Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

We’re getting good at sweating. We get lots of practice. By 10am it’s running off us in streams.

We are gradually getting things done but we’re not rushing. We have discovered a little section that requires some repair work done and that will take a while. The painting won’t start for a few days so here we are. Sweating. Any work we do tends to be before 10 or after 3:30. The rest of the day we sit in front of the fans. The showers/toilets are about 5 mins away so we have to manage ourselves well. It’s a bit like camping in that respect. The upside is we have showers that we can stand under and drench ourselves which we’re doing twice daily.

When the sun goes down it cools off. That would be great except then it’s time for the mosquitos to come out. We have a little river next to us. Go anywhere near it and you’re eaten alive. We have to cover ourselves in repellent and burn candles on the boat. We sleep with most of the hatches closed. We have a net in the hatch over our berth which allows us some breeze.

We haven’t been able to hook up to electricity from the ground due to our specific needs. Faffing around with this took most of the first day. Not a problem really as we’re making much more than enough with solar. We’re back down to just using the fridge so our consumption has halved. If we have a cloudy day we almost make enough and we have more than enough in the batteries to cover any shortfall.

Yesterday we gave the dinghy and the deck a good clean and took the lazy bag off so we can check it for any stitching that needs fixing. I also removed the zincs so we can order new ones.  We also removed the headsail and tied down all loose lines.  Finally we tied the dinghy down to the deck.  The broader reason for removing all the sails and tying things down is to prepare for any possible hurricanes while we’re away from Grenada on our planned trip to the UK and South Africa.

Our new internet order for parts is running into delays for a different reason than before. At least we’re in contact with the vendor, unlike the first one. Looks as though we’ll be here for a bit.  Well, we know the boat will be hear for six weeks – we won’t. We’ve had an offer to escape ashore with friends for a bit. We may take them up on that some time just to escape the sweat.

We narrowed down the water maker problems to a combination of factors. The filters had got a little clogged. In the past, an indicator would suggest that the filters were in need of attention. In this case, I think we must have picked up some larger particles which had clogged up the 50 micron filter. The error message suggested I needed to pay attention to the strainer which I did but it was only when I washed out the filters did most of the problems go away. That still left us with a faulty salinity probe. Spectra are again sending one free of charge. We’re hoping this one will be more reliable than the last two. We were able to make water by bypassing the alarm so we now have full tanks for our haul out.

In the afternoon, once the sun had lowered, I focused on the windlass which requires a once a year clean up and greasing. It turned out to be quite difficult prising apart the clutch for manual operation. Once we had managed to break it down, clean it and grease it up it seemed to work far better than ever. When my parents were with us we had a nasty moment with the windlass when it failed and we could not get it to work manually. We now suspect that the last annual maintenance was not thorough enough as the clutch, once greased, behaved so much better nine months ago. Bit by bit we learn more.

The weather held so we took a dinghy trip round the corner to Little Bacolet Bay, just west of where we are anchored.

It was a pleasant little beach with dark sand an no one else around. Sadly it had the usual washed up plastics and other trash, particularly above the waterline.

We walked to each end of the beach to get some exercise. At one end there was a brick door/arch which was probably part of something larger. On our round island tour we learned there used to be a town round here which has since vanished. Perhaps this was once part of it.

Our twice delayed haul out is now planned for 9am this morning. Before then we need to take the outboard off the dinghy, empty it out and haul it aboard. We have a few things to get done (paint, seals, through hulls/prop cleaning/painting, inspection, hull cleaning, ….) once on land but we know work will be slow. The heat of day will preclude hard work for most of the day. Not really looking forward to this. Hopefully I’ll also learn today more about my replacement order for all the parts we need to complete our work for this work period. If we can get them down here soon enough we may stay on the hard for a bit to get some of the work done out of the water. If so, there will really be no rushing around at all. We can get on with some relaxing and reading.

We decided to get off our arses and get busy.  We stayed in Clarke’s Court Bay and cadged a ride off Mike to go to the hash.  There had been a lot of rain overnight and more during the day and still more threatened so it was going to be muddy.  And it was.  That made it one of the best hashes we’ve been on.  We arrived at the end wet, muddy, scratched and tired.  We complimented Jackie as this was her first ever hash that she had set.  We learned some more about the Carriacou hash on September 5th.  Not only are they setting the next one up in Carriacou, they’re doing a follow on the sunday over in Petite Martinique.  Sounds like a lot of fun.

This morning I watched the F1GP at Clarke’s Court Bay Marina.  Looks like there may be some job openings in the Maclaren pit crew.  Soon after returning to the boat we up achored and motor sailed round to St David’s ready for tomorrow’s haul out.

Since arriving, Helen has cleaned out the BBQ which had filled with fat and grease while I changed the oil and oil filter on the genset as well as draining the fuel filters.  Together we took down the main sail as we want to get it inspected while we’re on the hard so we know it’s good for our Pacific crossing next year.

Now we feel quite pooped so we’re tidying up and winding down.  Not sure what time we’ll haul tomorrow.  Nor are we entirely sure when we can get the work done.