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Going nowhere fast

by steve, on August 22nd, 2009 (Grenada, Lista Light)

Because of the forecast rain we decided to delay hauling Dignity until Monday.  We’re still in Clarke’s Court Bay rapidly doing not a lot.

Katherine and Dave from Lista Light came over Thursday evening to have a look around and pick up the final two batteries.  We shared some wine before dinghying over to their boat with the batteries.  Lista Light is a 75 year old wooden boat having a project list a little longer than ours.

Yesterday we bussed into town for food.  While there I had my cell phone unlocked.  Been meaning to do this for ages.  Rest of the day was just lounging around.

Today we may motor round to St David’s. Or maybe we’ll go tomorrow.  We may or may not go to the hash.  Maybe.  Kind of sums up our mood.

On the electric front last Thursday was a record.  We made 279Ah from the solar panels over the entire day.  Never seen it this high.  In the past our ability to make solar energy was capped by the battery capacity.  We don’t have that problem now.

Update on the dinghy leak.  Turned out our earlier efforts didn’t fix it.  The assumption was that the dinghy was filling from beneath so our earlier test suggested that it was not leaking from underneath following our “fix”.  Now we reckon the ingress may be from above.  Did a test last night.  I opened the lower bung to let the water out and, with the forecast rain, anticipated testing it this morning to see if it had filled up.  Would have helped if I put the bung back in!!!!

Category: Grenada, Lista Light | Here is my comment

Life in the slow lane

by steve, on August 20th, 2009 (Bees Knees, Grenada, Jabulani, Lista Light, Where II)

The brakes seem to have gone on and life has slowed down a bit. Some do say that this is what we should have been like all along. Maybe.

Not that nothing has happened since I last blogged. We had a good evening with Mike and Jackie a couple of days ago. It was their first time on a dinghy so we had the usual fun associated with uncertainty. But no one ended up in the drink although the opposite did happen a few times. (Note – they do advertise the local AA on the net in the mornings but I don’t think we have that big a problem)

Yesterday we moved round to Clarke’s Court Bay as part of our gradual migration to St David’s for our haul out – which we’ve now postponed to Monday. Before leaving it was goodbyes with Matt and Karen from Where II. They are heading west next week so it’s highly likely we’ll not meet up again before they go. There’s a strong chance we’ll meet up in Bonaire in November but that’s not certain. They plan to spend more time in the Venezuelan islands than we do so a catch up is possible.

We met up with Jim at the marina burger night yesterday evening. We also met Dianne from Jabulani anchored nearby. She’s on her own and just getting onto her SSB project and can’t get it to work. I agreed to help out so have been round there this morning. We made some progress but Helen and I will go back later this evening when we’re more likely to get a good signal.

This morning I also had a quick chat with the folks on Lista Light who are due to take our last two 4D batteries. They’re pretty busy with a project list that dwarfs ours so they’ll be round at 8 this evening to look round the boat before we all head over and explore theirs.

The only other excitement this morning was being asked to move a little by the barge that moves the garbage as we were anchored in it’s route. Not sure why it couldn’t go around us but we wanted to get to cleaner water to fill the tanks.

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Category: Bees Knees, Grenada, Jabulani, Lista Light, Where II | Here is my comment

Grenada / Trinidad Tracks

by steve, on August 18th, 2009 (Grenada, Tracks, Trinidad)

I noticed that over the last few days the date on my tracks and waypoints have jumped back 19 years or so. Been going through resets and s/w installs to try and fix the problem. No luck yet but one byproduct is that I have downloaded our recent tracks of Grenada and the trip to Trinidad. Enjoy.


View 2009 Grenada 2 in a larger map

Category: Grenada, Tracks, Trinidad | Here is my comment

Back in Prickly Bay. Again.

by steve, on August 18th, 2009 (Grenada, Where II)

After my siesta (on Sunday) we installed the dive tank rack in on of the forward lockers. This has made the layout of the locker a lot better. Previously, the tanks had to be laid down on the floor at the furthest point away from the hatch and everything piled on top of them. This made it very awkward as everything would have to be shifted to get at the tanks. Now they’re much more accessible and we can pile things in the rest of the locker based on likelihood of use.

We then motored back down to the anchorage outside St George’s and stayed there for the evening. In the morning we took the bus to the IGA food store to pick up some items we’d not had for a while and to pick up some meats for a BBQ we’re planning for this evening. We also picked up some hooks from the hardware store to further improve the dive/wet gear locker.

After lunch we sailed round to Prickly Bay. More precisely, we sailed round the point and tested our tacking angle against the current. We were going nowhere so we lowered the sails and motored the last couple of miles.

Last night we had Matt & Karen aboard (Where II) for pre dinner drinks and chat. Dinner took a back seat and we had the pleasure of their company until late in the evening. Brain is feeling ok this morning despite prior patterns associated with our evenings with them. Perhaps that’s due to the large amounts of water drunk overnight.

The main plan for today is to have Jackie and Mike aboard for a BBQ this evening. They were the local couple we met on our first hash here on the island and Mike is the one who took us to the airport back in May. We’ll probably make a trip to the local ACE hardware store as we need a few more bits and pieces and we’ll probably install the hooks bought yesterday.

Weather watching has become a lot more important now that the hurricane season has actually turned into a hurricane season. We’ve had no named storms then suddenly there were three, Ana, Bill and Claudette. Bill was the most concerning due to it’s projected strength. It’s still east of us but heading well north – looking much like it going to pound Bermuda. Claudette fired up from the low that caused the carnival parade to be postponed a week ago and ran into NW Florida. Grenada has some risk of being hit by a storm. Although we have insurance this is our last resort. Our plan is basically to either go on the hard to ride out a storm or to sail south well in advance. We have a few places all ready plotted in our chart plotter in case we do have to run.

This coming weekend looks to be very, very wet. This may affect our plans to haul out and will certainly delay the start of any land work on the boat.

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Category: Grenada, Where II | Here is my comment

Dragon Bay

by KC2RIY, on August 16th, 2009 (Grenada)

We had heard that the snorkeling and diving was pretty good around Dragon Bay, 2-3 miles north of St George’s so, as the weather prediction for today was good, we decided to head up here before ducking round to the south of the island.

We found the bay easily enough and there were no other boats around bar local fishermen. We’d seen a number of dive buoys so we decided to snorkel around a few of them to decide if it were worth getting the dive gear out and seeing them closer. We dropped the dinghy in the water for the further buoys before swimming out to the nearest buoy. We didn’t last long as we were both being stung all over by something or things in the water we couldn’t see. We therefore jumped into the dinghy and motored round to the next set of buoys and tried there. No stingers there so we explored. This was where some statues have been sunk in the water both as art and a stimulus for reef growth. I had my camera with me but unfortunately the batteries were flat so no pics. Try this link for an idea of what we saw.

Eventually back on Dignity we had a decision to make. Should we get the tanks out and dive and if so where? We decided to go for it. We should have had two full tanks but one of them had lost a lot of air. Helen didn’t think she’d last too long so she got the full one and I got the one with less than 1,000 psi in it. That also settled the dive – off the back of the boat hoping the stingers wouldn’t affect us on the bottom with our wet suits on.

The dive was quite pleasant lasting nearly half an hour. Nothing remarkably new seen but it’s nice to get down there amongst the sea life.

This afternoon I’m going to fit the new dive tank rack now that a lot of the gear is out and drying. Then we’ll head back to St George’s. This anchorage is a little too rolly to be comfortable over night. We’ll do some food shopping tomorrow morning before heading around to Prickly Bay for a couple of days. We need to get over to St David’s Bay by Friday for our haul out so we can get our bottom painted, service all the through hulls and fix some of the rubber seals.

We’ve just had lunch so time for a siesta.

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Category: Grenada | Here is my comment
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