Back in Prickly Bay

Posted on July 13, 2009 by steve

This morning I spent time researching a good place to buy our second windlass as well as a number of other smaller items we need.

Later, we dinghied into town to go shopping for bits and food. Actually we went in twice because the first time we discovered we’d forgotten the dinghy lock key and our list of things to buy. We managed to get the parts we need for the stalled projects as well as a new bucket and washing up bowl (which we accidentally threw into a bin but fortunately recovered an hour later). We also managed to find some heavy duty jump leads which we can use to reduce the amount of battery shifting when we come to equalize the drive batteries. Using this lead I can equalize the starboard bank as they are near enough to the Xantrex charger to do this. The port batteries may need to be moved.

Back on the boat I completed the 72V/12V override project as well as the watermaker refilter project. Helen helped out with the water maker project as it involved drilling into metal and it’s easier to have someone vacuuming away the metal shards as they’re produced. She also closed off the six monthly job of putting vaseline on the dodger zippers.

We then set sail for Prickly Bay timing our departure for the easterly current and managed to sail most of the way until the current turned against us. We may have set off a little late. On the way I examined the way the new lazy bag line fell over the second reefing line and it looked good so I can close off this project too. It feels as though we’ve been quite productive today. The only downside was losing the lure I caught the tuna with. The wire leader had been ether chomped or worn through. This stuff is not supposed to break so I’ll pin my imagination on a monster from the deep with big, shiny teeth.

Now we’re in Prickly Bay. We need to dispose of all our empty bottles at the factory while replenishing our supplies of Ting and beer. Helen found a few more Caribs tucked away this afternoon so all is not lost.

In the morning we’ll take a look at the project list and decide which ones to focus on next. Now it’s time to just relax.

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Bow Lockers

Posted on July 12, 2009 by steve

After spending an hour or two looking up part references and potential alternates (in readiness of future spares purchasing) I was able to borrow Jim’s jigsaw. This allowed us to get on and do the bow locker project.

As mentioned before the bow lockers are pretty deep and difficult to get in an out. Consequently we use them little. They would be ideal to store trash or other light items if only we could just reach in.

Fortunately a ridge has been built into the hull presumably to allow a floor to be put in some time.

This is what we did this morning. The first bow locker floor took the longest simply because each piece of wood had to be measured, cut, inserted, (sometimes) modified before repeating the process with the next piece. We’ve had beautiful weather today with lots of sunshine. It made working outside pleasant except for when I had to go down into the lockers which were pretty hot and made for sweaty work.

The second bow locker was simpler as we could use the pieces from the first one to use as reference templates. The shapes and ladder placement were not quite the same size but close enough to make this much easier than the first.

The end result was very pleasing. We have already stored the spare pieces of wood and some spare fuel in the bow lockers. Another item struck of the list. 58 to go.

After clearing up, returning borrowed tools and having lunch we moved the boat outside the lagoon to get some fresher air. Helen has since been busy cleaning the deck and seat cushions while I’ve been checking on the anchor and catching up on computer work. It’ll be nice to relax a little soon. We picked up a couple of racks of ribs yesterday so these will go on the barbecue this evening.  Mmmmm.

UPDATE. Major incident occurred. I took a bottle of beer from the fridge to celebrate today’s accomplishments and discovered it is the LAST ONE. I have some cans bought in Martinique which we use as backup but this is critical. Not only that, we ran out of Ting about 5 days ago. Good job we’re going to Prickly Bay tomorrow. I can go to the brewery outlet and pick up some more crates.

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Saturday Projects

Posted on July 12, 2009 by steve

Project progress :

72V/12V bypass switch

The rational for this project is to allow us to make better use of the regeneration on the boat.  We have a switch that engages the DC cross converters that allows us to flow charge from the drive banks to the house banks.  This keeps us off the generator for days when at anchor and allows us to fill the house banks when sailing regeneratively.  There is a ‘feature’ which cutrs off the cross converter when the drive bank charge drops below 80% and only reenables it when the charge gets above 86%.  We can get around this at anchor but when sailing this can get very irritating.  Given our typical tapping of the drive batteries at anchor and our usual sailing in the morning, we normally set sail with house batteries down at 50% and the drive batteries around 70%-80%.  As soon as we’re in the wind we’re regenerating but as a result of the described ‘feature’ we can’t use any of the power we’re making for the house bank.

The fix is to change the switch so that we can activate the cross over relay whenever we want.  This I managed to do yesterday and am very pleased with the results.

The project is not yet complete as the new configuration represents a risk of drive bank depletion should we forget and leave the switch on.  The next step is to implement a red indicator light somewhere in the visible console to warn us when the relay is engaged.  The light I wanted was in Island Water World’s other store so I can’t get it til Monday.

Watermaker Reflush

The water that comes from the watermaker has around 200 parts per million of impurities in it.  This better than most tap water but not good enough for using in lead acid batteries.  Good distilled water comes in at around 1 part per million but we’ve found it hard to find at times.  I understand that anything under 20 parts per million is ok (please comment if I’m wrong on this).  (NOTE:  We bought some battery water in Rodney Bay, St Lucia that had over 40 parts per million).

In theory, if we run product water back through the water maker the new product water should be close to adequate.  If nothing else this could provide a promising backup supply of battery water.

Yesterday I proved the concept.  I independently powered the valve used to take fresh water to flush the system at the end of normal operation and used the system in normal mode.  With Helen’s help we monitored the water quality as it came out and very soon we hard water at 10 parts per million.  Because the pipe I was using to collect the water was missing a seal we were leaking water so we stopped the test there.

Having proved the concept I set about wiring in an override switch for the fresh water valve.  Turned out I had the wrong switch so all was able to do was run in all the necessary wires and fuse and leave it there.  All the marine and hardware stores close at midday on Saturday.  I tried to find an open store but the only one that was open didn’t have the switch I wanted.  To be completed Monday.

Topping Lift Shackle

The way the topping lift is tied to our boom eventually chaffs the line so a smooth shackle is required.  On attempting this improvement I discovered the shackle I bought was too small so I’ll replace it on Monday and have another go.

Bow Locker Platforms

The bow lockers are so deep that we rarely put anything in them.  We intend to put in place platforms on the convenient ridge half way up.  Yesterday we bought the wood and Helen cleaned out the lockers.  Now the wood needs cutting.  Once installed we’ll put rubbish/trash up front out of the way of our noses.

Lazy Bag Line Replacement

One of the short lines at the rear of the lazy bag (which covers the mainsail) was badly chaffed from rubbing against one of the reefing lines.  To protect both lines I put in place a longer one which should hang better.  This project can’t be considered closed until we’ve had the sail up and I can see the chaffing has been addressed.

House Battery Bank

Batteries require topping up and full equalization.  The former was completed but the latter awaits our docking at Clarks Court Bay Marina some time next week.

Net result of days activities: Zero projects fully completed.

In between all this we managed to refill the dinghy, did some food shopping and a walk around town.

At 5pm Carol and John from Sweet Caroline came over for a couple of hours for refreshments.  We closed the day with an episode of 24.

We’re at a parts jam for moving ahead on projects.  Jim has offered us the use of his electric saw which we can use to cut the bow locker platforms.  If this is available we’ll get this task done this morning.  We can also research some parts we need to build up our spares inventory as well as look for somewhere to get some of the more expensive items (such as a second windlass).  Some time today we hope to move out of the lagoon into the fresher waters (and more importantly fresh air) outside.  It’s a bit further to come into the shops on Monday but we’re becoming desperate for breeze.  We can also fill our water tanks.

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Boat work, day 1 of many

Posted on July 11, 2009 by steve

Quite a lot accomplished yesterday. Having prioritized my project list (61 items long) and determined what near term progress can be made on the higher priority items it was off measuring, buying, checking, going back to store to exchange items and get new and, in some cases, actually get into doing actual installs. In between all this I was off with Jim to do customs/import work on our collectively imported chain and our new anchor.

During my second trip from the marine store I heard from Jim that we could go and collect the 960lbs of chain and anchor from the depot. A truck had been arranged for this and once we had made our bus ride, final round of paperwork/payments we had our two drums of chain and anchor. Trying to manhandle 450lb of chain in a round drum proved to be impossible so we got them off the truck by tipping them over and rolling them off. We couldn’t even roll them up a plank onto our trolley to get them to the dock so we had to pull the chain out of each drum, put the drums onto the trolley then hand the chain back into the drums. This was all reversed at the dock to get the drums off the trolley.

Using the lengthy dock we were able to mark up our chain before handing it into the dinghy. Our last bit of effort for the day was to then haul the chain out of the dinghy into a forward locker we’d cleared. We were able to use the bow chain roller for this which made life fairly easy relative to all the earlier hauling.

This didn’t leave much time to get on with the projects we had on the list. However, I did replace the furler line (existing one is too short) and as one project was simply to acquire a fuel filter for when filling the fuel tanks I have been able to mark two projects as complete as well as marking off some partial items. It’s all progress and it feels good.

Project work finished in time to shower and get over to Sweet Caroline (Carol & John) for cocktails.  We were joined by Diter who is also in the lagoon.  We bumped into him back on Tyrell Bay outside In Stitches so we already knew each other.  A 5pm cut off for projects seems so reasonable that we’ve invited them back to Dignity today.

I have been asked why we’re buying new anchor/chain so here is the rationale. On board we already have two anchors. The one we use all the time is a 44lb delta, which works very well, with 200ft of chain. The chain is 2 years old and a bit corroded but still serviceable. The second anchor is an aluminium jobby that has about 30ft of chain and 100ft of line. It can hold Dignity in light conditions but all we’ve ever used it for is a stern anchor to hold Dignity in one spot.

Issues:

  • If we’re caught in a real blow and need extra holding power by having two decent anchors out we can’t do it.
  • If we need to anchor in more than 50ft of water (which we will in the Pacific) we can’t do it.
  • If we have a fouled anchor and can’t retrieve our main we have no effective spare.
  • Our anchor chain is probably good for 2 more years by which time we’ll have to buy a new one.

To solve all these issues we’ve imported 300ft of new chain and a 57lb anchor. This is one of our bigger projects to complete as we’ll need a second windlass, a second anchor holder, some separation for the anchor chains, etc. We’ll probably swap over to the new chain / anchor while we’re on dock in a few days time to get the better holding power just in case we get a blow down here. The new anchor, by the way, is a 57lb manson.

Posted in Bees Knees, Grenada, Sweet Caroline | Leave a comment

Great Meal Out

Posted on July 10, 2009 by steve

Over near the old fort are two nice restaurants, one on top of each other. For our meal out we figured one should be best so we went over and looked at the menu for each. On the ground floor was BB’s Crabback Caribbean Restaurant and above was a Chinese which I believe was called the Flag Restaurant. We all agreed the Chinese looked the most enticing so that’s where we ate.

The food was utterly delicious and well presented. The best dish was “The Fish Jumping Over the Dragon Door” which was basically sweet and sour red snapper. Very well done.

When we got back to the boat we learned from one of the neighbouring boats, Sweet Carolina, that we’d drifted into her three times. The winds have been quite weird in and out of the lagoon and the boats were swinging everywhere. We put out some more chain and that seemed to do the trick. They were pretty decent about it and ended up inviting us over to cocktails this evening. Can’t refuse company and refreshments.

Today has been the start of projects. The plan to take a slip at Grenada Yacht Club has been thwarted as they don’t have the correct power supply for us. We’ve verified we can do this at Clarkes Court Bay Marina so we’ll head there next week for our battery equalization. We’re still waiting for notification that our chain is ready to pick up. In the meantime we’re picking up parts for projects and food. Things are going slowly and it’s quite hot and sweaty. This will be our life for a bit.

Posted in Bees Knees, Grenada, Sweet Caroline | 1 Comment