One that got away. One that didn’t (not for the squeamish)

Posted on June 9, 2009 by steve

We had a lovely peaceful night anchored off Ronde Island (or Isle de Ronde depending on which chart you’re examining). We use our time yesterday afternoon to clean the barnacles off of Dignity’s hulls. Earlier in the afternoon I had jumped into the water for a swim and immediately noticed that she was covered in barnacles from her stay in Grenada so that set our afternoon’s activities.

This time, the muck underneath the boat contained hundreds of tiny soft shelled critters, a little like marine fleas, which having been disturbed from their home settled on me. When I left the water on a couple of occasions I could feel them crawling all over me – it was horrible. The last hour or so was spent on the hookah. I didn’t come out until I have rubbed as many of the critters off me as possible. While doing this I was surrounded by fish eating the critters as I washed them off. Even so, I still had many aboard when I climbed out the water. Yuch.

We left around 9am this morning putting out the fishing lines as quickly as possible. Within minutes we had a fish on a line but just as we were dealing with it we sailed into the lee of Kick ’em Jenny and the wind went wild. By the time we had dealt with the boat we had lost the fish but not before the line had tangled with one of the others.

The sailing was soon fine and having managed to untangle the lines we were hopeful of catching something with all four of the lines out. Soon we had attracted the attention of a number of frigate birds. In the past interest would soon disappear when the birds realized our lures were fake. This time, one was too eager and dived down and was hooked. It was sad realizing the bird was doomed one way or the other. For a while it flew while being towed. Soon it landed in the water and was dragged. I decided to see if it was possible to haul it aboard and remove the hook before it drowned. By the time I had it close to the boat and out of the water it was not in a happy state. The hook was in it’s body, a wing looked broken from being dragged in the water and it was not happy at all.

At this point I realized I would have preferred it had the bird drowned. As it was I couldn’t put it back in the water to drown nor could I bring myself to bring it aboard. So I removed the lure and let the bird have some peace in the water before the inevitable came. We did capture a few pics of the birds before and after the hookup. Suggest you don’t look if you’re squeamish.

The remained of the sail to Carriacou was less eventful. We have discovered another tear in the headsail further up than the previous one. We’re going to go ashore this afternoon and see how our dinghy cover is doing and see if we can have a professional look at the sail.

INSERT_MAP

Posted in Carriacou | Leave a comment

Ronde Island

Posted on June 8, 2009 by KC2RIY

Here we are at Ronde Island. As we were leaving this morning we received a call from Jim on Heatwave. He recommended a stop at Ronde Island as it was a nice quiet anchorage along the way which we might just get all to ourselves. We took this into consideration as a possible stop. As we sailed up the west coast things went reasonably well. That was apart from loosing my biggest lure. It looked like a clean cut on the wire just above the leader and swivel. The leader was about 18 inches long so that was one big bite, if it was a bite.

The current from the east was strong despite our lunar planning. A quick tack test showed us going back along our old course so we took Jim’s advice and headed for Ronde Island. So here were are. We’re not the only ones here. There is a French boat here too. The water looks lovely and clear – especially in comparison to the waters around Grenada itself. We may swim and have a little explore ashore later in the afternoon.

The easting we made motoring here will make for an easier sail to Carriacou tomorrow.

INSERT_MAP

Posted in Grenada | Leave a comment

Lazy, Rainy Day

Posted on June 7, 2009 by steve

Yes – it’s the rainy season and yes – it rains. Quite a lot today. Good job we nothing more planned than moving the boat outside the Lagoon for fresher air/water. We’ve been mainly reading today interspersed with opening and shutting the hatches torn between getting things inside the boat wet and being stifled in the reduced airflow. Wind forecasts for tomorrow are decreasing each time I look but things still look favourable for an early morning start. The easterly tug of the moon should begin around 7am and peak between 9am and 11am. We’ll aim to be between Grenada and Carriacou between those hours – assuming of course we have no undesirable forecast in the morning.

I’m blogging our position now as I doubt if I’ll do so in the morning before setting sail.

INSERT_MAP

Posted in Grenada | Leave a comment

1,000 Steps

Posted on June 7, 2009 by steve

The battery work went more or less to plan. At 8am, we dinghied into Island Water World to collect our new battery. We were a bit early so it wasn’t ready. We picked up some cleaning supplies and took our dud battery and the other good one that had been charged up ashore back to Dignity. Focusing on the four batteries which each had a low acidity reading in one cell each we first drained the problem cell down to the plates, topped this cell up from those surrounding which had strong acid then refilled the surround cells using acid from a good cell in the dud battery. A little more convoluted than the original plan but had the greatest effect. By the end of the morning we were back in IWW where we collected the new battery, took it back to the boat and installed it. Dignity was now ready to go.

After lunch we went for a walk around town hoping to catch the museum. We left the dinghy at Grenada Yacht Club, swapped some books then headed round to the fort area. Shortly after leaving the yacht club we passed a sports field where the local police were hosting events. In the heat we couldn’t believe how many were standing around in full track suits.

We are anchored in a place called “The Lagoon” where on one side you have the rapidly expanding Port Louis and on the other is the Grenada Yacht Club. The land sticks out to the north where you have the Tropical freight terminal. On the other side of this you have the Caranage. This is a squarish little bay surrounded by buildings, mostly commercial. The waterside has many boats docked, some fishing, some party and some commercial. The water is a bit yucky but overall the place has a bit of an atmosphere.

As we walked around the Caranage we came upon a couple of local fisherman who’d caught a boat load of jacks and were selling them in plastic bags to folks ashore. When we reached the museum we found it was not open. Unfortunately there wasn’t even a sign to say when they do open. Another time.

We walked through the tunnel that takes us to the ‘city’ area of St Georges where they have the market, banks and the new mall/cruise boat terminal. We bought some fruit at the market, looked around the mall then headed back to Dignity picking up some rum on the way. Some of this rum (the bottle of 150% proof for approx US$4) is destined for knocking out fish we catch.

In the evening we attended the 620th Grenada Hash which had the ominous title “1,000 Steps”. The start/end point was Port Louis Marina so we didn’t have far to travel at all. Port Louis is a new marina and very elegant. I would guess around 120 people attended this hash. Among them were some cruisers we knew: Jim from Bees Knees and Marianne and Theo from Double Dutch who we’d met on the recent turtle watch.

The hash began by taking us on a narrow path around the nearby prominentary. Soon we were scrambling up the side of the hill. I kept sliding out of my flip flops so I ended up climbing up the hill in bare feet.

From the top of the prominentary we were treated to a great view of the Lagoon where we were anchored. We then descended back down to Port Louis Marina where a water taxi awaited to take us over to the other side of the Caranage, close to the museum where we could continue our walk.

     

The walk from here took us all around St George’s. If there were steps in town, we climbed them. The relief that came with descent was tinged by the likely prospect we’d not seen our last climb. At one point we had a ‘beer stop’ which is unusual for hashes as the beer is usually reserved for the end of the hash. In this case the beer was in fact free and served by some interesting local characters, one of whom insisted on posing for the camera.

As an aside, you may notice that in the pics for the hash many are wearing ties. This was a mandatory dress requirement owing to the fact we were walking around the city. Obviously the hashers have an eye for their graces.

Given that at any time we knew exactly where the end of the hash was and how to get there, it was tempting to take a short cut to the finish. Unless we accidentally skipped some side path we avoided this temptation. Nevertheless, although there were many in the pack behind us, we were one of the last to arrive at the finish so we reckon one or two others succumbed to this temptation. I can’t blame them as this one was hard work. Back at Fort Louis Marina we had the customary beers to wash away the fatiguq of hard walking/climbing. Here we bumped into Jim from Heatwave who had wanted to go on the hash but had been delayed owing to flight delays with his family (Judy & Charlotte) who had left for Bermuda earlier in the day.

After the hash we decided to eat out with Jim from Bees Knees at a local place called the Horny Baboon. We had chicken wings, burgers and fries. We deserved it.

Quick note on plans for today. Having done our work on the boat and as tomorrow looks more and more like the day to head north we’re going to pop outside the lagoon to anchor Dignity in cleaner water and have a restful day.

I’ll leave you with some prophetic words on a sign we encountered on the hash yesterday having climbed yet another set of steps.

Enjoy the rest of the pics.

Posted in Bees Knees, Double Dutch, Grenada, Heatwave | Leave a comment

Projects Day

Posted on June 6, 2009 by steve

Friday turned out to be one of those boat projects day. The day started a little late as I provided some remote help (though not to successful conclusion) to a fellow on another boat having problems with his wifi setup.

Then I removed the battery which I was fairly sure had a dead cell and we took it into Island Water World to begin charging it and to investigate the results of the two batteries that had been independently charged overnight. The results were puzzling. From IWWs load tests they appeared ok but they still showed low readings on individual cell tests when using the hydrometer. This puzzle requires some attention as the battery with the dead cell had these characteristics six months ago when I first tested all the drive batteries.

I talked the problem around with Hunter from Arctic Tern, who we bumped into in the shop, and Jim, who turned up to borrow a tool, and with Helen. The strongest hypothesis I can come up with for cause is that sometime in the past the problem cells were overfilled with water and some of the acid spilled out. My last refill would have weakened the solution. There are a number of clues to support this idea but it doesn’t make it true. It does give us an avenue to attempt a fix.

The challenge will be to raise the acidity in the problem cells and, to a lesser extent, across a number of other cells which read low but not too low. We have a plan though. We now know that the battery we took ashore in the morning really is kaput. It has five good cells with strong acid it them. We’ll bring this battery back to the boat along with it’s replacement. We’ll drain some of the weak acid from the problem cells and replace with the strong acid from the good cells on the dud battery.

That will address any serious risks. We’ll then be free to sail north (the winds next week are looking favourable). Two to three weeks of usage should be enough to mix the acid into the cells. I will retest all the cells before coming back to Grenada. After this test we’ll deliberately lower the charge levels on the drive batteries which will weaken the acid in each cell. I know I can buy a five gallon container of battery acid on the island. With weakened cells I can again drain off fluid from every cell below optimum and replace with full strength acid. When the batteries are recharged and mixed they should be closer to optimum. We may have to repeat this process once a month a couple more times. Oh well. What else does one do on a boat?

Apart from lugging batteries around and scheming I also permanently wired in my Pure Sine Wave inverter bought in the US. It’s been working a dream although it couldn’t be fully utilized as it was running of a cigar lighter which couldn’t deliver the full amps without dropping the voltage too much and setting off the alarm on the unit.

So yesterday’s task was to mount it hidden away behind the console, wire it up to the fuse box I had earlier installed nearby for the radar and SSB in line with a switch installed on the console. I also permanently mounted a power multiblock close to where I wanted to place all the wifi/computer gear and ran the cable to the new inverter. Because I didn’t want to make a hole the size of the plug I had to disassemble the multi block so I could get away with a hole the size of the 110V wire. The last piece of the work was to move the Pactor modem to reduce the number of cables running from place to place.

Seems simple enough but it took hours. It was worth the effort as everything is now a lot tidier. The whole wifi setup now comes on at a flick of a switch. By being more directly wired I can charge everything of the new inverter without the alarm going off. Neat.

Today I’m off to IWW to buy the new battery and bring three batteries back to the boat (no fun there). We’ll install two of the batteries and do the first part of the acid master plan. This evening we have the twilight hash which starts from the marina right behind us. No fussing with travel today. If we have time we may squeeze in a visit to the museum in town.

Posted in Grenada | Leave a comment