Toodlepip …

… to Prickly Bay.  Hello St David’s.

This morning, more or less on whim, we forewent breakfast, raised our mud-caked anchor and headed east along Grenada’s southern coast. St David’s is home to Grenada Marine – who will give us a second quote for warranty work. St David’s is only a short burst away from Prickly Bay, but one made a lot longer thanks to Butterfly having filthy hulls and less than spanking props.  Let me explain: Prickly Bay, where we have anchored for the best part of a month,  not only provides excellent holding and shelter, but within days it generously plants a garden on your undersides for free.  Nothing polluted about these waters! Dick had already removed much of that garden a few days ago – particularly from the props, since we were planning to leave on Monday.  But in less than a week, that garden had returned with gusto, complete with multifarious  eco-systems of marine flora and fauna all procreating away merrily.  Terribly jolly in an environmentally healthy sort of way – but a complete bugger if you want to travel anywhere meaningfully.

Our stay in Prickly was a very sociable one. Moored behind us, Neil and Tracy whom we met in Bequia; moored ahead, Barry and Lindy – new friends. Some way off, Di and Gerald – again friends made in Bequia. But then it’s a very sociable life this cruising lark – partly because you spend much of your time on deck so you get to talk and wave with those passing by; partly because living aboard a boat has its own unique set of conditions and challenges that only another liveaboard would appreciate and understand.  You certainly talk the same talk – lungfuls of it revolving around fixing stuff and how to get hold of stuff and where to borrow stuff and who is selling  stuff and who can mend stuff and weld stuff, and sew stuff and – well, stuff like that.  While we’re the new kids on the block – Neil, Tracy, Barry, Lindy, Gerald, Di are old hands at the cruising lark. Their advice and know-how around these parts has been invaluable.

Talking of being invaluable – Neil especially deserves a mention here.  Twice he’s bailed us and deserves a little public recognition for being a trooper. Having committed the ultimate sin of losing a winch bolt overboard – hey, it’s got smooth sides, it rolls, there was some swell, a slip of the fingers – what can we say?  (er, we goofed, that’s what!) – Neil gamely donned wetsuit and diving gear and took the unlovely plunge in what seemed like a completely futile attempt to find it. This bolt is all of 3-inches long by 0.5 inches thin.  The seabed at Prickly Bay is thick mud – weed-infested and pitted with zillions of eel holes and such.  The boat was swinging wildly in the wind. What chances of finding something so small given those conditions?   “I reckon that’s up there with the loaves and fishes,” he said emerging with the errant bolt clutched between forefinger and thumb.  So do we, Neil.  So do we.

It was also Neil who helped us get to the bottom of our starboard engine trouble. I mentioned above, we were hoping to leave Prickly on Monday. Come Monday, and having fired the engines and got everything ready, the starboard engine  suddenly just ups and dies. Thankfully, before we’d started manoeuvring.  Firing  it again, we find small cirrus clouds of white smoke puffing merrily from the exhaust. All very pretty; all very bad news. White smoke can mean water in the diesel. Can – and in our case – did.  Up with the starboard cabin bed and heads down into engine compartment.  How can water be in the starboard diesel supply, but not the port? And thereby hangs a long and very dull shaggy dog story which is as rivetting as a parliamentary speech and certainly not worth boring you to tears with.  But it was Neil, bless him, who decided an extra-long second bleed of the system might be the cure.  It was.  As the engine roared into life – there was a huge cheer all round.  What can we say? – the guy’s a star. Oh, and for the record – just how is the water getting into the system? Well, it seems the diesel deck intake fittings are the likely culprit, not being completely watertight. Some of the rain we’ve had here of late has been thunderously heavy – overwhelming the lip of the fitting and seeping in. Not a hard job to fix if we can find the right parts. The search is already on.

Another friend who is also a star – is Jeremy. Jeremy Peacock is the Raymarine agent who sorted out our Raymarine problems in Cape Town. He has continued to follow our blog and reading of our co-ax woes, wrote to us. He’s red hot on boat communications  and has come up ace again.  Checking out his suggestions, we have arranged with AfricanCats to swop our existing coax, RG58 for RG223. Thanks again, Jeremy!

And so, here we are in St David’s Bay, waiting to meet with Grenada Marine. The journey down, today, although slow because of those feverishly fecund hulls and props, was just great.  Believe me, you have no idea how much I miss being at sea – which sounds faintly ridiculous since we live on the sea all the time now. But it’s not the same: for there is simply nothing to compare with whisking through the waves, wind in your face, the whispery kisses of water licking the hull – the sun shining, the boat surging and swivvering and plunging and rising – and all beneath a shimmering butterball of a  sun in a liquid blue sky. It’s a tonic like no other. Suddenly – all is right with the world and nothing else matters. Dick and I both agreed this morning that, despite the need to fix the boat, we mustn’t lie at anchor so long again. We miss the sailing and ocean travelling too much.

For the now, however, we must wait at St David’s, our appointment with Nicholas of Grenada Marine coming to naught today – more of which later.

And with an excellent wifi connection here in the bay (boosted by our new mobile wifi antenna – we’ve given up on the  Hawking for the present), this blog will be updated a little more frequently – hopefully, with some new photographs for good measure.  Just like the sailing, I need a regular camera fix too!

When Albert Einstein said …

… ” Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”

– he might have been on to something.

Heigh-ho.

Clouds …

… and silver linings. Or to put it another way: when is the wrong co-ax and crazy wiring a blessing in disguise? Answer, when those two faults reveal another flaw that otherwise would have remained hidden. Which is a long-winded way of saying the marine electrician who came out to quote for replacing the coaxial cable (he’s considerably more compact than Dick), found water where it shouldn’t be – in the co-ax sheathing itself. So completing a hat trick of AfricanCats’ installation blunders as far as the VHF/AIS are concerned. No bloody wonder these didn’t work as they should – but a huge bloody wonder they worked at all! (Of course, if we’d only spent more time to – and I quote Gideon here again: “… make themselve (sic) familiar to get optimal use this equipment …” we’d have been … er, not one jot better off at all! These faults have nothing to do with not being familiar with our equipment. Through necessity, we have become all too familiar with our equipment – and AfricanCats’ frequently bodged installation thereof!
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Meet Barnacle. Our new addition. The 9.5 Aluminium Superlight model from AB. Compact, sturdy, lightweight and stable. We’ve added a 9.8 Tohatsu outboard too. It’s a good partnership and a huge improvement over the old set up which was bought as part of Gideon’s much vaunted Ocean Crossing Package. The 9.8hp Tohatsu is a 2 stroke model and weighs no more than the 6hp 4 stroke, but performs far better. The funny thing is in theory the AB should weigh something like 8-10 kg more than AfricanCats’ tippy tender, yet raising it on the davitts takes considerably less effort. Hmm. Strange that, don’t you think? Any which way, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

We have, of course, now a problem. What to do with The Tippy One. Advertising it for sale on the local Cruisers Net radio station, was not encouraging. Only one response: “Hi Butterfly, is that the tender we’ve seen you using here in Prickly Bay?” Yes, we dutifully replied. The one with bright yellow stripes and Butterfly plastered down the side (not our idea, by the way.) ” Ah… [pause] … I think I’ll pass in that case.” And who can blame him. We’re seriously considering donating it to a local charity to do with as they will. Getting shot of the old Tohatsu outboard won’t be a problem, thankfully.

By the way, the final straw with the TO was the frustration caused by its inability to maintain direction with only one person aboard. Coming into dock took several attempts if the wind blew. You can’t use speed to maintain direction as you come in, and the nose just shoots off in the gusts. Cruising makes you terribly dependent on your tender – without it you’re pretty much stuffed; you certainly don’t need to play silly buggers every time you want to dock. Nor, while I’m in full gripe mode, do you want the name of your main boat plastered large on the damn thing. Might as well tell everyone you’re away, please feel free to help yourself. That said, couldn’t resist naming the new one – albeit rather more discreetly. And once we have a rib cover, even that will be under wraps.
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We’re officially in the hurricane season now – and are suffering the heat and humidity levels to prove it. Much talk last night with friends, Tracey and Neil, of hurricane tactics should the unthinkable be forecasted to happen in our area. Not something you want to consider, of course, but wise to have some sort of strategy. Talk on the radio, too, of tropical waves developing in the Cape Verde Islands, a common breeding ground for such things. Last few nights much dry lightning and towards the end of the day, huge billows of cumulus rising vertically into the stratosphere. All very indicative of hot unstable air. All very ooh-er. Our own contingency plans revolve around first getting stocked up on diesel (Prickly Bay is all out, at the moment) – and heading due south. To quote from Wikipedia:

Grenada, being on the Southern edge of the hurricane belt, has suffered only three hurricanes in fifty years. Hurricane Janet passed over Grenada on 23 September 1955 with winds of 115 mph, causing severe damage. The most recent storms to hit have been Hurricane Ivan on September 7, 2004 causing severe damage and thirty-nine deaths and Hurricane Emily on July 14, 2005, causing serious damage in Carriacou and in the north of Grenada which had been relatively lightly affected by Hurricane Ivan.

Anyway, like a lot of cruisers in these parts, we just hope our theoretical strategies remain just that – theoretical.
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A couple of days ago, we trundled off to find some foam. Correction: a LOT of foam. To explain: I want to make a lot of cushions to pretty up the cockpit seating area and both cabins and make them more comfortable. Also, the cabin berths are too hard and give rise to backache, so softer foam is required for a softer landing. But Grenadians don’t have feather or hollow fibre stuffed pillows or mattresses, they seem to use shredded foam instead. So we were delighted to find a local factory that makes nothing but foam. The premises are primitively Dickensian, but the owner of the place was helpfulness personified and a charming gentleman to boot. Not only did he give us a guided tour of the place, and a comprehensive explanation of how foam is made, he offered us prolonged shelter from the deluge of rain that looked like it would never stop. At last, once the gods turned off the faucet, we trundled back to the dinghy dock, laden with sheets of brightly bouncing foam and several huge bags of shredded off-cuts to stuff cushions with. And all for a song. Oh, we do like Grenada … !
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This, by the way, is our view of Prickly Bay, as seen from the port bow. Taken towards the end of day, yesterday. Today, at 3.30 pm local time, it’s a rather different view. Torrential rain and thick grey skies. But to bring this post full circle, there is a dazzling silver lining to these dense and ugly clouds: I can leave the heavens to clean the outside of the boat and do a thorough job with far more rinses than our water tanks would allow, while I toil away happily at a laptop. It’s not all a trampoline of roses, but for the best part the cruising life is a sweet one!

Recently, our “HotHotHot” …

… wifi connection is more like tepidtepidtepid. The installed wifi booster antenna is (and never has been) neither use nor ornament – so updating this blog is proving something of a challenge. But update it we ever-so-shall before the weekend is out. If you’ve time to spare, then watch this space!

elementary, my dear …

… reader.

By a process of systematic elimination involving much shinning up the mast and down again (what fun – NOT!), the Sherlock Merediths have successfully deduced Butterfly’s VHF and AIS problems (chronically short range – less than 2 nautical miles each) are definitely due to:

(a) AfricanCats using the wrong spec of co-ax and -
(b) some – shall we say – “creative” if highly illogical wiring. In fact, given the wiring configuration, we’re amazed that we managed to pick up anything at all. Alas, mis-labelled wires only added to the confusion.

And that’s the good news – understanding, at last, the whys and wherefores of our communications woe. Correcting the wiring faux pas was also good news – very easy to do, once spotted. The bad news is changing the coaxial cable for the right one is not going to be easy. Running it through the mast is okay, but it’s the access at the foot of the mast that’s a challenge*. Dick, at 6ft 3″ is not built for small crannies (titter ye not – y’know what I mean.) At 5ft 6″, I can play Jack-in-the-box more successfully, but have bugger all wiring expertise. I can change a fuse and fit a new plug and – well, that’s yer lot, mate.

But at least we know what’s needed to sort things out – so that’s another mystery sorted. Next!

(And on that happy note, Holmes & Watson tootle off to investigate a dysfunctional shower pump …)
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Shhhh … keep this under your hat but we’re fast becoming bus junkies. Grenada’s buses are just a delight. Not buses as we in the UK know ‘em (graffiti-bedaubed things that only turn up in convoys after hours of waiting) – but people-carriers that stop to gather passengers anywhere they find them, along the way, and off the way; their operators touting for business with a cheery bawl and a lot of whistling. The driver, usually bedecked in copious carats of bling and the obligatory black shades, winds his way up alleys and sidestreets – anywhere another fare might be found, while his ‘conductor’ side-kick, leans out of a window and acts as press-gang meister. They run with such frequency, you never have to wait for one, and while there’s an inch to spare, nobody is turned away. And just to keep the festive party spirit going, loud reggae blasts from every speaker. It’s a raucous, jolly adventure that inevitably puts you in a happy mood – and this from one who abhors crowds and loud music with a vengeance. But hand on heart, never before has travelling by bus been such fun, nor so efficient – and all for EC $2.50 (about 60p)

Bus mania – Yay, bring it on!

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Footnote * This was the verdict of the electrician at the time he visited the boat. Of course, we’ve subsequently found out there is very little room in the mast, so exchanging the coax for new is possibly going to be a sod of a job, too. As for the co ax, we’ve since been informed by African Cats that their mast and rigging supplier was responsible for using RG58 within the mast.  That doesn’t alter the fact it was African Cats themselves who installed RG58 between the radio and the splitter.

Prickly Bay …

… is where it’s at now. After six days at Port Louis marina (there’s a current offer of book four days, get two extra days free) we shuffled off round the corner to Prickly Bay, the reason being to sort out the outboard problems – and PB is the nearest place for that. Of course, the Law of Sod being what it is, now we are near a Tohatsu mechanic and have access to a good chandlers, the fickle thing is behaving itself.

While at Port Louis (the nicest, cleanest marina we’ve found so far) we made the most of our hire car and took a close look at the island – easy to do since it’s so small – 344 square kilometres is the official figure. The central rain forest area is one of its loveliest features and is well, just very, very foresty – and thanks to the sweat-lathering high humidity levels, very, very plush and lush and drippingly green. Plants that we use as house decoration back in the UK are found here growing wild and about twenty times as large. The Grenadians themselves have a well-deserved reputation for being friendly and fairly chilled out – which makes it a relaxing place to hang out. In short, we like it here.

The only fly in the ointment is the weather. We are in the rainy season now, and spend a good deal of the day rushing round opening and closing portholes and hatches between the deluges. The exercise is probably good for us, but I can think of more fun ways to stay fit. (The fact is we need to get ourselves sorted with suitable awnings and soon. So, tonight I drew up some designs; tomorrow I’ll get out the sewing machine and make a start.) The frequent showers and occasionally heavy squalls so drench the air, everything (including us) is covered in a fine film of condensation – humidity on a scale that makes it hard to keep anything dry for very long. But it’s hard to grumble when the sun is rarely off duty and a brief rest on the tramps brings the much-needed drying, cooling breeze for comfort.

Oh, but have we been busy little bees, us two! Despite the enervating climate, like so many liveaboard yachties, we’ve been beavering away at the TBF (To-Be-Fixed) list and making a lot of satisfying headway. In the previous blog post, I mentioned we’d cured a long-standing leak. As of two days ago, you can make that two. Recently, Dick had to throw away a whole cupboard of clothes and shoes that were very badly mildewed, because of another wretched fridge plumbing arrangement, but today, that same cupboard is dry and smelling sweet and should stay that way.

And on the subject of smelling sweet, let’s hear it for baking soda! Cheap-as-chips basic Bicarb has removed the dank odours caused by these long-standing leaks, very thoroughly and very quickly – so it’s not just an old wives’ tale, as an odour absorber, bicarbonate of soda really works. (Ha! Tragic, isn’t it? – some people get their kicks from booze or cocaine, whereas I get mine from sticking my head in a cupboard and sniffing in dry, de-odoured air!

We have several issues with various pieces of kit that don’t work properly – but more about this later. However, we are at least making inroads into understanding why our AIS and VHF aren’t up to speed. Both are essential for safe cruising, yet neither of our units has a range beyond 2 miles, which is, frankly, ridiculous. But a cheap temporary aerial purchased here in Grenada, unceremoniously stuck out of a porthole, gives us over three times that range with the AIS, and kept track with a boat that travelled on the other side of the headland, so it’s clearly not the radio or the AIS unit at fault, but the aerial or the installation. We hope to get this completely cracked by the end of this week.

Emails continue to fly between us and various manufacturers to sort out various other equipment failures (eg, our Blue Sky Controllers, FloScan – neither of which work as they should), since AfricanCats emphatically insist their installations have all been completely perfect and therefore none of the failures (bar the leaking diesel tank which they have graciously put their hand up to) can possibly be their problem; it can only be a matter of unit failure, or – and get this – our own stupidity in not being able to make them work. Well, that not said in so many words, but as good as. Here is a quote from Gideon in the AfricanCats private forum today:

Hallo Dick

All your equipment works but the user should make themselve (sic) familiar
to get optimal use this equipment.
If you purchase a new car or tv set or any other technical equipment
the same should be done. [...]

Gideon

And then he promptly closed the thread, so denying any right to reply.

Hmm … so let me get this clear then: We have no leaks (just puddles of our imagination?) and the AIS and radio and solar panel controllers are all humming merrily away doing what it says on the tin, if only we bothered to spend more time reading the manuals.

Oh well, that’s alright then.