Where am I?
Latitude: 017°01.237’ N
Longitude: 061°46.574’ W
Still moored stern-to at Catamaran Marina in Falmouth Harbour, Antigua. I expect that we will stay here until around 20th December.
How is the weather?
Warm, sunny, squally. Some gusts 20+ knots but we are snug in the marina so no worries about dragging our anchor!
What am I feeling?
It’s been a roller coaster of emotions this week with the watermaker challenges the main cause of the lows. But we have made steady progress and we are now ready to sail! With Patrick here, I have company too
What has happened this week?
My objective at the start of the week was to accomplish as much as possible before Patrick’s arrival on Sunday afternoon.
It’s remarkable how a very simple job on a yacht sometimes turns into an unexpected trial. A case in point is changing the drinking water filters which I have on the cold fresh water lines going to each of the forward heads sink, the galley sink and the aft cabin sink. These filters mean that we can drink our tank water. Anyway, what should have taken 15 minutes max ended up as a 2 hour ordeal, working in the heat in a very awkward position. Stuck isolation valves were the main issue. Thankfully I wont have to do that again during the trip unless we take on some bad water, giving the torn skin on my thumbs time to heal!
Watermakers are definitely a blessing/necessity but they’re also a bane when they don’t work flawlessly. Ours is a Cathelco Seafresh H2O system rated to produce 72 litres per hour of fresh water from sea water.
They are a complicated systems with a low pressure feed pump, pre-filters, a high pressure pump, pressure chambers, membranes, gauges, etc. And, of course, hoses and lots of little plastic connectors that invariably rot from the heat and spill water into the bilges as soon as they break under pressure. A push-to-connect connector is a tiny part and very cheap if you can buy them but they’re “not available” in Antigua apparently. After a stressful couple of days foraging for parts across the island, the engineer now has the system working. But I have no more spare connectors on board. Amazon will deliver some to Katie to bring on 22nd and meanwhile I have asked Oyster to include a comprehensive bag of spares of all of the connectors in the system in their next spares shipment.
Our new medical kit with updated medicines as well as a defibrillator (some of us are in that age bracket!) have arrived in Customs. With my extension of stay now issued, we can clear the kit from Customs tax-free under the exemption for transiting yachts.
MSOS, the supplier of the medical kit, also provides us with a 12 month offshore medical support. So, if we have any medical issues, we can call them 24/7 and they will guide us through what to do based on the kit we have. Having taken the medical training in Amsterdam in May, I have a good idea of what to do, but having a medical professional at the end of a satellite phone call gives a lot of comfort! Hopefully, we wont need to see how good their support actually is!
We have to decide what to do about our huge parasail spinnaker. It’s here in store with Antigua Rigging. We have not used it since it was shredded during a major squall during our Atlantic crossing in 2018 – our one hairy moment in 3,200 nautical miles. I had it repaired in Grenada at some expense but it has not seen action since then – it’s just too troublesome when sailing short handed.
It’s also very bulky so we usually lash it down on the fore deck when not in use.
I do think it will be useful on the Pacific Ocean legs between Panama and Marquesas when we have experienced crew on board to handle it, at least during daylight hours. After Marquesas, we will be more short handed so I’m not sure we would use the sail.
Anyway, I will give some thought to this over the next month. If we ship it home, we would have more space to store provisions and we do have a light weight gennaker sail on a top-down furler which we can use poled-out in lighter winds (I will explain what that’s all about as and when we do it). This sail is currently stored under the forward berth but we can move this to the deck and create more space. But the big spinnaker is of course ideal for running downwind and that is what we hope to do most of the way to Sydney.
Talking about space, I am also arranging to ship home all the hard copy manuals I have on board in nice Oyster ring binders. I have the electronic copies of all of these manuals and more, all stored on my ipad, my laptop, on 2 thumb drives and in the Cloud and actually I prefer to use the e-copies as they’re easier to search for and read using iPad. The manuals fill a space just over 3 cubic feet and weigh around 60kg or 70kg, using up space under the port side settee in the saloon. That’s a lot of tinned tuna and spam! Or gin bottles for that matter!
We’ve decided not to risk trying to replace the cable which connects the wind instrument on the top of the mast to the navigation system down below, because the cable seems very tight in the mast. We’d have to solder the new line to the top of the old one in order to “mouse” it down the mast and if the existing cable is not loose, we risk breaking it, leaving us with a line half way down the mast and no way to bring it out the bottom. The electricians have reset all the connections and we will see when we go sailing if our wind instrument issue is any better.
So, regarding the 8 issues listed in last week’s blog:
- Done – the new transducer was fitted on Friday and is assuring me I have 3.4 m of water under my keel.
- Not done – decided not to pursue replacing the cable for now, as mentioned above.
- Done – watermaker is up and running.
- Done – Taj and Kevin from A&F Sails came Friday morning to measure up and make a pattern. Now we have to see if they can make it before we depart for Columbia…
- Done – I have recalibrated the sender and it seems to be working. Am checking regularly the electronic reading vs the dipstick to make sure they more or less agree. If any issue, I will redo the calibration.
- Done – the tank took nearly 400 litres of diesel. Tank capacity is 850 litres.
- Done – although sailors never stop organising spares or cleaning the boat!
- Done – orders placed with Oyster. Of course, lead time is an issue at this time of year, so we’ll figure out later how best to get the spares to the yacht.
Seven out of eight ain’t bad…
For this coming week, then, the main tasks are:
- Get our medical kit cleared and delivered.
- Provisioning, laundry and chandlery.
- Welcome Elizabeth and Katie and go sailing. Green Island? Barbuda? Guadeloupe? So many choices!
Sadly Will and Elin cannot join us this year as Elin is in the middle of applying for her Green Card and cannot leave the US for now. We shall miss them!
It’s starting to feel a lot like Christmas!
Fujin out!