Our last report had us enjoying Cassada Bay, Carriacou during an anomalous west wind and north-west swells. We had enjoyed the beautiful scenery and calm, flat nights, but not so for our companions Steve and Maria on their 52’ Island Packet, Savannah Sky. They said they still rolled somewhat, and that something strange had shaken their boat in the middle of the night. On the first morning there, they up-anchored and headed to Port Louis Marina in St. George’s Harbour.
Cat Tales alone in picturesque Cassada Bay, Carriacou
Cat Tales spent two more days and nights, taking in the beauty and doing some snorkelling. We also took the opportunity to mix up some gelcoat and touch up all the nicks the topsides had acquired recently. This chore heralded the start of the end of the season and the start of the work – not that we were free of repair challenges all season.
We headed back to Tyrell when the wind returned out of the normal quadrant and began the end-of-season oil changes. It wasn’t all work, however, as we enjoyed lunch fish tacos at Las Iguanas and came in with other boaters, including Skip of s/v Peacekeeper, for their pizza specials one night. Skip had made a 24 hour jump from Guadeloupe. He was attempting to move the boat from Puerto Rico to Trinidad after technical issues forced a very late start to his sailing season. Dawn and I also hiked over to Paradise Beach, where we had beer and a great lunch while staring out over the fabulous scene of Sandy Island and Union Island and the amazing shades of water.
Independence Day Decorations, Carriacou
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| Finally, an IPA in Paradise…Paradise Beach, Carriacou |
Ultimately, we sailed alongside Peacekeeper down to the mooring balls outside St. George’s Harbour. It was a great sail, with a little north in the wind allowing us to take the inside route to Isle de Ronde to miss the Kick-em Jenny volcanic exclusion zone. Cat Tales tacked way out after that, and the wind allowed us to sail the complete course to within a mile of the mooring buoys. Sadly, as we started the engines and lowered sails, a piece of the sail track slipped, and we lost a number of bearings from the batten cars.
Skip (s/v Peacekeeper) aboard Cat Tales, Tyrell Bay, Carriacou after a 24 hour sail from Guadeloupe
We enjoyed some time with Skip, Steve and Maria, including a walk to Umbrellas, a fun beach restaurant on Paradise Beach. After two days tied to the mooring ball, Dawn and I sailed under jib to Prickly Bay, to continue our chores and prepare the boat for haulout. We got a little ahead of our normal schedule by dealing with the sails and a few other chores. When Skip also came around, we did the obligatory walk to the craft brewery for supper.
We were hauled out on the second morning in Prickly, and immediately things were removed from our control. Cat Tales was placed in a corner, and water/sand blasting was started on the boat. We could do very little, often just visiting during lunch or at the end of the day to pack things up. As there was a weekend in the middle of the work, I was able to do some work on the saildrives and the rudders to both protect previous work and coatings I had carried out and to push to project along. The rest of the work of decommissioning went smoothly, and we flew home feeling like we had it under control.
We have had some cool days and nights back in Canada, but for the most part, spring and summer are early. The winter was mild and there has been little rain – meaning river-running in a canoe is cancelled this year. Otherwise, no surprises.
We hope you all have a fun and memorable summer.
TECHNICAL
We are still enamoured with the new autohelm equipment we installed after our 1996 electronics failed. It added a few features to the chart plotter, and also the control head provides information gleaned from the rest of the electronics. We now have the wind instrument and sailing direction information all on one little display, leaving the chart plotter to display the chart at a better scale.
Our Raymarine a75 chartplotter is having a serious darkening and distortion of the polarizing film. As it is a touchscreen, nobody will “touch” it for repair. I looked at the Raymarine lineup, and all chartplotters or Multifunction Displays (MFD) they have are a few inches thicker, making them too fat to stick in the steering station. As a result, I have taken delivery of a refurbished a75, and will take it to the boat in November. Hope it works…
The bearings that escaped from the mast rail are 6 mm Torlon balls. To facilitate the repair of the rail, we removed all the batten cars and all of the Torlon balls. A close inspection of all the bearings brought us to the conclusion that the damaged balls and the missing balls came to a total short of 40, and we are sourcing them now. We asked for some ideas for repair of the rail from the sailmaker, Turbulence; and in short order the repairs were done. The bottom of the rail includes a short piece meant to assist in loading the bearings and launching the cars up the rail one at a time. It is held on with a rod up the rest of the rail and a bolt at the bottom. The bolt hole was a mess, so a new helicoil was placed in it to hold a new bolt and it works fine. The rest of the rail we concluded was causing the problem. It was poorly fastened and could weigh on the little loading strip and bolt. The technician installed 4 bolts equidistant from top to bottom in the rail, making it seriously secure.
The batten cars with their bearings in place, are placed on this loading strip to allow them to be slid onto the mast rail.
The sandblasting took 3 complete workdays, and I put on some eye and nose protection and worked at the same time and after-hours gently removing coatings from the rudders and saildrives, minimizing damage to the special protective layers below. Then the boat was moved to our usual spot for repairs. Two to four men were constantly working for two more days repairing the gelcoat with epoxy and filler, then applying Sea Hawk’s Tough Stuff two-part marine epoxy primer. I let them do the same to the rudders, while I coated the saildrives with zinc chromate and an outboard paint.
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| Sand Blasting with water was a noisy, terrifying, dirty experience |
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| Pitting of the gelcoat, after sandblasting |
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| Workmen repairing, fairing and sanding after the sandblasting |
While the workmen dealt with the bottoms, I mixed up batches of gelcoat, layered up the hole where the Hobie had attacked us and touched up past repairs and scratches. I was able to tidy up the bows just as the men arrived to them to apply their coatings.
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| The hull and rudders received a full coating of West Epoxy, followed by a coat of Tough Stuff 2 part epoxy…four more coatings to follow!! |
We had determined, with the assistance of the experienced yard managers that the lower rudder bearing housings were seriously worn, and we’re working on that problem over the summer as well.
We are still hoping to find a way to repair our 55 ampere internally regulated Hitachi alternator, and we also have to work on the big salon windows that sprayed water inside when we pretended to be a submarine off Diamond Rock.
