Last night was the third night on the water for Cat Tales, since April of 2020. It has been a difficult refit, a fair bit of hard work, but with fantastic luck.
We got splashed into Prickley Bay in Grenada on Monday, November 21; and are now in the new mooring field outside of St. George’s. It has been two rainy days. We arrived in Grenada on the 10th, stayed 4 nights in the accommodations over Budget Marine, and 7 nights at Cool Running. Both locations were dandy for us, and allowed an air-conditioned lunch reprieve while we did our best to acclimatize.
This guy hung around all week, even giving the ladder up to the boat a serious look. Some locals tell us that they taste like chicken!
Steve and Maria of Aspen arrived in the middle of our stay, did some essential boat work, then splashed to carry on their refit in the Port Louis Marina. Since they had only been out of the water since May, it was less onerous for them. We, too, had been here in May to do some work on Cat Tales, setting up the schedule purposely to meet with them. I’ll tell you about that in a later weblog. For now, know we spent 11 days in the boatyard then to check systems out and make arrangements. In total, that makes 21 days of boatyard blues. I figured out, recently, that since purchasing Cat Tales, we have worked over 39 weeks in boatyards. Some of it was fun, with the satisfaction of finding solutions and of getting things done; but a lot of it was frustrating, hard, dirty, sweaty work. Covid has resulted in some introspection. We’ll see if the season heals those thoughts.
We are making runs into St. George’s and spending time with the Aspen crew, and other friends we meet in the restaurants, while continuing to do chores on the boat. We are getting truly caught up, however, and may soon be back to the regular boat maintenance work. Hopefully, we’ll swing back into our Caribbean life of hiking, socializing, and exploring; and keep you abreast of it here.
TECHNICAL
One of the chores we worked on in May was the starboard side salon window, the big, curved acrylic window under the signature FP window shade. I had used Sikaflex 295UV black, and a piece of plastic drinking straw to push the caulking under the front lower section of the window and had loosened the perimeter screws to do it. I was attempting to screw the screws back down to squeeze the material when the corner screw easily stripped the hole. The window is a bit raised, and as I went to work in November to fix the hole, I notice that the Sika does not stick to the acrylic. I’m going ahead with fixing the hole and anchoring the corner down. I’ll carry on to see how bad the leakage is while at the same time scheming to figure out methods for digging the product out of the hard-to-reach location.
We had Turbulence, the rigging company located at the yard, replace the primary 3 wires, toggles, and turnbuckles. It only got done with a bit of nagging, though the job looks OK.
We also had Sea Safety Services provide us with new fire extinguishers (and new brackets), flares, and a new life raft, as required for insurance. Insurance also had me install a solenoid to control the propane at the tank remotely. I have had difficulty rigging a light to let me know the status of the solenoid, and may have to rewire with an off-the-shelf control system.
The three house batteries will be the three French 75 AH batteries we bought in January of 2020, as miraculously they still do the job. We bought two 68 AH batteries from a local auto store for starting the engines, and they are doing fine.
I also did a DIY on the escape hatch windows. There was a recall on some hatches of the same make, saying the glass could drop out in certain circumstances. I tapped and installed some washers that overlap the upper part of the hatch to make it more difficult for this to happen.
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| Escape hatch. Washer placed to hold the window in more snuggly…just in case! |
What still works is astounding: the engines sprang to life, including the outboard, all electronics are working but the AIS, which has to be trouble-shooted, water pump, the refrigeration condenser and 220 V cold plate, windlass, and toilet. Most outrageously, the EchoTech water maker is producing water at 260 ppm, with a membrane that was purchased in 2012 or earlier, and was pickled during Covid. What will I do with the new membrane I got delivered here, so sure I was that it would be over for that membrane?
