I start this weblog from the mooring field outside of St. George’s, Grenada. Not that we are on a mooring ball, however – either the market for them outstripped demand or some are missing. We, along with 5 other boats are actually using our ground tackle (anchor and 170 feet of chain) in attempts to grab the bottom here. It is like rubble and gravel thinly overlaying a poorly cast concrete driveway. Hope we are near here in the morning…
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| This is the SEA temperature. Not much coaxing needed to get in the water at the end of the day! |
This year we spent a full ten nights in the little apartments of Cool Running, across the street from Cat Tales’ boatyard. We did our best to work the full ten days, but we had the wettest day I’ve ever seen, followed by loss of running water in the boatyard and in our apartments from damage from landslides. There was a full stream of running water under Cat Tales, mind you; and our bottom work was done with wet ankles. It made one a little nervous to work with power tools, but at least the alligator behaved itself.
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| The water situation under the boat was typical for the 10 days while working |
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| Washing and waxing the entire boat is exhausting work in the heat. A day off for rain actually rested my arms to get ready for another go at it. |
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| After the torrential rain, the stream behind our boat was alive with water. The number of plastic containers floating out to sea was hard to take! |
The work went fine, however; and we got all we needed done before splashing. We did have a social life as well, with many ‘happy hours’ with friends at the restaurant One Love, located in the boatyard. Most often it was Maria and Hugh of MV White Pearl, out of Saint John, and Frank from Quebec of SV Komeekha.
As we finish this weblog we can report that Cat Tales did get on a mooring ball, but only after having to troubleshoot serious but small problems with both engines. It all got sorted out, and we have even hiked to a favourite restaurant, Umbrellas, for lunch on the same day with Hugh and Maria as well as Steve and Maria. We can also report that Cat Tales is a sweat-box to live in when it rains, beautiful for sitting and toasting sunsets at the end of the day, and lovely for keeping hands from being idle. Still, we are approaching being ready to set sail on some adventures and will be looking for a weather window next week for jumps to Carriacou and Bequia. We are nervous about what we might find on Carriacou, Union, Mayreau, and Canouan after the wrath of July’s Hurricane Beryl.
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| Laurie up the mast securing our radar reflector that he happened to notice while doing morning stretches. |
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| This workboat has been removing old wrecks from the bays in Grenada and its sister island Carriacou. You can see one on the deck and another being towed. We watched over 8 boats being removed while we were anchored there. The wrecks were from past hurricanes, but some have been there for years and years! |
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| Launch day for Cat Tales. Steve took this picture of us backing out of the slip. His boat was to be launched next on the schedule. |
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| The Spice Island Marine Services presented us with this gift basket to commemorate their 40th anniversary. They usually give us a couple tee-shirts, but this gift was given to anyone who had stored their boat with them for 10 years or more. |
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| Check out the personalized label on the gin bottle! Impressive! |
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| Besides two tee-shirts, Yeti cups, no less! What a lovely gift. Thank you Spice Island Marine!! |
TECHNICAL
The big job that was haunting us was the application of two layers of Sea Jet two-part primer and two layers of ablative paint. The extra layers were due to the removal of old paint and rebuilding of the bottom, as described in our spring weblog. It was so daunting that we called the boatyard weeks ahead and asked them to do it. Well, they only got one coat of ablative on, but we doubled up on the waterlines and leading edges, and accepted it.
The other haunting job was the removal of the lower rudder bearing housings. You may recall that our rudders were pulled to inspect the housings, and that we had determined to have the yard take over that job as well. When they didn’t respond with a method nor an estimate, I determined I had better do it myself, and studied at the schools of Facebook and YouTube. I successfully got them out, epoxied new ones in place, and we popped in the new bearings and rudders just as we were being launched.
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| Tools required to remove the old rudder bearings. |
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| Laurie had to remove a one cm slice of the rudder bearing housing and cut and then collapse the rest of the housing in on itself with hammer and chisel. Of course, this is all times two, because it’s a catamaran! |
Also in the spring weblog, we mentioned that we had spilled some of our sailcar bearings into the sea when a piece of sailtrack slipped. We sorted it all out by taking all the cars down, eliminating the worn and faulty balls, getting the rigger to install 4 new screws with fresh threads and putting a new thread coil in the old hole that held sailcar ‘launch rail’. Putting all the balls back and launching them all took a couple of hours; and that was followed by a couple of hours of bending on sails.
Other chores also kept us busy, and if we were stalled in one, we could start another. We were fixing 5 leaks in our port front window that we learned about after becoming a temporary submarine off of Diamond Rock Martinique, repairing a bent hatch frame that showed up in the same manoeuvre, installing new bearings on the steering seat, putting the propellers back on, recommissioning the two engines, applying special coatings onto the saildrives, washing and waxing, laundry and cleaning,
Many chores need to be done before we start travelling between islands as well. We have a serious leak in a side port that requires fixing, a new music car radio to install, the ham radio antenna and ground equipment to be removed, and the Raymarine a75 has to be switched out with our replacement. There are even chores we put off from last year. What fun!
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| Raymarine a75 refurbished and brought down with us in our luggage |
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| The old Raymarine a75 - you can see why we needed a new one. |
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| New one, working great! Raymarine doesn’t make this model anymore and our space can’t accommodate the newer models, so after a great deal of searching, Laurie was able to find a company in Miami that sells refurbished models which allowed up to freshen up the model we had and knew would fit! |
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As I work on putting photos into the blog this morning, Laurie is in the engine room changing the raycor primary fuel filters, and it’s very warm indeed in there!
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We’re off to lunch today with friends, so it’s not all work!
