Tied to a mooring ball outside of St. George’s isn’t bad.  When we’re sitting or working on the boat, we have solitude.  Solitude is good at bath-time when we clean off the sweat and grime at the back of the boat at the end of the day.  It is also the best location for Happy Hour, with good sunsets and the odd “Green Flash”.  We dinghied into St. George’s for the necessities as well:  food and booze from Foodland, boat parts from Island Water World, and social time with Steve and Maria of s/v Savannah Sky and Hugh and Maria of m/v White Pearl. 

When a weather window opened up, however, we took it and sailed to Tyrell Bay on December 6th.  We were quite nervous to see what Hurricane Beryl had left behind on the little island of Carriacou.  However, the 5 months of time since the storm has resulted in the houses looking 70% repaired, and the people’s emotional harm has somewhat lessened.  Still, we can’t understate the situation.  On nearby Union Island many people are still living in tents, having trouble coping.  All the boat wrecks are out of the mangroves, but for a ferry stuck high and dry.  Both boatyards are filled with boats being repaired.

I had to stop taking pictures after awhile, there were so many wrecked homes!

Many boats in the bay, however, there are many of them that are mastless and some that sat for weeks upside down in the mangroves.  

This WAS a house at one time

We had some walks, bought some electrical parts, had a dinner at Las Iguanas, and carried on with small boat projects.  One magnificent event was being invited to join in with birthday celebrations for Maria of m/v White Pearl.  We joined Hugh and Maria as well as Philippe and Dominique from French catamaran “Benji”, at The Gallery Bistro.  I (Laurie) got to practise my poor French, with lots of help from Hugh and Maria.  The food was a little spicy for us, with Indian cuisine, but well done.  The event was a great success, with Maria quite happy.

Maria, the birthday girl is sitting beside Dawn.  Hugh and Maria are from Saint John NB!

We checked out of Tyrell Bay on Sunday December 8, allowing us to sail to Bequia on December 9th.  We held off our departure until 8 am, hoping for the winds to die a bit.  The winds did behave to some extent, allowing the whole sail to be done with apparent winds down below 22 knots, but the sea was a bit difficult and the wind angle and current meant we had to do some tacking.  The 8 hours being tossed around were quite tiring, but there was very little fear and no squalls to concern us.

Sailboats can’t sail directly into the wind and this was the best angle we could manage.  We had to tack a couple times in order to make our Bequia destination without using the engines!

We checked in to Bequia the next day, and have been enjoying time with Savanna Sky, who motorsailed up here many days earlier to pick up a guest, and White Pearl who came in a couple of days behind us.  We’ve also been joined by Frank and Marie-Claude of s/v Komeekha, and Bill and Johanna of s/v Cloud Street who actually sailed up with us (passing us numerous times during the tacking duel with the wind and current).  With Steve and Maria’s guest Patty, we’ve been a tight, albeit large group; enjoying hikes, toasts, restaurants and happy hours.  Last night the whole crew enjoyed an extended happy hour on White Pearl, a 55’ luxury trawler.  Fantastic venue and fantastic party.

Steve and Maria and Laurie and I took the ferry to St. Vincent to meet up with Patty, their company from the US.  While we waited for her, we found a really nice restaurant for lunch, always a necessity for any outing!  We made the 4:00 ferry with just a few minutes to spare!

We are quite happy here, and that competes with our intent to get north to see other islands.  We’re watching the weather, but it will be a difficult decision.  Today, with unscheduled rain, we are making an easy day of it.  We’ll find something to clean or polish, and write up this weblog.  We heard about some serious wind and rain in central New Brunswick, and the damages it caused.  Seriously sorry for your troubles, everyone.

A very hot and hilly hike over to Hope Bay!  Cold beers all around at the end of this one!!

The distance is correct, however, the time isn’t.  I forgot to turn off the tracker while we had a 2 hour lunch!!

Thursday evening rum specials at the Cocktail Lab get many of us motivated to come out at night!

Left to right:  Maria, Steve, Laurie, Dawn, Marie-Claude, Frank, Patty and Hugh.  Maria from m/v White Pearl was taking the picture.

TECHNICAL

We’ve caught up on all our maintenance chores, but some things just come up when you think you can relax.  On our trip from St. George’s the new chart plotter and autohelm went dead.  I went below to try to troubleshoot it, and wiggled all the wires and got it going, while Dawn hand-steered.  The mess of wires, which has caused trouble at that location before, made it difficult to find the problem – so I vowed to fix it.  I went to Budget in Tyrell Bay, bought a bunch of stuff, and revamped the system.  The circuits provide power to the new navigation computer, the RayMarine backbone, the new chart plotter, and the autohelm electric motor. A harness with 4 connections became a modern terminal block for 6 connections.  The new system allows much more testing with a circuit-tester, and I determined that the problem was a friction-fit in-line fuse holder that kept loosening all by itself.  I retired the fuse holder and am confident that the sweaty two hours will be worth the extra effort.

On our rattling 8-hour sail to Bequia, a partial-bottle of gear oil tipped over and the top failed, allowing viscous, smelly gear oil to mess up the port engine room.  Two hours of bailing, mopping, cleaning with kerosene, cleaning with vinegar, water, and Simple Green, and the smell is only cut in half.  Giving it time.

I’ve lifted the two flexible panels on the bimini, allowing the panels to run cooler and with less risk to the bimini.  I used $6 worth of 5/8” pvc pipe for the project. 

The new 6 circuit terminal strip with crimped eyelets on the wires will allow better troubleshooting than the old style white connector that can be seen at the bottom of the picture.  This is for the Raymarine autopilot motor, computer, backbone and chart plotter.

The pipe allow air flow under the panels

New Canadian Tire cheapo car radio that allows the phone to Bluetooth in to stream music throughout the boat.

The last project was a swap-out of our perfectly running 12 volt car stereo with a new one that has Blue Tooth functions.  We’re presently running Dawn’s phone through it, allowing streaming music via a music app, currently listening to Rodriguez Radio.  Pretty sweet, and Dawn is happy!    Our phone has a Martinique Sim which allows us unlimited data…a first for us!!

A few days ago, I spotted a 50 something foot Chris White schooner-rigged catamaran with foiling masts rather than mainsails.  We met the couple Zeke and Halley who explained how it all worked.

Laurie is still drooling over this machine!