Final weblog for the 2024-25 sailing season
SMELLING THE BARN
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| Cat Tales being gently lifted from the water and preparing for storage. |
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| Sitting pretty in Prickly Bay, Grenada |
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| Cat Tales is the little one at the far left of this lineup. Newer boats are a bit longer, and a great deal beefier. |
That is a funny expression, but even down in Grenada, with few large farms and no real barns, they know the reference, or can guess the meaning. Horses and cattle smell their home and will speed up to get there. We’re presently sitting in our quirky apartment at Cool Running, waiting for the taxi that will take us to the airport. It was a harder than normal week in the boatyard.
We arrived as reported in Bequia on March 8th, and cleared customs the next morning. One missing item about the trip was the sighting of s/v Prism who pulled out from the Pitons in St. Lucia just as we pulled out of Anse Cochon. Our double-reefed main kept us behind them, and indeed, their lead grew to over two miles before we caught up in Admiralty Bay. We joined them after we all cleared Customs and made our way to Petra’s in Lower Bay with Frank of s/v Komeekha who had already completed a hike to Hope Bay.
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| A view of Admiralty Bay while hiking Bequia |
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| Looking at the south-west end of Bequia |
After a few lovely hikes and meals with this little group of five, both Komeekha and Prism caught a comparatively light weather window to continue their march south. Frank made one big jump to Prickly Bay down the west side of the islands, feeling he’d rather do it all at once rather than dealing with the sails and ground tackle in the middle as a solo-sailor. Anina and Charlie jumped all the way to Chaguaramas, Trinidad; with the reasoning much like Frank’s, but also to travel well to the east of the islands to maintain the better angle with the wind on this long voyage. We sat in our cockpit, watching their progress on the tracking applications, and keeping up communication with them.
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| Laurie with one of our favourite bar tenders, Leo, at the Cocktail Lab in Bequia. |
We saw and met other acquaintances while lingering in Bequia, but mostly enjoyed slow time alone. We read good books in our preferred genres, snorkeled the reef on quiet days, found interesting hikes high up the sides of the main harbour, and followed our usual custom of good lunches and even suppers ashore. When weather allowed it, we cleared out of Customs and Immigration and made the jump to Carriacou, arriving on March 25th. The week we were there, Dawn and I began our end-of-season maintenance: me working on engine fluids and checks, and Dawn starting through the boat with cleaning and wiping down to inhibit mold if Grenada turns abnormally damp in our absence.
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| Beside one of the largest grocery stores in Tyrell, someone parked their donkey outside…well now, that was a first! |
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| The playing field has been used to collect and compact debris from Hurricane Beryl. This is just a fraction of the volume, and here it is, almost a year later! It appears to be mostly, corrugated metal roofing. |
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| We often see creative ways to build a wheel barrow, and this is another fine example! |
We hiked around to keep up our dinghy legs as well, looking for restaurants that had reopened after the hurricane damage and gauging the level of recovery of the people and buildings. We decided to give the island a 55% recovery number, but the people get a perfect score for fantastic resilience. Construction and reconstruction is constant, with the predominant projects being roofing. Some wrecked habitations were being lightly dwarfed by new homes growing up behind them. The boating community is hard at work as well, with owners and clever opportunists fixing up the best of the boats. When we came through in December, wrecked boats were still being lifted onto barges and headed to dumps and landfills. Still, there are derelicts in the boatyards and in Trellis Bay that tend to affect one’s mood.
We left for our last easy and fun sail to a mooring ball outside of St. George’s on the main island on April 6th, and two days later had the easiest motor along the south coast and into Prickley Bay. We’ve had a few nights entertainment with Jock of s/v Unleaded, who had to answer many questions from us on his trials and tribulations this season. He was headed north in late November when he got beat up by winds and waves at the Kick’em Jenny underwater volcano. His mast fell down, taking off his davits, dinghy, and a large piece of transom. He spent most of the season in St. David’s reconstructing his WEST-constructed boat. Because he had built the boat and dinghy himself, he knew just how to tackle it. We also enjoyed time with Lunenburg sailors Richard and Heather of s/v Sea Pearl, taking in meals and drinks at the Brewery and at other local venues.
Finally we were hauled out of the bay and placed in the Spice Island Boatyard on April 14th, and began the work of getting Cat Tales squared away for storage.
One thing left to report: Cat Tales has been listed for sale. After enjoying her for 23 years, we have made this difficult decision. It has been more than just fun: exciting, challenging, engaging, educational, and the meeting of great people we would not have had the chance to enjoy otherwise. However, we’ll be back to Grenada in November to get Cat Tales ready for another season, and if no buyers arrive, we’ll go through the islands again!
Here’s the listing:
https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1996-fountaine-pajot-tobago-35-9757554/
TECHNICAL
We went at the boat in the normal fashion, maybe a little quicker as the dates that lined up for us only gave us six days to work. We left off the new Seajet 038 bottom paint as the directions provide for less than 3 months between application and wetting, and this helped a bit. All equipment was checked during decommissioning, and either repaired or noted for November repair. The four winches were torn down and regreassed. Interestingly, although the 6 years of life in the charter trade was tough on the winches, there have been no problems since the 2003 repairs, thanks to the maintenance. One exception: I found a broken pawl spring this time and replaced it with a spare. It shows the value of regular maintenance. One of our friends down here said that tearing down winches is the most gratifying thing she does. Her boat has eleven of them!
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| Laurie tearing down, cleaning, and greasing one of the 4 winches. |
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| Wrapping the dinghy and covering the trampoline will protect them both somewhat from sun damage while we’re gone. |
We found last year’s repair of the batten car loading strip was faulty, and had that done again, much better. A strong analysis of the issue suggests that the reefing loops at the luff of the new 2002 mainsail are too short, and reefing results in pressure on the stop at the bottom of the loading strip. Extensions to these reefing loops will result in that issue coming to its end.
The mainsail bag on the boom was originally fabricated by Dave Martin of Flyer Products, Fredericton, in 2003. The fabric was still in great shape, but all threads were rotten and letting go. We hired “Forever Canvas” to restitch it. They did a great job, complimenting Dave’s handiwork but condemning his thread.
One interesting thing I found was the rusting of a clip that holds on the safety baffle on the starboard saildrive. I will order complete baffle systems for both saildrives and replace these systems in November. I’ll not sell the boat with this job weighing on the new owner.
