Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Where are we Now?

Actually. . .

We're still in Grenada. The black hole of sailboats.

Let's see. . .we were ready to sail to Carriacou on Tuesday but we awoke to thunder and lightning. We decided to put it off a day when about 1-2 hours later it was fine. So Tuesday was a non-day of laying around, napping, and wishing we had pulled the trigger.

Tuesday had the added bonus of Sue going over to Prickly Bay Marina (motto: We hate you and the boat you rode in on!) to get ice and 4 jerry cans of water. Why not? When she returns the dinghy is freaking flat! What happened? Prickly Bay Marina dock is made of concrete with shards of glass, shark's teeth, rebar, sewing needles, razor wire, and other things embedded in the concrete. "Sure come on in and buy some water".

Bastards.

Well we had planned to tow the dinghy but we don't want to tow a flat one so we take off the motor and haul dinghy on deck. This is a process that is not pretty and does not lead to wedded bliss. OK?

PULL THE F***ING THING.

I'M PULLING!

Like that.

So we plan to sail to Carriacou with dinghy on board and spend the day there and maybe the next doing more dinghy repair. Maybe paint the bottom too because since I neglected the bottom for maybe 3 days and there are now 4 inch green beards around the water line. FINE!

We're up at 5. I check the engine, tighten the belt, we lash some final things to the deck and we are ready.

BOOM!

Thunder.

We re-check the weather. OK, there are various huge blobs coming toward Grenada. Nothing we couldn't handle if it came on us at sea but why leave in that?

So we stay. Again. And what a day it turned into...

We spent most of the morning looking for the dinghy leak while scrubbing and shaving green growth off the bottom. Oh but it would be good to have the wash down pump going now to clean off deck and dinghy. We turn on the breaker (it has it's own as it used to be married to the electric anchor windlass).

Nothing.

OK, I switch to my electrician's hat. I figure it must be the tiny switch in the anchor locker. This has been basically outdoors for 2 years. So, I cut it out and wire direct to the pump. It works! Well, it spins but no water comes out but, hey, that's progress, right?

Probably needs to be primed. Switch to plumber's hat. Now let me explain that the pump is under our bed in the V-berth so that bed and all the charts under the mattress have to be blown apart while I work, once again, standing on my head. I swear I'm just going to get up in the morning and put on my head lamp!

I disconnected the outflow line and put in a short hunk of hose. Then, well, I suck. Mightily! Who didn't know that!? Once I get water out the other side of the pump Sue turns on the breaker and Whooo HOOOOO, we got water squirting all over our bedroom! But, that means the pump works and we can use the hose topsides. This is just another example of working on something that was on NO list when I got up.

Now for the dinghy. Strangely while all this was going on the dinghy has not lost an atom of air! What the hell? Well, it ain't leaking now so we put it down to a mysterious leakage. We don't want to leave our sparkling clean dinghy in the water and we hate our dinghy davitts as they are too short and cause the dinghy to be drug up the transom which we just had repaired for a few thousand dollars. Well we have some ideas so let's get her in the water. OK.

The launching of the dinghy off the deck is similar to getting it on deck.

"What's wrong"
"It's stuck".
"Raise it or lower it"
""
"RAISE IT OR NOT?"
"WHAT"
"Oh for Christ's sake would you just pull the THING!
"Wait"
"Wait. . .What was that?"
"Oh good sweet baby Jesus. . ."

We had somehow hooked the rub rail from the dingy under the stainless rub rail on the boat and BOING shot about 30 wood screws into the sea while the stainless is sticking out like crazy bamboo shoots.

Do you see? Now I have another project that was on NO list when all I intended to do was go freaking SAILING!

We take out the remaining screws and stow the stainless on board. I then mix a batch of epoxy with some filler stuff and patch all the screw holes (well only missed three). Tomorrow we'll move the stainless 1 inch forward and drill and screw anew (!). (That's about 45 anew's!).

We've pulled dinghy out of the water and protected the transom with seat cushions. Could be the start of a bigger solution. A swim. A rum. Some backgammon and it's sunset. Weather dictates that we might as well hold tight, wait for our auto pilot parts (Friday or Monday. . . yeah, right!) and keep working on Enee. All plans chipped in Jell-O.

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