03/04/2011, San Blas Islands, Panama
This morning, after a breakfast of fresh melon and freshly baked chocolate chip muffins, I went snorkeling and swam all the way around the nearest reef. The water was so calm and clear that snorkeling was great even though in places the coral formations dropped off to 20' or so. My bum arm didn't seem to bother too much if I just sort of let it drag behind which is sort of what one does normally with snorkeling. Shortly after I returned to the boat, another cat, Fine Line, anchored outside the reef. Ann & Steve came by in the dingy to inquire about the best places to snorkel and introduce themselves. I explained that it was all pretty deep and better diving than snorkeling but suggested the section of reef that was nicest and still fairly shallow. A while later another boat, apparently friends of Fine Line, anchored even further off. Neighborhood is getting awfully crowded! I read in the hammock a bit and then disassembled and reassembled the folding props that I will put on when we haul out. Seem very well made and very straight forward to put on. Deb & I agreed that after lunch we would try launching the hookah and see if we could manage between us. It coulded up a bit, but we decided to go anyway. Unfortunately the hookah had other ideas. It once again did the start right up and then die routine. As I watched it do this several times while I fiddled with the throttle, it became clear that when the compressor hit 100# and tried to lug the engine down, it had trouble compensating and the throttle adjustment mechanism overreacted killing the engine. Of course, getting at that requires serious dismantling so I decided to put that off and we went snorkeling instead. Together we did the loop to the E of the boat. This is a bit longer and deeper than I had done earlier and would be great with the hookah as the coral formed deep canyons down to a sandy floor. As we were rounding the edge and headed back in through the cut, we spooked a very large grouper – at least 50#. If I had had the hookah and my spear gun,.... probably just as well. On the way back, we mostly were over conch grass but found very few conch until we came to this one little patch that had several including one huge one. Now the season on all shellfish officially is closed from March – May, but we had planned a major conch hunt for February 28 and got blown out by high winds and currents, soooo THIS is our February 28 hunt. We won't take any after today. We made a return trip over the same section and got a few more. All in all I extracted, Deb cleaned, and I diced six good sized conch. That will be enough for several nights of conch salad and at least a couple nights of conch fritters. With the lobster we already have in the freezer, we are pretty well set. After dealing with the conch, I tackled the hookah. I took it out of its floating tub, removed the pull starter and the cooling cowl thinking that I would find the automatic throttle control which is usually governed by the cooling air. Not on this model. With everything out of the way, I could see that the throttle control came from the middle of the engine. I'm not ever going to get there. As I was taking things apart I did notice that the fuel line was not in its clamp on the cooling cowl but above it where it might have been rubbing on the throttle control. ?? I put everything back together and fired it up and it works fine. (Of course this has happened before: take it apart and put it back together and it works even if you didn't “fix” anything.) Tomorrow we'll see if it still runs and we can go hookahing instead of snorkeling. Mojitos and then grilled lobster with wine and salad. Not a bad way to end the day.
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03/03/2011, San Blas Islands, Panama
Well, the lack of ecchymosis (black & blue) is no longer a concern. I'm discolored several inches above and below the elbow. It's stiff and hurts when I move “wrong” but still much better than I would have expected. Deb, however, insists that this will be a day of rest, so.... I'm reading the “Geek's Cookbook” that Dave brought me and also “1434: The Year A Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance”” that I borrowed from Cynde. Should keep me busy. But I have to swim. The wind has dropped and the seas are calm so the section of reef just behind the boat is no longer breaking except for an occasional wave. So after breakfast, I snorkeled out and explored a bit. Then I came back and read like a good boy. After lunch I talked Deb into going to the little deserted island that is part of this same reef system to walk around and snorkel. Launching dinghy was a project. I did manage to balance on the rail and lean over to put the plug in the transom with only one hand. Not graceful, but effective. Then we put first the stern and then the bow lines on the central winch and lowered dink down in stages. Pull starting was no problem as I always do that with the right, but running the engine with the right hand and sitting on port side was really disorienting. I kept increasing throttle when I meant to back off. Oops! We walked about and found a few shells. I swam out to the reef but didn't really find anything interesting except a few conch and some sand dollars. Back at the boat, the solar had totally charged the batteries (running more of a deficit overnight now that the wind generator is deprived) so I turned on the watermaker for an hour. We have been running it every day and it is working fine. Deb did a couple more loads of wash yesterday so we ran it for two hours then and are keeping the tanks nearly full. Sure is nice to have it back working again! I think I'll be able to talk Deb into a hookah dive tomorrow if we can figure out how to launch it with me only using one hand. As I remember, the outside reef was really spectacular. For now, I'll go grab a book, swing in the hammock until I get hot, go for a quick swim, and repeat. Sure is hard having these enforced rest days!
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03/02/2011, San Blas Islands, Panama
Today I did a very bad thing. I tore off one my biceps tendons. We had taken the kayak to the island to walk around and when we got back the waves were pushing the kayak up against the stern of the boat making exiting rather difficult. Deb did a split that I saved by paddling the bow back closer. I got out OK, but the kayak started to drift away from the boat. Holding the stanchion with my left hand, I lunged for the kayak grabbing it just in time. Unfortunately by then I was off balance and going in the water. No big deal, I had my swimsuit on anyway. Except as the weight of my body fell between the stanchion and the kayak something had to give. That something was my tendon. It was really strange. It didn't feel like the pull was that great. (I could have just let go, of course, but didn't.) Remember Silly Putty – that stuff that came in an egg? If you pulled it slowly it stretched forever, but if you pulled it quickly, it broke cleanly square at the edge. It was sort of like that. I felt it pulling and slowly stretching and then it was gone, just gone. No snap. No sharp pain. Just gone. And now I have a Popeye muscle. It hasn't turned black & blue (update Thursday AM now it HAS turned black & blue) and it doesn't hurt nearly as much as I would expect, but the defect is obvious and any use of my bicep is painful. I hesitate to say that I have a high pain tolerance as every ER doc knows that statement is always followed by, “but I do need some more Percocet.” The truth is that I have, thankfully, had very few painful conditions in my life – a couple broken ribs is about the worse. Anyway, I am not really in pain as long as I don't try to use it and Deb has plenty of good drugs if I need them. But doing things with one hand (like typing this!) is for the birds! It is going to take some real figuring and coordinated effort to get through this one. Fortunately we have no schedule. We are very comfortably anchored in a lovely place and we can easily stay right here for a few days if we need to. At least it was my Left arm. Had it been my Right..........
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03/01/2011, San Blas Islands, Panama
When I woke up at almost exactly 7:00 as I do most mornings, it was overcast and the wind was howling. While making coffee, I checked the wind gauge and it read 22-25 kts. - that is indeed strong trade winds. With the wind was a rather uncomfortable surge coming from wind driven waves wrapping around the end of the reef and hitting the boat broadside. There was also a strong wind driven current that would make hookahing impossible. Looking at the passage from here to Puyadas, I could see pretty big waves as well. I drank coffee, wrote yesterday's log and posted it, and checked email. When Deb woke up, I took her coffee and fresh squeezed OJ as I always do and we cuddled for a while before actually getting up. We listened to the morning net while eating a breakfast of grapefruit (amazingly good for local which are often dry and bitter) and English muffins (holding well with no signs of mold). The wind is expected to moderate over the next several days, so we decided to wait until noon and then try sailing over to Puyadas. By noon, the wind was down to 15-18, but I still tucked in a double reef when I raised the main prior to weighing anchor. We were in the process of that when Deb found the snap catch and eye bolt of the kellet, but no lead! It had managed to unscrew itself and fall off. The wind was still whipping so we let out some more chain, reattached the bridle, dropped the sails, shut off the engines, and I went swimming. Fortunately I found the lead weight almost immediately. I had taken a dive bag with line attached so I just dove down and scooped the weight into the bag and Deb lifted it back aboard. When I made the kellet, I had tightened a large fender washer between two nuts on a long eye bolt before pouring lead all around them in a coffee can. This made a pretty secure arrangement except that I had neglected to key the threads to prevent the eye bolt unscrewing. Lead is an excellent lubricant for stainless steel and eventually the threads had worked loose. I noticed this and tightened the eye bolt each time before deploying it, never imagining that it could work out 4” of thread overnight, but last night it did. To repair it, I found a 5/16” nylock nut and a lock washer. I screwed the nylock all the way up the eye bolt, added the lock washer, bathed the eye bolt in Locktite, and screwed it in jamming it tight against the lock washer and nylock nut. Then I tightened the nylock back on the weight fully compressing the lock washer. I hope this will stay. It should. Even with reefed sails (we put our ~30% of gennie), we had a boisterous sail. The waves peaked at about 12' and the wind hovered around 20 kts. But Always & All Ways loves to sail in strong winds as long as she is reefed appropriately and we made good and quite comfortable progress. We reached Puyadas in less than an hour. Last year we had worked our way inside the reef and anchored very comfortably in the protected lagoon. We wanted to do the same this year but it was windier and had bigger waves wrapping around the reef. As we approached, we watched a large native ulu with outboard, negotiate the cut from in – out. They bucked a couple big waves in the process. We decided to anchor at the beginning of the cut in ~20' and think about it over lunch which by now was well overdue. After lunch, we launched dinghy, grabbed a kayak paddle as a depth meter (6' to the beginning of the upper blade) and headed into the cut. It was very straight forward, good deep water right up to the reef which stuck out of water. The only problem was the width of the cut which was probably about 50'. Once through the cut, we would need to make a 45* turn to port and then wander around between reefs near shore and outside to find a place to anchor. Most of this was 7-10' deep. Twenty-three foot beam, 50' cut, no problem except that the following seas were pretty impressive at times and slewed you against the port reef. We gave it a try. Weighed anchor, waited for what looked like a lull in the following sea, gunned it and ran the cut. We actually made it through without a problem though I think I did lose a few more precious hairs. Last year we had had no wind and so anchored just by the kellet with no swing issues. This year would be different. After wandering around a bit, we approached the shore and dropped the Spade anchor precisely between two coral shoals. We backed it straight out towards a secondary cut in the reef that seemed too narrow to negotiate coming in, but gave deeper water further from shore. When the anchor was set with the kellet, bridle and appropriate scope let out, we hung maybe 50-60' from the reef with room to swing either way as long as we rotated about the kellet. Since I wasn't sure that would happen (the island blocked most of the wind but it was still howling outside), I dropped the Bruce into the dinghy and took it out to the edge of the reef where I dropped in in some marl and sand and set it with the dinghy outboard. Back at the boat, I used a winch to pull it tight creating a Bahamian moor with two anchors set at nearly 180* so that the boat can only swing in a circle about their junction. That done, I donned flippers and mask and swam our perimiter actually finding more and deeper water than I had expected. We should be nice and snug here and we can hear the surf pounding on all sides. Given how great I remember the diving to be, we will probably stay several days.
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03/01/2011, San Blas Islands, Panama
I set the alarm and got up early. By 6:30 I was headed for the airstrip (this time with an insulated mug of coffee). By 7:30 it was apparent that the 6:45 was not coming and the next flight would probably be 8:15 or so. So I went back tot he boat and had a couple Blueberry muffins and more coffee. When I saw a bigger crowd gathering at the airstrip, I returned. There was a LOT of cargo on that plane, but I instantly recognized my ETD still packed in the styrofoam container that it had now made four flights in. It was clearly labeled for me, but it didn't matter as I just walked up to where they had set it on the ground, picked it up and left. No one checked any idea, asked any questions or anything. I was back at the boat by 9:00, ETD in hand. We decided to go into town and try to get some fresh veggies and fruit before leaving. Our first several stops were all strike outs. No limes where I had got them before, no pineapples or papaya anywhere. As we were walking to the last store we knew of, we ran into a Kuna who had promised to bring pineapples and bananas yesterday. We had moved our boat to get the water (why I am not sure, but Federico insisted) and assumed he just didn't find us in our new location. He said he would get them, “Hoy, media dia.” We agreed we would wait until noon to get them. We then went onto the last store and found a wonderful selection of fruit and veggies including a big basket of our favorite orange lines (which some people call sour oranges, but they look and taste more like limes except for the orange color of their pulp.) We stocked up. Everything except pineapples and bananas. On the way back I tried the school again. This time it WAS open, school was in session, but the internet was down and no one seemed to know or care when it would be back up. Definitely not today or tomorrow. Since we had to wait for our Kuna friend to bring fruit, I went ahead and installed the watermaker then. I checked every connection and fitting three times. I reconnected the intake hose and opened the seacock. Finally I pushed the START button and the pump came on. Initially it shut off on “Low Pressure” safety as the system filled with water, but this was normal for initial start up. I canceled the safety and started it up again. It began to build pressure. I could hear the ETD working. The pre- and post- intake gauges were beginning to approach normal values, much better than any time previously. Then, suddenly, “BAM!!!” something exploded. I wasn't hurt. I shut it down immediately and looked around. It appeared that the rubber safety plug had blown out of the high pressure guage. Why? I had just started to look at it and noticed that is was not registering yet (just before it blew). Did sitting so long screw something up inside the guage or was my system now OVER pressurizing? I put the plug back in and tried it again. Same explosion. Amazing how much noise a 1/2” rubber plug can make. OK, I remember Einstein so I won't try it a third time, but if I replace the plug and wrap a towel around it so that it won't go anywhere and try to hold it what will happen? Well, the pump ran, the gauge got up to nearly 600# with only minor leakage around the plug and then the rear seal of the gauge started leaking as well. And we still were not making good water. The pressures were not through the roof though. Normal pressure for the ETD is 850 or so and given the leak, 600 indicated was probably close to that. What if I just eliminate the gauge? I mean it is not like I sit and monitor it all the time the watermaker is running. I just check it at start up. OK, I cannot just remove it, I have to plug the hose which uses a special high pressure compression fitting on a plastic hose. Not something I can mess with. But the other end it 1/4” NPT. But the only pipe plug I have is 3/8”. Finally I cut a tiny circle of gasket material, just big enough to cover the hole in the gauge, hold it in place with Teflon tape that I put on the threads as well and reassemble it all. I wrap the gauge in a towel and place it where I don't think it can do any harm and push the Start button while backing away lest anything else explode. I tell Deb to stand by the remote control to turn it off it I yell. The pump runs. The pressures build. The pre- and post – input gauges stabilize in their normal operating ranges of ~150 psi. The ETD chugs like ti should. Nothing bad is happening. It runs for a while like this with me peering at the gauges from a distance and Deb ready to shut everything down at an instant's notice. And then the green “Fresh water” light comes on and we are making good water! Cautiously, I crawl back in beside the watermaker (it is installed in a space next to the port engine compartment with somewhat cramped access, especially if you are still afraid of something exploding @ 1000 psi!). The water flow gauge shows almost 18 gph water production. Fantastic! (It is rated @ 15 gph.) I ran it for an hour while using water for another load of laundry and all seems well. I guess I will run it without the meter until I return to the US and get one then. I still have to deal with Sea Recovery (the manufacturer), Ocean Options (the original dealer) and Yacht Service (the guys who finally fixed it on the second try after a variety of fiascoes) and see if I can recover any of the nearly $3000 it has cost to get this thing running again. With the watermaker fixed (sort of) and the laundry done, we just needed our Kuna friend to bring our fruit and we could be off to a pretty little deserted island instead of the heavily populated one. We waited. And waited. By 2:30 we gave up and left. I know things are on “island time” but 2 ½ hours seemed a bit much. We have other fruit to last a week or so and we will get more then. It only took ~1/2 hr. so motor sail back to Garnirguinnitdup where we had found several conch. Since the ban on taking all shell fish goes into effect soon, we wanted to stock up. We have lots of lobster, but no conch, so it was time to get the hookah going and get some. Unfortunately the hookah did not cooperate. It started easily but then died. Several times. Since the hour was getting late, I put off fixing it until later and we just snorkeled around looking for conch, but found none. After that disappointment, I tinkered with the hookah throttle and it ran fine. I am not sure what the issue is, but if I get the throttle just right, all is well. If it is off a bit, it starts and then stalls. It must be something with the carburetor. If I can nurse it through this trip, I'll have a Honda mechanic look at it back in Bocas. I'm sure glad it worked well when Dave & Lisa were he as we used it daily.
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