FIXING YOUR BOAT IN EXOTIC LOCATIONS
07 December 2014 | Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
Our friend Dan on svLadyhawk says the word ‘cruising’ really means “fixing your boat in exotic locations.” This was certainly a true (and frustrating) experience for us this autumn! However, we ARE in the tropics, and NOT in the frozen north buried in snow!
FIX OR REPAIR DAILY
After several conversations with the great tech guys at the auto-pilot manufacturer in the U.K., having the whole contraption out and back in the boat three times and waiting for two weeks each for two different "hydraulics experts", who didn't show when they said they would and in the end didn't fix it, we liberated the auto-pilot from a shop that had accepted it after which the tech left town for a week. Then, we twisted into pretzels to reinstall and get at the thing, dripped significant amounts of hydraulic fluid all over the surrounding area. Roberta had an hour-long aerobic workout turning the steering wheel back and forth to expel air bubbles while Michael squeezed himself into a small space to hold the three hoses in a tiny bucket of hydraulic fluid, and then we traded places. Then the remote wouldn’t pair with the machinery. Sigh… But the next day, when we hooked up all the electronics again, it worked!!! Hooray! This was a most frustrating month-long experience and was supposed to have been done before Michael returned to the boat!
Then there was the tachometer… which had been operating off and on all last season. Michael ran some tests to determine that connections were good, and after some expert consultation back in the States he determined that a new tach sending unit was necessary. So we went to order one from the Yanmar guy. He thought it just needed cleaning… so M spent a whole day taking various things off the engine to access the tach sending unit, cleaning it and the surrounding area, repainting where some salt water had dripped, and reinstalling the thing. Still didn’t work, so we waited for the part to be delivered.
Meanwhile, in between installing and removing and fussing with the auto-pilot and tachometer we tackled loads of little and medium boat chores, like varnishing the blocks that hold the forward dorade guard, a three-day project to fix a leaky shower and re-gel coat cracks in the shower pan, changing watermaker filters, sewing the final gas can cover, wiring a new wifi bullet, new gaskets on leaky hatch covers, repairing a 50-30 amp pigtail, and etc. etc. etc. These fun chores always require tearing apart whatever we have just cleaned or picked up and put away and a period of living in a construction zone. With the contents of drawers and cabinets piled around us!
The guaranteed date for tachometer sending unit arrival came and went three or four times, and so finally WE went, deciding to wait in new exotic locations for friends coming along later to bring the little part with them. When we had the boat ready enough to leave Trinidad, our seasonal shakedown cruise was the 86-mile passage to Grenada… and of course, we shook out a few more issues to repair in another exotic location! We had to replace our sump pump and we discovered that the engine was not charging the batteries. Again, Michael ran several tests and Skype-called the manufacturer of our alternator and regulator. Balmar is a NW company out of Washington, and they were fantastic. With him sitting by the engine he was able to describe what was happening, and they determined that we needed a new regulator. Ouch! Roberta then called around and found the only one on the island in St George. We hopped on a little van-bus and rode in to Island Water World (the Grenada equivalent of West Marine) to pick it up and while there toured the city marina to check it out. While it looked very nice, we decided we probably would not ever go there because the only dock that met our electrical needs did not have finger piers, making it nearly impossible to get on and off our canoe-shaped boat.
One evening after a day of more fussy repairs, Roberta asked the Captain what he would like to do the next day… he grumpily replied, “Oh, I don’t know, it depends on what decides to break overnight!” After fixing a couple of other little things and a few trips to Budget Marine (another equivalent to West Marine, but right there in Prickly Bay – our anchorage) we headed for Carriacou to see our friends and dive instructors Gary and Alex Ward at Deefer Diving. We hoped to go diving with them before heading out on our own in Bonaire, but arrived to find their boat out of the water for a little repair! RATS!
Then friends on Tusen Takk II brought our tach sending unit, so we spent a morning installing that. And it worked! Although we had wanted to stay and visit an island we love, dive some, and meet up with other great friends, when a fabulous weather window opened up we decided to grab it rather than pass it by and get caught in weeks of Christmas winds too strong to make the passage to Bonaire. So, we have a new location in which to re-prime the fridge water cooling pump, get the air out of the watermaker lines, rebed hatches, make a shade awning, install windlass backing plates we had made for us in Carriacou, wire a USB plug for better electronic gadget charging, replace old screens, rebed the hatches (still leaking after gasket replacement!), and whatever else… Oh! And DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!!!
EXOTIC LOCATIONS…
…have their issues too, warm weather, palm trees, white sand beaches, turquoise water, great island music, rum drinks, and fun foods aside! While in Trinidad, Grenada and Carriacou, every time we left the boat (and sometimes while sitting outside on the boat when the wind was down) we slathered ourselves with Deet-laden mosquito repellant to try to avoid chikungunya, a nasty mosquito-born virus for which there is no cure and which has reached epidemic levels in most tropical countries. It has hit people hard and is quite painful in all joints, especially ones that have been injured. Roberta, held together with plates and screws, sure doesn’t want that!