Hello to all, I'm sorry that we haven't updated the blog in quite awhile. The lack of an update has primarily been due to repair issues. So, here goes my attempt to fill in the blanks on what we have been doing since our last entry.

Our primary reason for sailing from Antigua to St. Lucia was that we were told that it would be a good place have parts delivered. The refrigeration parts that we needed were at our mail forwarding service in Florida just waiting for us to provide a place for them to be shipped to. The parts were thermostats and temperature sensors for the refrigeration system. We had ordered them to address the long run times that we had been experiencing on the refrigerator since we left Florida. The theory was that the thermostat or the sensor feeding it were not reacting as they should to the refrigerator's plate temperature as the compressor was cooling it down. Also, they were parts that we should have had aboard as spares so we ordered two of each. However, after arriving in St. Lucia the refrigeration failed to run at all. It acted like it has in the past when our main batteries had a low charge. But this time the batteries were not low. When I pulled out my digital volt meter to start trying to find out what was wrong, it didn't work at all wouldn't even power on. Since our friends on Lee and Cindy on Tranquility were anchored near us we managed to borrow their meter. After many hours of unsuccessful troubleshooting of the system I gave up and we decided that we had to get ice to save the food. After getting the ice and dropping off a bunch of our frozen meats with a fellow cruiser we decided to look for a local technician to get another pair of eyes to look at the problem. Lee and Cindy were a great help with this as they have spent a lot of time in Rodney Bay and knew a great refrigeration guy named Prudent. They called Prudent on their cell phone and he told me that if we bring the boat into the marina he would come down and take a look at the refrigeration. In the mean time I started looking at what was available out there in the 12 volt refrigeration arena since I haven't done that in quite some time, figuring that we might have to replace our 15 year old system. We took the boat into Rodney Bay Marina, an IGY marina, that coincidentally has the same Walcon floating dock system that we had back in North Palm Beach Marina. Can you say deja vu? Once we were secured in our slip Pam was talking to a guy on a neighboring boat who knew Prudent and used his cell phone to call him for us. We lucked out again in the cell phone area, it pays to be friendly. Prudent arrived aboard about an hour later. Prudent checked a lot of the areas that I had checked coming up with the same findings. Then while checking the main solenoid's circuitry, for the second or third time, the system started working for no apparent reason. This left me with an uneasy feeling as in my 25 plus years repairing computer systems I can count on one hand the systems that did not fail again after just starting to work for no apparent reason. More often than not they fail again down the road. But since the system was running you can't fix what isn't broke. So, I took the opportunity to talk to Prudent about the refrigerator's long run times and my theory that the system might be low on refrigerant. He thought that there was a possibility and left to go get his refrigerant bottle. While he was gone I decided to start putting that system back together as there were a lot of components hanging by their wires. While doing this I discovered two bad connections on the diode on the coil of the main solenoid. I repaired them an re-installed the solenoid. I have since found that it is doubtful that the bad connections could have caused our problem. But it was not a good connection so who knows? In any case Prudent topped up the refrigerant and we have been closely monitoring the system since then. At this point we ordered our parts to be shipped from Florida and Lee and Cindy turned us on to a Lisa Kessel a Customs Broker that they said was the best person to get our parts thru customs once they arrived. Once again they allowed us to use their cell phone to contact some one. Are you picking up a familiar theme here? While we were waiting for the parts to come in I decided to install a fan to cool the main solenoid for the refrigeration system. It is in a sealed box and gets very warm and so I figured that since the solenoid has been a problem more than once, in the system's fifteen year history, a little cooling couldn't hurt. The parts arrived in St. Lucia from Florida after about four working days and Lisa called us on Cindy's cell phone, which Cindy was kind enough to loan to us for an afternoon, and told us that she had the parts and that we should meet her at the marina. I met Lisa and we went to Customs together where the clearing process was completed with no problem. The next day I replaced the refrigerator's thermostat and monitored the refrigerator's performance. Given that the refrigerator only ran every other day we had to wait two days to determine that the thermostat did not fix the long run time. So, next I replaced the refrigerator's temperature probe but this time we didn't have to wait two days because I put a warm probe in the cold box so it caused the system to run because the thermostat sensed that the refrigerator was too warm. We got the good news almost immediately, the new temperature probe reacted about twice as fast as the 15 year old one. So the run time for the system was about half of what it had been with the old probe. Since then we have continued to closely monitor that systems performance, meaning many sleepless nights for me as I would wake up every time the system turned on in the middle of the night so that I could monitor its performance. Now after about two weeks of close monitoring we are finally starting to relax enough to consider moving further south. We didn't want to leave earlier just in case the start up problem re-appeared and here in St. Lucia we have a refrigeration tech we trust, no telling who we might find elsewhere. Right now, unless we have another problem, we hope to leave to head further south on Sunday (5/29/11).

In addition to the refrigeration problem we also discovered that our jib needed to be repaired. We knew the sun shield needed to be replaced but figured that ir could wait until we got to Grenada for the summer. Well some re-enforcing webbing came loose so we got the sail down and took it to Kenney at Rodney Bay Sails for repair. And, we figured as long as we had the sail down we might as well have Kenney replace the sun shield. So the cruising kitty has taken quite a hit this month, just when we thought that expenditures would drop off since we had left the very expensive Antigua. But no such luck on that front. In the interim we also decided to buy an unlocked cell phone that we can use on any island with any carrier simply buying a SIM card for that island. It is our hope that the phone will enable us to do things that we weren't able to or inclined to use the satellite phone for. We'll be sure to update you on this front in future blog entries.

While all this repairing has been going on we have been taking note of things that have changed in the Caribbean since we were last here in 2001. In those ten years folks here have seen the rise of the cell phone system and the internet. Ten years ago we had to go to find an internet cafe to check our email, now we do it from the boat using a wifi. If we are ashore and want to check our email, we use our iPAD at one of the many restaurants that offer free wifi. Another change is we are seeing a lot fewer US flagged vessels, than in 2001. The size of the cruising boats has increased, back in 2001 the average size was around 40 feet now it is about 50 feet. There are way more sailing catamarans than there were in 2001. The number of powerboats around has increased tremendously, especially mid thirty foot center console boats driven by multiple outboard motors. We have even seen a fair number of sport fishing boats which we never saw in 2001. Also it appears that at least on Antigua and St. Lucia there is more disposable income than back in 2001 because many of these power boats a owned locally. We've even seen cigarette boats, we call them Crocket and Tubbs boats (for you Miami Vice fans, which we didn't see until got to south Florida back in 2001. An enhancement in weather forecasting has taken place since 2001, now weather radar is available that covers most of the island chain. So if you have wifi on your boat you can check the weather radar before you get underway. The internet access also allows us to pre-clear with customs on many of the former British islands. We haven't used it yet, but have been told that it greatly expedites the clearing process. Our first opportunity to do this will be in Grenada, we'll see how that goes and report on it in s future blog post. As we go further down island we'll keep our eyes peeled for other changes we notice. One thing that hasn't changed though is the beauty of these islands, thank God for that.