The Right Time
28 October 2017 | Punta Cana, DR
Capn Andy/85 degree Tradewinds
We were sitting in pretty Jolly Harbour, Antigua, with the hours ticking away for us to leave, having already cleared out when we cleared in. The problem was the generator not starting, thus we could not power up the air conditioning while at sea or use the generator to keep the ship’s batteries topped up. The engine alternator could charge all the batteries, but we didn’t want to be motoring day and night.
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One option would be to purchase a small portable generator, which would require us to have gasoline onboard, so that was ruled out, plus the fact that we needed maybe 3 KW for all our needs.
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The fellow who looked at the generator for a few minutes yesterday evening returned. I did not think he would be able to help but I was surprised at his expertise. The problem was traced to the generator’s battery, which would cause the generator to shut down if the battery lost its voltage. The marine store nearby had a replacement battery and that problem was solved. The generator guy, Wesley, also said one of our house banks wasn’t receiving a charge from the 120 volt AC charger. We looked for a battery switch or junction box, something that would cause this failure. It turned out there were two battery chargers and one was not showing a proper display, wasn’t charging anything, we would have to jumper the house battery banks together and replace the faulty charger later, one was not available here in Antigua.
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Wesley left us after the repairs were completed. We quickly entered waypoints into the chartplotter from the planned route on this computer. In OpenCPN the waypoints can be laid down quickly, moved around, and then the lat and long can be entered in the chartplotter and the waypoints named, grouped together into a route, in this case Antigua to St Croix. We motored away from the dock, spun around, followed the channel, green buoys to the right, out to the sea buoy, what a pretty island we have been at, our route starting now at the sea buoy heading WNW, select the next waypoint and hit “Navigate to”.
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As we got further from the island the breeze which had been blocked somewhat picked up and the seas, following, began to roll us a bit. We decided to raise sail and took the autopilot out of action and steered into the wind. The rope clutches for the 1st reef, which we had used all the way from St. Lucia, 2nd reef, and mainsheet were released. The halyard was hoisted on the electric winch while the owner hand steered and skipper tended the winch, raising the sail on hand signals or stopping as necessary, dropping the sail a little when it snagged on a lazy jack, up it went all the way.
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Skipper climbed up on deck with a large black dock line and rigged a preventer, a line that keeps the boom from jibing across unexpectedly. We were bearing off on a broad reach, rolling out the genoa. 5 1/2 knots, hmm. On went the engine. 1800 rpms (turns) to make 7 knots and follow our float plan to arrive in St. Croix tomorrow about 1 PM.
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We watched a waterspout form out of a black cloud to our port beam. It grew in intensity but didn’t come near us. It looked like we might get hit with a squall as thunderclouds began building all around us. As time went on the islands of Nevis, St. Kitts, and St. Eustatius appeared off our port bow. We had trouble sorting out all the volcanic peaks that came up over the horizon and out of the clouds. The OpenCPN map display on the laptop was clearer than the display of the chartplotter.
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There was no ship’s clock to tell us what time it was. The chartplotter could be set up to tell us the ETA of a waypoint, why can’t it also give us the correct time? I had already looked through it on our last trip up from St. Lucia, but tried again to find some way of getting a time display. It was not convenient to turn on a cell phone which had no service or use a computer just to tell time. One of the functions on the chartplotter was to search for external devices, such as a GPS which might be able to give us a time display somewhere on the chartplotter. It did not. A window appeared, something about pilot controls. I tried to close it out or hit standby or something like that, and suddenly the boat lurched in an extreme turn. Skipper was down below taking a nap and the owner was at the helm. I yelled turn it off, put it in standby, which button, lower left, we could hear crashing of stuff in the galley down below, we wrestled the helm to get the boat back on course, settled down, discussed what had just happened, and put the autopilot back in control with some apprehension.
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Down below the olive oil had jumped off the counter onto the galley sole, lost its top, spread oil all over. I mopped it up. I said to the owner, “Your teak is oiled now”. A few other items were gathered up and put back in place.