Nearly Stranded in St. Martin
28 April 2008
Shane at the top of the mast disconnecting the port side upper shroud
We had been on the appointment list with the local rigging specialists since we arrived in St. Martin on March 18th. It was now almost 3� weeks later. The waiting list was, at that time, about one week, maybe a little more. The appointment was made because we experienced some severe "pumping" of the mast while in Mayreau, Windward Islands. For 5 days, while at anchor during some 20+-knot winds, the whole boat would shutter. Even in our aft bunk, a good nights sleep was hard to come by. One of these nights the winds, with gusts over 25 knots, the wind was so bad we could not sleep at all. The next day we tried lots of different ways to tighten the rig, but it still kept on pumping. It would not do it all the time, so we decided it was probably due to how the wind was hitting the mast.
However, since Dream Chaser is 27 years old, this got us thinking about having a rig inspection done. It would be a good idea to make sure everything is up to snuff and we still had many miles to travel. A rigger would carefully inspect the mast, shrouds and fittings. But the rigging company was too busy and seemed to keep putting us off and many other "little folks" like us, as the company referred to us cruisers. It was obvious that they much prefer catering to the huge mega yachts. It had now been three weeks since we made the appointment and we were to the point of just blowing it off altogether. Our weather window was coming and we did not want to stay any longer.
It was now Monday April 7th and, with only two days before we were getting ready to depart from St. Martin, we needed to get our radar reflector reinstalled. The line it was on had chaffed through and had come tumbling down, with the radar deflector still attached, on one of our other previous exciting passages. It was lucky we didn't lose it overboard or put a huge gouge in the new paint job. I hoisted Shane up the mast in the bosun's chair to the first spreader and it was reattached within minutes. Then, since he was already up there, he went the rest of the way up the mast. Now at 60 feet up, he noticed not only one crack, but also several in the stainless fittings on the upper shrouds and also the lower shrouds, the heavy stainless wires that hold up the mast. The mast fittings were in serious condition and sailing at this point was out of the question.
Having succumbed to the fact that we probably wouldn't be leaving anytime soon, that morning with high hopes, we zipped back across the lagoon to the riggers to see if they could come out to the boat. The riggers were still all booked up with no break in their schedule anytime soon. However, the manager told us if we were "handy" enough and could get the shrouds off ourselves, that he would make a great effort to make new shrouds for us. We have done pretty much everything else on our boat, why should this stop us?
So, back across the lagoon in the dinghy we went to Dream Chaser. Immediately we began the work off removing the shrouds, one by one. First, we had to carefully tie off the mast with the spinnaker halyard for extra support. Then Shane went up the mast again and detached the starboard (right) upper shroud and the port (left) forward lower shroud. The wind was still gusting around 20 knots and making the job a little scary. Not having the mast held up anymore by all 6 heavy wires was a little unnerving. Several more trips in the dinghy were made that day to the riggers for this and that, for advice and to pick out the new fittings. The mile and a half trip was getting old by now. The manager completed a few but not all of the fittings that afternoon.
Tuesday morning early, we put on the one new upper and one new lower shroud and took the others off. It was like a puzzle to get it all done because you could not just do them all at the same time. Most of the new shrouds and fittings were done late that afternoon. In total we ended up with six new shiny stainless steel shrouds with pretty new turnbuckles and other pricey fittings.... all to the tune of well over $2000.
Wednesday morning, another trip was made to get the last of the new shrouds. Then with the help of our friend Tom on s/v Conch'd Out, we finished taking off the rest of the old and putting on the new. Shane remained up the mast for the rest of the morning and I worked on the smaller rigging projects and details on the deck like rebedding all the deck fittings. The rest of the day we worked as hard as we could to secure the shrouds to the deck, get the deck cleaned up and dispose of the old wire at a dumpster in town. We were under huge pressure to get out of the lagoon by the 5:30pm lift bridge as our weather window for making the passage to the British Virgin Islands was the next morning very early.
Now that the mast was secure and with barley enough time to spare, we started up the engine at
4:55pm. We motored Dream Chaser across the lagoon to the French side bridge for the 5:30pm lift. Whew! We had made it! Out into Marigot Bay we were and anchored securely for the night. Shane finished tightening the rigging while I made a quick meal and we collapsed into bed at 10:30 that eve.
We departed St. Martin Thursday morning at 5:45am and arrived at the Prickley Pear Island anchorage at 5:30pm, 78 miles later. En route a French navy helicopter swooped down on us and took an up close picture us and of our boat. It appeared that they were keeping tabs on who was making the passage east as they were tracking other vessels as well. The US Marines had previously owned the helicopter as we could see the former decal marks that had been removed. We had a real, nice comfortable down wind run, in light winds but with a bit of a northeasterly swell. It was only about 4-5 feet and not much of an issue comfort wise. Happily anchored at Prickley Pear, just south of famous Necker Island, we stayed for several glorious days to recoup after a long awaited departure from St. Martin.