05/09/2009, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

Long time, no update. I've been obeying the lesson drilled into us all from a very early age by parents and teachers alike...the one that goes if you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut.

Easter weekend turned out to be a bottom cleaning experience like never before. We met an Australian couple earlier that week and had them over for drinks. The captain talked to James about looking for additional income, and they came up with the idea of him hiring out to do bottom cleaning. He wanted to learn how to use our hookah equipment (electric compressor and diving attachments), so they agreed he would work with James on cleaning Pegasus, then take the equipment to do his boat. We spent several hours with them on Sunday, showing them how to set it up, and cleaning Pegasus. On Monday morning they took the equipment over to their boat, only to find that their engine could not generate enough power to run the compressor (they had no generator). So, they moved their boat to raft up with us and used our generator power to do their bottom. It was quite a bit more complicated than anyone had bargained for, but all turned out well.

James' friend from law school was in town with her husband, so we spent a couple days during the following week having dinner and visiting with them. Then we got back to business on our chart plotter and the strut for the dinghy. Each project took a bit longer than hoped, but they were ultimately successful.

On April 27, the laptop crashed, followed the next morning by the "supercomputer" James has had aboard for many years. He finally decided that his big computer was having too many problems with this lifestyle (and taking too much power), so he replaced it with something smaller and simpler, and began several days of installing software and updates. We were without the laptop for a full week, followed by the same ordeal of software installation and updates.

We have been sitting out a couple weeks of "disturbed" weather with frequent squalls and high winds, and finally had a plan together for leaving here this weekend with our British friends on L'Aventura, heading for Guadeloupe, then Martinique. We had planned to do our big provisioning this past Tuesday, but the weather was not very friendly, so we decided to wait a couple days. Good thing...Wednesday morning James was adding Freon to the refrigeration system, and it shut down! We found someone to come out and take a look at it, but they needed us in a marina, with electricity and convenient access to their shop, and had a prior commitment for Thursday, so they couldn't get to us until Friday.

Before we raised anchor on Thursday afternoon to move into the marina, James dove on the chain to clean the worst of the growth off. Since it was going to be a quick job (he was only in the water less than fifteen minutes), he just wore a tee shirt and trunks, instead of putting on the big wetsuit. He came up with HUNDREDS of bugs stuck to the shirt and eating him alive. By Friday morning, he was full of bites all over his arms, neck, chest, back and thighs. We have been treating him with Benadryl and hydrocortisone, and the swelling has gone down. The itching will probably take quite a while...no more skipping the wetsuit.

The refrigeration work began on Friday, continued part of Saturday (half day), and will not be completed until Monday (we hope). The company is owned by a man who has been in the business for over 50 years (started in the Navy), and he is making some very important changes to correct the problem we have always had with the Freon leak, among other things. James is pleased with the whole plan, but we would be more pleased if we didn't have the weekend right in the middle of it.

So, L'Aventura is leaving Sunday morning, but Pegasus is not. On a recent post to their website, Andy (the captain) closed with a statement that is the best description of this cruising life I have seen yet. After commenting on his plans for the next week or so, he wrote, "Funny how often heroes sail off in boats as an act of freedom at the end of some movie or other... but you never get to see them slaving away keeping their little floating kingdom functional!" PERFECT!!!

If the refrigeration is up and running Monday, we will do our provisioning on Tuesday and Wednesday. The travel forecast (ideal for Sunday and Monday) is not good again until later in the week, so we hope to leave Friday or Saturday and meet up with our friends again further south.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms.

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04/10/2009, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

We have been taking turns with problems between the watermaker and generator since we've been back out on anchor, while trying to get a little time devoted to the other things we were "planning" to work on. A couple days after leaving the marina, the watermaker decided it was not happy with the salinity. Its throughput had been slowly declining for several months, so it didn't come as a complete surprise. We went through various tests and maintenance procedures over the next couple days, and ended up having to replace the feed pump head. We had one of those on hand after our feed pump problem in the Turks and Caicos during summer 2007. We fired up the generator to give it plenty of power to get going, and two hours later the generator shut down. It was losing water. We had to wait for it to cool down enough to add water and got it running for the evening. The next morning it ran for an even shorter period of time before shutting down again and taking even more water. We were beginning to think we would have to replace the heat exchanger AGAIN! That was the part that went bad in Luperon in September 2007, that we had such a hassle retrieving from the Dominican Republic Customs people. Luckily, when we ran it that evening, before it shut down again, we found a spot dripping in the engine room, which we had not seen up until then. Turned out to be a hose with a hole in it, apparently getting bigger each time it ran. Well, that was actually good news, since the all-day (or worse) project of replacing the heat exchanger was reduced to a couple hours getting the new hose installed the next morning. So, after five days of fooling around with watermaker and generator, both were happy once more.

Now we could turn our attention back to removing the dingy davit strut to take to the welder and dealing with our chart plotter units, BOTH of which have different problems. The Monday morning that we finally got the strut removed, James took it in to the welder, only to find out that his vacation had begun that day, and he would be out for a week. Okay...on to the Northstar chart plotters. We decided we could keep and use one of them, bring in one new one, and return the really messed up one to the Northstar people for repair. James tried to order the new unit online. Well, it wouldn't accept a St. Maarten shipping address, so he called them. Somebody told him they could do it and would email him the instructions. After waiting another day, he called them again. Finally, we found someone who proceeded to tell us they could not ship to a country other than the one the credit card billed to. Fine...we'll have to ship it to Sarah in Miami and get her to ship it to us. Then we get an email telling us we have to call our credit card company and add the third-party shipping address to their list of approved destinations, and call the supplier back to tell them when that has been accomplished. Plus, they called Sarah to verify the order (because of its price). After we managed to jump through all their little hoops, we finally got confirmation that they would ship the d__n thing. Thank you Sarah!!! Things get a tad more convoluted, to say the least, once you are outside of the U.S.

In the midst of all the excitement, Michelle saw that her blood pressure had been steadily rising since beginning the new medication that we bought here. So, we had to go back to the pharmacist and get another brand to try. So far, it seems that this one will be okay. We still have to monitor both of us for a couple weeks before ordering our long-term supply.

After maybe ten days of good behavior by both watermaker and generator, we found the watermaker switch mysteriously off one morning. We though somebody had accidentally hit it while turning something else on or off, so we restarted it and let it finish. When we ran it a couple days later, we discovered it off again after maybe two hours. The noise from the generator in the morning drowns out the watermaker noise, so you don't know what it's doing until you actually check the control panel. Anyway, James found the feed pump still very hot, and we estimated it had already been off for at least an hour. He talked to the people here who are dealers for Spectra Watermakers, and they agreed that the feed pump motor probably needed new brushes and general servicing. So, he took everything apart (a bigger deal than it was to just change the head) and brought them the motor. We got it back Thursday, and he spent several hours in the afternoon getting it all put back together so we could start making water again after five days. Again, we started the generator to make sure it had plenty of power to get going. After ONE HOUR of making good water, the generator shut down! Just like I said all my years in the computer business...these machines talk to each other! Once again, we checked the obvious things - all okay. Not losing water, not a bad impeller, not a clogged pump strainer...the generator started back up okay, but then it wasn't sending any electricity to the batteries! It was now late Thursday afternoon, beginning a four-day holiday weekend here (businesses are closed Good Friday through Easter Monday). We used the engine to run the refrigerator/freezer at night, and James tackled the problem again this morning, thinking it could turn out to be something that would put us back in a marina. Not the best timing. He found a burned out wire in the generator control box; fortunately we had the right size wire and whatever else was needed to get it running again and avert a disaster. It's probably going to need more follow-up, but at least it looks like we might get to have some water and electricity over the weekend.

We got part of the way through the installation of the new chart plotter before the latest watermaker/generator episode. Maybe that will get done this weekend. We also got the strut back for the dinghy davit. That will hopefully be three or four hours to get re-mounted.

In spite of it all, we have gone to the Wednesday night cruisers' happy hour every week and met some very nice people. This past Wednesday (April 8) was the two-year anniversary of Pegasus' departure from Miami. James' law school friend is here with her husband for a few days, and we will be getting together with them one of these next few nights also.

Happy Easter/Passover!

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03/21/2009, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

We spent three weeks in Florida, taking care of medical tests, adjusting prescriptions, ordering some things for the boat that we couldn't find here, and visiting family/friends around the state. Thank you to all who played host to us.

We returned to St. Maarten late Tuesday afternoon, picked up our new supply of prescription medications on Wednesday, went grocery shopping in Philipsburg Thursday, and left the marina on Friday. It turned out that our friend who owns the casinos here put us in touch with his local pharmacist, who was able to fill our prescriptions for about ONE THIRD of the U.S. prices! And we wonder why health care in the U.S. is so outrageous. Getting everything here was also great because it saved us the trouble of getting it through Customs.

We are back on anchor in the Simpson Bay Lagoon, and we have several projects to take care of, including the replacement of the piece that broke off the dinghy davit during our crossing from St. Thomas, before venturing out anywhere from here. Our chart plotter is beginning to have issues, so we definitely have to solve its problem.

Then we will look at places around the island to go touring.

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