We've fallen under a bad influence!
10 April 2016 | Prickly Bay, Grenada
Bill
Those of you that have followed out blog for a while know our normal routine. Sail into a port and work on the boat. Get things fixed, see a few things and take off. It's been that way for a long time. Suddenly, we've fallen under the influence of Dave and Mary Margaret from Leu Cat. We've followed not only their blogs on Sailblogs(a great read by the way)but in their wake. When we got to Trinidad, we finally got to meet them. What great fun we've had together. They took off for Grenada several days ahead of us and have been here before. Well, when we sailed in last week, we parked Zephyr close to their boat. Dave showed up later in the afternoon and since he had rented a car for a week($400US!) he invited us to come along with him on Friday to see all the boat yards where we might have work done and meet the people that run them. As I said, hes been here before and had a good idea of the layout of the island. They are planning on having a good bit of work done on their boat while it's here. So, Friday morning, we piled into his car and took off stopping at Grenada Marine, a nice yard farther up the coast situated in a valley that gives it added protection should a hurricane show up. Nice people and I had a good conversation with the man that does their fiberglass and wood work. I showed him pictures of our deck and will be sending him more pictures tomorrow when we have decent internet. We ruled out another yard as it's still under construction and a dusty mess at this time. Then we went to Spice Island Marine and discussed about what we needed to have done. We made an appointment to bring Zephyr over on Tuesday morning for a closer look by their people. We also stopped at a local restaurant and had some great Greek food. We stopped at one of the big grocery stores and replaced some of our supplies. Later in the afternoon, we returned to Zephyr. Saturday morning, I had time to do a few jobs(relube the Jabsco head in the bow and replace the pencil zinc in the heat exchanger on the engine), then it was over to Leu Cat for and afternoon of playing "Mexican Train" dominos. This went on for the rest of the afternoon. No more work got done on Zephyr. We were actually having FUN!!! Yes, that right, FUN instead of working! Is it possible to actually sit back and relax instead of working on out boat? Apparently it is. But, wait, it gets worse. They invited us to go with them to the local beach for a day in the sand and water and a nice barbecue. Is this what cruising is supposed to be like? We've heard of other people doing it. Having fun and taking a few days to play!!! What an unusual concept. We just might have to do more of it. It was actually fun to get away and relax for a few days. Tomorrow,unfortunately, it's back to doing some work. We've had some electrical problems on board with systems not showing the proper voltage in our batteries and the VHF repeatedly showing "low voltage". I popped open the door where the buss bar is for the wiring and found some corrosion on the fitting. I pulled out a crescent wrench to undo one of the nuts on it and the fitting promptly broke in half! Corrosion had eaten all the metal on the buss bar. With that break, we now have no wind, depth, VHF, SSB, etc working on the boat. We need some new buss bars and maybe to replace some of the wire fittings. I have one really good buss bar that I've been saving but it only has five connections so I was planning on using it to rewire the B & G Vulcan and the NMEA2000 network for out chart plotter. I'll be off to the chandlery for a few tomorrow morning. There are several stores close by so we hope they have some in stock. Shouldn't be a big problem but I want to make sure I get it all fixed before we had to Spice Island Marine on Tuesday morning since I'll need a depth sounder to make sure we don't go aground.. Before we head for the store, we'll be dropping off one of our propane cylinders for a refill. We ran out of propane in one of our two tanks during our overnight cruise from Trinidad last week. Several years ago, when we were in Pohnpei, Micronesia, we has shipped in some new fiberglass cylinders. We had the old style metal tanks ever since we bought Zephyr and they tended to rust out in a few years. These new ones have been great. It's now going on over three years and no a sign of rust. A nice advance in propane tank construction. That's about it for now but I'll let you know how the electrical goes tomorrow as well as the bid for the teak decks. We're really hoping to get a good estimate for the repairs as we've really come to enjoy Grenada far more that Trinidad. Cross your fingers.