A bolt from the blue
21 June 2016
You might call it a bolt from the blue, well that’s how it all began maybe three or four weeks ago. Ever since the crankshaft bolt snapped sending the main pulley flying from the end of the crankshaft we seemed to have been dogged by one disaster after another. At first it looked like a simple, well in theory it was simple, just remove the broken bolt from the end of the shaft and screw in a new one.
We called in an expert with the tools to do this, but part way through trying to remove the broken bit of bolt there was a sharp intake of breath, like experts do, and an “Oh dear.” Turned out the keyway in the crankshaft had been damaged as the pulley flew away.
Bolt from the blue No 2. Only way to fix this is to take out the engine, remove the crankshaft and take it to a machine shop to be fixed. It took three days to get the engine out and apart.
The machine shop said they couldn’t fix the damage to the pulley which had also suffered in the breakdown. This was a special double pulley designed to make the engine work in a boat. We searched high and low for a replacement hours, days, a week. It was looking hopeless, and we were getting demoralized. Finally we found one, in Japan!
We managed to borrow the $2000 that this repair was going to cost, as we had long since run out of our savings, and were simply surviving on my small UK pension. Picaroon was up for sale and had two or three prospective buyers waiting in the wings when the catastrophe with the engine bolt occurred. We put them all on hold pending the repair being carried out and the engine put back in the boat.
And then we had bolt from the blue No3. One day we checked my bank account to see if my pension for May had been paid into my account. There was a credit that looked about the right amount but with a curious code next to it but we assumed it was my pension. We became a little suspicious but decided to wait and see what happened when it came around to the June payment.
When the date came around for Junes’ payment nothing appeared in my account, it became time to panic. We asked our old next door neighbour to ask the new owner of our old house if there had been any mail for us from the UK pensions office. Sure enough there was a letter that had just arrived which said my pension had been suspended and it gave me a number to call in the UK.
Had we still some savings to live on then this would have been an inconvenience, but as we rely on my pension coming in each month to survive this was a disaster. Of course we didn’t get our neighbours message on a weekday when we could call the pension offices, we received it on a Saturday, which meant we had to endure the anguish and worry of a whole weekend before we could call them.
The letter had said that my pension had been suspended because they didn’t know where I lived.
We had sold the only house we owned in the UK to fund the buying of Picaroon which we bought at the end of 2013 in Puerto Rico. Ever since then Picaroon has been our home, we’re what they call liveaboard sailors, and for the last three years we’ve been sailing around the islands, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Virgin islands ending up back in Puerto Rico, which is where we are now.
So first thing on Monday morning we took the dinghy over to the Marina snack bar where the wi-fi is usually pretty reliable called the UK number using Skype. A pleasant sounding lady took my call and asked a few security questions and took my national insurance number. At first I thought they would be just checking to see that I hadn’t died and that this was me, alive. When she asked for my UK address I told her that I don’t have one at the moment as I am living on a sailboat in Puerto Rico. I’m sorry she said, I’ll have to pass you over to my college in the international section.
After five minutes of “hold” music a friendly chap took my call. I explained my situation, with a little difficulty as I’m deaf and my hearing devices I use don’t work that well with telephone calls. But luckily Jackie was sat with me and between us we thought we had jumped all the hurdles. That was until he asked how long we had been out of the UK and we said, since 2013. Oh, now that makes things more complicated, he said, I’ll need to pass this on to our specialist international team. We gave him an email address and our Puerto Rican telephone number and he said we would have to wait to be contacted by them.
How long we’ll have to wait for that call, or email we don’t know.
From our research on their website it seems that we have maybe fallen foul of the rules governing payments made to pensioners living abroad. It would appear that if you live in certain countries then any increases in the state pension will not be paid. It’s a curious list of countries where the increase is paid and not paid. For instance if you’re in the USA you get the increase, but if you live in Canada you don’t. If you live in Jamaica you would get the increase but not if you lived in Cuba. Barbados is good, the Dominican Republic is not good.
As we’ve been travelling around quite a few of these islands there are places where we would be eligible for the increase and others where we would not. However, we have never stayed anywhere longer than six months and sometimes we have only stayed a month. If we have to give details of where and how long we stayed at various islands/countries it could get very complicated for the pensions department to work out if I’ve been overpaid or not, which equates to a very long and drawn out investigation.
The thing that is ridiculous here is that whatever increase I’ve had in my monthly amount has been very small indeed, I would hazard a guess that my pension has only increased by about five pounds since I left the UK in 2013.
The big mistake that I have made, if any, is that I never informed the pensions dept. that I was selling my house in the UK and moving onto a boat in the Caribbean. I suppose I stupidly thought that as long as I don’t become a resident of another country, but simply passing through, then I was still a UK citizen, with a UK bank account, it’s just that I was between properties. OK three years is a long time to be between properties, but whilst I was living on my boat I didn’t need a house in England, but I still considered myself to be English, and have the rights to receive my pension.
So right now we’re eating into our respective overdrafts, which are minute and getting smaller by the week. We can’t survive much longer without my pension being reinstated.
We’re not allowed to work here, in what is in effect the USA, and we can’t sell Picaroon without an engine. Oh what a to-do, what a pickle.
It was bad enough having the bolt from the blue breaking, but then to have my pension withdrawn at such a crucial time, well, it’s just not cricket, insult to injury is what it is.
It’s been a horrible four weeks, the worst month ever.
If you want to help us out whilst we’re in this hole you could buy my album of songs that I recorded before I became deaf.
You can pay what you can afford.
Thank you in advance.
Visit https://eaglei.bandcamp.com/album/turquoise-blues to get your copy