SV Lover Of The Light

Sailing Circumnavigators Cruising the Reefs and Islands

Jan 6 week 2025, maintenance and adventures in Grenada

Starting January 4, we spent 6 days on a mooring in Prickly Bay, rented from former owners of the nearby West Indies dive shop, and then we moved to Port Louis Marina for three days to more easily facilitate additional repairs on Lover Of The Light.

While moored in the bay, we caught up on laundry, did numerous sewing and other small boat item repairs, changed oil and filter on the generator diesel engine, and cleaned water maker and shower drain pump filters. On Monday, the skipper embarked on a 4-hour project to change out a gen-set engine mount which had disintegrated (project pictured here!).

On Tuesday, we more or less donated a new (18 months old but never used) spare starter battery to a local Grenadian needing a new battery for her car. The battery had sat clean and dry for 18 months in the boat's "hold", still had its factory plastic wrapping intact, but tested somewhat marginal for efficacy and was taking up space and 40 pounds of weight. It's our hope this young lady is getting good use out of it!

Last Wednesday, the skipper and mate took off on a 6-mile hike (round trip) to Clark's Court where we had a break for a late lunch at the marina restaurant "Cruiser's Galley", and met Karen, a very friendly and generous cruiser currently building a land house in Woburn Bay. Karen kindly gave the skipper two sets of spare guitar strings, much appreciated as they are hard to find in the Caribbean.

While in Prickly Bay, we managed to go running twice on the local roads, and also did a couple open water swims along the shore of 0.5 miles and 1 mile each.

Once on the dock in Port Louis, we retrieved a package at the St George's Post Office sent from the U.S., a small adventure in itself. The package contained a Tank Level Control Panel board, which the skipper set about to use to replace the old one on LOTL. The mate and skipper spent a couple hours filling the ship's tanks to newly calibrate the Tank monitor system, and we are no longer flying blind on tank levels as we have done the last couple months!

Additional repairs included going up the mast to replace the Windex wind indicator - involving drilling & tapping a new hole at top of the mast head (fun AND scary), doing some rigging work: tightened aft stays and tightened the genoa halyard to increase the luff tension in our new genoa. Then there was an all-important Tommy Bahama beach umbrella repair by the first mate. Meanwhile skipper completely disassembled our "newer" Forespar whisker pole, purchased in Mackay, Australia, did maintenance on all internal working parts, removed the damaged inner telescoping tube and cut the pole to shorten it to a more useable section.

Lastly the skip removed and repaired the whisker pole mast storage track, a work still somewhat in progress. And the mate accomplished some of the more relentless tasks of refilling water tanks, washing down the bilge; and washing/ waxing the top decks.
I'd be remiss if I did not mention that the skipper and mate took full advantage of the $1 bus transportation available to get around doing multiple errands in Grenada and also used the "cruiser bus" operated by our friend George from Secret Harbor, all part of the cruising experience. 



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