7th May

18 20 N
64 56 W

Weather: sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a

MAY 5TH

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY TO OUR NEIGHBOUR MARK - HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT DAY AND NOT TOO ISOLATED.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DALE AND LORIE'S BABY BOY, JAMES - WE DRANK TO EXCESS TO CELEBRATE!

AND LASTLY

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO TO EVERYONE - THE DRINK OF THE DAY IS MARGARITA



Well another week has flown by without too much change in circumstances, we are still anchored in the harbor at Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas, USVIs. As of today none of the countries heading south have opened their borders to cruisers so we will continue to sit here and hope that they open up sooner rather than later!
Life on the good ship lollypop has been a mixture of frustration, celebration and boredom this week. I began the week, and new month, with a walk to the post office with Lorie to mail a card as we both needed to get off the boats and stretch our legs a little, even if it was hot and uncomfortable out in the heat of the day. Gerry did a trash run and at the same time took our old solar panels to the dock and handed them over to the guy that runs Harbor Shoppers - a pre loved store for marine gear, as the guy had agreed to take them on consignment. It was good to actually be able to reclaim the space that they were taking up on deck, I just hope that they sell as they are still in good working order, just not enough amps for our requirements.
On his return to the boat Gerry decided to lift the floorboard in the galley next to the fridge to check out the spares underneath it. It was disgustingly grotty so he began cleaning it out, in doing so he discovered that the insulation for the fridge pipework was disintegrating (causing the grottiness) so he decided that he would replace the old insulation with some new stuff that we had on board - simple job? Why would it be! The old insulation that was still in place was difficult to get off and extended to awkward places underneath the fridge and had to be cut away, accompanied by a bit of sailor speak. The next issue was trying to get the new pipe insulation into place, for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about it looks like a swimming pool noodle but has a continuous split down the length with double sided sticky tape to join the thing together once it surrounds the pipework . Our "new" insulation has been stored under the cabin sole for a while and the wax tape which keeps the two pieces of sticky tape from sticking together until it is in place had torn and come away in places causing the sticky bits to try and meet up before the insulation was in place - much sailor speak and frustration to get it in place and stuck together correctly , I even had to let him use my crepe spatula at one point to keep the 2 halves apart! Eventually though he got the pipework near the fridge re insulated and continued to pull up the next floorboard to chase the pipework and repeat the work - that is until he ran out of new insulation. Uh OH this was going to require a trip to Home Depot to purchase enough insulation to finish the job, the floor boards were replaced and the trip to Home Depot scheduled for the next day. Dale and Gerry both went to Home Depot, anything to get out for the day and a trip to Home Depot was a good excuse, Lorie and I stayed behind on our respective boats. The guys returned with the insulation and subway sandwiches for us all for lunch. Gerry spent the afternoon finishing the pipework insulation and I kept out of the way and did a second coat of varnish on the hidey hole wood in the cockpit.
We had a quiet day on the 3rd, doing next to nothing all day and tempting fate who, true to form, put in an appearance at 8.30 in the evening. It has been Gerry's practice to run our gen set to make sure that we had enough power to keep the fridge running overnight. The fridge had stopped running for no apparent reason when it should have been running. Gerry spun the compressor fly wheel to see if it would run which it did, however shortly afterwards it tripped the 50amp breaker and stopped. Gerry kept spinning the fly wheel and resetting the breaker at great risk to chopping off one of his fingers in the process. Eventually he turned the generator on to increase the voltage going to the compressor motor in the hope that would temporarily fix the problem which it did. Having done that the fridge / freezer was down to temperature and was shut down for the time being, as usual. At around 2.30 am the compressor failed to start again when the freezer temperature was above the set point. Gerry got up to check what was happening and I laid in bed watching and listening. Once again he tried spinning the fly wheel which eventually got it started, he stayed up as clearly there was a problem and he wanted to make sure the fridge and freezer didn't go above temperature. As soon as possible he called Reefco, the refrigeration company and requested they come out to check the system. They were a bit busy and said it might be another day before they could come to us. Meanwhile we emptied the portable fridge / freezer that we have for drinks and medications and set it to freezer temperature. We then emptied all of the main freezer into the portable freezer as we didn't want to lose a freezer full of meat. The medications went across to Gypsy Palace for storage in their fridge as we weren't certain that they would be maintained at the correct temperature in our fridge. The compressor was kept running by spinning the fly wheel that day.
The Reefco guy arrived at 8 am the next day and proceeded to check out the system with it running and stopped. The outcome was that it appears the compressor motor was failing and the options were to replace the motor or replace the whole refrigeration unit. Given that the system is 30 years old the only option really was to replace the whole thing. Yikes! BOAT x 4 (break out another thousand x 4!). We bit the bullet and put in the order for a new unit and meanwhile tried to keep some fridge capability going.
Lorie and I had abandoned boats and gone grocery shopping whilst the Reefco guys were doing their thing, which brings me to the next bit of ridiculousness - for the past 2 months we have been shopping in the same supermarket with restrictions on quantity of people in the store at any one time and social distancing restrictions within the store, all good. From the beginning of this week there has been a relaxing of some restrictions and more places have been allowed to open up HOWEVER everyone must now wear a mask/face covering to enter all these establishments. We had no choice, I wore a pirate bandana - it's totally useless and Lorie wore a proper mask. If this had been in place for the last 2 months I wouldn't be ranting about it but what is the point starting it now - surely the horse has bolted? When you watch people with face coverings on you become aware of how useless they are - noses not quite covered, chins being kept warm (can't think of any other reason for them to cover just the chin!) , constant touching, pulling, adjusting and generally fidgeting with the covering, a great deal of which don't do anything useful as the microbes will penetrate the fabric in seconds and be transferred to the hands with the constant touching. Rant over.
With no possibility of the new unit for a week Gerry found there was low voltage going to the motor and some connections were either burnt or had been very hot so he decided to change out the power cables to the motor to increase voltage and hopefully allow the compressor to continue to run until the new one arrives. Dale assisted greatly whilst Gerry squashed himself into the lazerette to change out the cables. To cut a long story short and to omit all the sailor speak, it was unsuccessful and in the end the motor failed to start despite the coaxing and sailor speak. We now have no running main fridge or freezer, thank goodness we have the portable one for the frozen stuff and 2 neighbors who have offered space in their fridges / freezers until we get the fix - thanks Gypsy Palace and Texas Crewed - you guys are awesome!
Our entertainment came from Texas Crewed this week as Gene and Renee have bought themselves a minicat - it's an inflatable catamaran, about the same sort of size as the dinghy but with sails, a tiller and rudder. They had spent the entire day of the 1st May putting the thing together and finally, at just on dusk, they were ready to launch it for its maiden voyage. They managed a few rounds of the harbor but the wind was dropping and they didn't want to get stranded, plus it was getting dark so they made it back to their boat and tied it up for another sea trial in a couple of days' time. It was obvious that a couple of things need adjusting for it to run at its best but even so it looked pretty awesome and I'm sure it's going to provide hours of water fun for them.
The second launch was a couple of days later and this time they had the sails set correctly and took off around the harbor at a great speed, with many of the sailors on other boats around the place watching their progress, as I said before it looks like being great fun.
We had planned to have everyone over to our boat for a Cinco de Mayo celebration however with the boat in total disarray (read torn apart!) we were saved by Gene and Renee offering to hold it on their boat along with some people we hadn't yet met. I managed to knock together a 7 layer Mexican dip to take along and although we had the makings for Margaritas we didn't need to take them as Gene had knocked up bucket loads of 2 different types of Margaritas. There were 8 of us in attendance - the usual 6 suspects plus Chris and Helen (expat- Brits now residents of the USA) on a boat called Tyree from the next bay over to us. Another couple came by in their dinghy with 2 dogs and got called over for a take away Margarita off the side of the boat. We all ate, drank and made merry for a few hours before returning to our respective boats, and yes, we made it back without incident (good job we are the next boat across from Texas Crewed!).
Yesterday Gerry and Dale went out to Harbour Shoppers to pick up a charge controller ( I mentioned the disastrous second hand one that Gerry got from there in the last blog - the guy offered him a new one at cost - good result) so they were on a mission to pick it up along with anything else they could find and not live without! Once they were back home Gerry set about fitting the controller - with a little help from me when required to pull cables and hand him tools. The good news is that it works and we are now able to utilize the solar panel on the back of the boat to specifically charge the engine starting battery but with the capability of connecting to the house batteries as needed.
We have bought bags of ice to place in the fridge to try and keep our cold (not frozen) stuff from going off - we are going to try and use as much up as possible as quickly as possible to save waste.
The other gripe of the week is about trash - the USDA has been visiting boats around the place telling everyone that trash must only be dumped at Yacht Haven Grande Marina and you need to be able to produce a receipt for the trash - at $35 per bag or there would be a fine of $500! The reasoning is that they are, rightly, trying to keep bugs and infected materials out of the country and incineration of all "foreign" trash is mandated, the fleet is in uproar as most of us have been here for upwards of 2 months and we have all been buying stuff from local shops and USDA are saying that anything that has been taken on to our boats falls under the regulated trash regardless of the fact that it was purchased locally. None of us mind being charged a reasonable amount to dispose of trash but we feel that $35 per bag is excessive the debate has been taken to the governor and is ongoing, hopefully they will come up with something before we all get fines!
We waved goodbye to Rex and Cathy on Ole this week, they have headed for the States with the Salty Dawg flotilla, we have tracked them daily on Predict Wind and they are making great progress.
On a final positive note the Tap and Still bar has re-opened for take-aways so the 6 bandits picked up food yesterday and sat in the marina grounds enjoying an early burger dinner together, on the way back to our boats we stopped off at Texas Crewed for take away Margaritas (how was there any left over from yesterday - Gene must have made a bucket load and a half!) anyway we took the takeaway drink back to the boat and enjoyed it. Thanks Texas Crewed, it was just as good the second time around!
I'll be back with the next exciting instalment in a week's time, stay safe until then.