A picture perfect Sailing day…Almost.
03 December 2012
Karen
Monday, Dec 3rd, 2012
A picture perfect Sailing day…Almost.
You know the type…15 knts of breeze on the beam, deep blue seas with swell under 3 ft, the current in your favor, crisp blue sky with just a hint of clouds, and all systems working perfectly…..Well, today was not quite that day. Oh, the weather and seas were perfect, except the wind was on the nose, so sailing was out, then just as we arrive in Bequia around 3:15pm, after motoring from St. Georges since 6am, the starboard engine alarm sounds. Eeep! So we quickly take a mooring and shut the engines down only to find that we have poured 3 quarts of oil into the bilge…NOT GOOD! Guess we are not leaving tomorrow and we contact a mechanic to visit us. Then, spend 1 hour getting the main rigged. One would think that this would be done prior to leaving on our trip, but the weather conditions were never quire right to raise the sail in Port Louis, so we decided to wait till we were at anchor, and facing directly into the wind. As it turns out it was a good thing we could NOT sail today, because we had to rerun the halyard ( the line that pulls the sail up), after thinking it was better in the new position we put it in…Yeah – NOT! Then mess with the 3 reefing points that required me to hang off the end of the boom pulling, while Jim yanks from the front…Finally….things started looking better, and we could consider ourselves a sailboat…although as much as we will try I’m sure that neither of us will get much sleep tonight worrying about the engine.
Tuesday, Dec 4th, 2012
After waiting most of the morning for one technician, we talked to our boat boy friend who recommended what turned out to be an excellent mechanic to fix our problem. After showing up in his boat just after lunch as he promised, and then hanging upside down in the engine compartment for several minutes assessing the situation, Kerry Olliviere was able to quickly diagnose our problem as a faulty seal, then, remove the impeller and fix the seal for us. As he finished, he looked me in the eye and said…’it’s all fixed now, I guarantee it!’ which made me laugh but, truly did alleviate my worries!
It turns out some friends are still in Bequia, and we were able to visit with Doug and Wendy, and Glen and Sylvie, in addition to meeting Glen and Daelynn, and Dave and his wife, who were visiting with Doug and Wendy. Doug and Wendy did not know Glen and Sylvie, and we were telling them how fun they were and they should look for them when they got the chance, not knowing that Glen and Sylvie were in Bequia at the time. Then Doug and Wendy recounted the story of how last night, on the way to visit Glen and Daelynn then actually ended up stopping at the wrong boat, since the two were so similar. Turns out, then HAD met Glen & Sylvie…inadvertently! Funny and small world!