First, an apology to Phil on Beothuk for plagiarizing his T shirt with the wonderful Nfld saying - but it just seems right. I'm kneeling at the chart table, can't sit because the space is occupied by our trusty Yanmar 3JH4E, which, akin to a horse, has two broken port legs - I mean motor mounts.
Therefore it has been extracted from its stable in the engine room whilst we replace the cutless bearing and have the shaft straightened - the shaft is bent 8 thou where it passes through the log. Both port motor mounts sheared (1/2" bolts) just below the lower nut on the motor flanges - thankfully the engine continued to rest on the broken studs for God knows how long, and we never needed to go full astern in an emergency. The soft coupling (now broken) probably saved the day - play in it and the PSS meant both the transmission seals and the log are still in good shape. We are on the hard at Peakes in Trini as of Sep 28th - dirt people once again, while repairs are made.

No, we did not hit anything or pick up a stray net or line in our prop. The hypothesis is that when we were repowered the Yanmar documentation indicated that the new 3JH4E had the same mount footprint as our old 3HM35F. Yanmar later corrected their drawings to reflect that the footprint is actually an additional 4mm each side of center line. As a result the mounts were under stress from misalignment (think bow-legged!) and finally sheared after 4 years and 2300 hours. While repairs are underway, we are redoing our Cetol - it only lasts a year down here; and we also will have the bottom paint refreshed, the hull polished and the water line raised 3 inches. (We stayed at Crews Inn Marina for about five weeks when we arrived and found we were the only one of four IPs there that still pretended to have the original water line.)

Bad luck does come in threes - we also lost our autopilot (corroded control head circuit board) and the freezer system began loosing refrigerant and would fail one month after recharging. (This was due to a slow refrigerant leak into the water cooling condenser). The second time we paid for repairs, the freezer appears to be fixed.
We have also replaced the canvas panel between dodger and bimini and the side panels to make our house more water proof when it rains and more durable when it blows. In addition, the EPIRB battery had to be replaced, anchor chain replaced (rusting out) and the house batteries were nearing end of life. Trini offers very reasonable prices for both material and labor, but who says cruising is cheap? They say the average boat spends about $8K (US) here in Trini - we'd prefer not to add it up.

On the brighter side, there are a lot of great folk here, but not as many cruisers as a year ago. More are hanging in Grenada or heading home while their boat waits for them on the hard. We have been to a couple of great pan yard shows - the one on Republic Day featured SIX bands including the National Steel Symphony that plays the new and more mellow G pans. Early on we had a wonderful hike to Maracas Falls with the folks on Sunborne. Leona is known far and wide (on VHF Channel 68 at least) as the domino Queen for her skill at Sunday Mexican Train dominoes. As the pictures show, there is always time for a little party, like when Strider went back to Canada for two months.

The hurricane season has been a non event - so far. But it is very hot - daytime temps are always in the high 80s and low 90s - it has been 101 degrees in the cockpit some days. Down below, the temp reaches 94 in the daytime, dropping to 85 when we go to bed and around 80 when we wake up. Here on the hard we finally rented an air conditioner - we froze last night when it dropped to 67!

We are looking forward to getting back on the water and cruising again, but first we are taking a sea, land, air and river trip to Angel Falls, Venezuela with five other cruising couples. We have renewed our yellow fever vaccinations, started our anti- malarial tablets, stocked up on DEET and are packing light for our jungle adventure. Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world, is not accessible by road, We depart on Oct. 7th and will return to Trinidad Oct. 14th

We'll tell you all about it once we are back and Voyageur C has splashed.