Friday, June 19, 2020

Quarantine Anchorage (Sailor/Wuflu Jail), Grenada
12.02.484 N   
61.45.411 W

What types of jokes are allowed during quarantine? Inside jokes!

Well, we made it.  We actually arrived at dusk on Wednesday evening but as the Quarantine Dock was closing, we were instructed to anchor in the Quarantine Anchorage and report back in the morning. 

So now, lets get to the good, the bad and the ugly of the trip.  

Ready for the Big Trip!

The good?  Savannah was a trouper; even during some of the more challenging aspects of the trip, she made light of it.  Only once did she get sea sick.  More on that later. 

The bad?  I can honestly say it was one of the most challenging trips we have ever made. 

The ugly?  Once we got up the morning after our arrival and had to check in with the Quarantine Dock, we looked like a rust bucket.  All the rust Dale and I had diligently cleaned off the Palace previously was back with a vengeance. 

In my last post I told you how we had anchored to the side of a marine park in St. John.  We were having a pleasant day when about 4:30 pm, the National Park Service sent a patrol boat out to say that the entire area was now a marine park and that we had to move.  Apparently they knew that the cruising guides and charts still designated the area we were in as an anchorage, apologies extended, but that we still had to move.  We asked where the nearest anchorage was that we could get to in the setting sun and were directed across the large Round Bay to another of the 3 smaller bays called Coral Bay. 

Coral Bay wasn’t as pretty as Hansen Bay and was crowded to boot.  We raised anchor as quickly as possible as they were clearing out about a dozen other boats from our side to move away.  Opal followed suit and we did our best to anchor before night fall.  We ended up having to make a couple of attempts as we couldn’t get a good purchase.  Finally we got a good enough tug that we felt we could sit overnight. 

The next morning, Saturday, June 13, we raised our anchor about 9am and started our motoring east.  Of course the wind was directly on the bow, so there was no need to even try to raise the sails.  The transit was mild and we even were able to have a piano practice and a quick round of subtraction flash cards to keep us entertained.  The rest of the day Savannah played computer games and went below to read one of her books.  It was a sunny day, nice breeze and what I would consider a good transit. Unfortunately, by evening, right after dinner, she was sick.  Considering how well she had been doing, we surmised that it was being down below, without a breeze, reading.  As soon as she tossed her cookies, she immediately felt better and never had another problem.

Through the night, the winds and waves increased and slowed our progress down to 3 kts at times.  On Sunday, June 14, at change of shift at 2am, Dale found the genset running.  We had no idea, how it started or how long it had been running.  So from that time on, I started calculating an additional 4-6 hours of fuel usage to our motoring time. 

During these first couple of days, we were well ahead of Opal but knew that as soon as we turned south, they would catch up as they can point higher into the wind than we can.  We also began a twice daily single side band (SSB) radio check-ins with another boater named Escape Pod, located in Grenada keeping up with those who were on their way.

By mid-day on Sunday, we made our approach to the 2 waypoints we had installed to go around the Saba bank (a location noted on the charts as having dangerous waves).  As we rounded and turned south, we hoisted a reefed main and our jib and watched the speed pick up to 6 kts; Opal asked if we had actually deployed our Code Zero. 

Savannah's Perch

Unfortunately, with the wind comes the waves and they were getting larger by the hour.  By mid-afternoon, Savannah, who had been sitting high up in our sling seat, went flying from there to the cockpit seats, or one padded area to another.  It was the sudden flight that startled her.  She had been playing on her iPad games and throughout the flight did not drop the game at all.  In fact, I had to pry the dang thing from her hands to make sure she was alright.  She said that she had hit her chest but the only thing that she could have hit it on was the iPad itself as she landed.  In any event, she was fine.  As I said, a trouper!

Keeping Watch

As each day passed, Dale and Gerry took the opportunity to check in with each other a few minutes prior to checking in with Escape Pod on the SSB.  During the evening of the 14^th and early morning hours of the 15^th, we were hit with a rouge wave.  After dark with no moon to speak of, you have to feel though the wheel how the rudder is reacting to the water its slicing through.  This particular wave gave no warning and slapped us good.  When Dale came off watch, he checked to see how Savannah was doing, and found about ½” of water on the floor.  Thinking that I hadn’t closed the hatch over her bed when it had been raining, he sopped it up and dogged the overhead hatch down tighter.  When he relayed what he had found, I knew that her hatch was the first one I had closed when it started raining, so when I ended my watch, I went down to check on her too.  Again, the floor was covered with water.  As I was standing there, another wave hit the side and I was drenched in water.  I checked the side porthole and one of the three knobs holding it closed, came off in my hand.  I grabbed another towel, sopped up the water, checked that the bilge pumps were working and not being over loaded and told Dale what I had found. 

Needless to say, we switched places so that he could don a head light and see how bad the problem was.  He found that not one but two of the knobs broken.  At first he instructed me to bring us into the wind to keep the water off the porthole while he tried to silicone the hatch shut.  By 4am, we knew that the silicone wasn’t holding, so once again, I brought the boat into the wind to slow us down and keep the water off the porthole.  Dale donned his headlamp and tried sealing the whole thing again with Flex seal.  Our issue was that it required 15 minutes to set up.  So there we sat idling, waiting, and trying to stay dry.  Dale gave it a good 20-25 minutes to set up before going back down to put it together.  After that point, there was nothing more we could do but keep an eye on things and wait until light to see if it was holding. 

Daybreak was no more promising.  So once again, I brought us into the wind, slowed us to a

crawl and tried to keep the waves off the porthole.  This time he slathered the rubber goop all over the window.  Also this time, he grabbed some Flex Tape and hung upside down over the edge to place 4 lengths of tape over the outside of the porthole.  Obviously, if you know Dale, this was very challenging and by the time all 4 pieces of the tape were in place, he was green and going down for the count.  This was as good as it was going to get, while underway. 

Bless her heart, Savannah slept through the whole episode.  It reminded us of when we stomped all over her mother when she was younger and slept through us being hit by a very much larger boat while at anchor.  When Savannah woke up, the first thing she said was “what happened here?”  The side window was now covered with white rubbery material and looked like a scrubbing bubble bottle exploded on that side of the hull.  

Then . . . we lost our autopilot.  Again, it was about sunset, the wind was shifting, I was on watch at the time.  Dale came up to help me tack as we were being set farther and farther off our course.  We took it off auto, tacked and tried to set it again and although it appeared to engage, it in fact, did not.  In other words, the course we would put in would hold on the instrument but the helm would not respond.  Dale entered into the log book “auto pilot/chart plotter not talking.” 

For the next 3 days we hand steered.  We faced and met challenges we have never had to endure for such a long time before.  Winds up to 30 knots, waves (I swear 12-14 feet) but we made it.  We’ve lost our steering before on our Hunter in an overnight crossing to the Abacos.  After 3 days of hand steering though, those 12 hours seemed like child’s play.  I’ve been in 30 knot winds before in the Hunter maybe 10 degrees off the bow but the boat handled it well and it was only for a couple of hours.  In a catamaran, 30 knot winds taken on a 60-70 degree angle keeps up the speeds to maneuver through the waves but anything less leads to stalling your speed completely.  Nerve wracking at best.

This trip, the usual 12-15 knots were a reprieve but the gusts that crept in every couple of hours were in the 25-30 kt range.  Waves we took over the boat, Savannah took to calling mini-Tsunamis.  When they would drench her sitting in the sling seat, she’d yell out “free showers!” 

Don’t get me wrong, we did have good times too.  We would sit in the cockpit and watch all of the stars come out.  There were so many, it was hard for me to pinpoint the Big Dipper Savannah was so enamored with.  I think I saw the Southern Cross and pointed that one out to her but I need to confirm with Nicky that the stars I was seeing for a short time on the southern horizon at about 9pm were in fact, the right constellation. 

As it was obvious, I was going to be on watch when we arrived, I thought I could take a shower in the midst of all of this pitching and rolling.  I figured out a way to brace my legs on each side of the shower long enough to get a good rinsing but drying off was a bit of a challenge.  I decided that this could be accomplished by closing the toilet lid and sitting on it to not only dry off but get dressed as well.  Imagine my surprise when I found myself sliding between the shower and the sink on a very slippery lid trying to pull up my britches.  It was ugly but the mission was accomplished. 

Grenada Arrival

We kept hoping that everything would calm down the closer we got to Grenada but it wasn’t until we were within 10 miles of the center of the island that the waves subsided and the winds died to the normal 12-15 kts on Wednesday evening.  We radioed ahead to let them know we were approaching but were told to find a place in the anchorage and check back in the next morning. 

Gerry radioed us to find a place close to the channel to make getting in easier the next day.  We had tried to find him, as he was waving his flashlight to let us know where they were but there were too many boats around him and we were losing light very quickly. 

It took a couple of tries but we finally felt we anchored in a place where we might still be the next morning and called it a day.  After putting Savannah to bed, we sat out on the trampoline and watched the anchor lights bobbing back and forth and went over the things we need to fix while in quarantine.  We treated ourselves to a couple of very strong rum drinks before heading to bed ourselves.  Our bodies have aches on top of our pains.  Both of us have sore shoulders and sore backs from the experience but we’re still here. 

Thursday, June 18, we radioed into the Quarantine dock and requested permission to come in.  We hoisted anchor about 7:30am and entered into the facility we saw beginning its construction on our last trip in 2006.  Its beautiful.  There were people to grab our lines and a well organized checking in procedure was explained.  We were still a bit early but were told we could take on water and wash off the boat while we waited.  That’s when we saw the extent of the rust stains we had accumulated on the journey.  What a mess!  The stanctions are leaking rust from the inside.  Dale had observed this before and tried to put a bead of calking around the base but it hasn’t helped. 

Anita, the boater who organized obtaining the SIM cards for arriving boats, actually works for the marina came down and greeted us and explained again what to expect.  We took our garbage to cans set up close to the piers and walked over to where we needed to be.  Everything is very convenient.  The officer from the Ministry of Health, sprayed our hands and took our temperatures (with an infrared thermometer) filled out the paper work and gave us our SIM cards.  When we told him that we hadn’t paid for them as yet, he called Anita who said to pay her when we check out.  Amazing!  I guess she knows we’re not going anywhere. 

After our check in there, we crossed the channel to another marina that sold diesel and filled up there as well.  We had totally miscalculated our fuels.  We used way more water than we thought, and considerably less fuel (probably because I was terrified of running out, so I was constantly turning off the engines and forcing us to sail).  After that it was back to the anchorage and the anchoring dance began again. 

First we tried closer to Gerry but after a couple of hours realized we were dragging.  Then we tried more towards the center of the anchorage; a couple of times.  Finally, we felt we had snagged something that would hold us.  Dale dove the anchor and found that we had anchored into a ledge.  Unless the wind shifted, we’d be safe.  Then the wind shifted and we were on the move again.  Finally, we moved over toward Rum Truffel and tried there a couple of times.  One time we actually snagged a good sized rock that Dale thought would hold us for quite awhile.  Today we realized that we were slowly on the move again and reanchored farther forward.  When Dale dove the anchor this time, he said that he could tell what we were anchored to something but that regardless of how much backward motion put on the engines, it didn’t budge.  He just couldn’t identify what it was. 

In the meantime, Opal has had to move as well.  First, they tried in front of us.  Then they tried to the side of us, for the remainder of the day they have sat behind us and a bit to the right.  We’ve been told by previous boaters that you drop your anchor and back down until it catches on something.  Dale says the whole anchorage is rock.  Even when he tried to scout out other areas to anchor in, it’s all been rock. 

Today, Friday, June 19, Dale has kept busy exchanging the sump pump from the guest side to the master side as the pump died on our side; cleaned all the little brine shrimp out of the water maker filter and replaced it with a new one, then ran it for 2 hours; and finally tried to figure out why the hatch over our heads at night drips when its raining.  I conducted a piano lesson that added a scale to the regular music pieces and then 2 pages of subtraction equations of 2 digit numbers.  Once Dale is finished repairing all of the items that became apparent on our transit, I’ll concentrate on cleaning; no sense in cleaning when he’s not done tearing things apart.  When we first arrived, it looked like a bomb had gone off inside the boat.  You couldn’t open a single cabinet or drawer without something falling.  I was happy to find that putting a toilet roll around the necks of all of my treasured rum bottles saved them from any trauma. 


So I guess this catches you up on our transit.  Hopefully these next 10 days will pass quickly with all of the projects that need to be completed and we’ll be out and about soon.  Until then . . .   little miss Savannah was visited by the tooth fairy last evening.  She was very concerned that her personal tooth fairy wouldn't know where to find her.  I suggested that Grenada might have its own tooth fairy or that they were probably unionized and the closest one would pick up the job but she wasn't thrilled with the idea.  This morning, everything was rosy again as apparently her own personal fairy did, in fact, know where she had taken off to.  This excitement was made even better throughout the day when Papa allowed her to swim with fins.  She swam all the way to the anchor and back this evening!  Papa said she did better with fins than she normally does jumping in and swimming to the other side of the boat.   

Finally:  Where do sick boats go to get healthy?  The dock!