Thursday, July 9, 2020

St. George’s, Grenada

Port Louis Marina

12.02.608 N

61.44.986 W

Happy Birthday Robbie!

2020, written by Stephen King, directed by Quentin Tarantino

No, I haven’t given up writing posts for this blog, I just don’t want to bore you with our mundane lives at the moment.  We’re still here at the marina in Grenada and according to the latest word from Trinidad, most likely will be here through the hurricane season.  Although they still haven’t figured out an opening date for inbound cruisers, they will be instituting a 14 day quarantine when they do open.  Needless to say, we’ve all had our fill of Quarantine Jails.

On Tuesday, we got new neighbors on our port side; another catamaran.  Although we had never met, they had been our neighbors out in the Quarantine anchorage for the last week we were out there.  Topher, Kim and their son, Tanner, on Dorothy Rose.  We helped fend off any catastrophe when they backed in and gave them the heads up that we were anticipating a sea trial the next day, once our autopilot was repaired, and that we’d have to go through the same routine again.  

Dale has been busy trying to fix everything that broke on our last transit but decided that we needed a Raymarine technician (Sheldon) to have a look at our autopilot.  We were somewhat surprised when he crawled into the area where the autopilot actually connects to the rudder and found a broken wire.  Dale took over from there and stripped the wire back to find “good wire” (wire that’s not corroded) and reattached it, heat shrunk the connection and thought we had dodged a bullet when it came to all of the things that it could have been. 

Since he was already here, Sheldon updated the software to the chart plotter and ran diagnostics on the whole system.  Unfortunately, he found that one relay to the autopilot wasn’t responding and another was intermittent, so he asked if he could check the cables.   Those ended up being crimped severely possibly causing the issue and he suggested that they be replaced.  As we were still under the $100 mark we said fine. 

When he came back a couple of days later with new cables in hand, we were ready for our impending sea trial.  Shade cloths were down, enclosure panels removed, keys in the ignition, neighbors tasked with holding the dinghy until our return but the cables still didn’t fix the lack of communication problem.  Since counseling wouldn’t work in this particular case, he back tracked farther and found that when we hired (an idiot) to install a new chart plotter, autopilot head, and radar system, the guy taped the heading sensor to the bulkhead bracket with white electrical tape (so it wasn’t immediately obvious) instead of screwing it into the bracket as intended.  It’s amazing the thing worked at all.  The thought now is that this particular unit is no longer functional, so a new unit has been ordered.  I just smiled. 

For those friends and family who followed us on our 1^st trip through the Caribbean, we spent over a month here in Grenada back in 2006 ordering a part on Monday, waiting for it to arrive on Thursday, anticipating it clearing out of Customs on Friday, discovering that it either wasn’t shipped or what was shipped was the wrong part and having to start the whole procedure again on the following Monday, you’ll understand why I just smiled.  What else can you do?  Needless to say, I let our new neighbors know that we wouldn’t be jostling the line up this week. 

As I mentioned earlier, its pretty certain at this point that we won’t be going to Trinidad.  So this afternoon, Dale and I got on the phone and called Spice Island Marina for scheduling times, where we can get the boat hauled and the bottom painted, as well as repairing the broken stanchion and hopefully the broken port light replaced.  I called around to various hotels and apartment complexes for prices on short term rentals while the boat is in the yard as well as the cost of staying at this marina for the season. 

Other than that, we’ve had Gerry and Nicky over for dinner a couple of times and they invited us over to Opal for dinner.  Dale and Gerry keep each other busy fixing this, that or another on our boats or off to the closest marine store for pieces and parts.  The bakery that they found on their first excursion makes Roti’s on Fridays.  Of course, I had to check their quality and found it to be excellent.  They add pumpkin to their version which I found rather nice. 

Savannah is excelling in her swim lessons.  Gerry and Nicky got her a boogie board for an early birthday present that has been used to strengthen her kicking.  Within a day or two, the light came on and even strangers commented that she’s improved just in the time that she’s been here.  I do my laps most mornings, so I’m content to wait it out here.  Then we hit the hot showers before heading back to the boat for piano, reading, math and science lessons; not particularly exciting but definitely keeps us busy. 

Until things open up, there’s not really a lot going on. 

Finally:  I don’t think anyone expected that when we changed the clocks we’d go from Standard Time to the Twilight Zone.