Antigua

Well, it turned out the problem with the transmission wasn't too horrible. The lock nut had backed off, so the wonderful folks at MPS fixed that and replaced the seals. Almost wish they had found something bigger, just to put us more at ease. But, at only $350 US for the repairs, we're not complaining. It took a couple of weeks to get the parts in, but we used that time to explore English and Falmouth Harbours and take the bus into St. John's a couple of times. After more than two weeks, the transmission was back and installed on the boat. We had ordered new motor mounts at the same time, since we're pretty sure these are the originals. The chief mechanic came out with the motor mounts, had us start up, looked at the engine and told us we were fine. Talk about honest! That was about $600 in parts alone, not to mention labor. Vaughn was wonderful helping to put the transmission back in but, unfortunately, he lost his cell phone in our bilge. We retrieved it, but I don't think it will work again.

So, with our transmission now in and working we decided to pick up anchor and test the systems. We had met with Chris and Marsha on Endorphins and they told us that Indian Creek was a nice little anchorage, only a couple of miles away. Off we went to test everything and when all seemed to be working, we went and anchored in Indian Creek. Had to pass by Eric Clapton's little spread - not too shabby! Not a bad anchorage, but kind of buggy and with not real clear water. Spent a couple of days there and headed back to English Harbour to look at all the beautiful boats that were coming in for the charter boat show. Not for the likes of us to tour the insides, but even looking at them up close from the outside was amazing. Some people out there have a LOT more money than we do!

We finally left English Harbour and were planning on anchoring in Carlisle Bay and going out to the reef to snorkel. Kind of windy and choppy waves, so we passed on there and headed over to Jolly Harbour, home of Budget Marine. Once we pulled in and anchored we noticed that Metalia was there as well. We had met John and Marie in the work yard at Aquavit and they had given us all kinds of helpful tips on Antigua. It turned out Marie was back in Canada for the week, so we had John over for dinner and he pointed out the anchorages and problem areas - problem areas as far as the reef system goes! We tried to head north and made it to Deep Bay where the weather was not looking promising for heading farther north and cutting through the reef. So, back we went to Jolly Harbour where at least we could take the bus into town and visit three different beaches and had a wonderful dinner on Metalia. We went in and filled up with water this morning and pulled around to a little anchorage where we can steal internet, then we're off again tomorrow to attempt Boon's Pass and head into Jumby Bay.

I've posted another album, Venezuela to Antigua, on the Picasa Web Albums. That's sometimes easier than trying to download photos to the blog site.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!! ~~~_/)~~~

Venezuela to Antigua - 7 VERY Long Days

The last week before we left the marina we were busy shopping and stowing everything away, doing inventory lists, getting last minute chores done. You know, it's always better to leave some things until the last minute for that extra bit of stress. We had another gourmet meal aboard Nereia, cooked by Jaime, and made promises to keep in touch and meet up with he and Dan again. Told them they could always follow us to Antigua instead of heading west.

Up the next morning, Saturday, November 1st, topping off the water tanks, putting away all the loose knickknacks, hitting the bi-monthly swap meet for the last time, and off we went (even though Jaime tried to hold on to the boat and hold us back!)

Had a great motor all the way to our favorite little anchorage in Mochima Park, tucked in and secluded in 15 feet of water. Relaxed, swam and had an early night. Up and on the way to Coche before 7 a.m. Had not a bad day of motoring and some good sailing. Unfortunately, one of the small fishing boats decided that he couldn't make it past our bow, so cut real close to the stern, as we were screaming at him that we had fishing lines out. Yep, all 3 lures gone. To say DW was a little upset would be putting it mildly. Needless to say, he didn't realize at the time that this was the least of his problems.

Anchored in Coche where we were the last time and Dennis did his normal check of all fluid levels and the bilge. Red in the bilge, but no diesel smell. So not a good thing. Transmission fluid. Not quite understanding that since I had no problems at the helm with forward and reverse. Poured the last of our fluid in, only to have it run right back out. So, so not a good thing! Dennis crawled down into the small spot that he has to work in and couldn't find any problems. Now, a decision had to be made. We could sail on the outside of the islands back to Bahia Redonda and get a tow in - but the availability of parts and service people to work on Yanmar motors isn't really there. Made the decision to stick with our original plan and sail to Antigua, where parts and services would be readily available and at least we speak the same language. We had checked the weather before we left the marina and the winds were supposed to be light and the wave height down for the week. If we left Tuesday, we should miss the squalls that were going to hit the northern Windwards and Leewards. I spent Monday baking, making potato salad, pasta salad and cooking chicken so that I didn't have too much to do below underway.

Thankfully, the boat beside us left first thing Tuesday morning, so that I didn't have to worry about running into him as we pulled the anchor under sail alone. I didn't sleep all night I was so stressed about that part. We had taken up the anchor once or twice under sail, but had the motor running 'just in case'. But, that was also 4 years ago, when we were travelling with Frank and Gretchen on Infinity, and we were trying to show them that we could be real sailors too. Well, really, I wasn't sure about us! Dennis is only allowed 3 screwups a day, and he used all 3 up in the first half hour. The plan was for him to raise the main, hoist the anchor, and he'd be back to help pull out the jib. I was down below closing ports and making sure everything was ready to go and I heard the anchor coming up. Okay, he's done this before. He's taking up the snubber, right? I go up, the main isn't up. I ask him what he's doing. As usual, he ignores me (or he just doesn't hear is more like it). I give him another minute and walk up on deck and ask him what he thinks he's doing. He tells me to get back to the cockpit that the anchor is almost up. I inform him that he'd better drop it again - SINCE THE MAIN ISN'T UP! See, that's the difference between the two of us. Under stress, I get bitchy, he gets stupid! Then he didn't put a reef in, which is not a god thing as far as I'm concerned. I don't like being able to trail my hand in the water as we're sailing along. It also meant that I had to go below and put all of my clothes into garbage bags on the bed since there's a deck leak somewhere that drips down the starboard side, right into my clothes lockers. Oh, and if anyone tells you it's okay to cut the marker off Coche - DON'T! We did see 5'5" on the depth meter, I guess we were just over too much to hit the bottom!

It took us all day to get to the tip of Margarita. The first night is definitely the worst. We were both so stressed all day, neither one of us slept, so we were only doing a one to one and a half hour shift, and even that seemed long. We were also worried about power, not sure if we could run the diesel, so we ran no lights, no radio and hand steered all the way to Antigua. Let me tell you, that's a lot of work. The second day was better and we took turns napping all day and I was able to take most of the night shift. We've discovered that Dennis does well up until about midnight. After that, he just can't stay awake, even if he's just gotten up. I can handle the midnight to 5 a.m. shift as long as I have the MP3 player or IPOD going. (Found out that rechargeable batteries do not last in the MP3 player, you need regular batteries) Day 3 really is the turning point and you start to feel better. It also helped that Dennis would rig up the solar shower in the cockpit every morning so that at least we felt human at one point during the day. There was nothing out there. Usually, when I'm on night watch, there's always a freighter crossing my bow. I think days 4 and 5 we finally saw some traffic. Day 6, around 4 a.m., I could see Monserrat and Nevis. Unfortunately, it took us until 7 p.m. that night to make it past Monserrat and Redonda Rock. Light winds and strong currents. We were becalmed, doing 0.5 knots, for a couple of hours a day for 3 days. Very frustrating. Sunday night we made the crossing between Monserrat and Antigua. The waves got choppy and came over the bow and sides, getting me soaked. Dennis had to take over his shift early and put his rain gear on. Of course, not one wave came over the bow after that, and I woke to him trying to get out of his rain gear, with little success. It's cooler up here and I had on fleece!

Day 7, I think we're almost there. After the morning weather on Channel 06, everyone switches back to Channel 68. I called, stating that we were a couple of hours out of English Harbour, and if there was anyone that could help us come in to anchor, since we were without a motor, we'd really appreciate it. Sun Sail Charters responded and told us to give them a call when we were 10 to 15 minutes out. We did, finally at 11 a.m., and Sylvan and Clive came out to meet us out by the reef. Dennis said he wasn't worried. He obviously has much more confidence in my abilities than I do! They were great. They towed us in, we dropped the anchor, and they backed us up to set. We said we'd buy them a beer, but they didn't want anything. I brought in cookies and wrote a thank you to them in the Compass (January's Reader's Forum).

Got everything straightened out, had lunch, then went in to check into Customs, Immigration and the Port Authority. We'd heard not good things about the authorities in Antigua, and were a little worried since our Zarpe from Venezuela said we were checking into Guadaloupe. Fortunately for us, we ran into great people. Everyone was amazingly friendly and helpful and welcomed us to their island. The Immigration officer thumbed through our passport and commented that we hadn't been here before . We said not in 20 years, so we'd like to stay as long as possible. He laughed and said, "Welcome to our island - enjoy!"

So, here we are, the transmission having been taken out, dead in the water, waiting for our parts to arrive, two weeks later. English Harbour is a wonderful place to 'be stuck', and we've done a lot of walking, hiking and bus trips over the island.

Stay tuned! ~~~_/)~~~

Trip to Los Altos

We were in the restaurant at Bahia Redonda one night (I needed a break from cooking!) and Richard from Preferred Stock asked us if we'd like to join a group of people on a trip to Los Altos with Carlos, known on the radio as Charlie Alpha. We'd heard from our friends on Nereia it was a wonderful trip, so off we went. We stopped at Mermaid Falls first - how beautiful! I'll post the rest of the photos on our Picassa Web Albums.

We stopped by the pottery place, watched a lovely, elderly gentleman make paper from recycled paper and leaves, visited Carlos' house for the beautiful view and had a fantastic lunch. We had a great day with Preferred Stock (Richard and Shellee), Jus' Now (Mike and Sue), Child's Play (Mike and Kim) and Vamoose (Greg).
Sometimes it's a small world. We met Shellee from Preferred Stock back in Indiantown, Florida. Her parents owned a 32' Bayfield, Rainbow Connection. They travelled back and forth to the Bahamas with her son, their grandson, Jamal, who was a charming young lad and now the owner of Rainbow Connection.
Some of the unique work done by Maria Esther Galban at the pottery shop.

~~~_/)~~~

In the Boat Yard

Well, here we are, being hauled out of the water at Aquavi - something we really hadn't planned on - but the cutlass bearing just kept getting a little more 'play' to it all the time. What a lot of
work. We didn't want to have the bottom power washed and get rid of all that nice, expensive ablative paint we put on last year, so guess whose job it was to scrub the bottom? And then I made the mistake of complaining about the way the paint was put on last year, so there was another job I had. Someone remind me to keep my mouth shut!! While it was a lot of work, I'd rather suffer from heat exhaustion (it was 95 degrees and I had coveralls on) than
climb down into the bilge like Dennis had to. One of the yard guys came over to the boat and said he'd dig a hole to drop the rudder for 100 B's. At the exchange rate right now,that's about $25 US. No problem, have at it! We did that back in Michigan, ourselves, and it took us 6 hours to dig through stone and crushed concrete. Pinto brought a friend, they did it in 2 hours and I doubled their money. Well worth it, since we were doing all of the other work ourselves.Terry on Teka Nova had said on the Net one morning that Patrick was a fantastic general contractor, so we contacted him. He was amazing (plus really good looking). We discovered that there was corrosion on the shaft when we pulled it and he had a new shaft made for us in a day! Arrived when he said he would, the mechanics showed up on time, did a great job, and Aquavi was a great yard to haul at. They couldn't get us back into the water on the day that we wanted, so they only charged us for one extra day in the yard, not the three extra that we were there. While we hate being on the hard, Aquavi is a beautiful place to be, with a fantastic pool to relax by in the afternoon. And, since it's a hotel as well, there's actually waiters that stop by to see if you'd like a drink. Okay, so life on the hard wasn't that bad!!


They put us back in the water on Tuesday, we went out in the bay to check that everything worked okay, and tied back up in our slip at Bahia Redonda at noon, with help from Freddie. Potter, who speaks English, has left for Panama, so I've really got to brush up on my Spanish to communicate with Freddie! Got out the hose and all the cleaning stuff and gave the boat a good scrubbing. Spent two hours doing that, and no sooner did I finish than one heck of a storm blew in. It was the outer bands from Omar (I think it was just a tropical storm at that point). So, wasn't that a waste of two hours. We had whitecaps in the marina and tons of wind and rain. Glad we got in and tied up when we did. Our friends on Infinity said they had 60 knots of wind in Spaanese Waters in Curacao. We didn't have that, but it was pretty windy.


So, here we are, back at Bahia Redonda, getting serious about provisioning. November 1st is our day to pull away from the dock! ~~~_/)~~~