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Larry's LogLater that evening, Cheryl and David from Ginseng came over for drinks and snacks. We had first met them in Trinidad and then saw them here. Diane had invited them over when we saw them on the beach during bocce last time. They brought over an article in Yachting Monthly magazine (a UK publication) that Cheryl wrote about their experience during Hurricane Lenny in St. Martin's Simpson Bay Lagoon. I had no idea they had been through that but I just glanced through the article while they were there and read it after. Amazing! They were hit with 135-knot winds at one point and the boat broke free from the rented mooring and the 2 anchors they had set. It finally sank in the lagoon, with them still on board. They had just come down from Canada a week before, and then spent the next 8 months rebuilding and repairing the boat. They were lucky to be alive! Sunday morning Diane went for a walk with the ladies from Koncerto, Lady J and Ginseng while I ran the engine again to charge the batteries. I wanted to monitor it carefully again in case that regulator error showed up. The charging went very well, with the voltage and amp curves behaving exactly as they should. It seemed proof that the problem was with the ignition switch. At least I had been able to bypass it, for this purpose anyway. After Diane got back, we just spent a quiet day, catching up on logs and emails, and reading. After an easy day Sunday, Monday was pretty strenuous. We had wanted to walk to Saline Beach for some time and today seemed like the day. It started out very sunny and so we went to shore with camera and water and walking shoes, got breakfast at the bakery and started out. Steve and Connie had told us about the walk they did and said it was quite long, about 2 hours each way. Jan and Ghislane also did the walk and said it took about 90 minutes to get there. Of course, as we started walking, it started getting cloudy. It was cooler that way but I wanted to get some good pictures. As we walked past the Caritan Hotel, I wondered about doing the walk but we continued. The trail was well marked with blue and white painted stripes on various trees. As we walked, we also saw Machineel Trees painted with red stripes. We got a little nervous about walking under them since they are poisonous and rain dripping off them is caustic as well. Fortunately the rain wasn't too hard and we found some shelter near a shack with an overhang. The scenery was pretty but the rain and cloudy sky didn't make for great pictures. As the rain stopped, we continued and met a young French woman walking the same way. She asked in fairly good English if she could walk with us since she had seen a local on the trail that didn't look to "savory". We said sure and she walked with us until we eventually got to Saline Beach. On the walk to Saline Beach, we went past several beaches where different groups would congregate. One beach was the nude beach and another was the gay beach. Since it was a weekday, none were too crowded though. Saline Beach itself was very nice with big surf since it was on the windward side of the island. There was some nice scenery but we didn't stay long since it would take a while to walk back. Walking back it started to clear up and I managed to get some nice pictures but of course, it got hotter also. Walking past the other beaches this time was very "interesting." We also stopped at the Caritan Hotel for a rest, getting some refreshments and taking a quick dip in their pool. Back at the boat, we just relaxed. I hadn't worn socks and sneakers for months and getting them off was a real relief. Tuesday we were still tired but there was little sun or wind and we needed water so we went in to jerry jug some back to the boat. We played bocce ball on the beach later in the day and then had a quiet evening. A tough life! Wednesday morning we saw Pearl sail in and anchor next to us. We hadn't seen Pete or Dianne since Trinidad and it was good to see them again. We went over later to say hi and got reacquainted. They're from New York also and Pete was an ex-NYC fireman, like Diane's father. Dianne is also from NY with an accent that's unmistakable. They weren't going to stay in Ste. Anne long since they wanted to see Guadeloupe and Antigua. They hadn't seen these islands much on the way south and since they were heading back to the States, they wanted to make sure they saw them now. That afternoon I worked on getting the lazyjacks setup a little better. I wanted to arrange them so I could store the lines against the mast and boom while not in use to prevent chafe on the sail while underway. The only time they're needed is lowering the main so there's no reason to have them up all the time. They also get in the way of the sail cover so I wanted to figure this out. I had just loosened a line to get them out of the way for the last 2 months. I had a diagram of one way to set them up sent to me by a sailmaker I contacted before we had left for Bermuda but I had never had the time (inclination) to really approach the problem. It wasn't a very pressing problem but I thought now was a good time to look at it - not much wind and I could remove the sail cover without the sail blowing around. I found a small cleat I could use to hold the end of the line of the forward jacks and lengthened the line by just attaching a similar diameter line. I could now release this line and all the jacks would ease down to the boom where I could make them fast to the forward end. I would have to see how this worked in practice but it looked reasonable. Thursday was a good day. The new Yamaha 15 hp outboard engine we ordered came in and we picked it up at 5. The dealer delivered it, and another for another cruiser, to a beach in Ste. Anne and then drove Diane to a gas station to get gas in the 5-gallon tank that came with it. The new engine required a break in period of 10 hours and needed a 25:1 mixture of gas to oil during that time. Jim on Lady J had kindly gotten me some more 2-stroke oil on one of his trips into Marin since he said I would need a lot of oil for the break-in. We put the new engine in the dinghy, went back to the boat and managed to hoist it onto the mounting pad on the stern. It weighed about 85 pounds compared to the old engine that was only 60 pounds. Diane actually had a hard time lifting it with the 3-1 purchase on the hoist. I might have to get a tackle of 4 or 5 to 1. After it was on the stern rail, we just sat and admired it for a bit. We were both tired from last night since there was some loud music that kept us awake until about 2:30am. Also during the day, our friends on Antara sailed in and anchored near us. Diane had "met" Linda through a woman cruisers email list a couple of years ago and had kept in contact once she left the list and we had gone cruising. Antara had left about the same time we did but went back north last year to see Nova Scotia. They had actually watched Destiny for us while she was in Bermuda and we were in NY. Diane and I remembered an email from them saying a man had gone on the boat at one point in Bermuda, but we had emailed back saying it was Tom Whayman looking after her there. They had sailed south before we got back to Bermuda and then went back north before we could meet last year. They were now heading south to Grenada to get the boat hauled and the bottom painted before heading back up north. We went over to say hello "in person" and made arrangements to meet them for drinks on Antara the next evening, explaining about the new engine. Friday morning was a little frustrating. After running the gas out of the old Mariner outboard, removing it from the dinghy transom and placing it in the dinghy until we could hoist it up to the rail, I realized that the fuel line hose for the new engine was a smaller diameter than the old engine. That meant that I couldn't use the Racor filter I had just mounted to make sure the Mariner had clean and water-free fuel. We decided that we would use the new engine with just the small inline filter I had bought until I could get different fittings for the Racor. I thought it was very strange that the smaller engine used a larger hose, but that's the way it was! The new engine also wouldn't go into reverse while sitting on the stern rail, and that concerned me. Forward was fine but no reverse, at least not at that point. I examined the engine before we put it on the dinghy and sprayed some anti-corrosion spray onto the spots where I thought it might be a problem. Just as I was almost ready to hoist it down onto the dinghy transom, Jim and Jacqui stopped by to give us some Brie they had picked up for us and I told Jim about the 2 problems. He said he might have some fitting to let me use for the Racor but he couldn't help at all with the gearshift to reverse. His engine, only about a month older than ours, went into reverse without the engine turned on. I tried moving the prop thinking that it was just in a peculiar position but that didn't help. Well, I figured lets see what happens when we turn it on, thinking that this might be a new safety feature. So I continued getting the engine onto the dinghy. Diane lowered it down and I placed it gingerly on the transom of the dinghy. I then got the new gas tank, into which I had just mixed the oil to the correct 25:1 ratio and put the little inline filter on the hose. I had to search for the spare fittings that had been supplied with it but fortunately found them easily and installed it. We were ready to try it out. Just then, Jim came back with the spare nylon fittings he had said might work. Just in time for out first pull. So I put in the stop switch lock plate on the kill switch, pumped the squeeze bulb a bit to a firm pressure and gave it a pull. Not the first try, but on the second pull it came to life. Hooray!! Holding the dinghy against the boat, I tried reverse gear for just a second. Sure enough, it went into reverse with no problem. It just seemed strange that an engine only one month older should operate differently. I would ask Jack, the vendor in Martinique, about that when we could. |