working for a living again - 24 oct to 15 nov 2014

all good things must come to an end, so after a 4 month summer vacation i am back working again. on day one of my arrival i went and viewed sea forever sth and jaimee's new 60 ft privilege catamaran in the yard.  the good news was unlike most of the boats in the yard it was not suffering from severe hurricane damage.  the bad news was it was a complete disaster zone.  with unsupervised contractors trashing the boat over the last n months.



the good news was seth imediatly offeeed me a job for 20$ an hour helping him unscrew everything.  i rejected this offer imediatlly and spent the next 3 days working for free while we negotiated the final hourly rate, 20$ per hour.  i do get a bit more for working with 220 volt electric stuff.  





i even got roped into a 2 hour "tour" around the island to do a storage run stop in grand case for ribs and check out the hurricane damage.  the ribs where great the boats on the beach on the french side where not.  very depressing, i talked to some people who had lost boats when one of the marines disintegrated and took all boats down with it.  no one had insurance and people lost there whole life, dont know how i would cope with that sort of thing.  one of the guys working on seths boat ended up in the water at the peak of the storm swimming after his boat.  he never caught the boat but managed to get to shore and pulled out just before the marina collapsed around him. he is selling his 45 foot steel ketch for 20k and moving ashore.



dont really have time to blog any more as i get docked pay whenever using the internet on sea forever, i did set the internet up with a wirless router and a local sim.  we get 2G for 32$ per month not a bad deal.  palapa needs a bit of work.  i did finally get up the mast and fix the windex and replace the camera (700$) set me back a week of work.







did not even get veterans day off, they remamed it st martin day here,, but i am getting paid (so far).  feel a bit like the dude in office space who ends up working construction.   i may even have a couple of captin only charters this season.  alas not looking good for making it through the canal in jan but you cant have everything



cheers
roger

can you say overheating - or my trip to st martin 23 to 24 oct 2014

so after getting seth and jaimee of to the airport i got tom and i another Gatorade.  we tried and failed again to find darcy in the crewed yacht office to talk about work and then i decided it was time to get out of dodge.  i was exhausted after a week plus of parties but i figured i might as well be exhausted under way as exhausted sitting on the hook in road town



i got the hook up got the boat out of road harbor, got the anchor hosed down and was settling in for a nice motor when again the over temp alarm went off.  the temp gage had only lasted about 3 days so now i only got the buzzer for over temp.  i anchored behind this massive catamaran in 50 feet of water and then went down to check on the engine.  first thing i noticed was green coolant all over everything.  this i took as a good sign as something i could fix.  i found the leaking connection on the hot water heater heat exchanger.

however the hose clamp was completely unaccesable it looked like they had dropped the engine in and then put the floor in.  there was no clearance between tho hose clamp screw and the bottom of the floor (sole for you boat people).  i ended up getting an open end 8mm in there and tightening from the side.  i topped up with the last of my radiator fluid and i was done.



the wind was ten to fifteen knots and the swells mostly under  one meter  so it was a pretty smooth motor.  i even took a nap waking up just before sunset.  alas after recycling a leftover half slice of pizza from tom and my trip to st thomas the over temp alarm went off again.

this was really crappy as i had to shut down the engine and now the sub meter swell was on the beam rolling us around quite a lot.  i pulled the cap off with a rag and started adding the last of the fluid.  after this i started adding water.  got everything toped off fired up the engine and then i could see water spurting out of another hose.  i got out the wrench tightened the hose clamp on this and thought problem solved.

i logged all this and then resolved to check the coolant in 3 hours.  3 hours later i added a bit of water but all seemed good.  at 4am i had sighted st martin and again the alarm went off.  i added a gallon of water fired up the engine and after checking it water was again spurting off the last hose i tightened.  so shut down the engine again cut the hose reinstall the hose clamp add water fire up again .  this time i stayed at 2000 rpm and 4 kts because i was getting a bit tiered of this.

all worked well i got into simpson bay at sunrise dropped the hook and went to sleep :)

cheers
roger

slap dash reunion - 20 to 23 oct 2014

so this time i had not parked on the dive mooring so i was able to sleep in which is good because this happy hour at eleven pm thing is kicking my butt :)  i got over to road town around pm and got anchored in a nice hole between the vagrant boats and the sunken boat and the no anchoring buoys the marina had finally put in.



i got the boat cleaned up and then tracked down double d (aka dolphin daze) and left a note for jaimee.  i knew she was due in at 4pm and seth was not due in until almost midnight.   i went and bought tom yet another burger dinner at village key and then went looking for jaimee again.  at this point it was obvious a party was going on on one of the 5800s so i pulled up and hailed the boat.  someone recognized me and invited me on board and there was jaimee in supper happy form along with half the moorings 5800 fleet.



the party was in full swing with champagne left over from charters being poured like water.  it became increasingly obvious that the big challenge was going to be keeping the party going away until seth arrived.  the party btw was a going away party for seth and jaimee as they where leaving the moorings to start on a new 60 foot privilege cat based in st martin.  jaimee;s friend wisely pushed for us getting food even though jaimee and i where not hungry, she eventually dragged us down tho dock to pick up 60$ pizza from the moorings restaurant.



thanks to the pizza we all managed to to survive until seth arrived.  the party was pretty hopping i even danced to red solo cup with ulyian one of the moorings chefs, quite fun.  eventually seth texted he had landed and a cheer went up.  before long there he was on the dock and the party picked up.

eventually we declared victory, i only made it as far as seth and jaimee's salon, it is amazing how nice sleeping in air con is once and a while.  jaimee made it almost all the way home but did a final swim in road harbor.  fortunately she did not have her new smart phone with her.



the next am i was supposed to haul palapa , surprisingly that did not happen, as it turned out there was a boat sinking that took palapa's spot so it was a good call.  the next day was pretty much a loss, jaimee had gotten her passport taken at immigration so she had to get it back.  seth packed up a bit of his stuff for transport by palapa to st martin.  tom showed up and he and i fought over bits of canned food etc that seth and jaimee where getting rid of

eventually the day degenerated into another going away party of sorts for sava and ulyana who where heading off on charter the next day.  we invited ourselves over (with food) and again had long fun evening.

the next day seth and i again work up in the air con salon of DD.  at this point we where starting to run out of time so packing began in ernest.  we shuffled between packing and running stuff out to palapa until dark.  i was the smart one who decided we needed some food again so ordered another 60 dollars in pizza.  

this would have worked out to be plenty of pizza but as it turned out tom ended up eating most of it.  in spite of my protests to save a slice or two for the travelers when seth returned from his final shower tom had consumed it all.



a dragged tom and i off the boat to give jaimee and seth a final night alone on dd.  first thing in the am is seemed we where back on dd with me making coffee for everyone and trying to get the last minute stuff in the dingy.  seth and jaimee finally got to the cab only 30 minutes late.  another end of era era moment

i would be following in palapa on what should have been a sixteen hour boring motor but alas things never work out as planned ….

cheers
roger

Exploring the BVI - 16 to 19 oct

So i did not quite get up at dawn but by 0am i was on the fuel dock in Charlotte omallie.  it is still off season so the entire place was in "training".  fortunately i ran in to erik and pam who's wedding tom and i had missed.  erik invited me over and of course offered me a beer, how can you say no to that.  i did mange to leave after only 2 beers and got palapa fueled up watered up and underway.  i bet erik and his buddy boat i could get off the dock first and i just made it with them charging after me towards the entrance of the harbor



it was a nice motor over to st john where i had plans to meet up with allie and her bf morgan.  i got myself a place at the bar had a chicken bacon sandwich .  i got a text saying morgan and allie where at "the across the street bar" a local place that had dollar well drinks, yikes.  we had some chips and few other drinks before heading to the beach bar for bocci.



i thought i was going to rock the bocci but apparently the balls we have on palapa are not regulation.  these things where massive and i thought i would pull my shoulder out throwing.  we did two rounds i lost both and fnally declared defeat.



then the fun really started apparently there is another after hours happy hour on the island for the locals who work.  this one starts at eleven pm upstairs behind everything in this nice air con place.  we did have to wait a but to get drinks but this gave me en opportunity to play glaga and pac man with allie.  in spite of my "experience" with these games from an "early" age i again got my butt kicked.



the bar tender there is smoking hot so i highly recommend this place and will need to go back again.  in spite of this i made my way back to palapa and climbed into bed.  no sooner than i had dozed off it seemed and someone was pounding on my hull yelling "la palapa la palapa".  i tried to ignore it but it was persistent and as i crawled on deck i discovered a park ranger telling me i was on a dive mooring.

he did not want me to disrupt an early morning dive boat.   i pointed out it was off season and would it not be easier for the dive boat to wake me up when it got here.  he was unsympathetic so again i was underway at 6am.



i decided to head over to cane to track down tom as we where now both single keeping each other company..  tom invited me on a ride over to budget.  little did i realize this would result in more driving than i had ever done on the bvi.  the budget trip was easy but then tom wanted to go check out the harbor we where supposed to take the floating picnic table to the next day.  he suckered me in with a 6 pack of shaffer, did i mention tom was broke,  a dollar a beer hard to beet.



it was a serious off-road adventure involving dirt vertical roads, who would have guessed toms poc van was 4 wheel drive and we needed it.  we even when t by bomba shack and saw everyone surfing.  



if you look closely you can see another hot chick surfer catching a break.  this was all good but did not board well for the floating picnic table with its 30 amp electric motor



we where going to have dinner back on palapa but we stopped into uitos and one thing led to another and we decided to skip it.  as tom was leaving i ran into sam the marine surveyor from Antigua.  this resulted in me swimming home.  good news is the new life proof case is a keeper and my vintage iphone 4 continues to work.



the next morning i headed to shore to help launch the floating picnic table.  apparently this is on face book under angermanagmenttables  or something like this.  tom and his friend had built this while tom was on disability from work for screwing up his arm.  it is pretty famous in the usvi/bvi.  "we" had been reuted to bring the table to the bvi cable company's annual picnic.  as toms friend kevin works for them as a contractor.



the surf was pretty big so we anchored the picnic table just outside the surf line and opened a few beers.   as it turned out the surf prevented many people from coming by but eventually someone swam out.  tom invited her over, it turned out she was not from the party but a local dive instructor tanya.  



tanya was super fun and we convinced her to join us on the next event a bb on board the table at jost.  she swam out to the table with her bag resting on her head, cheating.  we had great time on the table pulling it up on the beach next to corsairs and the tire swing.  somehow i was the most sober and was eventually put in charge of the grill.



i did a pretty good job getting it going and cooking fish (jack from the bahamas) and sausage (from columbia) with no utensils.  i had to use the lid to flip the fish.  i did burn my arm but you have to make sacrifices.  we finally had to shut the party down at midnight so i could take tanya back across the water to Tortola so she could work the next day.

after dropping her off i headed back to jost dropped the hook and crawled into the back cabin.  at 4am my phone rang and i ignored it but again i was up at 7am checking msgs and saw that allie and morgan had finally responded to my text inviting them out to white bay.   we took both boats over to white bay first thing in the am, i again did bfast this time corn beef hash from san blas mixed with left over chips and a fried egg on top.  very well received.



once we where done w/ bfast i was off to pick up allie and morgan, more unpaid charter work but i was leaving soon and wanted to give them a trip to white bay.  i thought i was late but i ended up spending an hour and fifteen minutes in the bar waiting for allie to get her stuff together.  i did not bring a wallet or a shirt to shore so morgan had to cover my bar tab, should have ordered more :)



i was a bit worried about kevin and tom as they where out of rum but when i returned it looked like they had gotten themselves sorted.   we made ten dollars dropping someone off at their baby mega yacht and then the happy couple returned.   by now tom and kevien where running out of umph so i headed back to st john.  



we had an amazing sunset on the way back and then basically repeated our last night in st john. i could not resist the hot bar tenders offer of a pre happy hour drink so i wasted 3$ but other than that it was a complete success.  tomorrow is the seth and jaimee reunion fun never ends :)

cheers
roger

Hurricane Gonzolas and toms sail the lesser of to wevels - 13 to 15 Oct 2014

So i woke up at 6am and the first thing i did was check the wx.  Gonzalas was still on the same track to hit anagada about 35nm away from us but its wind speeds had been upgraded .  it seemed every time we got an update things where worse which did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling.  our plan had been to go to st john or up to north sound but these where closer to the storm so i thought why not go to culebra, also a great harbor and 20nm away from the track.  i thought tom would be unhappy with this plan as he was planning to go east to st kitts but after looking at the track he was on board.



we got under way by around 8am and by noon we where dropping anchor in culebra.  the anchorage was wide open as the few local boats with crew had gone into the mangroves.  i was much happier with no boats around and a 75 lb cr with a hundred meters of chain than in with a bunch of boats as was tom.



we spent the afternoon huracaining ourselves.  we both got extra anchors rigged in case we dragged in the wind shift i got everything inside including the sup and the surf board.



i even got the massive gerry jugs secured in the forward head.  finally i got my bed set up where i was prepared to stay up all night watching the gps display for winds and any sign of dragging.



once all was set up tom and i decided to head to shore for a beer as the forecast arrival time was midnight.  we found an open bar and within minutes of sitting down discovered the latest update was gonzalas was veering east away from us and towards st martin.  we would find out later st martin lost 30+ boats and  person.  primarily because they only predicated the hurricane at noon the day of and by then it was too late for any one to do anything.



we had seen 4 helos buz the harbor just before we came in and we learned this was the governor arriving to officially declare a state of emergency and shut down the bars and everything else.  this ironically went into effect at 5pm and then at 6pm everything was canceled based on the latest update.



we had a few beers and then headed home.  we both slept blissfully through the night getting a nice fresh water washdown.  the next day i again made bfast, seems like my job these days.  and then tom convinced me we should take advantage of the weather and take down and repair his head sail that the head had ripped out of.

this required me to go up the mast twice and jury rig a halyard to the head so we could pull up and down.  the mast trip was not bad other than trusting all the lines on toms vintage boat.  but what are friends for if not to risk their lives on the top of your mast, still safer than driving and crossing the st :)



once we got this in place we where able to lower the massive headsail onto the for-deck.  at this point i looked at the sail and said lets head over to st thomas and take this thing to a loft.  these where so many problems it was overwhelming.  tom replied, i'm out of money we have to fix it.  yikes.  so that s what "we" did.  tom did all the stitching

fortunately aimee had bought some 2 inch wide red webbing for sewing projects that was still on the boat.  we got this and all our combined sewing gear together and tom went to work.



by 5pm it was pretty clear this was a two day job so at sunset we knocked off and headed into town for dinner.  of course zacos was closed.  i was the only one with money so i selected the Chinese place.  tom got 4$ fried chicken and i got 8$ fried rice and pork & fries, everything comes with fries very authentic.  my dinner lasted two days so it was a wash.  i did have to kill a roach running across the bar but you cant have everything.



the next day tom was up at dawn sewing and at 9am i headed over for the next mast climb.  i won't try to explain the system tom has but i had to install a block on top of the foil to compress the foil and pull the sail up.  the halyard for this had to be secured to the roller furler before furling.  if anyone can understand this i will buy you a beer.



needless to say this was painful.  we ended up with the sail up flogging pinning tom between the rail and the sail holding the halyard.  eventually the boat tacked its self and we got everything under control.  

by this time it was noon so we decided to take advantage of the south winds to sail east something that almost never happens.



i must say it was an awesome sail for me back to st thomas and for tom back to cane in bvi.  i tried to track down friends on star gazer but failed so went out for sushi on my own.  i think it is the first on my own meal out i can remember.  i splurged and got two spicy tuna rolls very good :)

cheers
roger

Let the projects begin Christmas Cove USVI - 9 to 12 oct 2014

i got up early remembering tom had spent the night in the cockpit after our celebratory night out.  we was awake rebuilding a carb when i got up.  first i thought he was being super nice and rebuilding my carb but alas his was also afu.  i made us some bfast and got him off for his last day at stcw school.  he was not looking great but you would hate to look your best for a day in school.

by this point the ferry swell was kicking up so i decided to head over to christmas cove to get some nice scenery and flat water.   the two months of sailing there where uite a few projects on the board.   i decided before i got going i was going to treat my self to a nap so i did not get started until after am.



The first step was to try to fix my foot.  my brother had been apauledi had not removed the sea urchin spines from my foot and bandaged it more than two days after the event.  i soaked my foot for and hour (while updating the blog) as instructed and then started digging with pointy tweezers.  i had done this before on seths feet and this was much LESS pleasant.  i did accomplish the task and then wrapped tape around my foot to fulfill the "bandage" requirement.



the next order of business was to hose down the deck and cockpit. some how the forward water tank had gotten contaminated with enough salt water you could taste it so i used the tank up on the cleaning project.  definitely harder when you have to do everything your self.  after this i put a patch on the dingy, i used the don two part epoxy approach which tuned out to be about 85% of the fix for the problem.

by this time it was after 4pm so i dropped the mooring and headed back to meet up with tom again at the tap and still.  we pretty much had a repeat of the night before with tome getting a loaded burger and me another bacon hot dog with pretty much everything on it.  hard to beet this for 6$ and 2$ r&c's on happy hour.  we ran into pam and erik on gumption as well who where in town for pams daughters wedding.



the next day we again did bfast on palapa and then headed over to christmas cove to get some more projects completed.  the plan had been to get toms head sail down but the wind had come up.  on top of this as i pulled into the anchorage my over temp alarm went off.  the light was bad so i got only the buzzer so unsure exactly what the problem was i shut down right a way and dropped the hook.



the temp gage was also inop but i had picked one up in aruba so i was able to install this and get actual temperature.  we managed to clean toms dingy and do a few other projects including unplugging my forward head, before it was again time to head back to red hook for happy hour.  of course on the trip back my engine overheated again, this time confirmed by the new temp gauge that it was about 220F.  i motored slowly the rest of the way and dropped the hook but it looks like a problem with the heat exchanger that we will have to tackle tomorrow.



this evening we supplemented our tap and still dinner happy hour event with a trip down the street to this new bar.  there they happily announced it was always happy hour and we could again get r&c's for 2$. not sure how long we can last in red hook.  it was slow night so tom and our waitress emily took advantage of the curling tables.  tom being from canada is ver experienced in this sort of action packed game.



i did bfast again on palapa, my cabbage onion and egg fritata with oyster sauce and serachi, very good.   once we finsihed this off we started   work on the heat exchanger.  tom explained all we had to do was remove the two ands and tap it out.  i was thinking this might be too good to be true.  he then mentioned you should do this every year or so so it would not freeze up.

worse then being frozen up the forward end cap had been installed with no o ring.  this caused the aluminum housing to corrode filling the oring grouve with corrosion and eating away from the lip leaving a gap.  the lack of o ring allows cross contamination between salt water and fresh water systems.  this explained why i always seemed to have to add coolant and why the coolant was always so nasty looking.  they also had failed to seat the gasket on the other end of the exchanger allowing water to flow in and out without passing through the heat exchanger.  obviously the thing was put together on a friday very disappointing.



we eventually gave up on beating the core out as even if we got it out we where going to have to have the casing machined and more material added to fix it properly.  it was also sat so we could not get any one from the yanmar dealer on the island.  in the end we decided on another don fix silicone.  i lathered the thing up on both sides and after about 30 minutes to get tacky i reassembled.



it looked like a gooey mess but hopefully when we try it in  a day or two it will not leak.  by this point it was pushing 4pm again so we got cleaned up and again headed to tap and still for food and happy hour.  pam and erik had invited us to some wedding event at saphire beach so we headed over there at 5.  it was and interesting resort, very deserted no office we could find and after wandering for an hour or so caught the dollar bus back to town.  we obviously got yhe location or time or both wrong.  we did see a nice iguana.



we should probably have headed back to the boat at this point but we where all dressed up and had just enough time to make happy hour and the tap and still before heading to our always happy hour bar.  tom ran into an instructor from stcw and tried flirting with one of the locals and before we knew it we had been out all night again.



the next day brought t rain with much difficulty i got my dingy launched and over to toms with tang and the coffee pot for bfast we where both moving in slow motion so it was  noon   by the time tom had completed a massive onion and mushroom omelet.  eventually the rain stopped so we decided to go to town on the dollar bus for a few parts.

the good news was my dingy was now down to a very small leak after a secondary epoxy the day before.  we hit kmart, radio shack the auto store and some cosco like place before heading back,  i finally replaced the broken water jug in the cockpit and got gasket material as well as a new lifeproof case for my iphone and also red lights for the temp gage.



the trip took everything out of us so we parked our selves at fish tails to watch sunday afternoon football.  .  eventually we headed over to tap and still as well. where we discovered there was a trop storm/hurricane coming our way.  we called it an early night and after spending an hour or two on the computer looking at weather decided to check again in the am before deciding where to go.  oh and we had forgotten to pay our tab the night before at the happy   hour bar but fortunately kelly was there again and we settled up with her.  clearly a sign we need a break.

we can not stay in red hook and it looks like to storm will come right through the usvi/bvi.  it is a good thing we got my heat exchanger back together as well and hopefully that will show no leaks in the e am.  always something :)

cheers
roger