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
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