Saturday, February 28, 2009
Whunk Bang, Whuk boom, Bong, Whuck bang..... The mainsail is out of the mast and the roller for which it normally provides a pad and a muffle is free to bonk around inside the mast. For those who don't know the sound, you need only imagine a thirty five foot hollow vertical aluminum post, swaying back and forth, with a 2 inch aluminum pole rising the length of it bouncing around inside. We have made great strides in damping out this dementing distraction, bringing it down from a full throated whang bang to a relatively quiet, if constant, reminder that the mainsail is in the sail loft until Tuesday (and if you believe that, I have bridge you might be interested in buying). The genoa is in as well, both sails much the worse for wear following our high energy sails of the past few weeks.
The Designer has been hard at it, banging out a series of dresses and accessories to be featured in a self published catalogue. She reminds me of several highlights I missed in our story of the non-cruise through the Grenadines. On reflection, we had some pretty interesting times, dear reader, which I know you really would like to read about. There may be some photos we can show as well, if you are ready.
The first thing to come to mind is the small whaling boat we encountered as we skirted a squall on the way across to Beqia at the end of our long haul South. There was this very small boat, three men aboard, outboard on the transom and harpoon gun mounted on the bow. They were moving in tight circles and it took us a bit to figure out they were hunting whales. As we passed them, we came upon the whales themselves, a large pod of pilot whales. Fortunately for the whales, there was a good distance between them and the whalers.
I have been hard at the maintenance today, replacing the two cleats pulled of the stern by Boffo. Pack the grease cups for the steering cable and work the grease into the system. Muck about with Cetric's wiring input. This is deep in the bowels of Django, and is inscrutable. The wires go in, that much I have determined with some certainty. How they attach, or how to get at the attaching mechanism is still beyond me. The mucking about has had some effect and Cetric is responding with alacrity, though for how long is not clear.
The cleats have been replaced. If I were an obsessive type, I would be displeased by the slight cant of the starboard one. My mind was elsewhere when I marked the holes; on Whit, as a matter of fact. He emailed to say that I may be suffering from some debility or dementia following the unfortunate evening in Rodney Bay when I incurred serious injury ferrying him and KMH ashore in the middle of the night to have a drink at the bar. Shortly after getting Whit's email, I remarked that our ship's computer suffers from a nasty virus. The Artist says its because we have been using memory sticks in the internet cafes, and picked one up there. I am not so sure, hence the distraction resulting in Django's askew stern cleat.
In Bequia, we walked out to the turtle farm and took lots of pictures, but they all disappeared mysteriously. We stopped at a coconut grove by the sea and your scribe spent a good long time bashing away on a fallen nut to provide some sustenance for his two children. Sharp rocks, stone walls, conch shells all provided little in the way of damage to the damn nut. Success came eventually and we all gnawed away on coconut sitting on the beach. The next day, we met a talking billygoat over by Friendship Bay. He was being led along the road, hobbled, by a young boy and stopped to call his son who munched grass down the slope... "Come on, Kenneth" he bleated.
Despite two dinghy runs for water in Soufriere, we are out again, and most all of yesterday afternoon was dedicated to the refill. The fuel dock inside the lagoon would be our first choice, but there is a line up stretching back outside into the anchorage. These are all French registered yachts from Martinique. Both Martinique and Guadeloupe are locked down in a general strike, apparantly in protest for increases in the subsidised price of food. It has been going on for over two months in Guadeloupe, and, I suppose, 2-3 weeks in Martinique. I'll not comment on the politics.. oh,all right, if you insist.. from an ignorant outsiders perspective, one finds little to no services offered to boaters anywhere outside Le Marin. There is none of the small enterprise of boat boys, fruit men, laundry and water delivery that one finds in the other islands. Everyone seems to be very well fed, the roads are excellent, and all the solid teak docks have acknowledgements to the generosity of the European Community. Apparantly, large sums are being transferred from Europe to these Islands to keep the populace fat and happy. France has taken steps to reduce the drain a bit. The people will not stand for it and have walked out en masse. It is reminiscent of the situation in Quebec, where the public service unions have successfully thwarted rationalisation attempts by more than one government. Beware the government and the tax payor when a sufficiently large proportion of the populace is sucking contentedly on government benificence.
Back to the fuel dock in Rodney Bay, the water hose has gone missing. I think they have taken it away because it slows down the sale of fuel to the multitude of Martiniquais refugees.
The next possiblity is the marina. I round up a man who sets up a hose and lets me make four trips back and forth to Django. Seven hundred and twenty pounds of fresh water heaved up on deck and poured in to the tanks later, we have more or less a full load and its past RP o'clock (not that there's much in the way of RP aboard Django these days).
Django's bottom is dirty, wanting a good scrubbing. Despite an aching back (no peace for the wicked), I have one quarter completed this afternoon. We will be here long enough to finish the job before our sails come back from the loft. Perhaps the thuck bonk of the mast will have faded into the unconscious by then. In the meantime, Chris Parker says the weather will be fine during the whole while.
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