Preparing for guests

Well, here we are a week later and still no movement. It is deceptive, but we have completed quite a few tasks.

The new propellers failed to arrive, so putting off our haul out and bottom painting, which means that K and I have had to scrape away six months of marine growth from Django's bottoms. This has gone reasonably well, considering. We have ordered and installed a new anchor chain, such a joy, no more rust all over the fore deck and trampoline, and we have treated the bimini with a waterproofing agent. It has only a bit more life left in it, and will be the next item on the replacement list. The head has been disassembled and a new siphon break installed in the outlet line. This has put an end to head worries for the foreseeable future.

This evening, Enn and Dana arrive for an eleven day stay, and we will be able to start cruising. This evening is also the seventh and final tot in the Tot club initiation. Following this, we are expected to call a mismuster, which involves the drinking of yet another tot, all before Enn and Dana arrive.

I'll let you know how it all comes out later.

Back Aboard

Let's see, today is Tuesday, we arrived Saturday afternoon. Django is in pretty good shape, although some of her components are showing their age. The anchor chain is due for replacement, and I have found the right size in Jolly Harbour. How to get it aboard is the next exercise. The Nissan outboard is overdue for a proper service, and we have left it over at the fuel dock to be picked up by Greg, the outboard man. Of course, Greg is in Grenada for a while, so K and I paddle Boffo backwards, like a canoe, around English Harbour. We are anchored in tight in the preferred spot close to the dinghy dock at Nelson's Dockyard. Many of the semi-permanent residents have their spots here. We are lucky to find one close to shore. The holding is solid in mud, so no fear of dragging ashore in the night. This spot is all the better for being close up to a high hill in the west, behind which the blazing sun settles at about 4:00 pm, giving us two hours of shade before sundown.

Django's head is acting up. The joker valve is having its little joke, allowing the sea to come in. It dribbles over the top of the head and out through the shower sump, whence over the side through the shower pump. It is an annoyance which must be fixed, involving dismantling of the head. I do not like this job much at all.

It has taken a few days to acclimate to the heat again. Sunday, tied inshore by the mangroves, was brutal, 38 degrees C. Once we escaped to the anchorage things improved. I have drunk vast amounts of water to replace the buckets of sweat.

Terry has been a great help in all things, and has invited us, as his guests, to attend meetings of The Royal Navy Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda, which meets every evening at 5:45 pm to read from the "This Day in Naval History", receive announcements concerning members, and to drink the toast of the day including a toast to "Her Majesty, God Bless Her". A tot is 2.5 gills of neat rum, followed by a glass of cold water to douse the fire. The club has over 500 members from all parts of the world, although the two meetings we have attended have had five to ten members present. A number of the members are also keen fans of Patrick O'Brien, of Aubrey - Maturin fame. We have enjoyed meeting new friends.

Enn and Dana arrive Nov. 5. There's more to tell, but I will let you all savour this morsel and provide the rest later.

Preparations

Oct. 24, next Saturday, is the day K and I head back to Antigua and Django in English Harbour. Terry has looked in on her regularly, kept me abreast of the storms passing by and how Django has been doing resting in the weeds. K has sold her house and floated free from the grind of working to pay off the expenses. A bit mauled by the stock market, I have reduced my dependence on buy and hold dividend income and taken a more proactive stance in the markets to bring in the wherewithal. My little Acer will do double duty over the wifi links. You may be burdened with ideas on what seems a good thing from time to time and I would warn you not to take these to heart.

The first order of business is haulout, and do up the bottom. I am ordering new two blade folding props to replace the kiwiprop feathering props we have now. They are to much for Django's Volvo Penta D1-20 engines, and tend to stall in reverse; often embarrassing coming into a dock. So biting the bullet and shelling out for the new blades.

K is a great singing cook and loves to entertain guests aboard Django. Dana and Enn, her journalism mentor, will come down for a stay soon after we have completed the maintenance rituals. Not final where we will go, but Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis are high on the list of likely stops. English Harbour will be our base of operations this season.

The weather here is clear and cold, the sun too dim for sufficient vitamin D production. Take those supplements, you who must remain behind. I am looking forward to swimming and boating and soaking in the heat, not to mention the rum.

Django in the Weeds

Sunday, April 5, 2009

This morning Terry called on channel 68. Meet him at the bar at 10 to plan the move to the mangroves. He will go in his dinghy and I will bring Django around, dropping an anchor off the port quarter as I come in. He will hand me a line from the weeds and we will get another stern line onto my Beneteau 473 neighbour until a starbord stern anchor can be set later.

Django performs well and slides into her place without embarassment.

The day has been spent in more hard labour, seemingly never ending. The two kayaks, Lady and Tramp, are face to face across the trampoline, one under, one over, hopefully secure from a 120 knot hurricane blast. The two anchors and four lines ashore have been adjusted and readjusted until just right. Chafing gear has been attached to the lines.

I tested a system for lifting Boffo up onto the foredeck, where she will be strapped down hard tomorrow, after all the last errands have been run. That is the last chore before calling the water taxi for a ride to shore.

The mosquitos and noseeums are pretty vicious here by the shore. The little finches come into the boat and eat the melon seeds from my yuck bucket. It is interesting how a slight change in position produces an entirely different environment. It is a good thing I am off tomorrow.

Terry and his wife live year round tied up up to the mangroves. How do they do it?

A hint on the curry thing and a prize for the correct answer: tonight's dinner is a medley of things not yet eaten. When I began, I did not know how I would end up. The ingredients were

pasta, not enough, so not used. (the original thought was to have pasta for dinner)
left over rice with lentils.
one small bit of christophine
one egg
one half a very hot red pepper,
one half onion,
one half clove garlic,
a bit of cabage,
one tablespoon coconut milk,
some peanut oil,
some garlic sausage from Guadelupe.
curry powder,
black pepper,
soy sauce.

Dinner was very good, as usual. If you know the answer to the question not asked, post a comment.

Its sayonara to English Harbour, I suspect until the fall. May the bugs not keep me awake all night.

P.S.

The Artist has arrived safely in Bermuda, and professes not to be concerned with Ben any more. There is another man on the horizon, although he may be a bit young, she says.

Lone Sailor Returns to English Harbour

Friday, April 3, 2009

Peter, our aged single hander, came in about 4:00 pm, a RIB alongside giving power for the in harbour manoeuvering. He pulled up close to Arnold and Gay and let go the hook. About five, I interrupted my suffing of settee cushions into newly laundered covers to go over and take some shots of his boat. As I drew close, I heard a large splash. Lacking a dinghy (taken by the helpful search and rescue people the day before), he had lept overboard with a tee shirt in a zip lock bag, and made for shore. I missed giving him a lift by 30 seconds. Such is life.



Today was another day of hard labour aboard Django. More laundry, and a thorough cleaning job throughout. Leaving a boat lade up clean prevents all sorts of mold and mildew from building up, and is well worth the effort.

Terry came by later on to say he can't help me into the weeds tomorrow because he has to be present at the burial at sea he has arranged. He was hoping this would not be the case, but there you are.

So Sunday is our date for moving Django to her resting place. Should KMH and I come back on the 20th, there is no problem getting her going again. If not, all the jobs will be completed for a summer layup.

I am still reluctant to reveal the secret of a great vegetable curry, but I will give a clue. If you visit Moses in Dominica, you will taste the result. He did not reveal the secret to me, I stumbled upon it myself.

Lay up procedures....and the Antigua Buzz

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Today was dedicated to laundry (two loads, only a preliminary attack on the problem) and fluid replacement in the engine rooms. The laundry issue was easy, into the Dockyard and drop off the loads.

On the way back, there was Paul Ridley , with his sister, Joy, at the dock by the dinghy dock in his ocean rowing boat. He has just completed an 88 day passage from the Canaries to Antigua, Rowing for Hope following the death of their mother to cancer.

(double click on this photo, the resolution is great and Joy hiding behind is the best part)

A photographer was on hand from some US publication, and after asking Paul if he minded, I was able to jockey Boffo into place to get a couple of shots for you, my dedicated groupies. Breaking news, as it happens, here on the blog.
Taking a few deep breaths, I was able to return to Django for the job du jour. Replace the fluids.

There are four major fluid systems in Django's Volvo-Penta D1-20 diesel engines. You have been regaled with the difficulties she has experienced with the seawater cooling system, shells in the heat exchanger, you remember. Now we are dealing with the internal systems, isolated from the marine environment. First is the engine lubrication system, which I have dealt with before, and for which I have accumulated some small body of experience and tricks of the trade. The only problem with this fluid change is that the oil seems to get everywhere, all over my bare feet as I clamber over the small engines in the tight space, and then spread stealthily over the cabin sole. I notice every time despite my inadvertance and determination not to make a mess. The other issue is getting the oil filters to screw off. In Grenada, I almost had recourse to stabbing them with a screw diver and winding them off that way. I have learned a trick, for which I might be able to charge a large fee if I took the trouble to patent the process, but, screw that. Suffice to say that I have the answer.

The next replacement involves the internal cooling system. This is your run of the mill antifreeze and water combo running through the internal systams of the engine and passing a heat exchanger to drop off its heat to the heretofor mentioned sea water cooling system. The draining of this system is diagramed in the operations manual, showing drain ports through transparant renderings of all the engine bits which are actually in the way. All very good in theory, but in Django's engine space, there is no way to see these ports without a mirror. Fine then. I am brought to the thought that marine diesel mecahnics have probably lived reprehensible lives in the past, and have been reborn to struggle in cramped spaces with unknown sized things which need to be unscrewed, which they cannot see, to boot. What is I did to deserve this?

The really interesting part is that once the way of it becomes known, the problem unravels, and success is achieved. The fluids drained out, and the new flowed in.
Finally, the transmissions, those fearsome beasts which seem not to work, need their fluids changed as well. Most important not to overfill them. They will self destruct is you do. I am duly careful and even suck some of my newly replaced fluid from the port engine, just in case I am might be marginally over the limit.
By 4:00 pm, the jobs are done. There is still a lot to clean up and put away, but the brunt of it is achieved. I need to go in and get the laudry, drop off half the old fluids at the dump (I can't carry it all at once) and then perhaps head over to Arnold's for an after five cup of tea (not!).

The buzz at the cafe was all about Peter, 72, single handed master mariner, we talked about his distress call yesterday. Apart from the distress call, he had not been heard from for about a week. He has sailed from somewhere south in an old gaffer with a bum engine. This morning, he called Arnold on his cell phone. Five miles off Montserrat, he was making for Antigua, just about dead upwind, and hoped to be in sometime early tomorrow morning. His gaff has broken, so his normally poor upwind performance has been reduced to abysmal. Everyone at the table knows him well and talked about towing him in. The Antigua rescue people went out but were not equipped to tow him 20 miles upwind. So they took his almost useless dinghy from him, to lighten the load a bit. Hopefully he will be in English Harbour in the morning.

Back aboard Django, the feelings of loss have tempered somewhat, and I am able to enjoy the solitude. Dinner was more complex and interesting tonight, rice with curried christophine and tomatoe and onion salad. The secret to a good vegetable curry is ..... oh! alright then .....

Maybe another time.

English Harbour, Desolate and Alone

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Woe is me, I feel as though some part of me has been torn out. I did not suspect I would feel this way until this morning, as A. and I began preparing for her departure at noon. We went in to the immigration people to have her formally removed from Django's crew list, then to the dump to cast off the things she could not carry home and would not remain on Django, then to the cafe to find a caretaker for the young avocado tree and the christophine vine she has been tending.

Living at such close quarters for almost three months brings a melding of lives, and when this closeness ends, there is pain. The Artist and Designer take up a good deal of space, with her sketch books, pencils and pens, tape measures and fabrics strewn around Django. She is also consumes a lot of emotional space, self involved, particularly lately with the problems with Ben. Yet she spreads a sense of fun and interest and youth which I love. It can be annoying as times, but once removed, the absence is acute.

After leaving her in the taxi, I went in to find Terry at the restobar by the dock, where he spends every noon time, to talk about bringing Django into the weeds on Saturday, to get to know him a bit better, since he will be Django's master for the foreseeable future. He spoke of Antigua Sail Week, the troubles looming for Antigua after April, when hotel occupancy is projected at 15%; of the burial at sea he is organising on Saturday morning for the son of a friend who drowned in the Virgin Islands while cleaning the bottom of a boat; of a friend our age, single handed sailor, who has sent out a distress call off Martinique, probably disabled or ill, and has not been found yet; of the Australian charter skipper who was shot dead with his wife and child looking on, whose memorial on the side of the road A. and I passed yesterday. We had a couple of beers and agreed to meet at 1:00 pm on Saturday.

I could not face lunch alone aboard Django and went to Arnold's for a sandwich, then walked up on the ridges overlooking the harbour for most of the afternoon.

Back aboard Django, I am becoming used to being alone again. I have found the BBC World station on the radio and had its company over a tasty pasta dinner. There is a lot to do to get ready to leave on Monday, and I have my work on music and writing to fill the void, but it is a bit painful nonetheless.

As I counselled Alicia, time, the great healer, will take care of it all.