New Experiences

I should preface this post by saying that each and every day brings new experiences, we just seem to have had a flurry of them in the last couple of days.

We had planned to leave CYOA on Tuesday but the guys got super busy with running electrical wiring for the water maker and some other engine room repairs so that we stayed through to Thursday morning. Its not often I can claim to be the smallest one around and fit into tight spaces, but Wednesday morning found me doing yoga moves in the corner of the anchor lock with a power drill all set to drill a hole in the boat - yikes?! No worries, all above the water line. In their infinite wisdom when Fountaine-Pajot built this boat they put the water level sender in the starboard water tank that can only be removed/replaced if you care to drill a 3" hole in the wooden shelf behind the fridge. I'm not talking about a hidden shelf out of sight, but the one holding our books. "Not to worry," says Jay, we'll just give you an extra fan there. And voila, Mowzer now has a working water guage and a new fan in the saloon.

For the afternoon I think Jay decided that idle hands needed a job, so he set to work to teach me how to service our winches. This is actually a job I wanted to know how to do and while I'd taken apart our winches on Blue-By-You and 'cleaned' them, I definitely hadn't done it to Jay's level of achievement. We took the winch completely apart, soaked all the parts in mineral spirits and for the badly corroded and dirty bit moved them into a bath of muriatic acit - very nasty stuff. Making sure I had the same numnber of parts for both winches (19 - thats a note for me for later) and that everything went back where and how it should, this dirty job was one. With the lovely new winch handle that Henry bought and the newly serviced winches, trimming the sails is so much smoother now.

Soaking up the spirits - all the old grease is melting away.

Trying to keep the cabin top reasonably clean around the main assembly.

One done and the second going back together.

Meanwhile, amid a little blue air from down below, Henry and Paul managed to get cables run from circuit breakers to water maker, and replacement batteries installed in the engine room. Nothing is straight (or straight-forward) on a boat so the cable run was through nooks and crannies below the cockpit and through another new hole in the boat - this one thankfully hidden.

Thursday morning saw us finally off the dock and in the calm, amost non-existent winds we motored up to Tortola where we checked through customs, did a few groceries and then made our way to Nanny Cay where we stayed in the marina for the night. After Henry did a great job of backing us up against the dock (no sarcasm - he did a great job) we realized that other than CYOA this is the first time we have ever stayed in a marina - not bad after 5 years of cruising around these islands. The reason for the marina stay was so that we could be on the dock nice and early for our marine surveyor but at $100 for the night not an experience we will be repeating anytime soon.

Loaded up with groceries - nice to wheel the buggy with heavy items right to your dinghy.

On the dock at Nanny Cay - Mowzer's the little one at the end of the dock.

Geoff Williams from West Indies Marine Surveyors arrived promptly at 9am and went through Mowzer from bow to stern and right up to the tip of the mast. As Henry commented, we've had both houses and now both our boats surveyed in the last year and a half, it all felt rather familiar. This survey is to provide us with a valuation for insurance and a double-check that as we leave CYOA there are no nasty surprises awaiting us. Geoff was the consummate professional and had us out for the sea trial just after lunch and then back to Nanny Cay for a quick drop-off at the dock. We'll see him again next week when we return for the haul-out and he can go over the hulls below the water-line. So far so good but we look forward to reading his report next week.

Checking out the rigging on the mast.

Free agents at last - or at least until next Wednesday. The boat job list awaits ... but will be quite pleasant sitting in a quiet bay on Norman Island.

If you look carefully there's a double rainbow greeting us on Thursday morning.

Canadian colours.

As a final note, as we were sailing over to Road Town today this pretty little boat passed in front of us with it's bigger than life proclamation of being Canadian - did my heart proud and made such a pretty picture with the south shore of Tortola in the background.