Time Marches On

I awoke this morning after another hot sweaty night, listened to the morning net where it was announced that another end-of-month jumble sale would soon be taking place and that another full-moon dinghy drift is being planned.  Normally, event announcements just have me making a note on the calendar but what really got me thinking about these two in particular is that they will mark the end of our second month in Grenada.

Really???  Two whole months!!

I know I've said this before but I can't believe how the time is flying by down here.  We have of course been participating in the numerous social offerings and have tried to get out and about the island at least once a week for a hike or Hash event.  We have also been busy planning our next round of boat work and once all our bits and pieces arrive in Grenada we will have to knuckle-down and get to work to be ready for the next cruising season.

Lots of thought going on here between Henry & Rej, figuring out a new solar panel configuration.  Gotta love a bar that provides both 110V & 220V outlets of various configuration right above the tables for all the international cruisers.

Out and about on Grenada, following this cow and calf up the road and around many bumpy corners which had them scrambling to keep their footing on the truck.

This week also marked "somebody's" birthday, which he got to celebrate with two other friends with birthdays around the same date.  We marked the events with a pig-roast on the beach on Sunday and lots of good friends.

Starting the day with pancakes, bacon and our carefully guarded supply of Ontario maple syrup - yum!

We gathered at the beach for some serious limin', and cheers to Henry, Brita and Jackie.

Trying so hard to blow out the candles that just wouldn't stay lit.

Henry has diligently turned his attention to organizing league play on the volleyball court - who knew my stature-challenged hubby was so into volleyball, but since it is the most serious competition around here it's not surprising that he has gotten involved.  We now have volleyball keyed up for play everyday of the week except Saturdays (when we Hash instead) and the prep is starting for the big tournament in October.  The level of play is definitely improving and most interestingly the teenagers have taken it upon themselves to bring defeat to the adults so they are practicing day - and night, with the lights turned on.  I have no doubt that the adults are going down!

Yesterday we set off for another hike up in the rainforest, this time at The Seven Sisters waterfalls.  With development at the site, this turned into a bit of a stroll rather than a hike but there were some very tricky bits we would not have attempted without our guide Naquan.  Here's the pictorial view of our hike ...

Loaded up in Devon's van and all ready to head out for adventure.

Brand new steps and a rail have been installed to make the descent a whole lot easier than the river scramble it apparently used to be.

Eleven of us headed out - some of the crew making the descent:  Wendy, Gavin, Jackie, Carla, Robert & Dave.

We eagerly peered upward to see if we could spot a Mona monkey in the bamboo - unfortunately they were playing more "hide" than "seek"

Zip lining stations have been built but stand silent at the moment awaiting settlement of a land dispute.   They will most likely be in operation by the winter cruiseship season.

Naquan lent us a hand as he led us up the river to the Honeymoon falls.

Tucked into the secluded greenery, Honeymoon falls descend into a heart-shaped pool.  Could there be anything more romantic to share with 10 other sweaty hikers? ;-)

Making our way back down the little cascade below the pool.  It was difficult to get a grip with the water trying to push your foot off the rocks.

Adding to the drama, streaks of sulphur line the cliff walls in bright orange banners.

Our intrepid group at the lower two falls:  Gavin, Catherine, Robert, Carla, myself, Dave, Jackie, Wendy, Bill, Judy, Andy.
I just happened to have picked this picture where some were trying to imitate the monkeys we couldn't see - lots of fun on the trail with this group.

Its hard to get the feel of just how magnificent the rain forest is when in its depths.  This little opening by the river gives a feel for the surroundings - green, green, everywhere.

First in - Andy!

Cold fresh water falling from the volcanic lake at Grand Etang.  So refreshing!

We didn't want to come out until all covered in goosebumps, such a rare happening here on Grenada.

One last swim under the waterfall for Bill & Wendy.

Naquan entertained us with a jump from the top of this 45' waterfall while Dave looked on.

Naquan - soccer player and nature guide - most of all just a wonderful spirit.

Near the end of the hike we were offered up a 'shoe shine' to get the mud off our shoes.  We all happily stood in line for this service.

Andy offered up a muddy foot, and perhaps had just a little bit of mud cleaned off his legs as well.

This variegated Hibiscus bush was a new one for me. 

A happy hiker and guide.

A Flighty Visit & Livestock Bingo

When we left Canada, our trusty feline companion of 15 years did not join us.  Sadly, Minnie succumbed to illness a few months before our departure.  I often feel the emptiness of being a home without a four-legged friend, but whenever ashore there are plenty of cruising dogs and other assorted animals to make friends with.

Recently however, we've had some seriously different encounters.

Our new friend Carlos (from Brazil) travels on his boat Namaste with a parrot and a dog.  As we sat on the back of the boat the other day watching the anchorage, off went Carlos in his dinghy with the dog avidly perched on the front with the same grin on his face as a dog with his head out the car window.  Perched on Carlos' shoulder was Lauro the parrot - making Carlos look truly piratical!

On the return trip the little menagerie stopped by for a visit and Lauro even came aboard to sing a beautiful Brazilian tune.

Our next encounter was a little more hands-off but gives a pretty good idea of what life is like here on Grenada.

As we wander around the fields and roads, both in town and out, we often see livestock tethered in among the trees:  goats (tails up), sheep (tails down), and cattle, with chickens of all colours running free.

Well, last night we decided to partake in the weekly Bingo shenanigans at Prickly Bay and once the prizes were announced we were seriously considering what we might do with the winnings.  Along with good cash prizes, the three big awards included a little more than the just dollar bills.

• 1st game prize:  cash ... and a rabbit
• 2nd game prize:  cash ... and a pig
• 3rd game prize:  cash ... a rabbit ... and a pig ... and a goat

All livestock very much alive and kicking.

It's really hard to see in this blurry photo but there's Darren calling the bingo numbers on the left and over on the right is a pull cart with a pig in it (not visible) and standing in front of the woman in blue is the little goat.

Roti anyone??

What On Earth Do You Do All Day?

It's amazing how the time flies down here in Grenada but what is most confusing to me is that I can never remember what a specific day has entailed.  Social activities, general chores, a little bit of boat work (but not much) fill the calendar and always with the growing heat and humidity and the search for just a little cooler breeze.

So, what on earth can keep us so busy that the days are flying by, you might ask?

We usually start the day with the Cruiser's Net at 7:30.  Each day a different host gets on the VHF radio and we all religiously listen in and participate when needed - getting an update on security issues and the weather, filling in the calendar with upcoming social activities, trading/selling "treasures of the bilge", and getting the lo-down on local businesses and services available to us.  There's been a huge effort recently on the part of the cruising community down here to raise funds and goods to help provide relief to Dominica following tropical storm Erika, which has all come together on the Net.

Mondays and Thursdays often continue with yoga up at the marina restaurant and on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays we play volleyball in the afternoon.  There's also dominos, trivia, bridge, euchre, tai chi, and many other activities - hence why we call it Camp Grenada.

Dinghies heading in for volleyball - the 'kid boat' in front of us has gathered up 11 teenagers from various boats to come in and play ball with us.

Following the southerly winds of TS Erika, the little beach at Hartman Bay was inundated with sargassum weed.  This stinky, smelly mess would soon become very unpleasant in our little patch of paradise so a few of us banded together to rake up the weed and the marina willingly carted it away.

Raking up the sargassum

Lugging it down the beach by the cart load - thankfully it rained and was nice and cooling, but misted up the camera a bit.

The growing pile of wet, salty weed.

A nice clean beach, and we picked up some garbage as well.

Next day the truck arrived to carry it all away.

We've found some great friends in the anchorage to share all this fun with.  In particular Gwen & Guillaume on Slow Waltz, Dave & Jackie on Tempo, Robert & Carla on Moody Mistress and Tanya & David on Dea Latis.  Many others as well often round out the group on any given day.

Enjoying a rum punch at Nimrod's before Friday fish night at Taffy's.

On Saturdays we are still hashing with the local group - running up and down the hills of Grenada which is a great way to see the island and burn off a few of the calories consumed at the local hangouts.

For the last hash we gathered at the National Stadium - on our return it was like running into an Olympic stadium with the huge satisfaction of having completed the run.

The only thing keeping us on the trail at this point is following the person in front of you - the hares had slashed through the undergrowth to get us to the top of this particular hill.

The National Stadium where we started out.

We finally emerged from the bush onto this beautifully tendered garden, but still incredibly steep and tiring.

Another glimpse of the view of old Fort George beside the Carenage bay.

The end of the hash usually includes a bit of public shaming - here the "wizard sleeve" is employed on someone who complained about the food at the last hash.  Just try to hit your mouth with the beer in your hand and not soak yourself in the process.

I can't remember what these two did but they had to drink from the "dotty potty".  Warm, foamy beer (yum).

And so the days continue, but we do try to do a bit of work on the boat from time to time.  Since we are sitting in one place for a long time in extremely warm fertile waters, we are once again growing a whole ecological system on the bottom of the boat and our anchor chain.  I think we are both trying to live in ignorance of the need to scrub the bottom of the boat, but this will take a more significant chunk of our time in the coming week.  Just to give an idea, Gwen & Guillaume hauled their boat out to get the bottom repainted and it took over an hour of pressure washing and heavy scraping to get all the growth off the bottom of the boat.  We certainly don't want to haul out at the moment so we definitely need to keep on top of it.

But, before we get to work, we just wanted to fit in one more hike up at Grand Etang - repeating the Qua Qua to Concord hike we did in the rain a few weeks ago.  This time no rain and what an enjoyable time it was with a new group of folks, who rather wondered what they were in for as we marched them through mud and river.  It's still a rain forest so never really dries out.

Carla and Robert trying to avoid some of the mud early on the trail.  Legs and shoes were definitely not this colour at the end.

One of the views we couldn't truly appreciate on the previous hike.  It's like a giant green shag carpet was laid over a child's papier macher diorama.

Climbing up to the top of the wind-blown peak.

We finally reached the turnoff to Concord.  Tonya, David, Carla Robert & Jackie still smiling after the ascent.

Now heading down to Concord and picking our way through the river boulders.

Time to clean off and cool off in one of the little pools along the way.

Lots of other things I could go on about but time to wrap this up, and just in case you noticed that I am not in any of the pictures (usually behind the camera), here's one taken at the hash just to prove I was there.  And yes, we got busted for some minor infraction and were handed the Dotty Potty for a bit of nasty beverage consumption ;-)

Solar Panel Installation & Experience

It's now been ten months since we installed solar panels on Mowzer and so here's a more technical post on the details of the installation and our experience with it so far.

One of our primary goals when we moved aboard Mowzer was to be as energy self-sufficient as possible with solar and/or wind power generation.  If nothing else, our five years of visiting the boat in it’s charter configuration had taught us that the last thing we wanted to do was to have to run the engines or a generator for a couple of hours a day, both from a noise point of view but of course also from a desire to use as much renewable and free energy as possible.  Of course the energy is not really free because you have relatively high setup costs for both systems, but once up and running, they have relatively low operating/maintenance costs.

For solar, we mapped out the cabin top and bimini top space, documenting where all our lines, blocks, cleats and other sailing paraphernalia lie and while still at home, mapped out a plan to add thin, flexible solar panels to the tune of 345 watts.  The flexible panels are a bit less efficient than rigid but much lighter and they don’t require a frame to support them so there is pretty much a weight/installation cost vs. efficiency equality in our minds.

We ordered four Solbian panels for delivery to St. Thomas:  two square 90W panels and a rectangular 40W panel for the bimini and one rectangular 125W panel for the cabin top.

Once in St. Thomas we played around with the configuration to get maximum sun exposure with the assumption that most of our time will be spent in the Caribbean sitting at anchor with the wind blowing from the east which puts the best energy producing sunshine on our mid-line in the summer months and slightly to starboard in the winter months.  The one disadvantage of mounting on bimini and cabin-top is that they both tend to sweep upwards from fore to aft which results in the panels being more angled away from the sun in the later afternoon hours - pretty much after 4pm there is little solar production.

Three panels sewn to our bimini and one affixed to the cabin top.

To mount the panels we used two different methods:

For the cabin-top we first tried sticky-back Velcro but this quickly succumbed to the wet conditions and the adhesive really only lasted a couple of weeks.  We toyed with using a 3M adhesive product to stick either the panels or the velcro down but really didn’t want to deal with the mess and in hind-sight, we ended up moving the panel a bit so we were glad we did not go with a fully permanent solution in the beginning.  Our final installation used 3M Lock-Tite which holds the panel solidly in place even in 35 knot winds.

Cabin top panel affixed with 3M Lock-Tite under the leading edge.

For the panels on the bimini top we used the placket and velco method described here http://www.bruceschwab.com/uploads/solbian-to-canvas-guidelines.pdf .  The only addition we made was to provide a little more rigidity for the panels by inserting a piece of corrugated plastic board between the solar panel and the bimini.  I used my SailRite machine to sew the Velcro to the panels in a long, wide zig-zag stitch.  As with the cabin-top panel, these panels have remained in place through 35 knot winds but if we felt the need, any or all of the panels are easily removed and stored inside.

To protect wires from sun, they run under a flap of Sunbrella on top of the bimini.

Profile showing the thin solar panel with velcro, the corrugated plastic board and velcro on the bottom.

Velco plackets sandwich the two layers together and hold them to the bimini.

I didn't make my flaps quite big enough to give full coverage and protection so the exposed Velcro will eventually break down in the sun.

Each panel has two wires that we connected to longer wires with MC4 connectors which we routed around the bimini and above the main cockpit door.  We drilled two holes into the port bulkhead directly below the bimini where we installed gasketted conduits to pass the wires into the cabin, and then routed them down behind the navigation station and into the berth below.  We mounted four MPPT controllers each protected by a 15 amp fuse, on the wall in the berth where they are easily visible and monitored.  The outputs are then combined, with the negative run through a shunt to measure real-time amperage and then connected to the negative bus in the electrical box under the port berth.  The positive runs through a switch under the berth which in turn is connected to the house battery bank in the port engine room.

Conduits in the bulkhead feed the wires inside the cabin.

MPPT controllers and 15 am fuse.

When sitting at anchor, we pull the boom as far to port as possible so that all four panels get full sun.  We also ease off lines that cast shadows on the panels and tie them off at the mast.  At maximum sun, we routinely see 15 to 18 amps at the shunt but lower if the battery charge exceeds 85%.

We installed our solar panels in November and they were our only means of renewable energy production through the winter months in the north-eastern Caribbean.  We have a house battery bank of 500 amp-hours and in general we found that on a good sunny day we still needed to run our generator or engine for approximately an hour a day.

To give you an idea of our energy use, our main consumers of power are our refrigerator and freezer and for much of the time we do not turn on our freezer, opting to shop more often.  We do not use our big anchor light since that consumes 5 amps, instead opting to hang a 0.1 amp LED ‘anchor light’ in our rigging.  (As an aside, we will be upgrading our main anchor light to LED once in Grenada.)  All of our inside lighting has been converted to LED bulbs so very little power draw there, we have our propane gas solenoid that gets its workout at dinner-time.  We have an electric water pump for the galley and heads, and then there are the electronics that need a daily charge - two tablets, a phone and a laptop computer.  Underway, we have one chart plotter, various navigation instruments and Sulu, our trusty electronic auto pilot.  In busy anchorages the VHF radio is on all of the time.

What have we learned and what would we do differently?  What are we going to change?  Well, we definitely need either additional panels or to add a wind generator to this configuration since 345 watts is just not enough for us.  We also find that given the angle of the cabin and bimini we really only have good power production between about 9am and 4pm - six to seven hours on a good day.  That leaves 18 hours when we are losing the power struggle with our batteries and without a boost on the batteries at about 9pm our morning levels are just too low to maintain good battery health.  If we turn on the freezer we have to add more generator time.

So, in April we bit the bullet and decided to add a wind generator (more on that in a separate article) and are still toying with the idea of adding more solar.  We will most likely upgrade our bimini so that the entire surface is solid rather than the current configuration of the solid central area with canvas on the sides.  This would give us a more secure attachment point and more water-proofing for the cabin below.  The bimini has lost its water-proofing over the years and having the sewn plackets has greatly reduced it further since water pools against the Sunbrella ridges and finds it’s way through the stitching holes.  We would also consider adding a rigid panel on a frame over the dinghy davits that would allow us to angle it toward the later afternoon sun and therefore extend our hours of solar production.  For the moment we will hold off on more solar panels until we have completed a full year in the Caribbean since we fully expect that the summer months (hurricane season) will be more cloudy and therefore would not gain us as much solar production anyways.

Overall impression:  we love the Solbian panels and the option that the thin plastic and slight flex gives for easy mounting options.  The only maintenance we’ve had to worry about is to clean them with fresh water after a salty crossing or when in an anchorage with dust blowing from land (or the Sahara).  Where wires are exposed to the harsh sunlight we have installed Sunbrella sleeves to protect them.  We are careful not to walk on the panels and in the course of ten months we have only one small mark on one that we can only assume is from a rope slap when a genoa line flogged.