Generator Beat Down

"So, today's generator day, right?" I said hopefully to Henry this morning.

But of course, looking at the radar that showed the threat of another rainy afternoon we had to go off and do groceries, or risk needing to eat out for the next day or so. Off we took ourselves to Pueblo and the fish market to fill our bags with all that we could carry.

The Pueblo grocery store by Crown Bay is pretty grungy by most standards and it doesn't carry some of the more unusual items we are looking for, like pickled ginger, but it is within walking distance and close to a little seafood restaurant that will also sell beautiful fresh fish direct to you without having to buy the entire 20lb catch. This morning snapper and sea bass were the order of the day.

Our walk is quite pleasant and I snapped these as we made our way home...

The busiest portion if our walk is along Veterans Highway which is 4 lanes wide.

The lowest streets of Frenchtown are still flooded from yesterday's rain.

Frenchtown is quite residential for the most part.

Some of the "local" inhabitants scurried out of our way.

We're almost home, the marina is just around the corner at the bottom of this hill.

Ah, back to the dock, where we sit just past the gates on the left.

Ok, so back to the generator... We bought a brand new Honda 2000 generator and had it shipped in from the mainland states. Touted to be hassle free, never fail, the most reliable piece of cruising equipment you can buy, we were dumbfounded last week when we pulled it out of the box and it wouldn't start. Everyone who walked by on the dock commented on what a wonderful purchase we had made but our thought was that at that point it was less use than a cement block as an anchor. Even the service tech at Mayberry's where we purchased it was confounded.

Days have passed, the rain has fallen and the generator has sat in penance in the cockpit. Henry has threatened alternately to sing incantations and to throw it overboard, but today was the day to once again try to breath some life into the beast.

Not before we sat and chatted with Kyle though, whom we had visited Foxy's with a couple of weeks ago (has it been that long?). Both Jay and Kyle had provided suggestions of gas or WD40 shot right into the cylinder. Now, we're not giving them all the credit since I'm sure I heard a whisper of an incantation on the breeze, but suddenly the air was filled with a different sound from the dock. I poked my head out of the boat so see the biggest grin on Henry's face as the generator purred away beside him. Nothing like wet, solitary confinement to beat submission into a finely tuned piece of equipment.

You can't hear the sound of the pretty purring, but believe me, the sound of the running generator is oh so sweet!

As one final aside, it didn't rain today (yay) and the rain yesterday had the islands abuzz. 2.1" fell on St. Thomas and a record breaking (for the date) 3.6" fell on St. Croix, all between midnight and 6 pm (and it still continued to rain through the night). These are measurements we usually use for snow! (Our condolences to those up north experiencing the first hints of what is to come.)

Rainy Days

Today has dawned bright and sunny in quite a contrast to the last couple of days. A tropical wave passed through and with it came the most rain we've ever seen fall in one go. We managed to get caught out on Tuesday evening when it hit and by the time we reached Frenchtown, we were up to our ankles in run-off and soaked to the waist by passing cars. One of our neighbours on the dock commented that he'd been in a bar that evening when the water was flowing right through the back door and out the front!

Nothing daunted though, we have continued on with various boat jobs, not the least of which was getting ourselves de-cluttered and finding a home for everything. On a wee little boat (in comparison to our home back in Ottawa) we are learning that we need to take advantage of every nook and cranny and accept that except for those items we use multiple times every day, we will always have to move at least one thing to be able to get at the desired object. As a result it would appear to be imperative that once an item has a home that we both know, said item should always be returned to the designated home, otherwise I anticipate a certain amount of volatile commentary after moving a half dozen items to find the intended spot empty! That last note is really only intended for me for although I have good intentions when it comes to organization, now I really have to follow up.

The navigation / computer station with the Mac Mini running navigation software as an indoor backup to our chartplotter.

Port side of the saloon.

Starboard side of the saloon and galley. Notice the lovely cutting board Peter made us to fit over the stove - works a charm!

Downstairs by the berths is all packed away as well but due to some of the installation work we will tackle it will all probably need to be taken out multiple times until we finally have everything done.

We even managed to add a few pictures from home (notice the Roy Vickers print above the computer monitor at the nav station) and just before I left Genband, one of my co-workers from Israel gifted me a lovely traditional plaque with a blessing for our new abode. Thanks Nilly, and I wish I could remember what she told me it was called but I do remember that it represents the hand of Fatima and is used in both the Israeli and Arab households. I think it's just lovely.

I made good headway with the sunshade for the front of the boat. This is a big sewing project in that it involves about 15 yards of heavy Sunbrella fabric which I have to manipulate through my machine on the saloon table. As I heaved away, I noticed that the temperature inside the boat had climbed to 90F - is this what is meant by sweat shop? I also made a Bosun's Chair from a kit which was considerably cheaper than the ready-made. Combined with a safety harness this will let one of us ascend the mast to fix any problems such as a fouled line or burned out lightbulb. I'm anticipating I will be first up since I'm the lightest and given I made it, I actually feel pretty confident in the construction.

I'm really loving my Sailrite machine for handling all this heavy Sunbrella fabric.

Wednesday was engine service day so Henry had a chance to go through a full oil & filter change, drive belt replacement and impeller change with George. What a great boon to be able to go through it once with a pro! As Henry said once they had finished up, "Now I have to go read how to do it so I really have it cemented in my brain."

And finally today was once again laundry day. I will be happy when we are off the dock and a little less sweaty so that I don't have to go to the laundro-mat every few days. Combined with our wet clothes from the downpour I was a little concerned about the potential for a science experiment including the growth of mold and mildew so off I went in the dinghy.

While I was out for the morning, Henry started tackling the water-maker installation. He has roughed out the placement in the mid-port locker. We have a bit of carpentry work ahead to move the front panel of the lower cabinet out to accommodate the high pressure pump, but otherwise it looks like we will only have to give up the one vertical storage cabinet to hold it all in a really accessible location.

Henry and Jay got the lower panel off the cupboard which Henry then cleaned up in the cockpit,

Lower panel removed which will be moved outward, locker on the left will hold all the watermaker parts. Notice the nice clean bilge!

A Post Brought to You by the Letter A

A is for Anchor and for AIS and we have completed updates on both these fronts.

Anchor: We have had a couple of scary drags on the Delta anchor provided with Mowzer and while everyone has their own opinion about anchors and there is no single anchor that is good in all situations, after much research, seeing the anchor in action at Annapolis last year and knowing a few boats where this anchor is currently in (happy) active service we decided to purchase a 40 lb. Rocna. We'll definitely provide an update later once we've put it through the "living with it" test for a while, but the first step was to get the anchors swapped and the Rocna sitting in its new home on the roller.

At the same time we decided to pull all 300 feet of chain out of the locker, inspect it and remark it every 20' so when deploying we know exactly how much chain is down. We attached a couple of lines to the anchor, dropped it off the windlass and pulled it up on the dock, followed by all the chain which we then laid. It was then a relatively easy job to switch over to the new anchor, measure the chain and add the markings. We chose to use tie wraps; one at 20', two at 40', etc, and then a brightly coloured single at 100', and then repeat the series another two times for the length of the chain. We'll see how the tie wraps stand up to being rolled over the windlass, but they are cheap and easy to replace as needed.

Old and new, although similar in initial view, the Rocna has quite a number of technical features that should help us sleep better at night.

Getting the chain off the old anchor and switched over to the new.

The Rocna in its new home on Mowzer's anchor roller.

AIS: Along with Radar, Jay had installed AIS at our request on Mowzer this past summer. This little device is a very cool development in the boating world that couples digital VHF (radio) with vessel identification and our chart plotter puts all the information together with our GPS display. The end result is that vessels with AIS who are transmitting are displayed with tags on the chart plotter and by selecting the tag we can see all sorts of information about the vessel: it's size, it's speed and the system will warn us if there is a risk of collision on the existing course of the two vessels. We decided to install a Class B AIS which both receives and transmits information which allows us to 'see and be seen'. While the benefits of this information are appreciated in daytime, it is in the dark of night that the true value will be proven.

Because AIS is transmitted via radio, this means that even way off shore we will be able to 'see' vessels within the range of our VHF radio, which is anywhere from 5 - 15 miles depending on conditions. We are not dependent on a satelite or a shore-side transmitter to get the signal from other vessels in our area. There is however, a worldwide network of shore-side receivers that will track vessels in the coastal areas and since we do most of our sailing at the moment in these ranges we will be visible to these receivers.

If you are interested in checking up on us you can visit the Marine Traffic website and do a vessel search for Mowzer. There are two registered Mowzers with AIS, one with GB registry and us, so make sure you choose the right one. If we are on the move you will see our current location and track and if we are stopped (as we currently are) you will see the tag for the last time a receiver picked up our signal. Currently Marine Traffic shows us traveling along the south side of St. Thomas which was on Tuesday last week so there must be a dead zone in the harbour here since we have not been picked up at the CYOA dock, but rest assured that we are still sitting here. Once we move again, our signal should refresh.

We're underway just north of St. John - traveling at 6.2 knots.

This display shows all the other vessels around us; a diamond indicates they are stopped.

A Moving Experience

Remember those quiet couple of days up in the BVI when we really did nothing? So do I, with fondness...

The last couple of days have seen a beehive of activity as we have completed all the paperwork, rented a van and moved all our stuff from the shipping office to aboard Mowzer.

Also remember that I commented that Henry had picked up a tummy bug and was incapacitated on Tuesday evening? Well, the situation persisted through Wednesday, but thankfully by the evening he was starting to look himself. Yesterday still was a little dicey but at least he was able to get vertical and join me on the expedition. We figure it was all due to something he ate, most likely the lunch-time salad at Cruz Bay.

Wednesday began with arranging a van rental and by lunch-time I was off to the Excise Office, the Customs & Border Patrol Office and the CaribTrans shipping office with various officially stamped, and paid for, forms. We had cleared our first shipment of purchased items through Excise last week but we blended both shipments together for the rest of the clearances which made life a little less confusing. I'm not sure if the confusion resulted from there being so many different vendor invoices or the fact that the Customs agent was sipping back a lunch-time beer as he operated his calculator! It turns out that even if you purchase items from the States, if you have them shipped to the Virgin Islands and they were not manufactured in the U.S., you still have to pay duty on them. The good news is that the duty is 6% which is a lot lower then many other places and there is no additional sales tax, but it is still pretty mind-boggling. The Revenue Agency is about $500 richer and the shipping company made off with about $1200, but when we do the math on what we saved over costs in Canada which would have included import duty and 13% sales tax, we're still feeling pretty good about it all.

Along with regular checks on Henry to make sure he was hydrated, and still breathing, I made a couple of trips to the shipping office and back to the boat with all the boxes. It was rather like Christmas on Mowzer that evening as we unpackaged everything, going through carefully to ensure everything was present and undamaged. The resulting pile of cardboard and packaging material warranted a trip to the dumpster by itself. We filled up the spare berth with solar panels, water maker components, sewing materials, a propane BBQ (yay, no more briquettes), a wifi booster and then spilled out into the cockpick with a new Honda generator and our 'stay-put' Rocna anchor.

Thursday morning dawned bright and early seeing Henry feeling up to a visit to Home Depot - they open early with contractor hours. We knew we had lots of tools arriving in the final part of our shipment but had made the decision back home that we would purchase new power tools for the boat so along with those, we picked up some other heavy-duty bits and pieces including a couple of big pieces of corrugated plastic board to use as a backplate to the solar panels on the bimini. Sure glad we weren't trying to walk down the windy street with those suckers, we might have gone airborne!

Tools delivered back to Mowzer, we made our final visit to the shipper to pick up our personal items. This shipment completely filled the back of the van and we were super-pleased to be able to use CYOA's back door to park right at the end of our dock. We 'simply' had to stage the boxes along the dock to begin the process of finding a home for all that stuff.

With a final grocery run completed, Henry worn out and the clock ticking out the final minutes of our one-day rental, I returned the van and we are once again wheel-less.

19 items shipped from Ottawa, ranging from the paddle and paddle-board up to an 80 pound box of books, tools and assorted items, I felt like we were packing everything but the kitchen sink. By evening, everything was aboard and we were starting (just starting) to make sense of the mess. Lots of work ahead as we make Mowzer our home but the transformation from charter boat to live-aboard cruiser is starting to take shape.

Before: our main living area

Our spare berth - it a good thing no one is visiting for a little while.

Phew - that's one corner sorted out.

Days Like These

It's funny, the new 41' Lipari in the CYOA fleet is to be called "Days Like These", as a nod to Van Morrison. Now, all I can think of to describe the last couple of days, is this monicker. Days full of sunshine and relaxation, time spent together just the two of us and a quietness that we seem to only have achieved on the water or out in the woods camping.

The only real activity we challenged ourselves with was Monday morning when we popped into Foxy's Boutique to spend our winning gift certificate. I found a nice little sundress and a great book on Caribbean Flowers. Henry claims he is happy with these purchases - what a keeper!

Monday morning, main street of Jost Van Dyke - looking east

... And west

We then untied ourselves from our mooring ball home of three days and headed southeast around the end of Tortola, across the Drake Passage, to Benures Bay on the north shore of Norman Island where we dropped the anchor. There were two catamarans stern tied to the shore with anchors set out in front of them and we quickly learned of the shiftiness of the wind and current in the bay. We seem to have chosen a good spot for the first night but on the second evening when the winds shifted more to the east we adjusted our position out into the bay a bit and by morning we were very happy to have been prudent in moving. I for one did not want my wake-up call in the morning to be the sound of our keels grating across the underwater rocks and coral near shore. Much better to view this underwater landscape on a snorkel!

At this time of year there are still relatively few boats out in the BVI as the various fleets are in their prep phase for the November ramp-up to the holiday season. Looking out on the Drake Passage and only seeing a small handful of boats about is a far cry from when there are hundreds traversing the passage like a highway. We have certainly enjoyed the solitude on this visit.

The trade winds have not yet arrived in the protected waters of the Drake Passage, looking across to Tortola.

Tuesday was planned as haul-out day at Nanny Cay on Tortola. We have engaged a surveyor to comb over Mowzer and give us a full condition report on her both above and below the waterline, hence one reason for the haul-out. Two other reasons included installation of a through-hull (hole) in the bottom of the boat for our new watermaker, and after a summer of sitting in the warm, murky water of the harbour at Charlotte Amalie she is in dire need of a bottom cleaning which can be easily accomplished with a pressure washer.

Late Monday we received word that the lift at Nanny Cay had broken down and we'd be unable to do the lunchtime lift, so we opted to head back to CYOA on Tuesday to start getting our shipments sorted out and get on with our boat job list. Nanny Cay, we'll be back.

For anyone who sails in or out of West End, these houses are a landmark. They look like they're hanging on with Velcro.

We popped into Cruz Bay on St. John to check back into the USA and while sitting in Woody's this fellow came in to pick up his lunch. I guess the rules say he must wear a hard-hat and not have any loose hair - he is certainly following the letter of the law, and in the process may be better protected than most, but I couldn't help but chuckle at the sight...

Finally, we wrapped up our Tuesday return to St. Thomas with a trip around to Crown Bay to pick up our paperwork on our latest shipment. As we bounced across the bay, we stopped to snap a picture of the boat that had brought our personal effects down from Miami: the AHS Hamburg was busy being unloaded and again, somewhere in there are the rest of our worldly possessions.

Unfortunately, this evening Henry has been stricken with something nasty of the tummy variety. No fever so we don't think its Chikungunya, and is most likely food related, but for his sake I hope it passes quickly.