16 December
Nearly 3 weeks! of written silence. Haven't read anything either. Stan took over the Nav--wanted to--preferred to work without the kind of detail that I have used, and it seems to work for him. I can't keep figures (or anything else) in my head. Hard weather is all we've had too. We ran out of hard cold soon, as expected, but lumpy seas have been with us until yesterday and started again this pm. But WARM. Many disasters of diddling scope. Mizzen mast tang busted through in a night of monstrous seas. Two jib sheets chaffed badly and replaced. Now we are running with 3 rigged since we can't reach up to the cringle when it's furled, and the end of my 8' bowspit is not the best place for a stepstool! The worst is a minor leak--a stuffing box loose I think--that has us pumping twice an hour. Can't ever get a steady sleep. And we are tired--constantly close to the end of our rope. End? No telling where it is, and no RETURN when we find it! We're a week futsying around Bermuda and gave up as we got headed for the umpteenth time. It appeared obvious that St. Thomas was closer 800 miles down-wind than BDA up. Turn South. Cold water again but only briefly, and we keep thinking that we are out of the lumpy seas area, but it dogs us. The pumping wears us too, and added to that is the worry about supplies that did not get replenished in BDA. South is the order of the day. Overcast and lumpy is the condition of sky and sea.Wed. Dec 30th
Mid morning. Fair and windless. Laundry all hanging out. Not really laundry either. It's salted clothes, rags, towels, beds, and whatever, that have been rinsed out in yesterdays hard rain. I am in StT (St. Thomas) at a slip of Avery's Boat Works, dragged in from Hassle Is. (around the corner) by Dick Avery and his work boat. Hassle Is. was the anchorage we chose at landfall when we couldn't weather the gut between Hassle and Frenchtown. That was several days ago. No count. I am in a state of non compos mentis that has lots of lucid moments, but little continuous connection with anything. Basically the Boat is ok. Electrically we seem to be a disaster, apparently the end result of my jury-rigging under Sabino's Volvo addition. I can't figure out what he did, which wires do what in the Volvo harness. No English instruction sheet either. Mrs. Avery is a Swede so maybe we can label things.Thursday 12-31Leisure--the only apparent surplus in StT. Everyone is willing and apparently competent but Nothing gets done. I'm in a poor place to criticize too. I've gotten almost nothing done in whatever time I've been here. Stan got more done in the 24 hours that he was here. I guess I have found a place to work out of--Avery's Yard. I have this am gotten electric flowing into my battery #2 from shore power. Only 3-1/2 amps, so I have no idea how long it will take to charge up a dead battery. I do have a tester that seems to work--% meter, as well as a volt-olm meter ok. That seem to be the first step in electrical problems. Next will be finding direction of wires and relays to turn the engine over. Then to excite the alternator to make juice. That will make me a viable house boat. Propulsion waits on the repair and or replacement of the packing nut on the propeller shaft. Sails, started. North Sails Caribbean. Patches and reef points in mizzen, slides on main stormsail. That involves another cut in the main track. I don't really care for that, but there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid it. At gaff down now, the access to the track is buried in the gaff sliding gooseneck, so there will have to be another opening above the present one, maybe in place of the present one.
I was trying to list the things done. I continue. I got to the store with Stan on his way to the airport. Replaced immediate shortages of dry stuff. No fruit or green stuff in the place, except oranges and very expensive apples. I did neither. Carnation breakfast, milk powder, sugar, canned corn and tomato, bread and crackers. Bare bones stuff, like that we've been on for what seems like weeks. Beef in cans from Jim and Regina seems to be still my real staple, mixed with corn and tomato last night--good. Boring to be sure. Stan didn't like it at all. I can get thru a can (29 oz.) in two main meals and a sandwich or two between. Ham (Plumrose canned) with zucchini and tomato sauce is next alternate. Also an old friend. Stan and I ate at a pleasant workingman's restaurant twice while he was here. I've been back there for a cold beer but not to eat. $6 to $12 for a dinner there. I could eat myself into penury very quickly, especially at my current 4 to 5 meals a day!
I have found a rigging lift on the far shore of StT who can do my stays. Not till next week though, and a very far trip. Taxi? Probably $5 each way! Row? 3 miles up wind in the rubber floater? We'll see. Time enough after I'm up on the ways and have seen the damage and needs.
Clothes are still out of control! My rails and rigging covered with stuff that's trying to lose moisture. Rain last night, on fresh water rinsed stuff, didn't help much. May, on the other hand, have provided a welcome 2nd rinse. My bed dried yesterday so I'm rid of the plastic sheet. Bugs here last night too, my first night at the wharf. Wind less. Always? No bugs a mile away at Hasale Is.
Good news. I've found a way to salvage at least one and maybe two cups of coffee by reboiling the grounds. Naw it's 10 am--chase Mr. Avery. Row around to marina and laundry if he's not ready to work or direct me.
Rain and some very hard squalls out of NE. Safe enough here, tied to Avery's wharf. Avery's is a slightly funky yard, not all paint and spit and polish. Local rep is good without being very expensive. In fact cheapest anywhere around! Dick Avery is a nice sort of mañana guy, laid back pretty far in a laid back country! Willing to help, willing to have me do the work under his direction. Could hardly be better.New Year's Day 1988I got down under the screw yesterday. The nut is still there but there appears to be no thread. Couldn't tell exactiy what has happened. Couldn't fix what ails it in three one-breath dives.
and it's wet and stormy with moments of peaceful bright sun. Frenchtown is the west corner of St. Thomas harbor and free of any real sea. When it blows very hard we have angry little 6 or 7 inch waves, truly angry though. They splash right up onto the float and the spray manages to cover everything on the windward side of the boat. I'm still 'hung out' with clothes and bedding that has been rinsed out in fresh water but its all on the lee side now and it's had a lot of extra rinse from many hard showers last night and today.New Year's DayAvery's Boat House, my host, is a funky oreanization with my kind of sloppiness and many boats of smaller size, greater age and poorer condition. Also, the real biz of the yard, Pearson 28'8 and 32'8 which are up for bare-boat charter. Today's so wet and windy that none are going out. One came in (at the end of its charter) from Virgin Gorda-- told of 7' and 8' waves in the passage between Gorda and Tortola. Down wind but scary.
I have lost so much of the past few weeks at sea--5 or 6 I guess--that I can't accurately report on anything. Stan has the figures and I presume will get them all into this when he publishes. It was a hard trip. I have never been out in harder winds than we had at maximum. One spell of a couple three hours in a series of white squalls that I can't guess the velocity of, took the tops off all the waves, smoothing the sea, but truly confusing the difference between air and water. We were pumping on the 1/2 hour at the time so there was no escaping some exposure to it. Wet. Foul weather gear was necessary and welcome, but didn't begin to keep us dry. Generally not soaking wet at chest level, but dripping at least up to belly button and up to elbows, and allover damp and salty. The hard white squalls were part of a long spell of hard weather. Not all white squall, but all big sloppy seas, often from more than one direction, irregular and very energetic. Apogee would get pounded thirty times an hour. Often suddenly lifted and lurched. No position ever very safe below. Hang on at ALL times or get tossed to the deck, against a corner, into a shelf. My head is a mess of scabs now from the places that bled! The worst though was not bruises but salt sores. We both suffered fron the constant contact with super salty clothes and their friction. Made little (and some big) red sores that worked up to a pussy pimple quite painful and worse when it broke and became an irritated hole all the way through the epidermis--MEAT exposed. And of course that got salted too! Seems that it went on for weeks and no retreat from the constant contact since our beds and spares were wet too. Stan did a little better than I by being very careful, but he had a hard band of them across his buttocks, and no choice but to set on them and grind in more salt. Yuk. I had it worse for a while with an irritated scrotum--felt on fire, any contact painful. Plastic diapers helped a little. Bad. Bad. Bad.
Ok when we finally made the Trades. Dried out a little. Sailed naked all dsy. Healing set in gradually and blessed relief. But the seas never quit. They gradually became less confused and less violent, but were always there, always an occasional one to flip a hundred gallons of warm green water into the cockpit, or if it was not quite that big, twenty gallons of cold spray into any exposed place--neck, sleeve, ankle or waist. Thirty-four days, I think from Boston. First two cold, next 30 wet, last 2 down-wind into the Virgin Islands and StT. Very peaceful.
Pumping was one of the bugbears. Water built up in the bilges. Some came from the after vents astern. We bottled them up with Peg's old fw gear pant legs. Steady trickle from the stuffing box. We pumped a lot of days. Sixty-five to the 1/2 hour every half hour. Tiring. Wet. Interrupting sleep. Often close to the limit--(is there one?)--of exhaustion. After many days we got to a spot calm enough to get into the engine room, head first, reach down and stuff the stuffing box backwards with 7/16" dacron heavily smeared with caulking goo. Stan did it-- wouldn't let me even try. At that time he was nursing me along I guess. My leg in trouble, boils all over my feet, thighs, buttocks, and forearms. Both wrists bleeding and pussy from the elastic closure of the foul weather gear. Stan may have been better off but not much. He did continually keep me from rushing into greater exposure. We argued constantly about how much sail, when to lay to, what to do next.
That's the People part. There's also an equipment part. Various failures--electric, somewhere in the middle of the trip. Cabin lights had an intermittent short (still has). Running lights soon after. No recharge out of engine. No engine after caulking up the shaft. Stan managed to refit flashlights as fast as I lost and salted them. A kerosene lantern for general light and cooking.
Stan worked for a long time on navigation and on radio too, and we got a couple of welcome fixes from passing freighters. After a bit there was no contact though. Probably lack of batteries and Stan went back to the Nav books. I took the sights, he worked the figures. Took a couple of days to get it straight--maybe 3-- some I could explain. Most he had to get from the book, especially as he had lost confidence in my mental condition. (Me too.) Good fixes for two continuous days made a lot of confidence, and sure enough Sambro Cay and Light appeared on schedule. Turn west in the Easterly Trades, four hours to avoid Anegada. Then SW to see the great peak of Virgin Gorda. Lay to just west of Anegada for a full nights rest and a daylight approach--and we did just that--entering between Jost Van Dike and Tortola, Pillsbury Sound, and into StT to anchor in the lee of Hassle Is.
is about to 'dawn up', and I am at the wharf at Avery's Boat House. Dick Avery seems pretty competent but very laid back-- willing I should do any work done and under his direction. Found another Volvo owner too, and he had the same corrosion troubles. No telling yet where that one will go. The lost packing nut on the shaft is still there--loose and out of place against the screw. It feels as if the threads had worn out--not- very likely. Will haul here. Sails are in the North Sails loft in process. They'll put slides on the storm [main]sail. No need for the gap, in fact bad for propulsion. It will need a higher 'gap' in the track, which I can do, assuming I can find a piece of 1" track. Time goes on and I am conscious of getting very little done.Late night 1/13I am still drying out the boat and gear--all clothes and beds have been dried, most rinsed out in fresh water too. Last batch, still on rails and rigging. Got a powerful extra rinse from a passing disturbance-- Shocking hard rain and gusty winds. Talk of 30' seas on the north side of the Is. Couple of boats adrift off their moorings. Naturally I pitched in to help, and got wet twice!
There's even a closer grocer than Pueblo, not so big, but better fresh stuff. I'm on eggs and bread again!
We DONE IT though. Some difficulties, but DONE. ...
Now I seem to be humming along on all 4 cylinders. Not walking any more than necessary but having no problems getting around. Clambering up and down to the boat--it's a mile high and no real ladder, just rungs welded on to the verticals of the carriage that the boat is hauled up in. I've painted the bottom (2 coats). Repaired the small leak under your berth. Avery sent the stuffing box nut out to be re-machined and it's on with new packing. So I'll be thrown o'board any day now. I can't wait. Living ashore in a boat is without grace at best!Also dry--all day every day. Hanging out beds, clothes, towels, rags -- and today started on tools all inches thick with rust. Yuk.
But WARM! Bob says there's heaps of snow--I'm happy to only hear about it!
Things move very slowly here--probably at least another week.
Peter
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