2007.03.29

Four days since we last updated our blog and quite a lot has happened….!

We left Marsh Harbour on schedule on the 25th for Fisher’s Bay on Great Guana Cay
arriving there a couple of hours later. Since there was a nice breeze we had hoped to sail under genoa alone but when we endeavoured to unfurl it we found that the furler was stuck and wouldn’t budge. So we motored and we had something to occupy some of our time once moored or anchored.

Luckily we moored ‘cos when we tried to lower the anchor we found that the “down” button would not work, the “up” worked but not the down. We were clearly getting power to the windlass but somewhere on the “down” side there was a short.

The next day Heinz and I worked on the furler and on the windlass but came to no startling conclusion so what to do…..? We would definitely require our genoa for the trip back to the States and we also will need to anchor at several places on the way. After much discussion I ‘phoned the Dockmaster at the marina where we had been staying in Marsh Harbour and asked, since they were the headquarters of the Moorings fleet of charter boats , whether they had someone more knowledgeable than us . Sure they had, come on back and we’ll fix it!! So we left “L’Equipe” for the first time for many weeks and motored back to where we had left just a few hours before.

Tony, the dockmaster, had it all arranged and in short order O’Brian was aboard looking at our problems and promising to be back aboard at 09.30 hrs the next day. Imagine our surprise therefore (remembering island time !!) when he arrived at 08.30 hrs the next morning and in short order had our windlass working once again having traced the fault to a bad connection. Next the furler, which he diagnosed as the foil having dropped and catching on the drum. After some fiddling we found the appropriate screws slid the foil back up and screwed them up tight et voila a perfectly rotating drum!!!

When asked how much we owed him he replied ….” Would twenty five dollars be O K?”
We said sure, and gave him a fifty, considering it money well spent and something else to add to my learning experience of this boat and her systems. My next purchase is going to be a really good professional voltmeter since the two that we have aboard are really a bit mickey mouse.

We couldn’t be in Marsh Harbour without Catherine going to Maxwells for some final provisioning and I popped into the marine chandlery and hardware store for a couple of items and then it was off, under sail at last, back to Great Guana and Fisher’s Bay, where we found a mooring alongside “L’Equipe”.

Heinz and Jacqueline were not aboard but we had a suspicion that we knew where they were, so into the dinghy and off to Nippers…… a very funky bar on the beach and guess what, there they were, nursing frozen rum punches. We joined them and had a couple ourselves before returning along the beach back to the dinghy dock and our boat.
“L’Equipe” provided supper that evening, and at the risk of repeating ourselves, it was yet another gourmet meal, a lobster and shrimp salad, followed by a banana chocolate cake with whipped cream and of course topped off with our usual Babancourt rum digestif.

This morning I talked on the shortwave radio with weather guru Chris Parker who told us that the Whale Cay passage should be passable this afternoon but would not be until Sunday if we hung around, so we departed Great Guana at about 10.30 hrs and motor sailed through the Loggerhead Channel, around Whale Cay and into the passage. The Atlantic was in kindly mood as predicted and although we rolled and pitched a bit we came through very easily. Once through the motor was stopped and we sailed for
a couple of hours to the town of New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay. You will know this from our southbound visit when we fell in love with this town.

Since we were at low tide we anchored and Heinz went into Black Sound and managed to reserve the two moorings that we had had the previous time that we were here. After a couple of hours at anchor we braved the shallow channel and picked up our moorings with no further fuss. So here we are once again and it is rum punch time so enough of this blether ….. we shall likely be here a couple of days before moving on further northwards, the weather forecast for next week is pretty good.

Binow.