Saint Lucia - Sint Maarten - 23rd - 26th April 2015 SHAKEDOWN
Saint Lucia –
Sint Maarten
23rd
– 26th April 2015
3
days in St. Lucia and we worked very hard while there – the genoa halyard was
very difficult to re-wind onto the drum, with all three of us putting our heads together, Adam and I dismantling the
lower drum several times – all of us taking turns to read and attempt to
understand why we kept getting it wrong.
Now and again I think that I might be dyslexic, this was one of those
times – no matter how many times we re-wound the furling line onto that drum it was backwards.
Debra and I
working on sewing the sun strip back on the genoa
We
got it on eventually, and furled and
unfurled it while on our mooring and all seemed well – It wasn’t, it plagued us
throughout the rest of the trip – we were constantly reefing and unreefing it –
the unreefing was the problem and I broke another rule I usually adhere to –
‘if you have to
use
brute force to make something work,
something’s obviously wrong and you have to stop what you’re doing and fix
it’. Well when you’re at sea and you
need that sail and cannot fix it in the existing conditions go with brute force. Unfurling the genoa was a joint effort of
Adam forcing it to unfurl up on the bowsprit while I cranked it out on the
winch using the winch handle. Thank God
it did not break, but the foil is now bent at the point where it always got stuck.
Later when Adam and I took the sail down to put all the sails away the
halyard came
down
twisted around the foil. Hopefully now
that I have re-raised the sail without twisting the halyard that problems is
over. Yet to see.
It was a very expensive stop-over, life raft
service, fire extinguisher service, new to me rigid inflatable dinghy, fuel filters – only 2, should have bought a
dozen, new engine lining material and
many spares.
Going
back to my log from St. Lucia to Sint Maarten I see that we had to change the
primary fuel filter after 28 hours of running time, so now I’m thinking that it wasn’t in Sint
Maarten we took on the bad fuel but in
Bequia where I filled up before leaving.
And that makes more sense as I filled up from the local Daffodil fuel
barge.
The
350 odd miles from St. Lucia to Sint Maarten was well and truly a shakedown
trip for the 3 of us and MoondancerX.
Debra and Adam were working their
first night watches and were ‘excellently’ obedient crew – observed all
the the rules which are vital to me.
No-one leaves the cockpit unless another member is up. Life jackets on at all times on watch. If a
ship is within 2 miles of us wake me up even though they both knew how to use
the AIS – Automated Identification System, and of course stay awake. Try to be quiet when below decks so that the
sleepers can sleep. We worked 3 hour
watches around the clock, day and night even though we were mostly all awake in
daytime hours.
The jenneka
flying up front looking lovely
In
between grunt work Adam fished, didn’t catch anything, but I’m sure it
satisfied his hunter gatherer instincts and made us girls feel like the man was
trying to provide for us.
We
did fly the jenneka for a few hours, mostly I just wanted to see if I could
remember how to put the damn thing up – it had been so long since flying it –
last time coming back across the Atlantic – and apparently I didn’t remember
how to put it up because I completely ballsed up the first couple of attempts
while Debra and Adam watched me in complete bewilderment as they could not
understand what I was trying to do – never having see that done before – and I
was becoming increasingly frustrated as a couple of times it almost lifted me
out of the pulpit. We got her up
eventually and it was a thing of beauty, no faster, but pretty.
Adam, me and
Debra at Lagoonies
Adam is an
incredible break dancer – too bad didn’t get him on film
We
did have some fun in Sint Maarten along with the work, this is us at Lagoonies,
a happening bar in the Simpson Bay lagoon – where all the reprobates hang out,
good music, good food and the ever necessary Wi-Fi. Also met people I knew from Tradewinds, they
have a base there.
I do, however think the customs and immigration
people could put a bit of effort into being nicer to the cruisers, they are up
there with the worst
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