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Been a while but finally all critical repairs are done. Itchy feet said to get moving even though there are still many boat projects in progress (we are only 2 months delayed from the original plan). Dashed out of Annapolis after getting our water topped up (since we can’t make water in the Chesapeake – too dirty). Was interesting hearing from long time Chesapeake dwellers about the water – clear to four or five feet – used to be in the water constantly. That was then. Now, rarely in the water – can only see about 6 inches. General consensus – farm fertilizer and city storm runoff is harming the echosystem. Don’t know about harming it, but changing it for sure. Lots of crabs and other life but very murky, especially after a storm.

In any case, we made a run for it about noon and arrived in Sillery Bay on the Magothy River about 4 after a leasurely sail (at about 3.5 knots).  We finally resorted to the motor as a thunderstorm swept toward us. As luck would have it, the big bad storm that threatened us petered out before arriving and a brand new one formed just east of us as we arrived. So lots of thunder, but just not on top of us.

On the beach of Dobbins Island in Sillery Bay when we arrived, many boats were enjoying the end of labor day with a party – finally dispersing as the light faded. All that was left was someone’s flip flops which Charlie and I discovered the next morning after kayaking to the beach for a romp.  But the big surprise in the morning was when we spotted Dan (first person we met at Liberty Marina) pulling anchor. What a blast. He allowed as how he was one of the boisterous party people the evening before with members of his family and friends. He grew up in this area and happily remembered winter times when the area froze and people would drive cars to the island across the ice for a slightly more frigid party, albeit I believe there was amply antifreeze for the blood in attendance. Delight to see Dan there.

It was indeed the oil pressure sensor. With a new one, the genset works like a charm – what a relief. If it hadn’t been the sensor then it might have been the control board – $1,200 or worse yet actual low oil pressure which could mean big bucks. So I don’t feel so bad spending $100 for the sensor and a manual oil pressure gauge (to confirm the sensor) and another $100 on brokerage and expediting fees. Unable to get a clear answer online or from Onan (buy our part number xxx), I took a chance on a generic from Budget Marine which they had to send from St. Martin. All has come up roses for now. So we are once again flush 🙁 with water.

So what happens on those days where something “writable” isn’t happening. Well, let’s see. Yesterday we traveled from Barbuda to Deep Bay, Antigua. 15 knot winds close hauled sending us to Nevis (west of where we wanted to be) but with patience and a small prayer, the winds veered to the east then even northeast as we approached Antigua and we were able to spin back to south then southeast and sailed into Deep Bay, close reach all the way averaging 6.5 knots. A beautiful 4.5 hour sail soaking up some sun and some z’s (for part of the crew). Of course the weather turned overcast on arrival with rain (not forecast) at night and more rain today – a lot more. Actually we were happy about that since we have had little rain in the last 2 months and it gave the boat a good wash down (desalting). So ordinary life kicked in with a scrub of the boat (topsides and snorkel/diving the bottom – not minor, a couple hours here by G & P encouraging the bad guys to detach from the boat), two trips ashore with Charlie, bread making (refining the art of baking bread in a pressure cooker – much lower energy consumption – is excellent bread), yogurt making (didya know it is easy with powdered milk and a thermos?), a little work on taxes (ugh) and the web site (still learning) – you know, the routine stuff, just on a boat. Ending the day with G’s fabulous curried cauliflower and chick peas. Yum! For a change, a lousy sunset scrubbed out by the clouds. And the generator which has been on its best behavior now refuses to run for more than 25 minutes making water making difficult. So now we will have to finally sort out what the intermittent, now seemingly not so intermittent problem is. Boat = Sherlock challenge. Never ending. But loving it. Oh, and spotted a turtle a couple times – and I have a mascot here, twin to the one in Barbuda – a little fish, maybe 3 inches long that has attached itself to me when snorkeling. Freaks you out a little bit because he loves to nibble at your ear then swim around to have a look at you straight in the eye about 6 inches in front of your face then back to your vision’s periphery. Just hangs there. I have gotten used to him and him to me, I am sure. Kinda feels like a buddy. Swirls around my toes when I get out of the water – like he is saying “where are you going? Can I come too?”. Or maybe I have had too much sun now that the fish are clearly communicating?

So now, time to sleep, perchance to dream. Okay, too dramatic. But it is somewhat soothing to get ready for bed with the showers sprinkling by outside, highly reminiscent of our beloved Vancouver, with a small difference – a temp of 26 (79F) inviting us to a peaceful slumber. We shall see what the dawn brings.

So with Yoga, paddling, and swimming, we get lots of exercise, not to mention numerous dives to scrub the hulls and get rid of all the hitchhikers.  But today, we decided it was time to exercise land legs.  Charlie cast 2 votes in favor of this one.  So off we went through the mangroves to a place called Biras Creek and a narrow strip of land separating the breaking surf east side of the island from North Sound.  We started out hopeful we would catch a glimpse of an Iguana which Gwyn had spotted just once a couple weeks ago.  Lots of these little geckos scurrying around and more inviting resort spaces, but where are the Iguanas? (click photos for a larger image)

Then as we were meandering along a road, we saw this quaint little sign followed shortly ahead by the beastie itself!

Mission accomplished! But we were in for another surprise on the way back through the mangroves.

So it was a great long hike with sights along the way. Even Charlie was a bit worn out opting for only a short play with his ball at the beach when we got back. Our granddaughter, Janiah (9), loves lizards! So we hope you enjoy the Iguanas, Janiah. We were thinking of you today!

Having thoroughly enjoyed Norman, we decided it was time to go back to North Sound and settle back for the rest of our free mooring time – and frankly to get some down time, reading time, fixing up small stuff time, looking at the moon time – well you get the idea.  But our sailing pixie had a mischievous grin.  Shoulda known.   Wind was from a reasonable direction and P was all excited about the 0.5 knot to 1 knot speed increase we were seeing in the winds with the new folding props.  They made a significant difference in the lighter winds.  It kind of got our fine little sailing condo on water from the speed of a Clydesdale up to a frisky carriage horse – still a ways to go to make Arabian or thoroughbred – actually I don’t think that is even possible, but we are not here to race but be comfortable, and Blue Sky does that well.

So happily laid back with speeds wandering between 8 and 9 knots in 15 -20 wind close reaching – life was great.  At least until the gunshot sounded followed by the whale hitting our boat.  Well I exaggerate a bit but that was the first impression.  Actually it was the D shackle casting off its pin and contorting enough to release the boom from the mainsheet which flew to the leeward side of the boat, stopping abruptly as the blocks on the mainsheet all gathered for a conference on our bimini (with significant damage from the abrupt meeting) – it actually did sort of feel like we hit a whale or something.  P kept his calmly and loudly shouted “something broke” – ohhh my, just brilliant!

To shorten the story up a bit, boat was brought under control, sails doused, situation assessed and we headed to Roadtown for repairs after determining the spare D shackle was too big. Unbelievably, being a cat, the expired D shackle was still on the Bimini when we arrive in Roadtown.

Sailors, bear with me a bit.  The sailing community has all sorts of interesting terms, almost a secret language, so that the non sailor reading the above might as well be reading ancient Greek.  So I will digress and do some explaining while talking about some of our “challenges”.

D shackle – a piece of very strong stainless steel to connect something to something on a boat.  As you can see, it is shaped like a D and has a pin that screws in to allow you to open the D to attach stuff.  In our case, the miserable excuse for a D shackle on the right at one point tied a mainsheet block to the boom.  Oh dear.

Main sheet – the line (rope to landlubbers) that connects to the boom (metal thing at the bottom of the main sail) which allow a sailor to move that boom and thus the main sail to be aligned with the boat or to be almost perpendicular to the boat so that you can maximize your sailing performance depending on the wind direction.  No main sheet attached = no control of the sail (bad).

Leeward – the side of the boat that is closest to the water (on a monohull) or where the wind appears to be coming from the other side of the boat (monohull or catamaran) – also known as the least likely to get a massive amount of saltwater spray in your face (any kind of boat).

Windward, the side of the boat that is not Leeward and a bit breezy and damp.

Blocks – some people think pulleys.  For our purposes the same thing – ropes go around wheels ending up increasing your mechanical advantage.

If you look at the photo of 3 things to go wrong, the green line going back along the boom to 3 blocks at the far left is the main sheet.  I you blow the photo up a bit you will see that the top block attaches through a shackle to a line attached to the boom.  That shackle went to shackle heaven mashing the 3 blocks at the end of the boom into each other and allowing the boom to fly out – no so obvious in this photo with everything pulled in tight and no mainsail up, but use your imagination.

The 2 other things inferred are other failures.  At the very back of the boom you can see a line going up.  This is called the topping lift – I guess because it “lifts” the boom so it doesn’t hit your “top” or in our case the bimini.  In the middle of 45 knot winds and 13+ foot seas, our topping lift chaffed through the line that attaches to the boom due to a manufacturing flaw in the D shackle (sharp edge).  This had the rather nasty consequence of sending a piece of metal wildly flailing about at the end of a 50 foot line in heavy seas trying to punch holes in our mainsail or anything else it could take aim at.  King Neptune must have intervened on our behalf because when the seas moderated to 12 feet and 35kts and I ventured up top, it had tightly wrapped itself around the lazy jacks (those little lines you can see at the top of the photo that hold up the blue sail cover.  The bad news is that without the topping lift I could not drop the mainsail (which I badly wanted to do) without having the boom beat the hell out of the bimini (also not good).  So we sailed forth and survived.

Number 3 failure is a small little pin seen on the boom in the lower right of the folder.  Without the pin you cannot control the size of you mainsail (called reefing) and are thus in a very dangerous position in high winds.  You also lose control of your mainsail (called an outhaul).  The gods were merciful in a round about way.  On a routine daily inspection, I discovered the outhaul was almost chaffed through.  While trying to sort out why, I discovered the cap on the pin holding it in place had decided to take a swim despite my and a professional riggers attempts to identify any weak points in the rigging.  It was missed.  As I said, we were fortunate in that the pin only came partially out and nothing separated.  But now I have to have a pin fabricated and the outhaul replace.  Oh yes, it was brand new but was put in to a track on the boom that it was not in before (2 tracks available).  Result was that there were sharp edges on the boom causing chafe (cutting) on the outhaul that almost separated it.  Thanks goodness that didn’t happen.

Last in this long post is the clutch.  No, not a hen’s clutch but a device that acts like a brake on a line (aka rope) seen at the left.  So the little spring in the clutch at the far right in the first pic decided to abandon springiness.  In the second photo you can see the clutch removed and the little piece that goes inside ($25 west marine, $70 in BVI).  So without the little spring, what happens?  Well whatever the line the clutch is holding starts free falling so to speak.  In our case, the genoa (sail at the front of the boat) started getting wrinkly, then shorter and shorter until it was about to become a mess.  P diagnosed the problem and we cranked the gennie back up and resumed sailing but consumed a winch to do so.  P is now expert at removing clutches (hates silicone) breaking them open, replacing pieces and remounting.  Skills are improving every day.

So this is a long post.  Lesson is that if it can break it will.  Coastal sailing is a whole different world – a few fixes a season.  Although P read in many books the challenges of ocean sailing, the reality seems to be coming to roost in the form of foolishly sticking P’s hand in the fire.  Ok, get it now.  Things break – often when you put big waves, strong winds and 1800 miles under your belt in a few weeks.