Month: May 2014

Mahoooooooooooo! Look over your shoulder….

It’s been raining for days. Heavy, continuous rain. The tender is our alongside paddling pool that has to be bailed every day. Shortly afterward it fills again. Sometimes it’s suspended and drains through the transom bung but as the wind is beam on it has a tendency to fly; it glides well but the outboard’s a worry. We have rail clips to tether it but it’s not taking much notice. Thoughts on getting wet? We’re Trintella people. We don’t do wet! Our rig is loose now the furler is off and it squeaks in the wind with every little movement.

So, Jim, is it looking Furly nasty? Yep furly. You can have some of your old unit rebuilt with parts coming in at around 12k USD and we have yet to hear about the expensive bits that haven’t been quoted. The leadtime is about a month (Oh Stuck!). But there’s the Reckmann unit and that’ll be about 25k USD (what is it with the boat inustry; a new 103 inch Harley v-twin engine at the dealership here is just 3.5k USD!). But your hydraulic unit does not produce the flow rate required (several week’s leadtime uh oh….Stuck!). A Selden hydraulic

This place is called Maho; it should be renamed Maaaaaahoooooo! We had forgotten what an Atlantic squall was like so we lined up behind a 747 to get a quick reminder. We love aircraft and the opportunity to get this close is fantastic. We though we would start small and work our way up as we had no experience of jet blast. First out of the gate was a small private jet. That was fun and easy enough. Then the beach started filling and the dive masks went on as we got promoted straight into the 747 league. Since there

We saw the tall black mast moving around the lagoon so we raced down to the Yacht Club to wave goodbye to Alison and Volvo 70 Monster Project as they depart through the bridge for Bermuda. With a favourable wind on a good reach they could be up at around 20-25kn (so that’ll take a couple of days then). We expect to meet up again in Southampton Water. A couple of ordinary cruisers followed them out. We saw Axonite leave a couple of days ago so we are one of the last ARC boats to vacate the area. As the

News on the old furler is that the spares that are available will cost about as much as a new furler but then there are additional parts that need to be made which will cost far, far more. So we are furler shopping and trying not to bin our new forestay which is just 6 months old. We are a bit restrited as to choice as our hydraulic system delivers a flow of about 10 L/min whereas a number of furlers for our size require 15 L/min and up. The front runner is Selden which is a close match by

All sailors should be taught to avoid the code word for temporary abandonment of one’s vessel to technical fate. Teachers should educate kids that say they are stuck on their homework that the answer is going to cost them $4,000 usd and might be available next week, or perhaps not. Did I just write $4,000? Must be some zeros missing. Stuck in St Martin means the loss of Transatlantic momentum, waiting for parts, becoming bored whilst expenses rise rapidly and spending trends with it as the numbers in daily life seem so insignificant. Stuck is a condition. It starts slowly,

After three days in the lagoon Electec have done a deep dive on the generator and the headsail furler has disappeared into the sheds for a rebuild. That kind of progress was impossible to achieve  down south and the skills simply weren’t available. We are waiting for the results regarding both units….and time is pressing as we need to be out of the hurricane zone, way east of Bermuda, in reality in the Azores by July 1st. The headsail was cranked on the staysail halyard and lowered into the tender this morning. From there it went across the bay, through

This is it really, the end of the Caribbean and the beginning of our own ARC in reverse so we are starting to prepare to cross to Bermuda and to the Azores. But it is so hot from 8am through to sometime like 3am. The temperature changes by about 2 deg C but our hull becomes hot and we again hit about 34 deg C onboard. It’s sweltering and that’s not great when it comes to completing jobs. Doyle’s guide claimed the anchorage to be sheltered but with the east corner being full we had to drop back in the

We were greeted into Port Zante marina by Chuckie, probably the best harbour master in the world, do you know one that greets you with cold beer? We arrived in St Kitts as the calendar ticked over into May. Charlestown, the capital, was packed and lively. That is until the cruise ship warning horn went off. At 17.00 it was all aboard and by 17.30 the ship was gone. Now that it was nice and quiet we rolled up to a bar next to the marina and the  guys said that will be the last cruise ship this year. You