On our way home..........the long route!!

  3/10/2012

Not a volcano........just another sunset in St George, Grenada

After a couple of great years in the Eastern Caribbean, we are about to head westwards towards Panama and the Pacific!  Bonaire, Curacao and Aruba (A,B,C’s) represent the first step before heading for the ancient and historical city of Cartagena in Colombia. Thereafter, we will go on to spend a couple of months in the San Blas islands of Panama, before planning our canal transit in February 2013.  

Goodbye to friends......Renata & Steve from Hout Bay

Our time in Grenada has been geared towards preparing the boat for this next chapter in the “Journey of Sheer Tenacity”. As I’ve mentioned before, the “power struggle” is not a uniquely ANC party problem….its part of the daily struggle for all cruisers! After 3 or so years, the new batteries bought in Brazil were no longer holding their charge properly, and with a hungry “Freddie”, (Autopilot), the Pacific is no place to discover dead batteries!

Lithium ION is the future, but they are still in their infancy, and the BMC electronic management systems built in to each battery, make them complex and expensive at this point. Nor would we expect to find much by the way of support in the Pacific. Down the road, matched identical cells will replace the BMC systems, and bring down the prices. The advantages of Lithium Ion in terms of weight, usable power and sustained output will soon make them the first choice of all cruisers. But right now, we decided to go with the tried and tested lead Acid Deep cycle, so we bought 6 new Trojan 130AH batteries, which increase the “house” bank to 780AH. (We left RSA with 400ah!)  I kept the last two batteries bought in Brazil, and wired them into the Engine battery bank, bringing that bank up to 330AH too. The engine batteries are kept full via a separate solar panel, and the 2 added batteries are isolated from the cranking battery. The net result is that we should always have an extra 2 fully charged batteries in a crisis.

On a yacht “Absolute Power” is a joy! In politics, as Aldous Huxley warns, “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely!”

Our first westward step was aborted minutes after checking out! We received an email from Bonaire telling us that all the mooring buoys and marinas were full as a result of next weeks regatta and festival. So we just checked back in again, and will leave in 10 days or so! See how chilled and mellow I’ve become?

The good life

Life as a cruiser is not always cold beers, sunshine and swimming! Yesterday Mary and I were caught in a massive electrical storm in the dinghy, as we were making our way out to Sheer Tenacity in the anchorage off St Georges. Very wet, noisy and frightening actually! We got back to the rolling and pitching boat, thoroughly drenched, with a dinghy full of water! An hour later the sun came out, and all was good!

The beautiful Carenage,  St George

The Castle overlooking the anchorage

It was not such a good day for one little fish, however. Earlier in the day, before the thunderstorm, which would have filled the tanks in 20 minutes, I had decided to use the watermaker to make water. While checking the filters and pressure, I noticed a little fish had been sucked into the first mesh filter, and was swimming for his life! An hour later he was still swimming for the Olympics! When I had finished making water, I decided that he deserved to be rescued. As soon as I had turned off the pumps and closed the salt water inlet. I unscrewed the filter. I had forgotten that the water level in the fresh water flushing tank was above the level of the filter, so the poor little fish suddenly had a fresh water shower, and was washed into the bilges.

Once I had decided on a rescue mission, I had to see it through… quite apart from the stink in the boat if I left him there! So it was away with the companionway steps and cover so that I could access the bilges under the water maker. I eventually found him and rescued him with a pair of braai tongs. He was still alive and flopping, so I put the steps back and went up into the cockpit to return him to the sea. With a warm and fuzzy feeling, I watched him suddenly appreciate his new found freedom, as he slowly swam away,……………only to be nailed by a marauding Garfish who ate him for dinner!