Marin N14.28.03 W60.52.9
Amazing Grace
John and Julie
Sun 24 Jan 2010 02:03
We went for a sail the other day down to Castries and discovered we had a cracked batten on the main sail. The top and the next one down were both broken as it turned out. No abuse here - strange! However, it does explain the difficulty in getting the 'crease' out of the main recently! I converted the remains of the next to bottom batten into the new top batten and then set about finding a new length of batten for the the other. Alas, Rodney Bay's sailmaker had none and suggested we go to Martinique. So off we went...
It was a nice sail - beam reach for the technically-minded and we covered the 20+ miles in a little over 3 hours. We anchored and went for a mooch around. I checked with at least 4 sailmakers who all said 'we don't have any of those around here' - just like the wide-mouthed frog! So we spent a nice few days in Ste Anne's and came back to Rodney Bay - again a nice beam reach with a helpful current and tide! (ish).
One of the downsides of keeping a boat with 'European flavour' antifouling in Rodney Bay for a month is that these Caribbean marine beasties actually like it! So we founf that we had a green and beastie encrusted pair-a-hulls when we got back. Now we have 'self polishing' antifouling - that is to say, the beasties are not meant to stick, the paint itself wears away as we go along to reveal a constantly clean and smooth surface. Well that's the theory!!! The practice is that we were about 1kt slower through the water so there was nothing for it but for me to get in and give her a quick wipe down. WRONG!! The Caribbean marine beasties had been very busy. Rather than using a nice soft cloth to rub away the lightly encrusted hulls I ended up using a 2 inch paint scraper in the style of an Aussie outback sheep shearer - and the beasties were coming off like a fleece!
I did round one in Rodney Bay (in the bay not the marina) and round 2 in St Annes. The result is that we are getting faster but we will likely have to get a bottom job sometime soon. I'm weighing up the options between Grenada, Trinidad and the USA. The upside is that in Trinidad they use paint that is so toxic that the beasties run away the downside is that its illegal in the USA! We'll see!