November Already
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sat 1 Nov 2008 16:08
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Hello Friends
"12:00.2N
61:45.0W"
Judging from the emails, we guess you are
wondering what happened to regular Blog updates.
Well we've not been too busy since mid
September. But there have been a few world
events in the last month which have kept us occupied, though not well
entertained and most recently, Michael's computer has suddenly died. All recent
photos have been lost, though there wasn't really anything new, as the last
backup disk was mid-August.
So...
We travelled up to Martinique again and
finally managed to have the fridge works completed - they were originally
planned in January. For the not insubstantial sum of Euro 1,600 we've had the
cooling changed to a pumped seawater system, which does seem to work much
better. For the technically minded (if Arthur is still reading) the connections
to the hull plate for the freezer and the air fan for the fridge have been
removed and the heat dissipation of the refrigerant now passes through a heat
exchanger to the pumped seawater. www.refrigeration-marine.com is
the place to look if your French is up to scratch.
Having sailed direct from Grenada to
Martinique in a great 24 hour overnighter, we tootled back south rather more
slowly and spent time in the Grenadines. Given the time of year - peak hurricane
risk - the Tobago Cays were very quiet and we spent a while there. Even the Park
Rangers couldn't be bothered to turn up every day, so we only paid the fee for a
few days.
We sat out the big northerly swell from
Hurricane Omar sheltered in the lee of Sandy Island, Carriacou. It was startling
to watch the very rapid erosion of the island with the big swells washing over
it. Must have lost a couple of feet of height in a few hours on 16th October.
The photos have been lost of course with Michael's laptop.
We're now back down in Grenada and Rainer
has departed for his next boat. We wish him well on the 86 ft Fife classic,
'Astor' www.astor.org .
We're extending the 'helipad' as George
calls it, with another couple of 130 watt solar panels which will give us an 80%
lift in solar input and will we hope make us self-sufficient in power.
Our next 'Cabin Boy' arrives on the 6th
and we have a couple of weeks sailing before we have our annual haulout for
antifouling on the 24th.
That's about it: so far as Blue Sky is
concerned, everything is under control, which is more than can be said for the
financial markets, ho hum! At least our heating bills are minimal.
We hope that The Great Crash of 2008 has not
been too traumatic for our readers, whereever you are.
Best Wishes
George and Michael
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