Landlubbers Again

Vega
Hugh and Annie
Tue 18 Oct 2016 21:37
Vega is now safely (we hope) tucked up in Santa Marta marina where she will gently accumulate weed over the next two and a half months. She has been washed down, sails taken down and stowed, easily removable lines stowed, blocks and moving parts lubricated, marina electricity supply disconnected, dinghy covered, extra mooring lines put on. I had hoped that the solar panel would keep the batteries charged but on removing the plug connecting it to the boat discovered that one of the pins had corroded from the plug and was stuck in the socket. I will try and source a new plug in the UK but in the meantime hope the marina will attach the mains cable for an hour every couple of weeks. Not the end of the world if they don’t but the main worry is that they will connect up and forget to disconnect. Some semi permanent cruisers from England told us horror stories of stray currents and corrosion of boats in the marina.

Our new cruising friends also told us of the 40kt winds that sweep down from the mountains each afternoon in December and so I bought another mooring line from the tiny chandlery at the marina. It matches the two we bought in Bonaire after pulling in one mooring line only to discover that the inboard end was neatly wrapped around another folded line on the deck. The folded line was lifted over the rail and I watched it gracefully sink from view into water too deep for any snorkelling attempt at recovery. The new lines are thick braided, soft and slightly stretchy which makes for great mooring lines but with two downsides. Firstly they are badly prone to chafe and therefore have to be put on in such a way as to minimise this. A loop tied with a bowline over a cleat at one end and a couple of fore and aft turns around the cleat at the other before any diagonal securing turns seems the best configuration. Secondly the slight stretching causes a creaking noise when tension is put onto the cleats. It sounds to me like the gentle creaking of an old wooden sailing ship and is very relaxing. Sadly for Annie (and therefore me) it has different connotations and I have been up in the middle of the night changing all the lines to avoid one of the new ones being cleated above our cabin.

Ahead of this trip home there are no significant maintenance or equipment issues to be sorted before the next leg. We need a new end fitting for the GPS cable to the AIS transponder so that it will transmit our position; a new plug for the solar panel; electronic charts for the Pacific - both for the iPad and chart plotter as we are going paperless. This means a bluetooth dongle for Annie’s iPad so that it gets a GPS signal and/or a new iPad. We need more preservative for the water maker and a propane regulator for our butane gas bottles. Butane (camping gas) is standard fare in Europe but over here it is all propane that is at a higher pressure. The burners on the cooker can be adjusted for either but we blew the safety valve on the butane regulator at one point.

On the last occasions we have left the boat I have experienced a great sense of relief at not having to worry about many things arising from being on board. The weather, mooring lines, anchor holding, equipment failure, sail handling, fear and much more besides. It all goes with living and travelling on board but in my case leads to an underlying level of anxiety that can cause irascibility and stress avoidance. The position is compounded by concerns about ageing e.g. the inability to think several stages ahead when undertaking tasks and also forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is something that Annie and I have been working on because we are forever not being able to find things, or forgetting to take everything we need when leaving the boat, or leaving things at places we have been to. At every appropriate moment we have to take stock and make sure we have everything we should have. The other day we went to the supermarket armed with our carefully written out shopping list, bags for carrying things and so on. When we got there we found that it hadn’t occurred to either of us to check that we had some means of payment. Anyway, the point is that for me it sometimes feels like being a "Mr Bean” character with nothing going smoothly, easily and to plan. One consequence of this has been stress avoidance. For example, why go ashore when to do so means having to launch the dinghy, put on the outboard motor, start the motor, remember to take everything with us, worry about the anchor holding when we are ashore, getting back before the weather turns or it gets dark and then getting everything back on board. All these things are potential sources of frustration and anxiety. I talked about this with good friends Chris and Julia when last at home and Chris also admitted to a sense of relief when, after their circumnavigation, the boat was safely back in Bristol. Some stress seems par for the course but I am not content to bow to the inevitable and blame ageing. There must be a strategy for dealing with this and in fact habitually stopping and checking as a matter of course is a brilliant antidote to forgetfulness. I have Annie to thank for this strategy. There was a self help cult book around a few years ago written by, I think, Anne Jeffers (and if that is correct my longer term memory must be ok) called “Feel the Fear - and do it Anyway”. When we were in Santa Marta we had quickly taken the sails down and prepared the boat ahead of hurricane Mathew. The hurricane incentive meant that we (I) just had to get on and do it quickly without fretting about the heat and putting it off until tomorrow. After the hurricane had blown through we had some time for exploring and one option was to take the boat back up the coast to the five bays in the Tayrona Park and anchor for a night or two. Given that we were safely tucked up in the marina and the boat prepared for us to leave my first instinct was to avoid the hassle of taking the boat out again and then repeating all the packing up process on our return. But no, away we went and we had a fabulous time in quiet, beautiful anchorages (our great preference to being in a marina) that will be one of the highlights of our stay in Colombia. This time I am quite sad to be leaving Vega…..