12:01.25N 61:40.75W

We have now arrived in Grenada and are in St Davids Harbour where Vega will come out of the water on 13th June. We have been through the list of work with the yard and they seem confident that it can all be accommodated…………... 

A lot of the work on the boat has been to do with fitting additional equipment - Hydrovane wind steering, Iridium communications, water maker (that is still running a treat), additional anchor chain and so on and this continues as we work out new ways to make life easier or safer. For your delight and edification I will set out the work that needs doing in Grenada and from this you will be able to gauge the wear and tear we are experiencing.

1. Pressure wash and scrape the hull. The Coppercoat is still performing well to the extent that we have little weed on the hull. After a period in a marina we have long strands of weed around the waterline but this soon washes off on passage. What we do have though is lots of small barnacles and at one point I thought we were lugging our own portable coral reef around the Caribbean, although the barnacles don’t seem to slow us down very much as far as we can tell. I tried to remove some larger ones from the top of the rudder with my hand recently and discovered they are as sharp as needles. We have just watched  a boat with more marine life on the bottom than ours being pressure hosed and it came up almost as clean as a whistle…….... 

2. Engine service (1000 hours). I will undertake this before the boat comes out of the water. The manual says that the engine hoses and an “elbow" should have been replaced by now but engineers previously have said this is not necessary. The yard says its a simple job so they can do it.

3. Rig check. A close inspection to make sure no wire is fraying or joints and connections looking dodgy and the tension is what it should be (it looks to me that it is). Other than superficial rust that should polish off we are not aware of anything untoward.

4. Remove the burred over screw holding the steaming light cover in place and replace the bulb or repair the faulty connection as appropriate. We haven’t had a working steaming light for a while but on the odd occasion have needed one we used the anchor light. The yard can sort the problem at the same time as the rig check.

5. Replace the internal stern gland seals. We have new seals to fit following ongoing minor leakage of water and oil from the stern gland that could have been exacerbated when the cutlass bearing was replaced in the Canaries (all to do with the prop shaft where it exits the boat and keeping the sea out of the boat). The bilge had what looked like thick oil in it recently but I can find no source other than the stern gland so we can only hope  that a thin layer of oil on top of the water looks worse than it is. Bilgex is a wonderful thing.

6. Replace the four anodes - one on the hull, one on the refrigerator outlet, one on the prop and one on the rope cutter. A quick look recently suggested that the hull anode is only lightly corroded but the prop anode is severely corroded. The ‘fridge anode lasts at least two years but the very small rope cutter anode has been overlooked in the past (anodes are lumps of zinc that will corrode sacrificially in rensponse to electrolysis caused by seawater and electrical current acting on the underwater metalwork).

7. Straighten the Duogen and the iridium poles back to the vertical. Both lean slightly from the vertical - the iridium pole because thats how it was fitted and the Duogen because the retaining brackets on the pushpit have slipped sideways. The Duogen now has a directional bias so that the wind turbine aligns to the direction of lean of the pole rather than the wind in lighter airs. 

8. Add two Spinlock genoa furling line blocks to the stanchions. The furling line originally ran through metal eyes on the stanchions but the friction broke the line when crossing the Atlantic. I could only source two of the four required blocks in Antigua.

9. Service the four Andersen winches. I discovered that some people service their winches annually while I have worked on the principle of “if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it”. The internal parts that need re-greasing look fiendishly complicated from the manual so I think this is one for the professionals although I acknowledge the likely disdain from my more mechanical friends.

10. Replace the Raymarine AIS receiver with the new Digital Yacht transceiver. When we bought the boat and all the equipment was fitted we thought it would be more important to see what everyone else was up to than for them to see us. However, when crossing shipping lanes and in poor visibility we would now feel more comfortable with another way of them being aware us as we now realise that you cannot rely upon diligent watch keeping on many cargo vessels - many use radar and collision avoidance alarms rather than a pair of eyes. The radar is good for large vessels and features such as the coastline and heavy rain showers but is alarmingly ineffective against smaller wooden boats and yachts. We will be able to switch off the transmit function when we really do wish to remain unseen by Jack Sparrow. I have been assured by those who should know that we can do a straight swap of the equipment and the new unit is “plug and play”. Pigs might also fly but I will give it a go before calling in the professionals. The new unit transmits its data within the boat so that you can pick it up on an iPad or laptop. Sets of electronic charts cost about £30 for an iPad and £200 for a plotter. This means that you can do all your navigating on an iPad from the comfort of your bunk and the plotter is no longer required. I wouldn’t get rid of ours but like the idea of saving £130 each time we need a new set of charts. And yes, Mike, I acknowledge that you have been telling me this for some while.

11. Replace the plug for the VHF handset in the cockpit. The boat’s VHF radio has an extension unit in the cockpit so we don’t have to keep going below to use the radio. It plugs into a socket mounted on the binnacle (that supports the steering wheel) but the socket is exposed to the elements and the numerous small pins corrode and break. This will be the second time we have had to replace the socket and were alerted to the problem this time when heavy rain in mid Atlantic got into the socket and caused the radio to emit a distress call. We have been using a hand held radio as an alternative when in harbours and marinas.

12. Clean the mainsail. Washing sails can degrade them but our mainsail still has deeply engrained brown lines from dust off the shrouds and lazy jacks. Its about time we shed our little bit of the Sahara so will have a go with our mild detergent (Dreft). It worked a treat on the sheets (ropes, not bedding) when we washed them in Antigua.

13. After five years the spray hood stitching is beginning to fall apart. We had some of it restitched in Antigua and Annie has had a go also. Now that we are undoing the hood on a regular basis to let air flow through the cockpit but then putting it back when it rains or we leave the boat the velcro stitching is coming away also. It needs an overhaul or possibly even replacing.

14. With our new, heavier outboard motor it is a real pain lugging it from the pushpit to the side for lowering it onto the dinghy, using a block and tackle hung from the boom. The deck is narrow alongside the cockpit and when the boat is rolling it is almost impossible to hang on to the motor and keep balance at the same time. We need a vertical stainless steel pole with gantry arm fixed to the top from with which we can raise and lower the motor directly to and from its mounting on the push pit. I wish we had looked at the availability of a Tohatsu 2 stroke which are amazingly light and powerful.

15. Clean the log wheel. When sailing continuously the log wheel in the bottom of the hull remains free and spins to give us speed through the water. As soon as we stop the housing becomes a haven for little barnacles and crustaceans that prevent it from rotating. We have never been able to successfully calibrate our log with speed over ground i.e. with no current, speed through the water and speed over the ground should be roughly the same. When sailing with the current, speed over the ground will be greater than speed through the water and vice versa. The log usually reads up to two knots slower than speed over ground. We just rely on speed over the ground given by the GPS and haven’t cleaned the log wheel for some while (tut tut, yes I know).

16. Check and service the sea cocks. After reading a lot of discussion in the yachting press we had our brass sea cocks replaced with bronze ones. The brass ones looked fine for the three years we had them. The bronze ones now have a bright green coating. Maybe this is normal, or it suggests they are weeping or maybe they aren’t bronze at all. A failed seacock could be inconvenient so we will get them checked over.

17. When the water maker was fitted in Lanzarote the bronze lever controlled water intake was fitted into the seawater intake pipe for the engine after the seawater strainer and as recommended by the water maker manufacturer. With this configuration we couldn’t get the water maker to work and the supplier maintained that the intake had to be before the strainer. Against the better judgement of the crew I put an intake into the seawater pipe before the strainer (plus a couple of other modifications) but had to leave the original bronze one where fitted because to move it would have meant replacing it with a straight pipe connector (or replace the whole section of pipe) which I didn’t have. We now have a plastic tee but with no stop cock to isolate the water maker when not in use so we will now get the bronze one with stop cock relocated.

18. Rig a proper bridle for towing the dinghy. Our new dinghy with its rigid V shaped floor tows brilliantly. There is a main attachment point for the towing line on the metal bow and also two attachment points, one on either side on each float, designed to prevent the dinghy from swinging from side to side. We have rigged up a temporary arrangement (see photo) that works well but is a bit cumbersome. Three smaller lines attached to a metal ring to which the main towing line can also be attached should do the trick.

19. We had an extra 30 metres of anchor chain put on in Lanzarote. The connecting link is now very rusty and only half the thickness of a normal link at the point at which the two halves snap together. Two people have told me they have had their link welded because of this. We now don’t trust the link and avoid needing more than 30m of chain when anchoring. It will be replaced.

20. Replace the gas bottle regulator. We broke the pressure gauge some while ago, not that we ever took any notice of it, but recently when putting on a newly refilled bottle there was a loud pop and gas was leaking from one end of the regulator. Opening the valve to allow the gas to flow to the cooker stopped the leak but it looks like an end cap on the regulator is missing where, presumably, a pressure release valve is located.

21. Replace the plastic beading on the inside of the heads locker door - its coming off.

22. Clean and polish the hull, topsides and metalwork.

23. Whip various rope ends that are fraying.

24. Try and get the electronic gas lighter on the cooker working again.

23. Fill out an equipment instruction manual for Nick and Mazz who are honeymooning on Vega after their wedding at the end of July. We have found a yacht management outfit who are members of the Cruising Association and also friends of people we have met who can arrange the re-float, put the sails back on and put Vega into a marina for Nick and Mazz………………..

Its coming into the wet season season now and we have had a couple of days of grey skies and rain. It has transformed the vegetation on Grenada which is looking amazingly lush and verdant compared to some of the islands we have been on recently. Don’t worry N&M it doesn’t rain all the time in the wet season and it is carnival time when you are here.