Inconvenience! What inconvenience??
Oriole
Sun 13 Apr 2014 12:37
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Port Louis Marina, St George's,
Grenada.
Sunday 13th April.
12:02.66N 61:44.82W
This has undoubtedly been one of the busiest weeks
in our sailing lives and with the assistance of many yachties in Tyrrel Bay who
have been very generous with their time Oriole now has a stable but rather
stubby rig with very much reduced sail plan.
The surveyor for our insurance was on board
Oriole by 0830 on Monday morning and spent most of the day assessing the
damage and discussing with us our next steps. The easy option, to take
Oriole for repairs in Grenada did not appeal to us as we do not know any of the
rather restricted number of tradesmen. The passage from Grenada to
Trinidad is a bit more challenging and is 80 miles of exposed Atlantic Ocean
compared with only about 10 miles of unsheltered water from Tyrrel Bay to St
George's. Trinidad is "home" for Oriole.
However we had a lot of work to do to secure the
mast and get halyards rigged on which to hoist sails. We knew that
motoring without sails with a stubby little mast would produce a horrible
motion. We managed to exchange the staysail halyard for a
forestay with a loop at the top to take a block for a halyard so we
couold raise a jib and we managed to borrow a sail that could be hanked on
to the stay. This saved us having to modify our own sail or set the
jib flying. We devised an arrangement at the top of the mast to take
another block for a new main halyard and with our running backstays set up we
had a well supported rig. The height of the remaining mast is sadly too
short for even for our deepest third reef so we have borrowed a trisail to set
in its place.
 John cutting down the furled staysail
which was held by a whisker.
After a total of 84 man-hours Oriole was once again
ready for sea, and on Friday we set sail from Tyrrel Bay in company with Shian
as guard ship and headed for Grenada. We had a brisk 18-20 knots of wind
just aft of the beam and gusts up to 30 knots, but the mast did not show any
signs of movement and we bowled along with a somewhat jerky rolling motion at
between 6.5 and 7 knots with the engine in fairly relaxed mode.
 We could do with a bit more sail aft,
but beggars can't be choosers.
 Further minor mods are required to get
the trisail setting better.
As is usual off Kick 'em Jenny there was a more
ugly sea, but Oriole and her crew took it in their stride and 5 hours after
departure we were tied up in the new smart marina in the Lagoon. As we got
back into mobile phone range John was calling various contractors in Trinidad to
get them to prepare estimates for repairs as soon as we arrive there.
We slept the sleep of the dead helped by a number or rum punches. Our
surveyor has now agreed to recommended that we continue to Trinidad with the
blessing and cover of our insurance company. We are now feeling much more
relaxed after several pretty disturbed nights with both of us having flash
backs to this enormous red stern bearing down on us and tearing into Oriole
with all the sound effects.
We have been amused by the lack of
planning by the ferry owners who phoned us as we were weighing
anchor on Friday to ask where we were as they had a surveyor on the
fast ferry from Grenada to report on the damage for their insurance
company. Could we delay our departure? We cordially
declined, and later passed the ferry powering north as we sailed
south. On Saturday morning we had another phone call, this time from the
surveyor now in Grenada, asking where Oriole was so he could come and have a
look before he returned to Trinidad. We were in town for the day and I
detected a note of irritation in his voice when I told him we were planning
to be in Trinidad on Tuesday evening, and if only someone had thought to
warn us, we could have avoided for him the very tedious journey from Trinidad to
Carriacou and back. We have now arranged a visit for him to view Oriole in
Chaguaramas.
The captain and owners of the ferrry have
apologised for the "inconvenience they have caused us" and we are looking at this as yet another of life's
challenges! The cost of restoring Oriole to her pre-accident state
is going to be prodigious.
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