Bilge Rat
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Wed 13 Jan 2010 01:11
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You may recall me mentioning that on Christmas Eve
in Deadmans Bay, Peter Island in the BVI's we had a huge thunder and lightning
storm which woke me up. The fact that it did not wake Craig up, however, is
no indication of the strength of the storm
On hearing the thunder crashing and roaring while
we were at anchor I woke up and switched everything off as a precaution.
Nevertheless when we awoke on Christmas morning we had no autopilot and no jib
furler (which is electric - with an electronic control ). Could it have been the
lightning?
Since then we have of course manually helmed
around the Virgin Islands and the over night passages top Antigua, and
have been sailing without our speed, depth and wind instruments. Not really a
big deal once you get used to it, but the autopilot is a real miss.
We are now on our way south - "down island" and are
picking up Craig's girlfriend tomorrow in Antigua and then our friends Grant and
Jan in St Vincent on Monday for a week of cruising the
Grenadines.
However all this week I have been working with
various firms working aboard, to do some warranty work on our generator, hatches
furling gear etc. The biggest issue, is that with the electronics, and I
spent all day Tuesday with "Cap" from a firm called Signal Locker being a "Bilge
Rat" working under the floorboards and behind bulkheads tracing cables and
testing connections and various electronic instruments. I recon I could now do a
pretty good job at diagnosing electronic problems on a Raymarine Sea talk system
- which, while just requiring logic to diagnos, has come up with a very
unlogical diagnosis which we can only attribute to the possibility of a
lightning strike. However we will see when the parts arrive from the US this
week how logical the diagnosis was.
I dont have to ask as I know that most readers of
this blog will think that we have a very easy life of it
sailing around the world - however one (very perceptive) reader recently
said "it sounds like very hard work, this sailing round the world". Of course I
dont expect any sympathy but at times of course it is very hard work. The boat
requires a lot of work to maintain it and keep everything in good order plus
deal with the breakdowns and bizzarre events like lightning strikes. We
generally find ourselves doing all the daily chores you would at home plus
sailing the boat, maintaining the boat, doing the endless paperwork in entering
and leaving countries, finding suppliers and of course there is a
considerable amount of partying to do - ON TOP of all
this.......
This morning I cycled twice in the blazing heat to
the dockyard to speak with the electronics guys. Now as I have told you all a
million times I am not given to exaggerating, but I think this was a round
trip of six miles - twice (which makes twelve for those of you
whose arithmetic skills are dulled by the sheer lack of sympathy for
me!) in the blazing heat. Anyway on the way back I stopped at Antigua sails
who are a bit up the hill from Nelsons Dockyard. I slumped down in the
office chair puffing and pantiing sweating profusely and my tongue hanging
out.
"What on earth have you been doing?" they enquired.
"I - I h- ha - have j - just cycled
from Catamaran marina to here I spluttered out from the depths of the
puddle of sweat I was now sitting in. "How old are you?" they asked. "Forty Five
" I said thinking they would be impressed i could cycle this round trip at
my age and in this heat.
"When I was 51 I cycled across Tibet" said the
owner disdainfully, before telling me he then cycled across India. Bloody
hell! This was a tight situation.
I confidently assured them that in the afternoon I
would be cycling back and fore between the docks with two bags of cement on my
back just for fun, while allowing the humiliation to suppress my
hyper-ventilating!
After the drama of getting Rhiann back
to Scotland last week and cancelling our flights due to weather
delays, we are now keen to get under way again and sail to anchorages
anew.
Our plans are now to be back in Scotland at
the end of the month while the final preps are done to the boat for our next leg
and we attend to business and family affairs.
We have to exit the "teething" problem phase with
the boat, which the builders, Discovery Yachts, have been absolutely
brilliant at supporting, and start preparing now for the next 12,000 miles
or so which would take us to Australia. However before then we need to sort out
our crew for the various passages and get a good security protocol in place and
of course transit the Panama canal. I am ready for new adventures and am looking
forward to visiting Columbia though with some
reservations.
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