Sunday in Martinique
Catmojo
Matt
Sun 5 Dec 2021 22:57
Mojo sailed into the bay at Le Marin with Ahab the pirate spinnaker still flying on Saturday afternoon. Bill on Sweetie radioed to say yay, fabulous! It was quite swish. I managed to hold it to 112degrees and then proceeded to try get the sail down and made a total hash of it, due to it being over a week since I checked things, and so on. Eventually I had to bomb downwind under engines and cut the lines with slasher knife. I've damaged the sail a bit but meh, very fixable. I fixed the lines this (Sunday) morning and I think I'll soon have the pulley wheels at the end of the boom sorted too - the spindle is free running but the aluminium boom metal needs to be "peened over" (i.e. bashed with hammer and chisel a bit) to make it all stay in place. I'm pretty good at bashing metal things with hammer and chisel. Edit, yeah, pulley wheels sorted.
I went over to see Bill on Sweetie, who freely admits his own slight (massive) cockup in naming his boat. He thought his wife would like it as he uses the word a lot. But he hadn't thought about what it sounded like on VHF, or the sniggering from customs and immigration officials.
Sweetie is the same model as Mojo tho his is hull number 26, Mojo was number 4. He's got all-teak cockpit flooring, Mojo has white fibreglass, less weight but less luxy.
Sat evening we went into Ste Anne for me to check in, which needed the computer at Boubou's caff to be rebuilt a bit. We had Bokits which is a sandwich really. Yan from Zulu and his mate turned up, recognised me which impressed Bill, and both Yan and his mate were bit surprised (aghast) at the idea of me putting up a spinnaker and going to sleep, which is what I did for over a week on transat. But there are loud alarms in case of squalls and stuff? I'm still keeping a lookout with radar and AIS on automatic with alarms - often a better lookout than eyeballing.
Anything else? Oh yes, Zulu says he's braved the riots once already, and they were very nice on their picket line. Bill confirms empty shelves in a supermarket, or at least they didn't have the cheap beer he likes. They've limited sales of gasoline cos some naughty types have used it to make Molotov cocktails. Yeah, massively dangerous, argh.
Today Sunday everything shut, and Bill helped me make an experimental giant windbreak for Mojo, an idea I have been working on a while. Version one has 18metres of beige windbreak blow-through material around the mast and clipping to the cockpit both sides and distinctly knocks down the 25kt wind. Looks a bit weird but v effective.
Bill's likely ready for us to make a move north soon. I've said my only condition is to drop into Les Saintes, specifically Ti'Kezla, easily best resto in Guadeloupe.
Big thanks again to James for keeping an eye on Mojo transat progress.