Still in Jolly...
Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Tue 12 Apr 2011 00:41
Monday 11th April
2011
Yep, we are still
here.
The last few days of
James's visit flew by and soon we were waving him off in a taxi as he headed for
the airport. That was over a week ago,and although we had planned to move
on within a day or two, as usual things did not go to plan. The fridge
wasn't a problem - it simply worked perfectly when the guy came to fix it and
wouldn't play up at all so there was nothing he could do. We paid him for his
time and now wait for it to pack up again.
The first hold-up
was the rigger. The wire strop on one of the dinghy davits needed
replacing before we could lift up the dinghy,and the rigger could not make a new
one until Wednesday. That has been made,collected and
fitted.
The second hold-up
was the missing hatches. We had ordered new hatches direct from Gebo
in Holland and they had despatched them by TNT here. They were collected
from Customs by an agent here, but when we went to collect them from the office,
only two of the hatches were there. At first he was not interested in our
missing items, but then we said we were not paying his fee until he went back to
Customs to find out where the rest of the hatches were. This got his
attention and he went back to chase them up. In the meantime we contacted Gebo
and asked them to chase up TNT from their end. Eventually, it became clear
that the hatches were not in Antigua, and eventually on Friday we got an email
from Gebo saying they had just despatched two more. So then the question
was, do we wait around for them to arrive, or ask the marina to holdon to them
and collect them in nine months time when we come back this way (if, indeed,
they ever arrive)? We checked the parcel tracking service on Saturday
morning and it said they had left Heathrow that morning. So in theory they
should have been on the island by Saturday evening. We decided to wait
until today and ring the agent to see if they can be collected. He said he may
be able to get them tomorrow morning so we are waiting till
then.
The third hold-up
was Steve. He started to feel a bit giddy on Tuesday evening (no,not
alcohol-induced) and when he woke upon Wednesday morning he felt quite
rotten. Light-headed and nauseous. We went to see a doctor who diagnosed
vertigo, gave him some tablets and sent him for a battery of tests to make sure
it wasn't anything else. The results came back normal (well, as much as he
can be!) and he has been feeling a bit better with each passing day, but was not
too keen to go to sea feeling as he did.
The fourth hold-up
is the water inlet for the watermaker and the fridge. This is in the engine
compartment. Steve was taking off the pipe today to clean it out (in case
this was causing the fridge malfunction) and water started coming into the
boat. The connector has a crack in it. This connector is attached to a
hole in the bottom of the boat that we cannot shut off. He wrapped some
'magic' sealing tape around it and fortunately the leak has stopped, for
now. We cannot go to sea with the potential to spring a leak into the
engine room at any time, so we will have to stay to get it fixed
tomorrow. The guys are of the opinion that they can send a diver
under the boat to cover the hole and stop water coming in long
enough for the cracked connector to be replaced. The alternative is
that the boat will have to be hauled out of the water in order for it to be
fixed.
So...it remains to
be seen when we will eventually get away, but St Martin is the next stop.
It's about 100 nmiles from here,and we will therefore do an overnighter- our
first since the passage from Barbados to St Lucia.