Green Island - and a broken portlight
Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Sat 22 Dec 2012 17:57
09:28.816N 78:38.083W
Saturday 22nd December 2012
Distance run: 10 nmiles
After a peaceful night at Isla Tigre, we lifted the
anchor around 0930, once the shoals and reefs were visible, and picked our way
carefully out of the anchorage. We had learnt a valuable lesson the day
before - don't leave the forward-looking sonar on automatic! In this mode
the distance ahead that it is displaying reduces automatically as the depth
decreases. The upshot of this on the way in was that it
showed that we would go aground about five seconds before we did! So
we took it off auto and had it set to see well ahead as we left which
seemed to work much better as we changed course twice to avoid shallow
water.
We motorsailed with the yankee up and arrived at
the Green Island anchorage before noon. There were already seven boats
here, but still plenty of room for us. There is deep water all the way in,
except for the sand bar at the entrance, and we are anchored in 10 metres of
water. It is a lovely anchorage off an uninhabited island, and we had
planned to spend a couple of days here, swimming, snorkelling and exploring the
island, but we are still here four days later. It is a very calm and
sheltered anchorage, which is just as well because the weather has been horrid
for the last two days. Normally it is overcast in the morning and clears
by lunchtime, but the dark clouds, wind and rain have been constant. So we
have been chilling out on the boat, which is nice, but no swimming, snorkelling
etc.
Yesterday a Kuna boat came around selling fruit and
veg, and as we are getting short of fresh stuff we waved them over. Big
mistake. This dugout was enormous and had an outboard engine on it - and
the guy driving was incompetent. As he approached us he lost control of it
in the wind and ended up T-boning us at speed. The prow of the dugout
smashed into our port forward saloon portlight and broke it.
The broken portlight from
outside.
And
from the inside - see how the Perspex has been pushed inwards.
The prow of the Kuna boat that hit the
portlight.
This was definitely not good news as the portlight
is in the hull of the boat and was now not watertight. To their credit,
the Kuna guys accepted responsibilty and agreed that they should pay towards the
repair, but we are in the middle of nowhere and now need to make the boat safe
for sea. We suggested a nominal $100, which they agreed to, but only had
£20 with them and will bring the rest on Tuesday. We will see. We
may have moved on by then. In any case the cost of repair is likely to be
five times that much if we have to replace the whole portlight. We are hoping
once we get to Shelter Bay Marina we might be able to get a piece of perspex cut
and just replace that. Fingers crossed....
Rod came over to take a look, and we
decided we needed to cover it with a wooden blank on the outside of the
boat to stop water pushing against the glass. He took a template and as he
has a jigsaw was able to cut a piece of thick plywood to shape to cover the
glass. He bevelled the edges so that the blank cannot be pushed through
into the boat. This was then stuck in place with silicone
adhesive and has been left for 24-48 hours to cure, before testing it
to see if further fixing will be necessary.
As they say in the cruising world - another shit
day in paradise.....