How does this sailing thing go again?

17/10/18 Grenada

The colour of one’s urine is always a good indication of one’s state of hydration and on the morning of my arrival in Grenada, mine was dark orange. I hastily downed 3 cups of water and 10 minutes later promptly regurgitated them, for no apparent reason, other than perhaps shock to the system or a delayed reaction to the calamitous overnight sail here. 

I certainly should have been seasick on that testing sail, but was pleasantly surprised, believing that the ginger root drink I had prepared had staved it off.

Being the first sail after months on the hardstand in Trinidad, things were bound to go wrong. I could list them:

1. Casting off the mooring, one of my thongs went overboard. (I was wearing them to keep the bandage on my sprained ankle dry).
2. Retrieving the deeply buried boathook from the cockpit locker (in semi panic as Shanti drifts back toward the boat behind), the hook catches on fridge wiring and pulls it out.
3. “Tilly”, the tiller pilot, notices the shiny new red ropes on “Min”, the wind pilot, and decides to retire. This is a critical piece of equipment, which is why I carry a spare.
4. Ripping into the sub-bunk black hole, (in semi panic as we become a “vessel not under command”), hauling out everything that’s so neatly stowed there, I unearth the large bubble-wrapped, unopened box, housing who? -  “Tilly 2?”
5. “Tilly 2” is a darker-skinned version of her forebear, and untested.  Now, I ask you, who in their right mind, doesn’t pre-test?
6. Recalcitrant, petulant, obstinate, or perhaps just comically whimsical, “Tilly 2” wants to steer Shanti round in circles. That’s OK, I have known such things to be necessary with new autopilots. It's called “swinging the compass”, so the inbuilt fluxgate compass can get its bearings. Just annoying right at this moment, with all the large steel vessels moored nearby.
7. After 3 more circles, I say, “enough already!  Let’s just get going”, but she won’t oblige. (Not her fault; I haven’t given the instructions more than a glazed glance, and later discover she needs an extension push rod). So I toss her back down below, grab a can of WD40, spray “Tilly 1”’s connection points and give her another chance.  This yields a last gasp of about half an hour before all function lights finally fade into autopilot oblivion.

The sea-state outside of the Bocas is lumpy in the breathless afternoon, so “Janis”, the trusty Yanmar “steel spinnaker” must pitch and roll us through this slop. “At least she’s working,” I think, followed quickly by, “Don’t tempt fate!”

The current is pushing strongly West, so we must push against it to avoid ending up in Venezuela. I try not to clench my jaw, my neck, or anything else, contemplating this precarious situation of no wind and a long-idle engine, whose every variance in pitch causes me alarm.

One of the 6 worst things of single-handing is enforced steering, with no autopilot. Being stuck at the helm is said by some to be the maritime version of wearing a ball and chain. There’s probably more of a psychological aspect to this than the physical restraint warrants, but I certainly felt uncomfortably fettered, being harnessed to the jerking tiller as each wave tried to yank it from my hand. Of course it’s possible to lash it momentarily or simply abandon it in order to dash below to check the course.

8.  It was on one of such frantic forays below that I discovered failure  #8: the usual icon of a little red boat on the electronic chart was conspicuously absent. I still had the iPad running Navionics, so all was not completely lost; but the computer has other important functions, such as showing the AIS positions of other vessels that might be on an imminent collision course. After jiggling the USB hub that brings information from 4 sources into the laptop, switching things off and on again, and so forth, I suddenly remembered the new barge board which had been unceremoniously shoved aboard just prior to launching.  Its impenetrable lumber thickness now sat lashed to the cabin-top handrails, practically directly above the GPS mouse below. “Voila!” I thought and scrambled up on deck to reposition it. But alas, brilliant as that deduction might have been, the little red ship icon continued to be AWOL.
9.  No problem, I thought. The hefty, first-response, emergency, field-service “Toughbook” computer that had crashed somewhere mid-Indian ocean had since been revived, so I fired that up. Yes! Ship’s position on chart registered; course and AIS lacking.  A bit more downstairs time required. Please stop rollering round in circles Shanti - and heading back from whence we came is not helpful.

10. And so we motored on, until eventually, just after a scarlet sunset, a mirage-like rainbow and a brief deluge, a thick curtain of darkness wrapped the world up and packed it away out of sight. The wind came and “Janis” was hushed - always a peaceful moment - except at this time, for “Blewy”, who was whirling like a turbo-charged demented dervish, making, or so I believed, mega-amps of wonderful power. However, on checking the digital readout on the charge controller, I discovered, zilch, zip, zero input. Why??

11.  Screaming like a banshee, or jet engine, or wind-generator, there went “Blewy”, making all that unconscionable commotion for no power production. The battery monitor showed 12.2 volts and draining.  Somehow her wires had let go.

12.  And then, as if becoming suddenly aware of her disgraceful performance, “Blewy” did an Isadora Duncan, wrapping the hobbling-string round her neck and thwacking to a strangled halt. Ah, peace at last.

Now it was “Min’s” turn to shine. It would have been preferable to test the rebuilt Fleming self-steering wind vane in daylight, and there was not even the sliverest sliver or a shimmering shaving of the outermost rim of a new moon to prick the clouds. Nonetheless, with the breeze building and veering north-east, for the first time, something untested seemed to be playing the game.

Tired as I was, the most I could trust leaving everything to its own devices at this stage was only 10 minutes.  There were interesting distractions. A pod of dolphins sheered up some sparkling luminescence in their wake and before long, the brilliant stella-nova-lights of the gas drilling pods lit the horizon. I aimed to sail between them, holding my Easting as much as possible, but an American service ship was directly in my path, moving at 2 knots to the East, and it seemed prudent to pass behind it.

            13. This was a big mistake, which I didn’t realize until later. At around 0500, my course over ground showed the full extent of the current, which had practically swept me beyond making any possible landfall on Grenada. At the same time, the ebb tide added a further 2 knots to the West, and the wind went to the Northeast.  All of which meant that even with “Janis” fully roused and roaring, the headway was scarcely 2-3 knots, punching into a short, sharp 2 metre chop and once again tied to the “wheel”.



The black line is the intended course; the yellow line is my actual track.

This circus ride went on for about another 9 hours, until finally the reef-bound pass into the anchorage at Hog Island was breasted. It’s been a long while since I felt such a tremendous sense of relief at reaching a safe harbour, reminding me of the struggle up the east coast of Australia and other coastal passages, where time and tide wait for no-one.

Hog Island and the encircling reefs make this a very secure hurricane hole, and definitely not a place to enter in the dark.  There are literally dozens of boats packed cheek to jowl, rather like the crowded “Bum’s Bay” at Southport, Queensland, only multiplied tenfold. More than 80% of the vessels on moorings here are unoccupied, some, like the one that gave me a scary nudge early one morning, are semi-abandoned wrecks.

As in Trinidad, there’s plenty to do here - local farmers’ markets, cheap meals at the Rum bar, arts and crafts markets, live music beach parties.  A funny sight was a group of cruisers cooling off with a circle of seats in waist-deep water.

Yesterday, a few of us arranged a private bus tour of the island, with a very informative local guide by the name of Cutty. This filled in some of the gaping gaps in my knowledge of Grenada, as well as taking in the spectacular scenery of the interior, that we yachties seldom see.

Feeling cool-ish for the first time in ages.

The highlights were the Annandale waterfalls, the Rivers rum distillery and the boutique Grenada organic chocolate factory. Not quite to the same scale as Bundaberg or the Cadbury’s factory but impressive in their hand-crafted quality.

Hand-wrapping 7,000 blocks of chocolate a day.

Sugar-free and bitter.

The Rivers Rum factory has 80 employees and is operating pretty much as it did 170 years ago, using the original paddle wheel from England,. This is turned by the powerful cascade of river water, which is fed by the mountains' 140" annual rainfall. Their big claim to fame is the natural fermentation process which guarantees no hangover. Hmmmm. Somehow I doubt that would be the case for me.

Vats of sugar cane juice being heated.

We had an excellent young Venezuelan guide, extolling the hangover free virtues of Rivers rum.  We had a few free shots, but I would need a little more  asbestos lining to my palate to tolerate the burn.

While I'm yet to acquire the taste for the local tipple, the tiny sip I had seemed smooth enough and I bought a couple of bottles of the 73% proof firewater for gifts.

 I’ll stick to the occasional spritzer - cool white wine with soda water.  

The greatest thrill after getting settled here was finding a resident yachtie who was able to re-gas my fridge in less than 5 minutes. Yay! The small pleasures of life.

Full praise also to my German friends, Wolfgang and Klaus, who resurrected “Blewy”, the wind-generator. As suspected, the cables had come adrift, so an easy fix. She’s humming away to my favourite amp-loading tune, keeping the fridge going day and night.  Fridge and power! What more could you ask for?

Happy hour with iced wine and freshly baked cheese and coconut oil scones on board Shanti.

Klaus sailing away to meet up with his girlfriend in Martinique