Quite windy in Tyrell Bay (it always seems to be) and rains off and on through the night.
Today is an investigation, repair, restock day.
Turns out virtually NONE of the rope clutches actually hold the rope they’re supposed to. You can pull the rope through either way with the clutch down. The clutch for the outhaul has a broken spring so that has to be fixed before we can go anywhere by sail.
We go to the Carriacou Marine shop where we pay for our mooring ball and check out the chandlery. Not a lot there but at least has the putty knife I need to take the clutches off and turns out they are a depot for Island Water World – they can get any part IWW has in stock in 24 hours.
We go back to the boat to drop of our stuff before going for groceries.
So we’re standing in the cockpit getting ready to jump back in the dinghy when I notice we’re completely askant to all other boats around us.
Yeah, we’re drifting. Turns out I connected our mooring lines to a line on the ball, not the big steel loop itself, and that line just broke. We fire up the engine and get us stabilized and anchored. Imagine if we hadn’t gone back to the boat? Imagine if we had waited 5 minutes longer in the marina? I shudder to think. This is at least the third time we have been saved from big disaster through either dumb luck or divine intervention – we prefer the latter. There have been too many things happen that could have been disastrous that turned out to be non-events. Trying to be grateful every day.
Back on the boat I start taking apart the key clutch pair. (Chalk up another learning experience – as we both have said a few times – “OK, that’s enough learning for today.”) If I can make it work for the next 3 weeks then I don’t have to buy the part here which is almost 50% more than back home,
Also work on how to re-rig the dinghy davit lifters. We bought some rope rings the same as the old,, broken ones but we don’t have spare, braidable rope and I don’t really want to spend two days re-learning how to braid rope. Gonna hafta McGiver something to get us through.
We have planned every night to go ashore for pizza but every night it has rained, and, basically exhausted by 7 pm, we have elected to “stay home” rather than go out and spend money. Aside from me making coffee and boiling water, Christy has been doing ALL the cooking from breakfast to dinner. She has been doing an amazing job. The dollar store serving set and the world’s best frying pan (“Our Place” best ever) and coupla pots we bought have been sufficient so far./