Pretty quiet night at Clarke’s – we thought we’d hear the blasting from Nimrod’s but although we could hear a bit of music, it was very faint. Fairly calm winds overnight too so pretty comfortable yet not too hot.
I rouse Christy at 6:30 am as the winds are low and it’s a good time to take down the genoa. It’s difficult to unfurl since the furling rope is a bit short, after removing the stopper not we get the sail completely out and flapping in the growing breeze.
No way we can pull it down, it will not budge in the sleeve. Furl it back up and I go see Damian when 8 am rolls around. He reckons the halyard has wrapped around the furler and he’ll have to go back up. He’ll come by on his lunch hour.
Fabien comes by to finish up his bit of work and shows me a few things on the Victron system. We have 2×400 watts of solar panel power so we should be seeing 6-700 watts of generation on a sunny day. He’s also not happy with the drawdown on our battery bank. I think that when we had the old solar system we put a lot of strain on the bank and sometimes drew them down too much. That’s not so good on AGM. We should be fine for another year or two though. Will probably have to replace them this time 2027.
Silvio’s guys also finish up in the morning, they did a great job and we give them an EC$100 tip as they drive away, they are very happy with this.
Damian and his helper come by on their lunch break since they are doing this work on the side. Damian goes up, unravels the top of the foresail halyard and strings a line through the mast and the proper sheave so we can pull up a new halyard when we are ready. Christy wants to rerun the old halyard but maybe a false economy, we’ll see. Don’t have to do anything until next fall.
Another EC$600 cash gone but they also bring down the Genoa, flake, fold and stuff it in the bag for us. Nice to learn how to do it properly! They got it all done in an hour which would have taken me 3 so that is good too,
They depart. Christy and I dinghy across the bay to Treasure Trove, trying to find the gizmos that broke in the cockpit that hold the ropes together. No dice. We’ve tried every chandlery from Martinique to Grenada and no luck so perhaps we’ll have to look at Beneteau sites. They do have used scuba gear but we’re not sure we trust their stuff.
Back on the dock we pay our bill at Clarke’s office and enquire about haul-out in October. The lift is completely booked until November 18! That’s way too late for us and although they hint that Jose maybe able to fit us in (I’m sure he would) We’d like something a little more certain. We’ll try Spice Island.
Time to go, we leave the dock with dinghy in tow quite well in spite of the usual stiff breeze. We motor over to Mt. Hartman taking the shortcut again and manage to pick up George’s mooring without issue – my tie job with a spare fender worked fine.