by Judy Handley | Mar 16, 2011 | Caribbean - Grenada, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 143, Year 6 Bread, Granola, and Varnish
Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Weather: Partly Cloudy with Rain Sprinkles; Wind E 10-15 knots
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
It was another of those high energy days on Windbird and the mix of bread, granola, and varnish made for interesting day. We were totally out of granola this morning and had to have eggs and toast for breakfast. But having the toast wiped out the last of the bread, so making granola and bread got moved to the top of the TO DO list. I can’t believe we still have 54 of the 90 eggs we bought in South Africa. So having eggs for breakfast was not a problem. The eggs are now two months old and have not been refrigerated. Eggs in South Africa were not kept in a cooler in the supermarkets, so after buying the room temperature eggs, I coated them with Crisco and then turned them every couple of days. They are still good but the yolks are not as firm as they once were. I should mention that I now use Crisco instead of Vaseline to coat eggs. I had always used Vaseline until I met Lynne on Constance. She pointed out that Vaseline is a petroleum product and not all that desirable as a food additive. I agreed and switched to Crisco and the eggs have kept just as long as they did with Vaseline, maybe even longer.
So tonight, Windbird has two of four large containers of granola baked and ready to eat and three loaves of bread. That should last Mark, Steve, and I at least a couple of weeks. But tomorrow I will try to get the other two large containers of granola baked anyway. This morning I had trouble getting the oven to light and soon realized that the LP tank was empty. Mark switched to the second tank and we will get this one filled before we leave here. A twenty pound tank of LP gas usually lasts us about three months, so if we leave here with two tanks full, we won’t need to fill up again until September when we are back in the USA. And I’m not even sure we can get our old tanks filled there without some adaptations, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
I did about half of the remaining spring cleaning jobs and ended the day by varnishing the cockpit cap rail and the Dorade boxes. While I was baking, Mark did the sanding of the cap rail for me and then he went to shore and walked to Ace Hardware to buy the right kind of foam brushes that I use for varnishing. I bought a few foam brushed in South Africa but the foam looks like it will disintegrate easily, and that is not what you want to happen while varnishing. So Mark’s stainless cleaning got derailed today, but hopefully he can continue tomorrow.
This next part of this log is in answer to some questions asked by Rich Corbett who often posts on our blog. Rich has just bought a sailboat and his most recent questions have been about what to do about brightwork and stainless. Since that is what we are doing, I’ll kill two birds with one stone by answering Rich’s questions and explaining in detail the products we use. For cleaning stainless and cleaning rust stains on fiberglass we use Prism Polish which is a metal polish and fiberglass deoxidizer, so it cleans the stainless and the fiberglass at the same time. We first bought this at an Annapolis Boat Show, but it can be ordered online from www.mppros.com, and we swear by it as a stainless polish.
The question about how much teak you want to keep up with on a boat is a big one. When we left Boston, I had applied fifteen coats of varnish to our rubrail, our handrails, the Dorade boxes, and the cockpit cap rail. The amount of salt water that constantly abrades the rubrail made that impossible for me to keep up with, so the rubrail is now “natural” gray teak. The same is true of our handrails on the deck, but for different reasons. We constantly tie things down to the handrails, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not keep up with them. So they are also now “natural” gray teak. I targeted the Dorade boxes and the cockpit cap rail and things I could keep up with and at least once a year, and sometimes twice, I sand and apply three to five new coats of varnish to these pieces. We tried Cetol on our previous boat and didn’t care for the look, so for me it is either “au naturale” or varnish. And the varnish I use is Epifanes Clear High Gloss Varnish. If I were starting from raw wood, I would apply five coats of Epifanes Rapid Clear, and then go to the High Gloss Varnish. You do not have to sand between coats of Rapid Clear, but you do need to do a light hand sanding between coats of High Gloss Varnish. This varnish is incredibly tough.
I’ll end this log on a light note. I got an email from my sister-in-law Sue a couple of days ago that still has me chuckling. My friend Linda Stuart in Concord was a fifth grade teacher before becoming math coordinator for the school district. Linda is always saying “frickin this” and “frickin that”, so I know she’ll enjoy this joke. And just coming from A-frica, I enjoyed it as well.
A frickin Elephant: from the diary of a Pre-School Teacher
My five-year old students are learning to read. Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said, “Look at this! It’s a frickin’ elephant!” I took a deep breath, then asked…”What did you call it?” “It’s a frickin’ elephant! It says so on the picture!” And so it does…”A-f r i c a n Elephant. “
by Judy Handley | Mar 16, 2011 | Caribbean - Grenada, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 142, Year 6 Thinking of Michelle
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Weather: Mostly Sunny Day; Wind E 10-15 knots
Air Temperature: A Little Warmer Today, 76 – 84 degrees F
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
We have been waiting to hear the pathology report after Mark’s niece Michelle’s mastectomy last week. We read the report posted by Michelle’s husband Jim last night and then read Michelle’s “emotional side” post today on Caring Bridges. Since Michelle is posting there, I’m hoping she won’t mind my talking about her cancer in this log. The report reiterated that there was no cancer in the lymph nodes but went on to say that they are going to treat this aggressively and she will have chemo and possibly radiation. As she said, she always knew this was a possibility, but not until she got the actual report did it really hit her emotionally. But she is strong, and young, and beautiful on the inside as well as on the outside, and she will work her way through this. Michelle is an intensive care nurse, an avid tennis player, the mom of two teenage boys, and a wonderful wife and daughter. So now she, and all of us, just need to think positively and hope that a year from now, this will all be behind Michelle so she can move on through life an even stronger individual than she is today. Michelle, we love you and send our most positive thoughts your way today and every day.
Life aboard Windbird went a little slower today. I continued the spring cleaning process and Mark handled lines on Laelia to help Howard and Judy get their boat into the slipway to be taken out of the water. Laelia made it safely on land with only one little mishap where the wind blew them into the dock and they lost a metal piece on the rubrail. But that can be easily replaced. They then invited us to lunch at De Big Fish and tonight we are going to pick them up and we will have dinner here on Windbird. Tomorrow will be the last great push to get all the cleaning done inside Windbird so I can start the varnishing. The Dorade boxes are ready and waiting for that first coat of varnish and early tomorrow I will sand the teak piece that surrounds the cockpit. If the weather holds, I might get a coat of varnish on tomorrow, a second on Thursday, a third on Friday, and even a fourth on Saturday. But whatever gets done by Saturday is it. Steve arrives Saturday night and we will turn our attention to enjoying Grenada and the rest of the Caribbean as we sail northward. A little note about getting our headsail and staysail sun protective coverings replaced. The estimate for doing that was way more than we could afford. The price of Sunbrella is almost $30 a yard and we needed yards and yards. So we asked Johnny Sails to do what they could to patch things up. Those sails won’t be ready until Tuesday, so we are setting our departure from Grenada for Wednesday.
by Judy Handley | Mar 14, 2011 | Caribbean - Grenada, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 141, Year 6 Still Working Away
Date: Monday, March 14, 2011
Weather: Mostly Sunny Day; Wind E 10-15 knots
Air Temperature: Same, Same Everyday, 74 – 82 degrees F
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
I’m sitting here trying to figure out how such a small boat can take so long to clean. I am doing deep cleaning–washing the ceilings, walls, and floors, and reorganizing all of the storage cabinets–so I guess that explains part of it, but it still seems like we work for hours only to find we have hours more to do. And the laundry! Today I washed two beach towels, a queen-sized bed mattress cover, and a bed spread that had been used in the v-berth to protect the cushions. Add to that the normal laundry we accumulate in three or four days, and doing all this by hand takes me most of a morning. We did have time to get some boat maintenance work done. Mark sewed leather patches on our mainsail cover. Our original Doyle stack pack (mainsail cover) was replaced and redesigned in Langkawi. We love the redesigned cover, but it has one flaw. A stack pack cover is always up, even when you are sailing. You simply unzip it and raise the sail. But this one allows the cover to rub on the rigging when the mainsail is way out to one side of another when sailing downwind. And since that is the way we sailed for 44 days, holes were rubbed in the patches that Mark sewed on in South Africa. We are hoping that the leather he put on today is a little more durable. Mark also took off all the wooden Dorade boxes and stainless cowl vents. I got the stainless vents cleaned and the Dorade boxes sanded and ready to varnish. Mark also got the piece of teak today that we need to replace the top of the one Dorade that went overboard. He got that piece glued on and has started shaving the edges to make it match the other Dorades. I attacked the galley today and cleaned out the pot and pan storage area. I scrubbed the bottoms of all the stainless pots, so they are nice and shiny again. I also rolled up the long carpet runner that has been in our main cabin for the past five and half years. It was in place to protect the teak and holly flooring that we varnished before leaving Boston. But it has done its job and is going in the trash. We will have bare floors for now which are much easier to keep clean, so that’s a good thing.
Tomorrow morning I will drop Mark off on Laelia so he can help handle lines when they go into Spice Island Marine to be hauled out of the water. I will then take the dinghy to Spice Island Marine to pick him up once Laelia is out of the water. In the meantime, I will finish cleaning the main cabin and galley and get a first coat of varnish on those Dorade boxes. And then I’ll take the afternoon off cleaning to fix dinner. We have invited Howard and Judy for dinner to celebrate their successful haul-out Fixing dinner won’t take all afternoon, but the evening will start early as we have to go in to pick them up and take them home afterwards.
We heard from our friends Patsy and Eric Decker that their son Warren and family were not affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. That was good news. But then we thought of our friends Jean-Pierre and Colette of Safina who, last time we heard from them, were headed to Japan on their way back to the USA via the great circle route. We will email them tonight and hope that they are safe.
by Judy Handley | Mar 13, 2011 | Caribbean - Grenada, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 140, Year 6 Sunday, But Not a Day of Rest
Date: Sunday, March 13, 2011
Weather: Sunny Day; Wind NE 15 knots
Air Temperature: Same, Same Everyday, 74 – 82 degrees F
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
We did it again. We managed to work away another entire day. But we are making progress, so it feels good. Mark worked on a number of small projects. He fixed a leak in forward head sink, cleaned more stainless on deck, cut new line for tie-downs for our jerry cans, put new water filters in the fresh water supply, reworked the old bracket for our alternator to make it more secure, lashed the ends of a few lines to keep them from fraying, and reinstalled cleats on the new stays. He also worked on raising our StrongTrack a couple of inches. This is a Teflon track that slides into the track on our mast for the mainsail. The Teflon makes raising and lowering the main easier. It needed to be raised to make it easier to remove and re-install the main sail slides when we put the mainsail back on. I cleaned the cockpit and surrounding canvas, cleaned the v-berth area top to bottom, cleaned the forward head top to bottom, and worked on cleaning parts of the main cabin. The number of louvered doors slows this process immensely, but little by little the spring cleaning and repairs on Windbird are coming right along.
I haven’t mentioned anything about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan but we certainly have been thinking about the people there. We have good friends whose son and family live in Japan and we hope that they are safe. It was an unbelievably strong earthquake that has actually altered the Earth’s rotation. The earthquake in Sumatra in 2004 did the same. This reminds us just how much we are at the mercy of Mother Nature.
by Judy Handley | Mar 12, 2011 | Caribbean - Grenada, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 139, Year 6 Productive Saturday
Date: Saturday, March 12, 2011
Weather: Sunny Day; Wind NE 10-15 knots
Air Temperature: Same, Same Everyday, 74 – 82 degrees F
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
We were up early this morning to get our headsail and staysail down before the winds build. During the night, the winds die down and then start up again as soon as the sun is up, but at 6 am things are pretty calm. So we did successfully take down the two sails. We wanted to put up the mainsail that we got back yesterday, but it got too windy before we could get that done. We’ll try again at 6 am tomorrow morning.
We did a few things on Windbird and then headed into De Big Fish restaurant at Spice Island Marine to make Skype calls. We first called Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah. We had a good connection and got to see the boys in action. Sam told us about a Central and South American eagle, the Harpy Eagle, that he is learning about in preschool. He also showed us his new toy model of Alvin, an underwater research vessel. Heather said they had to use bath colors to turn the bath water blue so Alvin could do a little bathtub research! Jonah is a delightful “almost” two year-old. Like Ziggy yesterday, he would point to us on the computer screen and call us by name. And instead of oranges and bananas like Ziggy, Jonah decided to feed us strawberries this morning which got a bit messy on the computer monitor. We have 42 more days before we see Ziggy, Jonah, and Sam on the beach in Vieques in Puerto Rico and we just can’t wait. We next called my sister Patsy and her husband Joe, but unfortunately a lot of people started arriving at the restaurant to watch a rugby match. The speakers were booming so loud that I could hardly hear Patsy, so I put on my headset. But unfortunately the headsets decided to finally bite the dust this morning. There has been a short in the wires for months, but today I just couldn’t wiggle anything to make them work. So our conversation was cut short. We’ll try again in a few days when we can hopefully get our wifi booster working so we can call from the boat.
From De Big Fish in the NW corner of Prickly Bay we zoomed over to Prickly Bay Marina on the E side to deliver our headsail and staysail to Douglas of Johnny Sails. We had hoped he could give us an on-the-spot estimate for replacing the Sunbrella edging on the sails, but he said he needed to take the sails to inspect them and will call us on Monday. We’re a little nervous about that this job will be too expensive, so we are thinking of alternatives “just in case.” From Prickly Bay Marina we took the dinghy back over to Spice Island Marine so we could walk to The Blue Machine, the name of the ATM out on the main road, and get a new money supply. We paid cash for the mainsail repairs and that basically wiped us out. It is probably a little less than a mile from the De Big Fish to The Blue Machine. It is along a main road, but there is a sidewalk that makes the walk safe considering the amount of traffic. We stopped at Ace Hardware on the way to buy some replacement Dremel cutting discs, walked on to The Blue Machine, and then back to Spice Island Marine. There are a number of other small businesses and the Carib Brewery along the way. Carib is one of the main beers of the southern part of the Caribbean and our favorite. We were pretty blown away with the things available in the Ace Hardware. It is just like being back home.
This afternoon I worked at starting to return a few very delinquent emails and Mark chipped away at cleaning the stainless. His brother Steve is the best stainless cleaner ever, but Mark is determined to not leave much for him to do this time. I guess we’ll just have to focus on having fun!
by Judy Handley | Mar 11, 2011 | Caribbean - Grenada, Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 138, Year 6 Disappearing Time
Date: Friday, March 11, 2011
Weather: Cloudy with Periods of Sunshine; Wind N-NE 10-15 knots
Air Temperature: Same, Same Everyday, 74 – 82 degrees F
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
We’re really not sure where the time is going, but it is surely passing by quickly. I have SO many emails that I have needed to return for days now, and somehow the time never comes when I can get to that. So if you are wondering why I haven’t returned your email it is because I can’t seem to get there from here. Today was all about getting the new rigging up, getting the repaired mainsail, doing a little cleaning, and talking to Justin, Jo, and Ziggy on Skype. And then we ended the day at Prickly Bay Marina listening to a steel drum band in company with Judy and Howard of Laelia.
Every morning we listen to the local cruiser’s net at 7:30 pm to find out what is happening in this area. Today we learned about the tsunami in Japan. We haven’t heard an update but will get that when we log on to send this log. Next we checked our incoming email and learned from my sister that our daughter was featured in an interview on PBS’s News Hour about the health affects of wind turbines on those who live close to their installations. Evidently this is a hot, hot issue as her website has been swamped. We did talk to her briefly last night but the connection was really bad. All we understood from her was that this had been a VERY busy work week due to a hot button story and that she has been a single mom all week as her husband Jed has been in DC at a conference. It was exciting this morning to see the interview (www.climatide.org). No sooner had we watched that than the rigger’s arrived. They took down one aft lower from one side of the boat and one forward lower from the other side and then left with a promise of returning in an hour and half. At this point we gave up the thought of going to St. George’s today. That will just have to wait until all of this work gets done. I washed the cockpit side curtains in anticipation of storing some of them and just being able to see more clearly out of the remaining curtains. Before I could finish that job, the riggers returned. We now have all new aft and forward lowers to the tune of approximately $800 US.
In the early afternoon, we packed up my computer with camera and headset for using with Skype and went to De Big Fish to see if the connection is better from there for Skype calls. It is definitely better than from here, but still not perfect. Regardless, we had a great call with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy. Ziggy did his best to put on a spectacular show for us. When he first saw us on video, he almost instantly asked for an orange. We aren’t certain, but it sure seemed like he was remembering a previous call with us when he tried to feed us an orange through the computer screen. We happened to have some tangerines nearby, and as soon as he offered the orange, we pick up a tangerine and started eating it, thanking him for the delivery. Since we had no oranges in the restaurant today, we could not reciprocate, so he moved on to offer us a banana. He played the harmonica for us as well as a tambourine. He seems to be quite the party guy and loves to yell, “Par-TEE.” We think most assuredly that Justin and Jo are going to have their hands full over the next few years.
No sooner was our call over with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy than it was time to head to Prickly Bay Marina to meet Johnny Sails for the delivery of our repaired mainsail. The sail looked great and we are very pleased with the repairs. We stuck around for Happy Hour with Judy and Howard of Laelia and then ended up staying even later to listen to a local steel drum band and to have a pizza dinner before returning to Windbird in the dark. The steel drum band was fabulous and played everything from the John Lennon’s Imagine to the Hallelujah Chorus.
Tomorrow morning we go in early to have a Skype video call with Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah, but not before taking down the headsail and staysail to take them in to have new Sunbrella sun protections strips put on by Johnny Sails. One of these days we’ll make it to St. George’s, just not this weekend.
