St Martin - Sundowners and maintenance
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St Martin - Sundowners and maintenance “18:04.076N 63:05.861W” 5486 Miles since leaving Sandwich. 12th March 2023 As I started to write this a dinghy that was motoring across the bay suddenly changed its course to come alongside just to say, “Good morning and you have a very nice boot”, (Canadian). Nice way to start the day that, especially as I have been in maintenance mode for the last few days and really needed someone to tell name the boat was looking good, shallow I know but you surely have to admire my honesty. We have been in Marigot Bay, St Martin for a week now and apart from the anchor tripping out one night it has been a pretty peaceful stopover. This isn’t the prettiest island in the Caribbean but it is the place to be to get bits and fix things. Straddling the French and Dutch border that divides this island is a large saltwater lagoon which has lifting bridges and short canals at each end to allow yachts to enter or leave. The lagoon itself is ringed by marinas, restaurants, chandleries, and maintenances yards of all descriptions which has made it the centre for boat repair in these here parts. It is also, or so it would seem, the place that old boats come to die. The lagoon on the French side is absolutely littered with dismasted project or past caring boats of all shapes and sizes. We anchored in Marigot bay rather than Simpsons Bay on the Dutch side as the French customs/Immigration process is just so easy. Inside the Island Water World chandlery tucked away in a corner is a computer terminal, 10 minutes putting in the relevant details plus a fee of €2 each and we were in. While Norma got on with the admin, I perused the shelves lusting after all of the shiny boaty bits on display and was soon engaged in a lengthy discussion about bilge pumps and solar panels, absolute heaven for me. I was only stopped from blowing the kids inheritance in one afternoon by Norma introducing two Kiwis to me who she had made friends with at the immigration terminal. The brothers Roderick (Roddy) and Simon are long term fly fishing around the world in a very nice Halberg Rassay, and yes you read that right, what an eclectic bunch of people you meet on your travels. I got a bit ahead of myself there as even Norma couldn’t have got that much information in 10 minutes, what actually happened was that we accepted an offer for sundowners on their boat a couple of days later and a very good time was had by all. We watched the sun go down and then carried on socialising for several hours afterwards, it was definitely a bit of a wobbly course that I set as we meandered our way back to Spectra in the dinghy much, much, later than the sun actually went to bed. Back on subject, maintenance or more precisely what have I broken now?
In a completely different order, while in Island Water World, French side, I purchased 3 meters of 38 mm toilet hose. This is now coiled up in the forward cabin awaiting me building up the will power and to gird my loins before taking the toilet apart again. My loins remain thoroughly ungirded at present leaving that as a job for the future. On our second day we put putted through the canal into the lagoon and made our way over to the much larger chandleries on the Dutch side. This was a journey of about 1.5 miles which definitely convinced us that our dinghy outboard combo was a tadge on the small side. We arrived with the obligatory soggy bottoms and looked at lots of dinghy and outboards in Budget Marine, Yamaha, and Island Water World. Here is the snag, ease of use in the water and general zoom, zoominess, points us towards dinghies with rigid floors, but the practicality of stowing the beast for long offshore passages pushes us towards the inflatable roll away air deck variants. The price for dinghy and outboard is coming in at about €4000 for the air deck and €5000 for the rigid bottoms, decisions, decisions. We have talked about this an awful lot and just can’t come up with a definite choice and so have decided to park that one for a while and see how we get on. Another factor is that I am pretty sure that even without the tax-free discounts on offer here, we can still get a better deal in America or Canada. At the moment our little put, put, will just have to do. I carry a spare water pump which would do the aft bilge just perfectly but of course this is a boat and so the pipe fittings are all wrong. After an exhaustive search through the end fittings bins in the chandleries I managed to get a fitting that would fit my replacement pump output/input 1” and then fit the pipes on each side 32mm and 38 mm respectively. On that note, even though these are European islands just about everything is measured in imperial and priced in dollars so you can guess who the big spenders are. Anyway, after a lot of head scratching I found what I needed and carried it back to the boat. Of course I had got it all back to front and it wouldn’t fit, oh how I laughed. Not to be dismayed I did manage to add another bit of plumbing from Spectra’s spares locker to each side of the pump and it worked. Not pretty but it worked. When I tried to test it, I discovered that I had no water in the aft bilge anyway which is a good thing I suppose. What I had to do was take a pipe off one of the seacocks letting the ocean in and flooding the bilge just so that I could then test that the replacement pump was capably of pumping it all out again. As we are still afloat I can say with confidence that it did work and another job has been ticked off the list.
One dead water pump on the saloon table.
And a Heath Robinson repair to fit a replacement. It’s not pretty but it works. While on our travels to various chandleries I met Renne who is a top-notch salesman at Island Water World on the Dutch side. A long-term cruiser he and his wife have spent a lot of time in the Pacific, and he shared a link to his website which has a plethora of information on that cruising ground. He also invited us to a talk that he was giving on cruising the Pacific with Beer and BBQ on Saturday afternoon which we put straight into our things to do diaries. As I said he was also a very good salesman and although he didn’t manage to close the deal on the dinghy and outboard, he did sell us two solar panels, brackets for the rails and electrical thingy-ma-jigs to connect it all up. Double bonus he also arranged, at no extra cost, for their guys to deliver the whole lot to Spectra on her anchorage by delivery boat, which brings me rather neatly to where I stopped the last episode. The delivery arrived a 1630 which by anyone’s standards was pretty late for a 0900 to 1000 time slot. To cut them some slack the sea was pretty rough and a big swell was making the entrance to the canal very ugly. In fact, the driver said he had come out that morning but after taking one look at the white water in the canal entrance decided not to bother. Anyway, all’s well that ends well and after an exciting handover of goods in the 1 meter swell we had all of the bits on board that I needed to mount the solar panels onto the aft rails. I have been unsuccessfully trying to purchase the same make and model of solar panels even to the point of contacting the manufacturer, in China of course, but it would seem that the model I have is only supplied to the UK and I had to finally give up on that idea. I have however purchased very similar ones but as they are not exact in look as well as output, I had to reconfigure my existing panels before I could fit the new ones. I took both of the old panels off and then built a new solid rail on both sides of Spectra. Once this was done, I could put the pair of existing panels on the starboard side aft, one behind the other, and then mount the two new ones on the port aft side also one behind the other. Each pair of panels was then connected in series which doubled their voltage output and then both pairs of panels were connected in parallel to the solar charger and combined into the battery bank which doubled the current output. I am pleased to say that the average voltage in has doubled and the current is peaking at 15 amps which is where the limiter on the solar charger engages. Last night we had the fridge and freezer switched on plus two battery chargers for power tools and the panels covered that output without any issue. I switched the chargers off when they had finished and also switched the fridge off overnight leaving just the freezer working. This morning I as soon as the sun came up I switched the fridge back on and the solar panels have not only handled that load but have also recharged the main battery banks as well. All in all, it’s been a success story so far and I am smiling like the proverbial Cheshire cat.
Old Panels removed.
From both sides
New frame work fitted.
Old panels fitted to Starboard in series. I need a solid pole to replace the two parts that I have used here, That will make it neater and more solid.
New Panels fitted to the Port side also in series.
This is the output / Input when the two pairs are connected in parallel to the solar battery charger.
Cold Beer and Frozen meat all without the noisy, heavy and smelly generator helping out = Happy days Prior to the upgrade the most that I ever got out of the panels in a 24 hr period was 960 watts in the last 24 hours the new panel setup has produced 1.63KW which is all very encouraging. On Friday night we had a vicious swell work its way into the anchorage along with continuous wind shifts as a whole series of squalls came through the packed boats. At 0200 in the morning I was awoken by a horn blasting and a flashing light shining on the deckhead. Jumping out of bed we both rushed up to the cockpit and found that we had drifted far too close to the German yacht behind us. The nice chap in the German yacht shouted across, “I think you are slipping your anchor” and indeed we were or at least had been. I surmise that with all of the turning in the squalls Spectra had wound a loop in her chain which had worked its way down to the anchor and tripped it out of the sand. We had held the same position for three days and there was no reason to think the anchor had just popped out. Actually, it had reset itself and we had stopped our backwards trajectory but with only 15 meters between us and the yacht behind we really had to move. Up came the anchor and it was clean of any weed or debris which kind of confirms my conjecture. It was a simple matter of moving 50 meters or so off to the side and redropping 40 meters of chain and we were soon settled in again. After sitting in the cockpit with a cup of tea for half an hour watching the other boats bouncing up and down I was comfortable with the situation and went back to bed. It was only in the morning that I discovered that Norma could not settle down again and had got back up and spent the night in the cockpit keeping an eye on things, bless her little cotton socks. It was a very tired Norma that met me at 0630 when I came up into the cockpit again. As it happened, we had not moved an inch, but it never hurts to check. The swell continued throughout Saturday leaving a wall of white water at the canal entrance making dinghy passage unsafe. It was a shame, but discretion got the better part of valour (plus Norma was very tired) and we decided to give the talk on the Pacific cruising over on the Dutch side a miss. Finally, Starlink. Renne, great salesman that he is, gave me some good advice when I asked if he knew anything about it. Apparently, Mike who runs the Shrimpy launderette at the Canal front on the French side is the man to talk to. We put putted over to the Shrimpy laundry and met up with Mike, a very cheerful and profoundly rotund chap who was engrossed in a cooking programme on the television while his very harassed looking wife actually ran the laundry. We mentioned Starlink and he immediately gave us his card, “put that down as your address for delivery care of your boat name and it will be delivered here”, he said. He also mentioned that it was only 90 euro per month in St Martin and 450 euro to purchase which is considerably cheaper than the website gave us for purchase and connectivity in America. Leaving the Shrimpy laundry via the back entrance where the dinghy dock is we espied Roddy and Mike in their bashed-up dinghy, affectionately called granny, motoring past. We gave them a hail and they pointed to Carols bar all of 15 meters along the dinghy dock. We walked straight into a very friendly yachty watering hole where they joined us for an afternoon meeting of minds. The lovely Carol soon had me connected to Wi-Fi via her iphone and as we downed a few beers I ordered the Starlink RV package which Mr Musk should deliver in 2 to 4 weeks. Mike will receive and hold it for us and all for the princely sum of 10 dollars. This, when combined with our newfound power from the solar panels, will enable us to get full broadband up and down the coastline of the Americas and of course through the Caribbean and the Bahamas chain. Video calls back home will be back on the cards again but this time from the boat and not only when we are in marinas. Some people even use it on the move, but we will have to wait and see how good that actually is on a keel boat and how much power it burns with the aerial actively tracking all of the time. This means that we are a bit stuck in this locality for a while. Tomorrow, we plan to check out of St Martin and go to Anguilla for a few days to visit Elvis’s bar. Apparently, it was destroyed by a hurricane a few years ago and has since been rebuilt in the same spot on the beach. We can only hope that the great atmosphere that the place had when we visited in 2015 has also been rebuilt. After that we will come back over here and wait on Mr Musk to deliver our package before continuing the odyssey Northwards. Until next time see yall! |
