One week later-And we are drying out
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One week later-And we are drying out “32:22.80N 64:40.53W” 7008 Miles since leaving Sandwich. 18th June 2023 A week has passed since our dramatic arrival and I have again been remiss in updating the blog. In my defence I have been rather busy and in a lot of pain from my ribs, back and shoulder all of which decided
to start hurting once the adrenaline levels had dropped. We have had two birthdays aboard; my granddaughter Lily has completed her final GCSE exam and got her first job back in England and life goes on. I think I will concentrate this section to what has happened
regarding Spectra and then write about what we have been doing ashore in Nova Scotia. After mooring Spectra and saying goodbye to the heroes from the Earl Gray we took stock of the situation. Spectra was absolutely trashed. Everything, and I mean everything, was soaking wet, water was steadily
dripping through the ceiling around the mast area wet clothes and bits of boat equipment were scattered all over the boat and half of the floor hatches had been lifted in our search for leaks. We were very, very cold, and just as trashed as the boat. As the
adrenaline subsided all of the aches and pains returned with a vengeance, Norma was limping badly on her twisted ankle, Tony had started shivering again and everything from my waist to neck was sending sharp pains up to my brain every time that I moved. We
shoved things into heaps, found a set of dry clothes each and then went to bed. Note even when the bedding is damp it warms up enough to let you sleep if you are tired enough. Four hours later we surfaced and began the big clean up. I must note here that the
marina manager Erin has been absolutely wonderful throughout. When we went up to the office she gently took us through the customs process, (all on the phone) and welcomed us to Shelburne. Norma took armfuls of clothing and blankets up to the office and commandeered
the dryers to give us something dry to wear. Erin contacted Brad the ex-Commodore of the yacht club who came down with an extension lead and hot air blower so that we could begin to dry the boat out. An immediate problem was that Shelburne being a small marina
have no 220v 50-amp electricity sockets and only 110v 30-amp ones available. We carry a step-up transformer to cover this problem but of course that had been soaked with sea water and blew up as soon as we plugged it in. By the end of the day we had dry clothes
and a warm boat at least. The cushions and mattresses were still all damp but things were definitely improving, to celebrate we went ashore and tried the local delicacy of Poutine (French fries gravy and curds). Hardly haute cuisine but it hit the spot, right
time right place, empty stomach, hot and easy. Day two and the proper clean up got under way. Tony and myself sorted the boat out as best we could. We pulled the foresail and stay sail down and laid them out to dry. Norma piled up a second and then a third
load of clothes and bedding that needed washed. We took down all of the headlining in the forward passageway, front of the saloon and forward heads to dry things out and assess the damage. Another must was ordering a replacement transformer from Amazon so
that we could get electricity aboard and start to normalise our lives. Prodigious amounts of sticky tape was put onto the starboard capping rail to stop, or at least slow down, the water ingress which steadily dripped in whenever it rained. We then discovered
why the main VHF set wasn’t working at any decent range during the rescue. The main boom topping lift (rope from the top of the mast that holds the back of the boom up when the sail is down) had broken free and been blown horizontally up to the top of the
Mizzen mast where it wrapped itself around the VHF antenna and broke it. That necessitated me (bruised ribs and all) being pulled up to the top of the mizzen mast in a bosun’s chair in order to unwrap the rope from the VHF aerial and fix the mount. We also
contacted our insurers and gave them the bad news. Admiral was very supportive and sent us a list of surveyors to start the process. Now the trouble with Shelburne is that it is very remote and all of the surveyors supplied by Admiral were either busy or couldn’t
travel that far. Eventually by day 4 we had found Lunenburg Marine Surveys
who were available and could come down to Spectra. After checking with Admiral that we were approved to engage them, we gave the ‘all clear’ to come down. Lyn and David arrived bright and early on Saturday morning to give Spectra
the once over which wasn’t good news. Here is a list of what we found broken up to now: External Starboard:
Port:
Deck and mast:
Internal:
Sundry damage to equipment.
Ouch!! But we are alive. The next step is to get a boat repair yard to give us a quote for fixing all of that. East River marine have been agreed by Admiral and we are currently awaiting a time for them to arrive and produce a costed
repair bill. They are 140 odd Kilometres away and so the quote will have to include the costs for either towing Spectra there or lifting her and transportation by road which ain’t going to be cheap for sure.
Spectra is now reasonably dry after running a blow heater inside for 5 days nonstop and although the ceiling around the mast leaks like a sieve in heavy rain life has more or less returned to normal. The new
transformer arrived yesterday which means that the one remaining battery charger is going again and the white goods are all powered up again. Life is not comfortable but it is liveable for the moment. My 60th birthday has come and gone but today is Tony’s birthday so I am going to stop this now and head out to do something. Next time I will update on what we have all been up to when not on Spectra. Teaser it involves a potato museum.
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