Settling into port

So greetings from Martinique, where we arrived safely last Friday afternoon after a 20 day Atlantic crossing. This was an incredibly slow time due to the fact that the trade winds disappeared. We suspect that we had no wind because of all the storms they were having further North. The same storms that had some people worried about us, however I can assure everyone that the storms up around Madeira were a thousand miles North of where we were.

Since arriving in port we've been busy reorganising ourselves from life at sea to life in port, and there's quite an amount of work in that. On top of that there's our own recovery, the repairs and the maintenance, a 3,000 mile trip takes its tole not only on the boat, but on her crew as well.

Our first order of business was to let immediate family etc. know of our safe arrival, a task not helped by my phone running out of credit in the process. We had been saving a bottle of bubbly for our journey's end, and as soon as we saw land it went in the fridge. Once we had the boat securely tied to our marina berth we celebrated. Later we went for dinner in the nearest cafe, conveniently situated literally on our marina pontoon, the “Mango bay” can boast poor quality, an overpriced menu, and sloppy service, but it still knocked the socks of cooking and washing up for ourselves in a rolling boat.

Then we had to get details of Neil's flight, which we were expecting to be Monday at the earliest, but it turned out to be the next morning. That lit a bit of a fire under us, as the immigration office was closed by the time we got into port, and we had to check in when they opened Saturday at 7 a.m. with Neil's airport taxi waiting outside the door. All went well I'm glad to say and flights were duly caught.

The marina was full and was only able to give us a berth for a single night. In many ways that's just as well, because it's cheaper to anchor (well, free actually), and much more pleasant swinging free on the anchor than being packed like sardines. However, the marina has plus points too, the conveniences of being able to step ashore, unlimited electricity, etc. are particularly welcome after three weeks at sea. At anchor there is a much greater urgency about getting reorganised, without shore power sorting out our power generation is an immediate concern, we have to inflate the dinghy before we can go ashore, and so on. Of course these are all things we would have had to do eventually, but we could have used more of a rest first.

Saturday morning after Neil left we went back to the boat, filled up with water, washed the decks, checked email, rang home on Skype, and then, before dark took the boat out and found ourselves a spot in the anchorage.

Sunday, we took out the big dinghy and inflated it. It's a 3.8 metre dinghy, with five air chambers, and takes about 2,000 depressions of the pump to inflate, in addition, everything had been stowed for our ocean passage, every tool and accessory that we needed had to be dug out from the bottom of another locker, plus the fact that we're still recovering from 3 hours on 6 hours off for the last three weeks, the dinghy took us all day.

Martinique, as you probably know, is a French Department, and I am struggling with my 1974 pass Leaving cert French. Worse, they all just ignore my attempts and speak to me in English. Now that we had the dinghy we thought we'd have a look ashore, where we found a nearby restaurant. The barman decided he was going to be my new best friend, but despite the fact that his entire English vocabulary consisted of the word "Hello" and an assortment of "Ers" and "Ehs" and "Ums", he resolutely avoided speaking French to us to the extent that we were on our second beer before discovering the chef was on a night off, and the restaurant was closed! Not having the energy to go looking for another restaurant we settled for the increasingly obvious mediocrity of Mango Bay.

The big dinghy is made of PVC, which under the hot sun has a tendency to sweat, and being red, the red dye runs, gets on our clothes and skin, and the dinghy gets sticky and dirty and awful looking. So Catherine had resolved to put our €55 Lidl sewing machine to good use, and to make a cover for it. She had even bought the material months previously. So with the dinghy up, she went to work first thing Monday morning.

For my part, my main concern was our power needs. During the crossing our solar panels were producing only about half the power that they used to. In hindsight the obvious thing to check was whether each panel was still working. However I'd gotten it into my head that the connections were corroding, so I first wasted half a day checking them, and only when I found them all in as new condition did I think to try the obvious. By Monday evening I had established that the starboard panel was indeed the culprit, and fixed the problem.

I was expecting Catherine's dinghy cover to be a loose baggy thing, but as the first segment took shape on Monday I could see that it was turning out to be more like a tailored suit. On Tuesday, as she continued with it, I set about restoring the towed generator to wind generator mode. Were I a bit more of a DIY expert this task might have taken me an hour or two, but as it is, under normal circumstances I'd be at it for half a day. This is not normal circumstances, I am still suffering the sleep deprivation from three weeks at sea, plus, I'd never done this job before, so it was getting dark on Tuesday evening when I finally had the Wind generator reassembled and ready to be hoisted at first light.

Wednesday morning, before breakfast, soon after daybreak with hardly a breadth of wind, conditions were ideal for hoisting the wind generator on top of it's eight foot mounting pole. I perched precariously on the pole while Catherine used a halyard (that's a rope) on a winch to hoist the generator and I guided it into place.

Wednesday, the 17th March, that is. Catherine continues to beaver away at the dinghy cover, which is looking great as its ultimate shape becomes more apparent. Meanwhile, I'm contemplating what job I'm going to tackle next, when I see a dinghy headed our way. Mike and June Kelly, from the sailing boat “Idunno” out of New York, having seen our Irish flag, stopped by to say happy St Paddy's day. Mike being obviously of Irish American stock, so we celebrated with tea and biscuits.

I settle for being gofor for Catherine as she repeatedly climbs in and out of the dinghy, measuring and adjusting the pattern. In between, I manage to return the pilot berth to “workshop” status, making all my tools more accessible, and I also got the v-berth rearranged. All the while, I'm counting the amps going in and out of the batteries from the solar panels and the wind gen. We're doing alright, except that the sewing machine is chomping up a lot of the battery power. Even still, we are generating almost as much as we are using, and when the cover is finished we should be quids up on our power generation/consumption.

Wednesday evening, it's Paddy's day, we're going out. Now eating out three times within a week was a rarity for us at our most affluent times. Now, as penny pinching live-aboards, it's a no-no. Yet here we are, but the first two times we've had the mediocrity of “Mango Bay”, it's Paddy's day, and we've just sailed the Atlantic. We're not going to penny pinch tonight. We found a nice little restaurant, where we shared a tasty scallop starter, I had lamb cutlets, Catherine had spare ribs, and we even eventually persuaded our waitress to talk to us slowly in French. Washed down with a bottle of fairly ordinary wine, and a glass of brandy before bed back on the boat. I think I am rejoining the human race at last.

Thursday. Again I awake just before dawn, and eventually give up trying to get back asleep and get up as day breaks. I contemplate. The setting not so bad, 9 a.m. local time, sitting under the bimini (bimini = a kind of sun shade over the boat's cockpit), temperature hasn’t gotten too high yet, probably not yet over 30 in the shade, I've just finished my morning coffee and considering another. Although, life does still retain a few challenges, my task list is now down to the jobs that have to wait until the interior of the boat ceases to be a sewing workshop. Among these are unblocking the heads, and jobs I have to recruit expertise for, electronics problems, getting main sail repaired so that the battens will stay in, and getting the batteries tested to find out why they aren't holding their charge. I am resigned to the fact that the battery bank will have to be replaced, a right kick in the budgetary teeth that'll be, but more importantly, I want to have the wiring checked, as the batteries are only three years old, and I want to make sure that the new ones won't be thrashed due to some undiagnosed electrical problem.

So now I take out my computer and start to catch up on some emails and my blog.

You might be a bit surprised that I'm up so early, but there are a few drivers to that. First, we stayed on Irish time (= Canarian time) for the entire trip, where as they are 4 hours behind here in the Caribbean, so body clock is somewhere in between at the moment. Second, at these latitudes you get pretty much 12 hours day and 12 hours night, with only a little variation Summer and Winter, and that means we have daylight from about 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local, (or 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Irish, much more civilised!). Thirdly, the winder on my watch is stuck, so I've been unable to switch it to local time!