Thursday afternoon has the winds blowing 20-25 knots in the Prickly Bay anchorage and kicking up a short chop on the water. This is our third day anchored here and we’ll probably stay a couple more before heading north.
Every morning there is a cruisers net on the marine radio for the anchorages and marinas in south Grenada. Today, we offered our Venezuelan charts and money for sale since we won’t need them in the near future. They were scarfed up almost immediately by a couple leaving next Monday for Los Testigos and VZ. We received a good price on everything and were happy to recoop much of our investment. It’s interesting that the couple who bought all our stuff asked my why we didn’t stay in Venezuela longer. I told them we did not feel safe and there were too many reports of theft and shootings for us. They gave us the typical answer we’ve heard from other people – “We’ll stay around other boats and be careful.†Well… That didn’t work for our neighbor Michael on Sundance and I don’t know what it would take to make most of these cruisers believers other than having something happen near them.
We had Gary and Nita, from Freedom, over for dinner on Second Wind last night. Laura made a great meal of Chicken a la King over linguine and Nita supplied a nice tossed salad. We talked for quite awhile during and after dinner about cruising and chartering – it was a lot of fun. Gary is making long range plans for a 5-year sail around the world starting March of 2009 from Panama on his brother’s 58 foot Catamaran. We talked a little about the South Pacific and my 4,400 mile sail there last year. I gave him the lowdown on all the great places (HA!).
I’ve been troubleshooting a problem with our main engine which started on the way here from Los Testigos. The engine skips a little while running at speed which typically means fuel problems. I changed the primary fuel filter while we were underway and it didn’t seem to help. Yesterday, I changed out the on-engine fuel filter which has fixed this in the past. Darn – it didn’t fix it this time. Even while running the engine at low RPM in the mornings to charge our refrigeration, we can still hear it changing speed. So, back to work on it!
Today I enlisted Laura’s help with climbing down into the engine room to completely clean out our primary fuel filter. We took the filter completely apart to make sure there was no dirt or water getting into the lines. It was sparkling clean when we put it all back together. Before calling in a diesel mechanic, I decided to take the boat out of the anchorage and run the engine at higher speed, under-load for more troubleshooting. We prepared the boat for sea and pulled up our anchor for a short cruise. Motoring out of the bay the engine was not happy as it was changing RPM about every 10 seconds. I increased the RPM to almost full throttle (we never run this speed!) and it seemed to even out a little. When I pulled back the throttle it seemed to be running much better. We did this a couple more times and each time it seemed to help. When we motored back into the anchorage 30 minutes later, it was running pretty smooth. My current assumption is we had / have some water in the fuel system and it took a bit to work through. I will monitor this closely for the next couple days and call in a mechanic if it persists. I don’t want to leave here if there is any chance it’s not fixed because the good mechanics are here in Grenada and we’re comfortable getting around since we spent 2 months here last year. As we go north, we’ll be into more remote areas and finding the right people will be more difficult.
Friday morning brings clear skies and more beautiful weather. The temps since we’ve come back to the Caribbean last month have been fantastic – highs in the mid-80s and lows near 70. It has been much nicer than when we left in October when it was hot, hot, hot. It rains almost every day in the afternoon when the trades pick up. This is typical for winter in the Carib.
Laura and Nita are doing a major grocery this morning. We were hoping to stock up our larder in Margarita which is supposed to be the cheapest of the entire Caribbean but that was not to be so we’ll pay a little more for stocking up in Grenada. We’ll buy staples for 4-6 weeks to last until we get to Puerto Rico and Wal-Mart.
The engine is still acting up slightly and I’m torn between letting it go or calling a mechanic. I guess we’ll spend the weekend in this harbor and if it’s not 100% by Monday, I’ll call in an expert (I hope!).
Last night we went over to Freedom for a desert of port and chocolate fondue with pears and apples that was organized by the gals (thanks again K. for bringing us that great Deavers port). Both Laura and Nita are chocolate nuts – go figure. I brought over our DVDs for swapping and it turns out they are also big Si-Fi fans. They wanted about 20 of my DVDs which they hadn’t seen. They had didn’t have a great selection of movies but they did have the first 2 seasons of Deadwood and every year of Cheers. I let them have all my Si-Fi movies and came home with 5 new movies, the 2 seasons of Deadwood and the first 4 years of Cheers. Wow! It will probably take us a year to watch all that!
Tonight we are picking up the bus to Gouyave for their Friday night fish-fry. We went to this twice when we were here last year and it’s a great pig-out and party. The whole town is a Carnival-like atmosphere with about 50 booths with all different seafood dishes from fish cakes to shrimp stir-fry. Gary and Nita are going also so it should be a lot of fun. They are leaving tomorrow as they need to be in St. Luca in a week to pick up a charter. We’ll miss them.
Want to hear something funny? Last night we were talking to them about chartering and Gary said he could recommend some people who had run many charters that we could talk to. He said in St. Thomas we should talk to Byron. Laura said “Byron?†and I said, “Byron Rose?†We all started talking at the same time and it turned out they were good friends with Byron and Margo Rose who ran the sailing charter we took in 2004. It’s a small world out there folks…
February 2, 2008 at 5:42 pm |
Youre welcome!
–K