16 Nov 2018

16/11/2018: Grenada

We had a late night last night, well by cruising standards that is. 11.30pm, the cruising equivalent of 2.30am given nine o'clock is known as the cruisers' midnight. Several G&Ts and glasses of wine being enjoyed with new Canadian friends, a fun evening was had by all.

Today should be the final day we have the riggers on board, a nice crew of local men led by Wayne, a rigger with over fifteen years experience of climbing up masts. So we now have a working furler for the genoa, a replacement steel lower for the one that was coming unwound and three halyards (lines) dropped inside the mast. When Wayne removed another of the steel cables holding the mast upright (they have to do this one at a time so the mast doesn't fall down) we asked to inspect it before he took it away to make a replacement. His boss, the chap who had surveyed the rigging for us, had said the fittings were badly rusted and pitted and we were interested to see how bad they were. They didn't look too bad to our untrained eye (and off the record Wayne agreed with us too) so we asked him to clean them up first so we could have a proper look at them. Lo and behold, an hour later they were shining like new with no evidence of any pitting at all. So we got the surveyor to have a look at them again with his magnifying glass and he agreed they didn't need replacing after all! We made the decision to have Wayne clean up and inspect all the other fittings first to decide which, if any needed replacing. The answer: none. Obviously we're pleased not to have the additional expense of replacing half of the standing rigging, but not so impressed with the initial assessment of the rigging surveyor.

We're into our third day of predominantly cloudy weather with a few showers thrown in. It's still very warm and it's a shame our cockpit enclosure isn't complete as otherwise we'd be able to sit outside. Instead we have to stay inside during the showers with the hatches closed and it soon gets very hot indeed.

We're using our time on board waiting for the various marine tradesmen to work on 'Survival', the sequel to 'Meltdown', our first literary endeavour, and it's flowing very well.  We've written over 15,000 words now and are enjoying developing the characters brought forward from the prequel. We're aiming to have it finished before we set sail for the Pacific so have about 8 weeks left. At the current output, that shouldn't be too much of a problem!

All being well the new solar panels should arrive today and we'll get them fitted this weekend. It will be nice to know the batteries are being kept topped up more efficiently without us having to run the generator as long each day. It will be a big advantage for the Pacific where the availability of diesel may be more limited.

So all in all, things are heading in the right direction and we may even be able to sail before too much longer.