Day 147, Saturday November 16th
We leave Man O War by about 9 with a rising tide. First order of business is to run some tests
on our engine and prop. Dawson has lined
up a matrix to test our speed and acceleration at a bunch of RPM’s. Typically we run the engine around 2300 or
2400 RPMs so it pains Julie to have to do 300 RPM increments up to full throttle
which is about 3700 RPM’s. Poor engine
having to work so hard. Dawson is
satisfied with his data collection so now it is time to raise the sails. It is only about a 6 mile run across the sea,
but a good opportunity to shake out the reefs we had put in at Hampton.
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| Dawson in the middle of the sea diving our thru hull |
It takes a good 15 minutes to get all the knots out of the
sail. They were stressed during the
crossing and in there quite well. The
winds are light, but sufficient to shut the motor off and relax our way across
the bay. Another job pops into mind
though as our holding tank is not discharging.
This is a problem as the Bahamas has no pump outs. Sounds gross but they just dump, preferably
when you are offshore. The tides do 2
flushes a day where 50% of the water is sent out into the Atlantic so it is not
really a problem for the islands. Dawson
wants to send a wire up the discharge through hull so we heave too, which is a
sailing tactic where you keep the sails up but trim them so that the boat stops
and stays in one place. Often sailors on
a long crossing or waiting for daylight to enter a harbour will use this
technique. We had not practiced it so
the light winds offered a good opportunity to try hoving too. It worked brilliantly while Dawson hopped
overboard and inspected the thru hull.
We tied a rope for him to hold onto so he would not drift away in any
current.
Dawson was able to establish that the thruhull fitting is
not the problem. Unfortunately the
problem is closer to the tank that is just about full at this point in time. It would be much nicer if the tank was
empty. Too bad we did not test the
discharge in fresh water after having it pumped. It is illegal to dump in Canadian waters so
we did not see if it worked until now when we reached the ocean and it is not
working. In hind sight we could have
tested it with clean water in Canadian waters, but never thought of it. Oh well.
Once we get anchored in Marsh Harbour Dawson continues to
putter away trying to figure out the tank discharge. Could there be another valve? Perhaps an airlock such that there is a
vacumn in the tank? He tries to get the
inspection plate off, but that is stuck so out comes the WD40. We will have to wait for awhile for the WD40
to work.
We decide to head into town and purchase a “snake” (wire
snake to send up the plumbing to poke through blockage), and restock our liquor
cabinet. We have not stocked up as Rum
is much cheaper here. We land the dinghy
by the marina and Snappas restaurant and meet up with a fellow sailor. They are out of Beaufort and also did the
Salty Dawg rally headed for the BVI’s but due to shredding their jib and
seasickness they came to the Bahamas instead.
Their list of woes made ours look minimal. They were seasick, chipped a tooth, their LCD
television screen went flying, they shredded their jib, their outboard motor
won’t work, and I can’t remember what else, but we felt better afterwards that
we had fared quite well.
Our walk into town is pleasant, although most places shut at
noon. They have 3 hardware stores and
all are closed. We are lucky though and
find a place to purchase a sim card for the blackberry and the ipad. We also find about 3 liquor stores that are
open. We head over to the restaurant we
have picked for dinner, but the kitchen does not open for an hour so we have a
couple of happy hours while we blog and finally we can order dinner.
We head back to the boat and have dessert which consists of
a pigout on chocolate and trail mix while we play kings cribbage. It has been a long day so we are soon off to
bed.
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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