Day 141, Sunday November 10th

Day 141, Sunday November 10^th

Dawson is up early.  We have all slept soundly but Dawson is frustrated with himself as he suspects a dirty fuel filter is the culprit and we should have changed this prior to setting out.  Greg, Rob and Dawson spend the morning changing out the fuel filter and testing the engine.  Julie starts tackling cleaning the boat of moisture and salt. 

Dawson diving the prop

hoisting the quarantine flag

Once the fuel filter is changed the engine appears to be behaving.  We decide to stay in the anchorage another night though and fix a few other items. (hopefully customs does not ming)! On the passage, we took on water through a solar vent and shorted the lights in the forward area so we need to change out the light fixture.  We also need to fix the wind generator, prop, fuel filter, etc. Dawson spends the day going from repair to repair.  We hoist him up the bosun chair so he can investigate the steaming light not working now, and untangle our starboard halyard so we can drop the usa flag and hoist the quarantine flag.  Dawson continues to be frustrated, but we have been hard on the boat.  We just put 125 hours on her in heavy weather.  The steaming light is fixed by cleaning up the contacts, and we are able to hoist the quarantine flag.  Technically we should clear customs immediately, however with engine problems it is delayed as we are in an unserviced anchorage.  The to do list also has the watermaker repair as when we fired it up to use, it leaked.  We had depickled it and flushed it but now with pressure going through it, the water is going where it should not be going. Our wind generator also needs its tail put back on.  It fell while underway and luckily we were able to retrieve it.  We had tried to turn the wind vane off but the brakes failed so it just kept spinning madly until the tail came loose.

 

As much as we are constantly fixing things, other things seem to need attention.  We are hoping the ratio of repairs to leisure time will drop soon.

We all have a bit of a dip, and shower off with fresh water, and some soap.  The cabin gets put in some order.  It stayed neat enough while underway, but all the portholes and hatches had to remain closed so it was stuffy and humid.  Now there are lots of flies buzzing around too.



Greg killing our fly investation

We are to bed early with plans on going to Spanish Wells tomorrow so Dawson can investigate why the prop is not working to its potential.  We are also looking forward to some internet as we have heard inklings that our BVI bound colleagues are not fairing well out in the Gulf stream and beyond.

We are not sure how many days we will stay here as tomorrow the winds look good, but beyond that for 5 days it is gale winds again.  We shall see.  Greg starts investigating how he can get to Freeport by the 18^th, we are still hoping we can get to Marsh Harbour on the Abacos, north of us by the 18^th.  We must respect the weather though when making plans.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson