Case Pilote, Day 3

Both Mike and I are awake shortly after 5am.  No reason.  Neither of us can get back to sleep so while I am semi content (semi because I would prefer to be asleep) to lie in bed, Mike gets up and starts to do all the admin chores associated with the boat hauling out in Grenada.  He thinks I have gone back to sleep, so after 40 minutes or so of waiting, I call out to demand my tea.  Naturally, he obliges.  Good man.

He wants us to start work on the rigging at 7am.  No way, Jose!  There are too many mosquitoes around at that time sitting here in the harbour, so we actually start after 9am.

We fit the new outhaul, pulling it through the boom by attaching it with tape to the old one.  We also re-run the two reefing lines.  Then we have to make sure the three lines through the boom are not wrapped around each other.

Photos:  Re-rigging Jeannius

Our engineer turns up to check the port engine and says it is now running fine and not leaking oil any more.  He tells us to run it for an hour which at least means that we will have hot showers tonight.  He says that the generator parts should be back from the machine shop late this afternoon and that he will fit them tomorrow, along with a new pump for the starboard engine then we can be off.  So it looks like we will head to Grenada, weather permitting, on Friday or Saturday.

We go for a nap after lunch as it’s too hot to do anything outside, and are dozing nicely when we are awoken by a group of local lads, obviously just out from school, jumping off the dock right next to Jeannius, and swimming and yelling to each other underneath us.  They have obviously discovered how nice it is swimming between the hulls.  I get up and peer underneath the stairs through the glass escape hatch and can clearly see them hanging off the drainage channels and doing pull ups.  They are doing no harm, but are just a bit noisy so I run some clean water out of the kitchen sink which falls straight into the sea near them and it does the trick!

Mike goes outside and comes back in covered in strange flies, a bit like flying ants, a plague of which just arrived in the port.  I shoo him outside and flick them off of him before he is allowed back in.

As the sun starts to go down, we finish the rigging and mend the sail bag as best we can.  It has numerous small tears and really needs someone with a sewing machine to patch it up.  We were quoted nearly $2000 for a new one which is completely out of the question.

The evening is spent on the PC as usual and eating even more strange things out of the freezer.