We arrived in Falmouth Antigua with plenty of time before Laurie’s flight home – and therefore ample time to cook me some dinners!! Not sure quite how I’d manage without Laurie’s cooking! She’s so good to me. But, a couple of days after we arrived, there she goes, and leaves me with a long list of boat project to work on!

A week into it and progress is being made:

• The engine’s strange misfiring (it was frequently stalling on us) is fixed! Finally traced it to a leaky elbow joint in the fuel line attached to the Racor filters… Difficult discovery but fortunately once found, an easy fix!
• I beefed up the mounting for the autopilot ram with an additional rather large stainless-steel bracket. Hopefully it’ll no longer flap about while steering the boat!
• Replaced the drain hose from the sink. Eugh! That was far worse than replacing the head hose! I’ve no idea what we’ve been putting down there – but it appears to have collected over the whole 10 years of Toodle-oo!’s life!
• Serviced the head (easy compared to the sink!)
• Serviced all the winches
• Checked all the rudder mounting bolts, tested the thruhulls and replaced a couple of badly corroded hose clamps.
• I’m now completing the varnishing of the companionway steps which were in AWFUL condition. This has been avoided in the past because the treads all have rubber inserts to assist grip… getting those out was really laborious. I started varnishing but quickly realized I had not done a good enough job on the rubber – the brush was picking up dozens of tiny black particles – so I had to re-do it and then sand everything again and start over. So far, I have 4 coats of 2-part Poly-urethane (not used this before) and it’s looking good. 2 more coats to do then the fun part – replacing the rubber inserts using a nasty black goopy Sikaflex product – can’t wait to see how badly I screw that one up!

Since I’d been working so hard, I gave myself a day off from boat projects, climbed up the hill to the remains of an old fort looking out over the harbor entrance and took in the sights of the Antigua Classic Regatta. Makes me feel lucky we only use 2 sails at a time for the most part! Spectacular boats!

A bit of a scramble on the start line!

Another class starts

Columbia gets a late start with Topsail problems

Big boats rounding the mark

Columbia chases the field around the mark

While I was photographing the boats I suddenly realized this little fellow was busy building its nest right in front of me!

Humming Bird building a nest

Meanwhile, Laurie is swanning around with all her friends and family – but payback will come when she has to heft back a whole bunch of boat parts…