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!

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

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…

 

It’s amazing how time gets away from you when sailing – here’s a blog about Grenada – which we left nearly a month ago!! So, not the most up to date report, but here you go…

 

Our aim this year was to get ourselves down to Grenada rather earlier than last year – when we felt that everyone around us was packing up their boats and heading home for the summer. We didn’t want to feel like we were in that transient mood… Turns out, whenever you’re in Grenada someone is having their boat hauled out so that they can head home!

We initially arrived in Prickly Bay where we were happy for 3 or 4 days – our part of the anchorage was nice and smooth while we got to watch others rocking and rolling all day long. Then all of a sudden we start rolling with them. We decided that there must be somewhere better so we moved a couple of bays east to Clarkes Court Bay – where there was a lovely collection of OCC boats – and the water was flat(ish)!

We did 3 HASH’s while we were in Grenada – always fun – and we took some lovely walks. We attempted a bit of a bushwacking walk – which turned out to be impossible – we initially walked past the trailhead but then found it – completely overgrown. Not a chance.

I spied out a potential alternative route and it started out in a village – where we asked directions and they promptly had their 5 year old son guide us up to the ‘Pipeline’. An excellent guide, he took us right to the pipeline which we followed for a very enjoyable walk. We took a slight diversion close to the end on a meandering trail – which we were thinking would end up at Marijuana farm – no such luck!

Our best walk on Grenada started off as a repeat of last year’s hike from the Grand Etang up to Mount Qua Qua – but just before the summit there’s a trail that takes you to Fontainebleu and Concorde Waterfalls. The trail down is very overgrown and challenging, but we managed and ended up for a swim in Fountainbleu – once the nubile beauties had vacated the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed a guided tour with renowned tour guide ‘Cutty’ who took us along all the narrow roads all the way up to the old rum distillery, while he described the flora and fauna of the island – very interesting. We ended back at the Grand Etang where he tried to coach some monkeys down for us, but they were playing coy today…

We left Grenada on March 30^th and headed towards Antigua where Laurie was to take a flight back home. We stopped along the way in Tyrell Bay, Carriacou where I dived on the boat to clean off the bottom – which was in horrible shape. We next stopped in Le Marin, Martinique after an easy overnight sail and we ended up staying in Martinique for nearly a week.