After a couple of days in the BVIs, we met our close friends Joe and MK Ghiglia on January 7th at St. Thomas, USVI. We had planned to anchor out, off of the main town marina area and dinghy ashore to meet them when they came from the airport via bus. We had suggested a rendezvous spot and a backup location if we failed to make the first spot work out. Good thing we did as we saw them, and they us, as they passed by in the bus on their way to location number 2. So we dingied back to the boat, raised it back onto theback, pulled anchor and drove down the island a ways to the other spot at a marina nearby. There, after the necessary hugs, we boarded the boat and headed off to our first short hop to our selected anchorage for night number 1.
It's always fun connecting with friends on board and this was certainly no exception. As Joe and MK are some of our oldest and closest friends, we intended to show them the area as we have come to love it. I think we did a good job as they really seemed to enjoy every aspect of their trip.
Joe, who has done some sailing previously, really got into sailing this big cat and became better at it with each day's passing. He learned much about this type of boat and enjoyed learning the new stuff like catching mooring balls and anchoring. Fortunately, he brought a small guitar so we had some fun music on board as well.
We had hoped to take them to the famed full moon gathering a couple of nights after they arrived but it became too difficult to coordinate so we missed that. However, that may have been the only thing we had wanted to dothat we didn't!
As I wrote last entry, the boat is scheduled to be sold in February so we have been busy cleaning and fixing minor issues which might cause concern to a boat inspector, hoping nothing major would happen before the delivery and sale closing. The generator was fixed, in Antigua, and we hoped that would be the last of the repairs.
One day last week, while sailing in a terrific breeze with good (manageable) wind speed, easy sea conditions, and clear blue skies, we were making about 8 kts and really feeling good about the performance of the boat. BANG! Joe looked at me with a startled face, we immediately began to lose boat speed,and I looked up to see the mainsail loose from the boom. Not a good thing. The clew (the attachment point of the mainsail to the end of the boom) had torn out and the main was flapping in the breeze from the mast alone! Joe thought he had done something wrong, I assured him he hadn't, and we set about dropping the sail. Of course it was Saturday so diagnosis and repairs would have to wait until Monday. We spent the rest if the weekend worrying about how much the repair would be and even "IF" they could be made or if a new main would be needed. I speculated that the stitching around the ring which holds the sail to the boom end had rotted out from UV exposure and that repairs, in a true boating sense, would be "a thousand bucks, give or take". On Monday, we called the sail makers on Tortola to schedule an appointment time for repairs and motored on over there.
We were all relieved to learn from our phone call, that repairs wouldn't take more than an hour once the sail was in the shop. Since I had not removed the sail before, I asked if they would have someone there to assist and they were happy to oblige. Sure enough, about an hour later, the sail was brought back to the boat and we all helped them rehang it from the mast and rig it accordingly. Now for the moment of truth: the bill. I was shocked to look at the bill and see that we had made all repairs and removed and re-hung the sail for less than $200! We all felt in a celebratory mood that night, to be sure. The repairman confirmed my suspicion that the UV rays from the sun had weakened the stitching on the clew and caused the failure. This is one of the only areas where the sail cover doesn't cover the sail once it is lowered for the day. We were so happy with the repairs that we set out for several days of outstanding sailing, each seemed better than the one before. The weather for their visit seemed a bit cool to us but just right for our visitors. It has warmed today again, so we believe they must have brought it with them just for their visit.
Now we must get the boat ready for inspection and sea trial as they are scheduled for next Tuesday, January 20. We don't have too daunting of a job ahead as we try hard to keep on top of cleaning and repairs, but as always, there is always something do. On the 23rd, daughter Nancy arrives for a week so we are eager to get the inspection over and pick her up and enjoy a week aboard with her. I'm sure we will keep her busy with similar activities as we just did, but with new people enjoying these activities, it is all worthwhile. She departs on January 27th and that will only give us about two final weeks to be out here enjoying this wonderful lifestyle. We are hoping the buyer will ask us to deliver the boat to Annapolis for him, but we haven't spoken to him about this yet and don't know his intentions for where he'll want the boat. We're just hoping...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment