Storm Surge

We've been watching the Weather news about all the snow and cold up in the high latitudes and we're quite happy not to be shoveling anything other than metaphorically.  But we don't get away without any weather issues here, either.  Oh it's nothing like the blizzards in Boston or the temperatures in Toronto, but we do have these fierce sunrises on the south side of Providenciales.

Somehow, I'm not expecting much sympathy here from people looking out their frozen windows at over two meters of snow with more on the way.  I know it's going to be a stretch for some imaginations, but these days we start feeling chilled when the temperature drops down to levels that I suspect are still warmer than the settings on most home thermostats. The temperatures dropped into the low 70's here right before Jacob went home to New England.   Dooley hauled his favorite Colorado winter sweater out of his suitcase to help Jacob mentally prepare for the cold.

We're just getting to the end of a nice little two day storm that blew through here over the weekend.   The original forecasts were for almost 40 knots of wind, although I don't think we saw quite that much.  Such a storm forecast coming at the beginning of the yearly cruising season produced a bit of a crowd at South Side Marina.  Anticipating strong winds and seas from the north, sailors were looking for places to hide from the storm.  Every single slip at Bob's marina was filled.  South Side Marina is sheltered from the worst of our north and north east winds.  It's a good place to hang out in a blow.  Here's a view looking upwind, into the salina.  You can see what the wind is doing to this protected water.  We heard it was pretty grim on the north side of the island but we were too tied up in our own little world to drive over to look.   It was bad enough here.

We  decided to see if we could get some aerial photos during the storm.  You might remember that I've now got three kites picked for various wind conditions.  I've got a big 12 ft. delta style that will fly and lift a camera in six knots of wind.  This covers me on mild days.  And that kite gets very little use.   Next in line is our standard 9 ft. delta.  This one is good from around 10 knots up to near 20. We use that kite most of the time. But I've also got a small parafoil kite that I've been told should hold together up to 30 knots.   We decided to see how it would handle these conditions.  We had a nice little storm to test it with.  The parafoil kite fits into that bag. Nice package. 

And it worked.  We managed to get some useful photos in driving rain and wind gusts to 30 knots.   Here's South Side Marina full of boats riding out the storm.

 

I'm  not sure what kind of photos we were expecting in these conditions, but we were pleasantly surprised to get any at all.  I used 200 lb. dacron line, and had to wear gloves to handle it.   The parafoil kite handled the wind, although the rain,  reduced light, and platform motion didn't produce our usual tropical scenery. The strain from the wind and constant gusts got to me very quickly, and I took a wrap around one of Bob's parking lot fence rails to control it.

I was expecting something to come loose from the KAP setup with all the violent motion we were seeing from the ground.  Here's a view from the camera pointing toward the kite. The KAP setup is usually  50 to 100 ft. down the string from the kite itself.    You can see  how everything was tilted at an extreme angle due to the wind velocity.

That's a view looking west from South Side Marina, showing some of the Discovery Bay canal system. Gnarly day. And I am almost certain I would never have been able to get any useful photos if we'd been using any drone that I could afford. There's just something to be said for simplicity.

Now I didn't want you to think that Providenciales looks like those photos for the month of February.  Because it doesn't. We get these storms blowing through from time to time, and then the weather gets back to winter normal for us.

A normal afternoon at South Side Marina is much more laid back than it would appear during a storm.  We often set  up a camera just for the heck of it, but hours go by before any boat action so we never bother to post any of that footage.  I'll show you what  we mean.

Here's most of an afternoon at South Side Marina, with the camera attached to our boat Twisted Sheets.   The dive charter boats all come in shortly after noon.  There's a little story in this video. There was a cruiser aground just outside the entrance to the marina.  It's obscured in the video. The Club Med dive boat, "Batray" fouled on the anchor the grounded boat put out.  The Club Med boat finally had to swing around backwards to get free of the grounded boat's anchor line, helped dislodge the grounded boat and for some reason decided to come into the marina backwards, with  engines in reverse.   They spun the boat around as soon as they had room to do so, and the other boat traffic that was waiting for the mess to get sorted out all came in behind them.  LaGringa sped up the time lapse to make the hours go by quickly, and slowed it when the boats were maneuvering.  So that's what was going on in this video with the boat traffic:

Watching this makes it seem like we're stable when we're on the boat.  It's the rest of the world that's looking a little shaky at the moment.

Last week after the storm before this blew through, La Gringa and I  decided to see if we could get some fun photos by sticking a GoPro camera to the SUPs.  I stuck one camera on my head again and won't bother you with additional images of that ludicrosity.  And we tried using a suction cup mount on the SUP. Of course the first thing I did was attach it to the underside of the surfboard.  I got a few hundred mostly useless images of murky water because it was still stirred up after the storm.   I'm not even going to post any of those photos up here.  They are terrible and not representative of the water clarity here.  We also  tried sticking the camera to the top of the  paddleboard to see how that would work. We got some surprising results, although not what I was anticipating.

We continue to learn things about attaching cameras to moving objects.  For an example I can illustrate one of my own "duh" moments right here.   I had moved the suction mount from under the board to the top of the board.  I tied a piece of paracord to it as a safety line should it fall off.  Or in the more likely event of a big bald headed oaf falling and knocking it off.   This has been known to happen.

Can you tell how murky the water is?  It typically takes about a day or a day and a half for the sand to settle out after a storm blows through.  This was only a few hours after unsettled weather passed through.   If you look at that photo above you can see the shadow of the GoPro camera on my head that took this series of photos.  You can also see that the camera is not pointing just exactly straight ahead on the board.  I wanted it pointed straight ahead.  I thought I would just scootch up on the board and turn it. Wrong.

You see, moving my considerable weight that far forward on the paddleboard caused the front of the board to go underwater, raising the back of the board into the air.  And dumping the dummy firmly and completely into the ocean. The GoPro on my head was on a two second repetition rate and it caught this image as my grasping hands slid completely past the camera I wanted to adjust.  I think this is about when I got that unmistakable and momentary "Ah Oh!!" feeling...

You know the one where you suddenly realize what's going to happen and that there's not a danged thing you can do about it.

We all knew what kind of situation I was going to be in two seconds later, I suspect.

I mentioned earlier that we got some surprising results with the camera on the SUP, but what I didn't say was that these results were not in the water.  The results we want to show you were from the trip home from the beach.

If you're not familiar with these cameras, you should know that they have a firmware /menu  setting that  flips the image upside down.  This is so that the cameras can be attached to the underside of things and still record video right side up.  I had the camera set to be shooting upside down.  I didn't worry much about the images being reversed because I can easily change that with the editing software. When we loaded the SUPs on our vehicle to take them home, we left the camera in place and turned on. This is what it looked like on the board:

And this is what the ride home looked like with the camera in the inverted mode:

Yes, sure, we could have flipped it back over in software, but then it would just be like a zillion other 'SUP with camera on top of the car on a dirt road on a tropical island" videos, wouldn't it? I like this  better. And if you really feel the need to view it right side up, well, you do have options.   You might look silly doing it, but hey, your choice.

Other than little things like that, it's been a quiet week.   We got some some of that crystal clear weather that often comes the day after a weather front blows through and I tried the little pocket digital camera to see how it would do with night photography.  This is the night sky from our patio.   Now there's a view you haven't seen before, and now that I know the camera can handle it I might be able to get some more of this.   We have some incredible starry nights when the moon is away.   I just haven't tried to talk about them here before.

Other day to day mundane things include getting another flat tire fixed. That doesn't sound like such a big deal, does it? I mean, EVERYbody gets a flat tire from time to time, right? Sure.

But do you average one a month?  For ten years?  With five different vehicles?

This is bad country for rubber tires.

That's bordering on DIY so I'm going to grab this opportunity to show the sailors among us another little project that might be useful.   Rust stains on sails.  We had the sails off of Twisted Sheets recently to try to eradicate ugly things.

Needless to say, this takes a calm windless day.   We found out the hard way that things get real complicated when trying to lay out a big sail on a patio on a windy day.  Don't do it.

But for this experiment we managed to  grab a calm day.  This is our jib on the patio.

Apparently one of the previous owners of our old boat had rolled up the sail with some metal shackle or something similar in contact with the dacron.   The metal thing rusted, and left a series of stains on our nice white sail.   We didn't like that.   We had a bunch of stains like this:

There were a number of rust removing compounds included with the boat equipment, and I had already tried a number of them with mixed results.  Finally I noticed that the main active ingredient in the ones that worked the best seemed to be oxalic acid.  I needed to get the well set rust stains out of dacron sails.  I didn't need all the conditioners and lubricants and greases and oils that some of the rust compounds include.  I mean, after all, they're mostly formulated for iron and steel objects.   Sails don't need oil.  I bought a jar of the active ingredient without the marketing additives.

We weren't able to find a lot of information on relative strengths so with typical oafish overkill I mixed up a small batch and saturated it with as much oxalic acid powder as would dissolve in hot water.   I used a toothbrush to scrub it lightly into the rust stain.

And it worked immediately, if not sooner.   This is that particular set of stains after about 30 seconds of contact with the acid:

And this is the stain after a minute.  Notice all the small stains to the left of the main one are practically gone, and the main one is getting close.  I applied one more little splash of the acid to the stitching and about thirty seconds later the stain was just another fading memory. The next and important step is to scrub the entire area down with a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and water. This neutralizes the acid. You know you're done when the bubbling stops. Then rinse it with water and let it dry!

I could show you the last photo, but you already know what it would look like. A white bit of sail with no stain.

I wanted to end this post with some nice local water images instead of rusty sails, so I picked a few more from another little scenario that we witness quite often here lately. We live very close to the Caicos Marina and Shipyard.  This is one of the very few marinas between Puerto Rico and Florida that have the ability to lift a boat out of the water for repairs.  So it's not uncommon for boats with engine problems to get themselves close to us using their sails.  They  typically drop the anchor just outside the marina and call for help.  The marina will send someone out in a power boat to tow the damaged vessel in to safety.

This sequence is just another example of exactly that very scenario.  This sloop was unable to start their engine, and the forecast was for bad weather.   They managed to get themselves here by sail alone. In this photo, Jamie from Caicos Marina is  discussing the towing operation with the stricken sailboat.

He passed them a line and secured it to the transom of his boat and the bow cleats of the sloop.

And after a few minutes of adjustment he was able to tow the boat into the marina for some welcome repairs.  And you might ask why I bothered to include this.  Well one reason is that it's just another of the little vignettes that make up our typical days around here.  

And the other reason is that Jamie's boat is our former Contender 25 with the 300 HPDI Yamaha outboard that I am so intimately familiar with.  It's great for us to see "Off Cay" still out working and boating.  So many boats here seem to break, get parked on a trailer for repairs, and stay there.  For years.  For ever.  But not this one.  We're glad to have found a good home for the Contender as we moved further and further away from power boats and into sail.

We're continuing to spend the majority of our time working on the sailboat.  Most of the major systems are up and running, and I'm finishing up small projects and cosmetic issues.  I had already shown you photos of how a friend solved his engine access issues using mast steps.   I had decided to do something similar because it let me get rid of two aluminum ladders.  I won't go back and revisit that whole boondoggle.  I liked Frank's solution better, although I didn't choose the same kind of folding steps.   Frank used mast steps, and I used folding steps from a firetruck supply company.   A third of the price, two fewer holes to drill, I ordered a handful of these:

From what I have seen, this step is going to be  a lot friendlier to bare  feet.  It doesn't stick out into the area so far, and it's not pointed on the end.   I think this is going to work out well:

Those rust stains on the left are from the recently removed water maker.  I decided that I didn't like sea water that close to our solar controllers.  And they're slated to be moved as well, as soon as I figure out where to put them.

I've been meaning to post this photo for some weeks now, and it keeps getting put aside because it's unrelated to the other things I'm working on at the time. But I'm not going to let it slip any longer.  

Bob's Bar is surrounded by drop-down hurricane shutters.  People who gather at the bar often use one of the marking pens that Bob and Nevarde supply to write their names, boat information, or messages on the inside of these shutters.  When we returned from our trip to Colorado last year, we found  that some visitors to the island had stopped by to say hello to us.   We missed them, dagnabbit, but they did leave us a message written on a storm shutter:

Neil and Terri, thank you for taking the trouble to try to look us up.    We don't get that many visitors in this little out-of-the-way place, and we're sorry we missed you.  We hope you had a great time in the TCI and that you'll try again if you ever come back through.

Well that's it for this Monday's post.   We have a lot going on right now and I don't anticipate any problems filling this blog up with photos going forward.  In fact we're a bit excited about some of the trips we have planned.   And soon.

Sailing Again

 The sun hadn't yet slipped up to that point of ambushing me over the pale fence of those clouds on the horizon, but it was close.   God's own laser was about to hit, but I had a few moments standing there on the patio, steaming fresh first cup of  coffee in hand.  It was still so hot I had to sip little bursts of the morning sea air in with the liquid caffeine.  Walking out onto the patio in that magic time just before the sun bursts loose has become somewhat of a tradition here. Sometimes we have a camera in hand, but usually we don't.  We carefully keep a weather eye to the east this time of year.   August is  the primary  proponent of our perennial prognosticated period of primo paranoia.  This runs from about right now into early October.   We know there's an ever increasing threat  as the heat of the African Sahara starts carelessly flinging off  those spinning tropical waves.   We watch the weather websites.  Have you seen the earth wind one?  Check that out.  Click on the "Earth" logo for the menu and then adjust the date. Whenever we see those whirling curlicues of wind and clouds escaping the Sahara and heading for the Cape Verde Islands,we know there's the potential  for another hurricane sooner or later. This is of some concern to us.    So far, this morning is looking pretty mellow.

We get a lot of mellow from living, sleeping, and breathing the very air on this small outpost of land surrounded by restless sea.   There are times when I walk past this view and it doesn't even register.  That's part of human nature I suppose.  What once was extraordinary eventually becomes the backdrop of your life.  It's just always there.  But with this as a backdrop, there are many times when something about the ocean or the sky just stops me in my tracks.  You've seen some of those moments in photos throughout this blog.  A few days ago, I was watching the waves as they interacted with the overhanging rock shoreline.  We've often noticed that the seas seemed rougher when we motored, paddled or sailed a small boat near the shoreline.   We'd figured out that it was twice as bumpy, because the waves were reflecting off of the island and crossing back through the incoming waves.  Well, I decided to try to get a video to show you.  If you just sort of trance out on the waves just below the center of the image, you can see the reflections going out to sea.

One of our readers had commented on wave patterns after our previous post, and told me that the Polynesians had predicted the presence of distant islands by observing wave patterns.  They have much more substantial waves to work with, and that all is starting to make sense, isn't it.  Big waves make big patterns.

We've picked up another outboard motor for the dinghy.  An expat friend of ours got it in a boat deal that he's explained to me twice that I still don't quite understand.  But I don't need to understand it.  He gets into a lot of good boat deals here.  So do we, come to think of it.   Anyhow, as I was saying we got a slightly bigger, much newer and only moderately broken motor out of it all.   It had most of the parts it needed, and has five more horsepower than the one that came with the boat.  So now we own two ancient Mercury two strokes, a 10 and a 15 horsepower.    I like two stroke outboards for small horsepower applications.  We do have a four stroke on our skiff, so I also appreciate the quiet and fuel efficient operation of the newer mandated designs.  But for pure power to weight ratio zip it's hard to beat an old Mercury  Well, actually, you can beat them.  Maybe that's the point.  There's just something about the chain saw scream of a two cylinder two stroke at full throttle that makes what's left of my inner ear rattle when human voices barely register any more. Or maybe it's knowing that they're a little bit like the Land Rover Defenders.  Forbidden fruit in the USA can be one of the perks of living here. Psst. Wanna buy a can of Freon?

After I identified, located, ordered, imported, mutilated and installed some throttle linkage parts  we loaded up the dog and the dinghy and did a little shakedown trip to see how the new old outboard performed. Theoretically, it should outrun the smaller one in  a contest between the new old motor and the old new old moto.  Huh?

I read a quote somewhere recently that I liked.  I wish I could remember where, so that I could correctly credit whoever wrote it but I'm not going to let that stop me from using it. Someone wrote that they were going to name their next boat Theory, because everything works, in Theory.   I wish I'd thought of that one.

It was another great day for small boats as so many of them seem to be down here.  Here's my version of a Paint-By-Number image of us heading up the Discovery Bay canal. Dooley the Delighted was all up for a rubber boat trip up the canal.  I've been trying to get to the point where I can do all this photo editing, layout and writing on a tablet but it's not easy for me.  I've been using an iPad and on my third keyboard for it.  I'm not there yet.  I need some good photo processing software for a tablet.  This one has some cute special effects and I tried out a couple of them in this post.  This does kind of look like a paint-by-numbers masterpiece.  By a six year old on a sugar binge.

Dooley the Destroyer always gets hyper on these canal trips. He goes all commando-in-a-rubber-boat-with-attitude on me. See, the little booger  knows that he can safely bark at bigger dogs from inside a nice secure boat. This brings out the obnoxious side of sharing life with the loquacious little yippy yahoo.  His version of liquid courage is a little different than mine, but the results are similar. Someone shooting his mouth off in a situation where silence might be a better option.  

He gets all steely eyed with his imagined canine version of Martin Sheen doing a thousand yard stare on the Mekong Delta. I could almost hear him humming the Ride of the Valkyries. 

Those readers who actually follow this blog will likely recognize most of these image locations.  This is the Discovery Bay canal system that opens into the same channel where South Side Marina is located.  We've made this canal trip dozens of times in a number of different boats.  The sights haven't changed much in general.  But I'll post up some familiar photos so you can sort of watch the slow decay of things here in the tropics.   And as we all should have figured out by now...everything changes.  Constantly.

These are the two 'obnoxious dogs who follow us up and down the canal barking insults at our own darling and blameless little terrieriest'.   According to Dooley the Defamist.  And he was in full voice at this point.  Apparently, dogs can't bark and swim at the same time.  I didn't realize that until Dooley pointed it out.   He became the canal king of trash talk.

Remember that old saying that if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem?  Dooley is a huge part of the problem.   He's as bad as they are. My ears are usually ringing after a few minutes of this.   

The dogs will run along the banks of the canal to stay up with us, barking and hurling canine insults, swimming where they have to. I almost called them the "local" dogs, but then I realized that Dooley has probably been living on this island since before these 'potcake dogs' parents were even born.   

 Do dogs bark in different accents?   Or is it all scratch and sniff with them?  

You may have noticed that we were having a difficult time even getting  a photo on this trip that did not have a dog in it.  They know every inch of this canal, and would take short cuts through the bush and come out barking every time we got close to shore.   I think they were entering into the spirit of the game.  At least, that's what I hope they were doing.  They look well fed and I haven't heard any missing person reports lately.

This next photo reminded me of something I wanted to point out about this canal network.   See that rusty metal thing lying there on the bank of the canal in this next photo?  The thing that looks like heavy steel plate welded to the end of a concrete filled section of pipe, looking alike a big drill bit?

Now look at the little scalloped shaped notches along the edge of the canal.  There are three of them in that photo alone. Can you tell that the radius of the notches knocked in the rock is the same as the heavy end of that hunk of iron?

That's because these canals were all dug with that hunk of iron doing the initial smashing of the rock. They used a crane to lift the iron battering ram high, and then dropped it onto the limestone. The weight of the heavy tool smashed and pulverized the soft rock enough that it could then be scooped out by bucket and front end loaders.  The man who did all this canal construction still lives near here, and we see him quite often at Bob's Bar.  That must have been a fun project.  And it's not finished, by a long shot.  I don't know if it ever will be, as Alan is pretty much retired now.  I believe that he's the same engineer who designed South Side Marina's lifting crane, by the way.  A good mechanical engineer will never run out of projects in a place like this.

We boogied up the canal, testing the outboard for reliability before taking it out into the ocean where we could open it up and test full throttle.   I'll put up some recent photos of the various same old sights along this section of canal.  And I'll tell you why in a minute.  I was playing with the photo software effects here.  Trying to spice up a dull photo.  Meh.

I suspect this part of Providenciales may be changing and in a direction we would prefer not to see. We're reading in the local newspaper that the people trying to put together the captive live dolphin prison have purchased land and apparently expect to go ahead with building this thing. There is some news on that in this article from the Sun.  The area where they were planning to build is right here, essentially. I posted a photo of the sign they erected near here in a previous post called Rusty Old Wrecks.  That sign got smashed to pieces, by the way. If this atrocity is allowed, this area will be  changed.  For now, it looks pretty much the same as it's been for the past several years.

We didn't go very far up the canal, as the purpose of the trip was really to test my repairs on the new old outboard motor.  We turned around at the big limestone smashing device and headed back over to South Side Marina.   Something about the names of these two boats tickled some distant memory that I can't quite identify.  I just know that  something that sounds a lot like " Moonlight  and Galliano" seems to set me off.  Is that the name of a country and western song?   It should be.

S/V Twisted Sheets is more or less seaworthy  most of the time, again. That sort of depends upon what's failed most recently and how critical it is to safe boat operation.  And it depends upon one's definition of "seaworthy". This old boat has been taking up most of our time so far this year but I did realize we're way overdue for a blog update so I threw this one together.  It has no central  theme, other than a loose shuffle of snapshots of this life we've chosen.  And recently, that's all been all about getting our sailboat ready.   The latest step in a long process that started one morning in New Jersey when we looked at each other and said "let's move to someplace tropical, get a sailboat, and explore."  This all doesn't happen overnight, apparently. No.  It takes days and days of work, weeks and months even.  And thousands of dollars.  Who knew?

I've been talking about this old boat of ours for quite a while now.  That should change more to me talking about where we're going with it, but we're still a few short panics and small projects shy of that point.   Putting a few hours in on the boat has become a big part of our day.  I've almost completely removed the interior vinyl and foam now.  We're down to bare fiberglass and plywood in most places.   Here's one of the last little areas to be stripped near the inside helm.

And it's not all tearing down any more.  We've started building back up.  For example, there was this big open space in the galley where I'd removed a small refrigerator when we got here.   We don't even know exactly what was in that refrigerator.  La Gringa had opened the door of it slightly to see what was in it, and that was the last time she touched it.   I ended up taping it shut, unopened, before tearing it out.  I heard rustling noises coming from it long after any sloshing inside should have settled down.  It sounded like the half life of someone's illegal science experiment.  There were things in that fridge.  Bad things.

So we gave it to a local Haitian guy with no olfactory glands and a sense of adventure. He seemed glad to get it. We were glad to let it go.

This abscessed refrigerator extraction left a  large hole in the cabinetry and I decided to install an ice maker in its place.  I wanted to do it in such a way as to have minimal impact on the original boat, and I also wanted to be able to easily remove it if we decided to put something else here some day.   So first I measured the space and drew the pieces  on Google's   CAD program, SketchUp.  That looks like this:

That white box at the top of the drawing is the bottom of the little portable ice maker.  I also decided to try using Starboard plastic for the low friction runners I wanted to install.   I built the parts in my little garage shop before taking them down to the boat.  Here's the pile of stuff from the drawing, come to life:

This is the home of the former refrigerator and its suspicious biological cargo.  We cleaned it out and painted it. I've installed the two slide/runners on the sides. Just a few screws to hold them in, and easily removed.  Correction, I should have said stainless screws. We've been replacing a lot of rusted fasteners on this boat.

After installing the sides, I had only to place the sliding platform on the runners and push it all the way back until the little latches on the bottom engaged.  Those are to keep this from falling out when we pull it forward into the boat to open the top of the ice maker.

I had already measured the ice machine and found that it needs to be extended about 8 inches out in order to open the top.  This is the little platform slid 8 and a half inches out.  That mahogany plank across the front of it is from  a weatherbeaten old hunk of driftwood we picked up over on the beach at West Caicos.

I like the thought that we "recycled" part of another boat that could have broken up decades ago.  We have no way of knowing how long that piece of mahogany floated, nor how many years it sat in the rocks at the edge of the sea before we found it. I haven't yet figured out what to do with the space under the new ice maker, but it's about the right size for storing frying pans and cooking utensils.  I'm sure something will come to mind after we've spent a few weeks on board.

We've continued to have problems related to the 12 volt electrical systems on the boat.  You may recall that most of them were pretty thoroughly fried by a lightning bolt when we were just north of Chub Cay up in the Berry Islands.  I know we'll never forget it.

The latest fallout of that is that the "house bank" batteries started to cook away. We returned to the boat after being away a few days to find that one of the four big Group 31 batteries was too hot to touch and almost totally dry.  I got rid of that one, and a few days later the next one went.  We are thinking that they were shaken pretty hard by the lightning strike, and they had been run down completely dead several times, and were also four years old.  So to head off future issue, we junked them and replaced them with four six volt golf cart batteries.   Here's the new batteries on their way to the boat. With yours truly being the mule that decided that this was a good time to take a break and take a photo.  That's about 250 lbs of batteries.  And for some stupid reason I was carrying them two at a time. Felt more balanced. And macho. And I think my arms are a little longer afterward.

I rested up for a few minutes, made all the excuses I could think of to put this off until later, realized that I had to get it done today.... and carried on.  Some parts of my life would go so much easier if I could just cut out the whining part in the middle section right between when I realize what I need to do, and when I actually do it. Next stop, getting the batteries onto the boat and down into the engine compartments.  Those are the old batteries on the left, compared to the new ones on the right.

The new batteries are taller than the old ones, and I had to modify the battery area of the boat to accommodate that.   The golf cart batteries are about ten pounds heavier than the old 12 volt batteries, even though the old batteries are larger.  From what I've been told, this is because they have a lot more lead in them.

While I was redoing the charging circuits I decided to add some 20 amp lighted toggle switches between the solar panels and the solar controllers, and between the controllers and the batteries.  I couldn't find any electrical boxes or brackets for toggle switches on the island, and they're hardly worth importing, so I made some on the 3D printer.  These are closed boxes on the top, open on the bottom.  That's to keep splashes off the switch wiring from above, and allow access and ventilation from below.  If you want the files to print some of these up, just ask.  I'm developing quite a library of 3D printed boat parts.

I haven't yet finished securing all the wire runs, but wanted to show you how the lights instantly tell me what's on and off in that area.   The blue lights mean the solar panels are connected to the controllers.  The red lights mean that the controllers are supplying 12 volts to the batteries.  Pretty, eh wot?

Back up above when I was whining about the batteries, I mentioned that they were taller than the old ones they replaced.  I had to move all the battery wiring up about three inches.  The easiest way I could think of to do this was to cut a piece of plywood the correct size and mount all the wiring to it.  Then I mounted the board up high enough to clear the batteries. I think this is a much better approach than drilling a few dozen new holes in the boat. I used existing holes to attach the plywood.  I think I'll be using this approach more often. Lets me make sweeping changes with minimal impact to the boat itself.  Plywood is cheap.

I had plenty of supervision while working on the wiring.  La Gringa took this photo of Dooley while he kept his eyes on my every move down in the engine compartment.  You can probably see why I wanted to put some splash covers over the switches.  It's all right under this hatch. I think Dooley is fascinated by areas accessible only by ladder.  I told him rats can climb ladders.

This is what an interested dog looks like from the other side of the ladder while he's contemplating how a rat would look climbing it.

We're still refining some of the things we've made for the boat.  I'm still looking for the best way to secure these heavy hatches when I'm working down around the engines, batteries, or in one of the lazarettes.  Latest version is just a hook, a piece of shock cord, and a shock cord gripper.  From the Gringos' 3D printer, again.  Prototype #2 is two pieces of plastic and a cord.  Getting simpler.

This is working pretty well, but I have one more mod to make.  I think it will be easy to eliminate the yellow piece by putting two holes in the white one.   I'll draw it up and print it before the next blog post.  I keep re-learning how good simplicity is on a boat.  One moving part is almost as good as no moving parts except that in this case the entire boat is a moving part.

We also had one more solar panel to install.  We brought this down with us from Florida on the boat two years ago.  And are just now getting around to installing it.  The truth is that we just haven't needed it.  I had a little bit of a hassle getting it installed and wanted to show you what I came up with.   Not because I think it's mind shattering clever, but because it worked pretty well and you might be able to use it.  The problem was that I couldn't reach the top of these bolts to hold them while I tightened the nuts from below.  La Gringa was busy with something else or she could have climbed up on the top of the boat  and played wench with a wrench.  But she wasn't around and my arms were just not long enough to reach both sides of the fastener.

We called upon the trusty rusty Dremel tool with a cutting disk to cut a groove in the end of the stainless bolts that I needed  to be still while I tightened up the locking nut underneath.   The black rubber on the bolt is a piece of fuel line tubing I am using as a shock mount for the solar panel.

The slot I cut with the Dremel allowed me to hold the bolt from turning with a flat bladed screwdriver while I tightened the nut with a wrench.  And it worked beautifully.

I know that it must seem like I am writing down every little boat detail as we go through this process.  I want to assure you that I am sparing you pages of DIY nightmares, experiences, and learning curves.  I could write several pages on the interior setup of a Simpson-Lawrence electric windlass, for example.  I could ramble on about my email exchanges with the Scotsman who apparently owns the remaining store of spare parts for these windlasses.  But I won't.  Risk of defamation suits, you see.
Well, maybe one photo.  Of the newly cleaned up and lubricated gear train.  Fun, huh?

We still haven't replaced all of the oft-lamented but still fried electronics.  Some of the stuff on the boat was pretty ancient, and won't be replaced.  We are still thinking through the whole electronic chart plotter morass before making a purchasing decision.  These days the trend is to integrate all the boat sensors in a central location and display them on overlays on one monitor.   I'm not totally sure yet, but I think I'm leery of this approach.  I must still be old school retro grouch, but I don't like the idea of everything depending upon one box of electronics to work.  So we're trying different approaches.  Redundancy.  Stand alone systems where possible.

One thing that's working pretty well so far is using an iPad with GPS to do the navigation chart plotting.  This probably won't end up being our final chart plotter, but it's stand alone and a good backup plan.  The problem is mainly reading the display from the outside helm.  We started out trying to read it through the window, which worked to some extent.  You can see the edge of the window at the bottom of the photo:

After listening to me complain and grumble for a while La Gringa came up with the excellent idea of wedging the iPad into the window track.  Ahhhh.... That's much better!!   Easy to see from outside now, although one does have to tilt one's head 90 degrees to the side kinda like a robin eyeing a short term earthworm, but it works. Thanks, dear.

I'm fairly certain that I can draw up and print some clips to secure an iPad where we want it to be, once we determine where we want it to be. We've been doing a lot of that lately. One of the best things about using a 3D printer is that it makes it easy to customize parts to exactly what we want for a given spot. For example, see those two little screw holes there to the right under the sliding window frame?   Those are from a flimsy folding drink holder that is, sadly, no longer with us.   As I am typing this, the printer is next to me making up a more rugged replacement for that drink holder.  It should be shaped something like this:

It will use the same holes as the former one. I don't like drilling new holes in the boat at every installation change.   SOME previous owners should not be allowed access to drill bits.  Nor silicon, but that's another story.  We've got a lot of holes to fill.

We finally got the boat back offshore recently.  We took her out just to sail, no other reason.   We wanted to make sure all the rigging was correct, since we hadn't been under sail for two years.  One of the first things I discovered when we tried to unfurl the Genoa was that I had wrapped the furling line when the sail was furled.  This is wrong.   As wrong as it could be, in fact.  I had to unwrap it all while we were underway. That'll teach me to pay attention next time.  Hopefully. Although it hasn't, yet. This is a roller furler.  That starts with "R" which I think is shorthand for "Arghhhhh!!"

While I was up on the bow messing around with my previous mistakes La Gringa was sailing the boat on the main sail alone.  That small island disappearing behind us is Providenciales.  We wanted to sail out far enough that we could see nothing but ocean in every direction.  And we did.

She didn't get to have all the fun, naturally.  I had my turn at the wheel.  Ah, now this is relaxing.  See our little iPad navigation system?  Very convenient, and I think I have an idea for a better mounting setup.  It's likely to involve a 3D printer.  I bet you knew that already.

And if you would like further confirmation of how relaxing this little sail was, please feel free to check with my back up engineer.  He thought it was pretty mellow out, his own self:

We left what's starting to feel like home at South Side Marina and just headed south. That block of clouds up ahead is over Molasses Reef which is the site of the oldest European shipwreck found so far in the New World.  This is on the southern edge of the Caicos Bank.  Aiming the boat at clouds is as good a destination decision as any when all we want to do is go sailing.

It's been way too long since we could get photos of Twisted Sheets under sail.    For people like us, this was a pretty good day.   Spectacular, actually. There's not much we would rather be doing.

One last peek at the island of Providenciales disappearing to the north as we sail directly toward the equator. I didn't bother taking photos after we were out of the sight of land.  I mean, it just looks amazingly like this, anyway, but with the land gone.  I'm sure you can imagine that.  As well as you can imagine the restraint I am showing by not lecturing you again about using clouds to navigate.  I won't, I won't, I won't.

You probably noticed that the sails were on the starboard side of the boat when we were heading south.  We had about ten knots of wind from the east.  

So after we turned the boat around and headed back toward where we hoped the island would be, the same easterly winds pushed the sails to the other side of the boat when we were heading north again. And that's about as technical as I'm going to get about that, but in the future you can probably look at the sails of any boat in this country and tell what direction its going.   The wind is almost always from the east.

Here's a video of what sailing this boat is like on a relaxed beam reach.  We were only averaging around 4 knots in 10-12 knots of wind.  That probably doesn't sound like much, unless you consider that we're moving an entire three bedroom, two bath apartment smoothly along at  a brisk walk.  Try that one at home.

No land in sight at this point.  And the water color changes with the angle of the light.  And the angle of the light changes with the boat direction and time of day.  We're trying to learn all this while we think about taking photos. And navigating. Good light is essential for navigating safely around here.  The GPS tells us where we and the islands are, but there is very little data on where the submerged coral heads and rocks and sand bars and shoals are located.  It's important to read the water.  This is all essentially unsurveyed outside the established routes.

Sometimes, the angle of the light is diffused by atmospheric conditions.  This is a photo taken from the house during a particularly dense little rain shower one afternoon recently.  We were feeling sorry for the crews of these two boats trying too get to the shipyard while visibility was quickly dropping.  We haven't seen one bit of fog in the nine years we've been here, bu lowered visibility in rain is pretty close.

I was looking at that photo and came up with another one of my silly band names.  How about  Saturated Atmosphere?  It has a kind of a rhythm to it, don't you think?

While you're thinking, what do you think this is?  Some one's idea of a civic beautification project?   A budet reforestation freak?

Nope.  It's a road hazard sign.   There is a hole in the dirt road and someone stuck a tree limb in it to warn motorists.  Not that uncommon, here.   We just never before bothered to take a photo of one of these literal "bush road signs".  

We have taken the Hobie out ONCE so far this year.  There's something sad bout that.  We love the little boat, and we love sailing it.  But the truth is that we're putting all our spare energy into the big sailboat and the Hobie is playing second fiddle.   It still sails as good as it always did, but we've moved on to bigger things.  I think we'll be putting this and the skiff both up for sale shortly. We plan to keep the dog, but would entertain offers..... Just kidding.  About the dog I mean.  I'm serious about selling the boats, though.

I see that this post has grown to sufficient length to qualify as finished. I never know just when to stop uploading the photos.  We take so many that it's sometimes difficult to pick and choose.  Especially when the post doesn't really have much of a theme to it, like this one doesn't.  It's more about what we've been up to lately, I guess.  I know we discard hundreds of photos to never be seen by anyone again.  Often when I'm looking at them I have a hard time remembering why I took them in the first place.

I may as well fit in another boat project here, as I know some of our readers are also cruisers.  This is the type of thing that's been taking up a lot of time lately.  In this case, La Gringa remarked that the anchor line was starting to worry her as it was getting frayed where the rope meets the chain.  Uh, yeah, that does look a bit shaky.

Someone used a simple backsplice through a chain link, and then tried to lash it with fishing line to take up the slack where the link will chafe the rope.   And a cable tie to keep the ends from coming unraveled.  Is that the correct splice for an anchor rode?  A frayed knot!  (Did you catch that one?)

Here's a better photo with something for scale.  Me.  And take a look at the rope just a short distance from the splice.  This was not good.  It had been snagging in the windlass gypsy when this oversized splice wouldn't feed into the anchor locker.

When I saw the splice that's been causing the anchoring jam issues, it reminded me of the lyrics in a Charlie Daniels fiddle tune I've been working on..."sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done",

This is  what it's supposed to look like, in one version. There is another splice that distributes the line down several links into the chain, too.  I like this one better in this case.

It gave me an excuse to use my little folding fid, too.   Not much call for a fid these days. I guess I should explain why this is a better splice.  It's because it actually grips the chain link tighter when it's under load.  This means it doesn't chafe through as quickly as the previous splice here was doing.  This also feeds through the windlass gypsy and into the anchor locker a lot smoother. There.  Ain't you glad you learned that? Now go sailing.  Seriously. You should.  It's good for your soul.

While this post was sitting on my computer unfinished I further refined the old plastic hatch holder design.  And yes, it's further simplified.  Now it's down to one piece of shock cord and a hook.  We've also discovered that this hook will fit into the window channels, which gives us an easy way now to hang the iPad navigation screen anywhere we like in that opening.  Or to watch a movie in bed.   Gotta love these printers.

I just spent what felt like two brain minutes (probably ten milliseconds) trying to figure out WHY I took a photo of a loaf of bread.

Then I remembered why.  We had just returned from a trip to the grocery store and I was blown away by how much it cost us at the register.  I took this photo to show you that we pay $6.85 for a loaf of bread.   I bet that makes you feel better about your own grocery prices.   Does a loaf of bread equal a gallon of gasoline where you live?

After that discussion we determined that after adding in the cost of the gasoline to go to the store at $6.30 a gallon, and the cost of the electricity to cook, at $.50/ kilowatt hour, it would probably be cheaper to just go out for breakfast.

So we did.   We called up our friend Preacher and all met for brunch at the beach.  Nice spread.

Well, that's going to be it for this post, boys and girls.  We've actually got a nice time lapse video for a change.   It's a sunrise instead of a sunset.  C'est la vie, y'all, and welcome to the Land of MakeDo.

  Until next time...