As we are in the St. Vincent Grenadines, there is not much to report about sailing. Crossings are short hops, maybe 12 nm from Bequia – Admiralty Bay to Mustique – Britannia. One has to shift attention to reefs instead, as now many approaches as well as anchorages are cluttered with reefs and shoals, and eyeball navigation important.
The sailing was nice, 20 knots on a reach and flat seas. A couple of miles before getting to Mustique, we caught a barracuda with our trailing line. It did not put much of a fight, but showed a long line of teeth and, as we we were pulling it out of water, it managed to cut our line! Again, we were slow with the kill. Next time I will have the flare gun ready.
The only place in Mustique where you are allowed to anchor is Britannia bay, on the leeward coast. On arrival, there was a tanker anchored though. The ship was there for a reason, but still a trap for the distracted: It was transferring its load of fuel onshore through a floating pipeline which cut the bay in half for several hundred meters. We tacked some 50-75 meters before, but we later saw another sailboat getting much closer before realizing what was about to happen. The guy on watch onboard the tanker hailed, but really at the last second.
Mustique has been a private island since 1835, although changing hands a couple of times. In the books it is known for being a playground for the rich and famous. Because of this reputation one might expect curious visitors, but the reality is quite the opposite: The Island is quiet, the beaches deserted and the trails pleasant to walk, protected by the shadows of thick forest. True, there is a somewhat unnatural sense of order, with neat gardens and barbecue tables arranged along the shore, security patrols, etc, but our civilized origins appreciate that once in a while.
Day 1 was spent walking on the beach nearby our anchorage, and then snorkeling. It is that beautiful. We soon discovered many oversized shells. Maybe the result of underwater nuclear tests? Walking further, they were amassed by the hundreds. We later discovered they had been washed onshore by a hurricane not long ago and it seems someone took the pain to create a reef for a quieter bathing area. The kids returned with their hands full of shells, for friends and family. To be discussed if there is storage space onboard. The last stroll that day was around the salt pond, which is important to maintain the local ecosystem as it retains the dirt from rainwater flowing down the hills and lets clean water flow into the sea, in turn necessary for coral development.
The next morning we left for a daylong walking tour of the island, up and down the hills and then onto Macarroni beach for a picnic. Again, surreal, as you have a km long beach with white sand, turquoise water, and no one around. We spent a few hours there and slowly walked back towards Britannia bay. We allowed ourselves a dinner at Basil’s, just to keep with the yachtsmen tradition. Next week there will be the annual Blues Festival there, but as usual we seem to be sailing one week ahead or behind the local events.
What I did like is that Mustique is truly a place for resting. No stores other than basic provisioning, no restaurants, not much of anything actually, except the constant wash of the ocean. Maybe we will stop again on our way up then.
On a general note, we are all tired these days, as we do not get proper sleep since Martinique – Le Marin, about 1 month ago, and we have not been to a marina since Tenerife….the latest anchorages have been rolly, which detracts from sleeping hours. We have received a recommended cure, which is Punch – Siesta – Punch – Siesta, but it may not apply to all the crew.
I already had a sensitive sleep, but by now I have developed a noise obsession. Any “clong” or “grnyec” at night must be identified and eliminated. To name one, recently it took about 1h in the middle of the night to uncover a can of olive oils lying sideways and rolling in some hidden drawer below decks. Some other noises are more structural and need “engineering”: Take our mooring line, which takes off the load from the windlass when at anchor. The line under stress has developed a cracking noise, in spite of having a shock absorber. We cleaned the line with soft water, and added a 2nd shock absorber, now it is almost silent.
Ear plugs are not the prudent mariner’s solution as you still want to hear any unusual sounds or anything resembling trouble (e.g. any one throwing their anchor at night too close), or a kid going for a midnight bath.
We are catching up with the list of small repairs: The latest include the bow navigation light (got struck by a flapping genoa), small tape repairs on the genoa, a leaking hatch liner (still leaking though), broken wardrobe lock, corroded GPS antenna cable at one of the 90 degree turns, plus the regular cleaning and greasing of deck fittings / electrical contacts, bolt & nut tightening as well as a hull and prop cleaning underwater (outboard engine is keeping up). More serious, our solar panels were charging about 1/3 of what they should have. We did not focus on this issue during the long passage since the hydrogenator kept the batteries permanently full, but now the situation began conditioning life on board as we had to increase the fridge temp, limit recharging of electronic devices etc in order to run the engine as few hours as possible. Our 4 service batteries carry 440A, and our daily consumption at anchor is about 80A, or 120 on days we run the water maker, and we try to keep the batteries at 70-80% charge. The panels, 6 of them totalling 360W were delivering 25-30A….
The source could have been a diode, a connection anywhere between the panel and the charge controller or the charge controller itself (or a combination), and the tracing work a somewhat daunting prospect in spite of the very clear guidelines we received from our friends back in Europe. But before we started, we had one more glance at the fuse box. They were visually good (these are standard U 5A units), but had never taken them off their housing. Curiously, although they still looked intact, replacing 2 of them out of 4 showed the instant energy production doubling, and the full day production increasing even more as probably the faulty fuses corresponded to the lateral panels (which get better exposure). Our production run rate now is 60-70A , and we are back to reading our Kindle instead of the cook books that we were left with, and the odd movie (we discovered Rrrrr!, a masterpiece of French cinema).
The other pending task regarded the watermaker. The 1.5 meter of piping running from the microfilter to the water maker itself needed replacing. We had replaced a defective pipe this summer (wrong rating, as it should have handled 20bar) with whatever we did find on the spot, and by now it had developed a bubbling deformation which was due to burst anytime.