The Saga of a Propeller

As avid readers of this blog will know we have had a problem with our propulsion when not under sail.

Well, we have now got some movement on the issue. Stewart and Karen from Pampero anchored next to us yesterday and he brought his diving skills to bear and we were able to get the propeller off. This showed the good news that neither the propeller nor the shaft were significantly damaged but that the keyway holding the two together had corroded away. Now all we need to do is to get a new keyway made up and we can then refit the prop and be on our way, all at a fraction of the price of a new prop and/or prop shaft. This is just as well as it now transpires that our batteries are shot to pieces and need replacing as they are not holding any sort of charge.

The next stage was to find some suitable metal to make a new key. The local chandler here in Fort de France would not be any use but we had hopes of one of the shops or such like in Marin and Pampero had hired a car as they needed some spare parts for their own boat. We drove down and after a lot of trawling round for both batteries and keys we found some stainless steel that would serve the purpose even though it was about twice as thick and deep as we would need. Pampero has an angle grinder which would make taking the excess metal off a lot easier than our files would.

Suffice to say that after a lot of measuring with callipers in the suddenly rather murky water we got the dimensions for the key and now have a working propeller and so are now able to motor again and all for a fraction of the cost we had envisaged at one point when we thought we would be needing a new prop and possibly shaft!

The battery saga continues though we have a couple of places where we can try. That won't be cheap and we are braced for spending three to four hundred Euros.

A Couple More Photos

I didn't have that much wifi the other day so didn't put many pictures up. An interesting aspect of sailing here is that although the scenery is very beautiful, a lot of places are not very photogenic. Still here are some pictures of Fort de France.

Martinique

It has been rather too long since we have managed to get a proper update on our adventures to date but this should suffice.

We have had to spend rather longer than we originally planned around the Fort de France area but will be moving on to Guadaloupe soon.

As previously blathered here, we started our Martinique adventure in Le Marin. A good time was had there though we did find it a bit “yottie”. It is after all a major center for this area and has literally dozens of charter companies as well as private boats based there along with all their associated support services. As it turned out, we could have benefitted from some of those support services. After an enjoyable time visiting old friends and making new ones on a replica Cornish lugger called Greyhound we moved a short distance to Sainte Anne.

Greyhound was a great experience though. It was built by Marcus and Freya who now operate her as a skippered charter affair both in the Caribbean and in UK waters. The original Greyhound was built to operate out of Fowey as a privateer in the eighteenth century. The current one has a much more peaceful purpose though they do carry a cannon which we had the pleasure of seeing fired in celebration of Carnival. You can find out more information about here here.

The next day, we took on some water and motored round to Sainte Anne which is just at the entrance to the Le Marin inlet. The anchorage was lovely being in crystal clear water and although in the company of lots of boats did not feel too crowded. However, the town was a distinct disappointment. It was quite smart but not in a practical way and lacked shops that we would want where we could get produce. The market was also very small and we couldn't find much fresh produce and no ice at all! Friends had recommended visiting Anse D'Arlet just to the south of the Rade de Fort de France. We therefore sailed off the anchor after just two nights and had a great sail past Le Rocher du Diamant.

There is an amusing story in the cruising guide about this rock. During the Anglo-French wars in the eighteenth century, the British wanted to station a warship off the southern end of Martinique but were short of vessels. They therefore captured this rock and “commissioned” it as HMS Diamond Rock. It was duly recaptured by Admiral Villeneneuve who then went on to lose to Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar.

This was actually taken while at anchor in Le Marin but I am a bit proud of it!

With this story in mind, we sailed quite close to it and marvelled at the tenacity of the British seamen who hauled cannons up it's sheer sides and then passed on round the point and north to Anse D'Arlet. This did prove to be a very pleasant anchorage though rather crowded – it is very close to Fort de France and gets a lot of weekend sailors in it. Stupidly, we also suffered an attack of lazycitis and didn't go ashore. We intended to go further on into the Rade de Fort de France and this is where our problems started multiplying!

First off, we were enjoying a good sail and even were overhauling an American boat when the jib started sliding down the furling luff foil. It became clear that the jib halyard had parted company or some such at the top of the mast. We lowered the jib and motored on to Anse Mitan on the south side of the Rade almost due south of the city of Fort de France. It was while motoring that the propeller started making alarming squeaking noises. We managed to get the anchor down and then took stock. The jib looked less alarming as it became clear that the halyard had not parted but rather a snap shackle on the rotator at the top of the jib had come undone. So, a trip up the mast to retrieve it should be all that was required. I spent some time poking around the gearbox, shaft coupling and through hull shaft seal to see if any of them were the culprit for the squeaking. Our biggest worry would be that the shaft seal was about to fail as that would put the boat at risk! Nothing appeared wrong and we set out to move to a more sheltered spot as we were rolling too much for me to go up the mast. We chose a spot called Trois Ilets a bit further up as being nice and sheltered as well as being a very nice spot itself. However, our propeller had other ideas. The squeaking reched a peak and then stopped as did the boat. We were left drifting, not very fast onto a coral reef with no sail ready. In record time we got the mainsheet attached, the main cover off and the sail raised and under way just as we drifted into some deeper water. Under main alone we sailed back to our old spot under the lee of Point du Bout before moving further into Anse Mitan where I was able to go up the mast and also put a mask on to look underneath.

The trip up the mast was achieved and the bent snap shackle was replaced with a simple screw shackle so we had our full suit of sails again. A trip under the boat revealed our motor problem as well.

There is a key way which locks the propeller to the prop shaft and this seems to have sheared off as the shaft rotates but the propeller doesn't. It is also very easy to turn the propeller by hand which you should not be able to do. This is quite serious as it will mean a haul out to fix and probably a new propeller or even a new prop shaft.

We don't want to sail back to Le Marin so have come up with four options, one of which as been eliminated. There is a boat yard in Fort de France and we checked to see if they could help us but are not set up to repair our sort of engine and propeller – they specialise in high speed power boats. Option two is to sail to Pointe a Pitre in Guadaloupe and fix it there. Third, we can sail to Antigua and get it fixed in English Harbour. Finally, we could do without an engine till we return to the UK. This last is not a completely insane option though unlikely.

Our plan at the moment is to sail to Antigua via Guadaloupe with the intention of hauling out and fixing our prop there. We feel it would be better to get it fixed where there are no language barriers. In the meantime we will be able to practise our boat handling under sail alone which is no bad thing really!

Parking Meter Checked

Sorry for the delay in updating but we have been without intertubes access for a while now. There is quite a lot of news but the most important bit is that we found the parking meters here in Fort de France!

We are in Fort de France at the moment and have found somewhere where we can do updates so I will see about filling people in on all our "adventures" asap.

Checking Parking Meters in Martinique

We are now in the French island of Martinique and this has a particular significance for me as there is an immortal line in one of the Clouseau Pink Panther films where Dreyfuss is bawling Clouseau out and says that if he doesn't do something he will find himself checking parking meters in Martinique. We are therefore on a mission to find a parking meter here.

At a more mundane level we had an enjoyable sail here though we found it tiring as well. It is only 25 miles or so from Rodney Bay to Le Marin but we were knackered when we did make it. For the first time in months – September to be precise – we were hard on the wind all the way. The distance is roughly the same as Torpoint to Fowey which we used to do regularly on a weekend when UK based. It gave us a bit of a turn to think that a weekend would start on Friday after work with a 200 mile drive to Plymouth. We would then get underway in the morning and arrive Fowey mid afternoon, much as we just did. We would then go straight ashore and probably have a drink and a meal in a pub. The next morning we would take ourselves back to Torpoint, put the boat to bed and dfrive the 200 miles back to London. Down here we will spend at least a week in Le Marin and then head a short distance round the island to visit Fort de France.

There is a huge difference between St. Lucia and Martinique.. The harbour is very crowded with hundreds of boats anchored and on moorings to say nothing of the 600 berth marina. Of course everything is in French and everyone speaks that language though you generally seem to find that they also speak fluent English as well though. All the cars have French number plates with the European flag on it as well. The currency is the euro as well. All in all, it feels a bit strange though also quite nice. The only bread you can buy are baguettes though I have yet to find any Brie!

The view from where we were anchored at first.

This is a local "Yole" which seem to be raced quite keenly here.

We have also gone into a marina for the first time in weeks to allow us to have some luxurious showers and also to catch up on laundry. We are not sure what it will be like though as the marina berth is much more sheltered than the anchorage and is also near some mangrove swamps so we may have to deal with mozzies for the first time on this side of the pond. We will be here for a while so I will doubtless be doing some updates in due course.

On another note, the website Marina Traffic to be keeping track of us quite well. If you go to their site, you can see our progress – if you are that interested of course!

First Thoughts on Being in the Caribbean

Well, we have been here for around three weeks now and feel that we are settled in this part of the world. It is strange in a way as the whole object of an Atlantic circuit is to cruise the warm waters and emerald islands of the Caribbean but you only actually spend about a quarter of the entire cruise here. The rest is spent getting here and then getting back! It would be great to spend much longer here but constraints of weather mean you can't. We are definitely feeling that we are not doing each island justice but the requirement to be out of here in time for the hurricane season means that you can't extend your stay into the summer.

I suspect that this is why people wind up coming back for a second trip. Goodness knows what it would be like on a longer cruise such as a circumnavigation where there are thousands more islands spread all over the south Pacific and much more widely spread than they are here. Still, we are enjoying the time here enormously and are still not feeling so rushed that we can't extend our time here in St. Lucia a bit as the wind is blowing harder than we would choose for the 20 odd miles north to Martinique. We won't however, be making it to the other famous harbours here in St. Lucia such as Marigot bay and Soufriere bay. That will have to wait for next time.

We had a very nice passage form Barbados with perfect winds giving us a very fast passage and a perfect dawn landfall on Point du Cap at the northern extremity of this island. We first anchored under Pigeon Island which seemed quieter than further into the bay but then had to move for reasons outlined below. Rodney bay is a large bay right near the northern end of St. Lucia and is nice and sheltered with a large (for here) marina in a lagoon at the center of the bay. It is a favourite spot with yotties of all sorts. We were even graced with a tall ship which seems to be a cruise ship given how many people were ferried ashore from it. For the first time we have met charter boats as well as boats who are locally based here rather than just long distance cruisers like ourselves. This makes for much more crowd of course but it is OK at the moment.

As usual, we did not lift our outboard off the dinghy though it is advisable to do so in some places as it makes theft more difficult to steal it. However, there seems to be very little risk of that here and it is a heavy beast to lift up and down. In the morning we found the dinghy partially deflated and the outboard mostly submerged in the water. After lots of swearing, I got it together to jump in the water and attach the main halyard to allow Audrey to winch it aboard. Of course lots of water drained out and we imagined the worst. Drowning an outboard is a serious thing and often leads to the death of the engine. Modern outboards are miracles of power and light weight but this is achieved by very fine engineering. The aluminium carburettor, for example, has a myriad lot of tubes in it which will block up when corroded and stop it working at all. Clearly, we had to work quickly to save it though I did waste some time by taking the plug out and blowing all the water out of the cylinder to no avail.

We therefore, upped anchor and moved closer to the lagoon where the marina is so as to shorten the row to the boatyard. Fortunately, Rodney bay does have quite a big boat yard including outboard engineers. We left it with a guy with instructions to try and recover it but not to order expensive parts which we could not afford. Thankfully, it had been caught in time and after a thorough clean, rinse and reassembly we still have a functioning engine. This is a huge relief as rowing the quite long distances you may have to cover here would be quite gruelling! I feel a bit rueful about this as I used to row everywhere when a teenager but we now find rowing more than a quarter of a mile very tiring.

We are now being very careful to lift the engine off the dinghy each night now though, thankfully, we haven't encountered any further deflations. I think it was caused by the valve sticking a bit allowing air to leak rather than a seam starting to leak or general wear on the material.

We celebrated having an outboard again by heading over to Pigeon Island which is a national park and walking over it. A British Admiral called Rodney first used the island as a base to plan raids on the French in Martinique during the eighteenth century and gave his name to the bay. During the twentieth century it was inhabited by an English woman called Josset Legh (?) who built a house there and lived on the island till 1980. I think she also influenced the development of Rodney bay as a yachting center as well. Now you can tie up to a pontoon and walk over the ruins of both Rodney's fort and Josset's house which was destroyed by a hurricane. There is a lovely tropical forest on the windward side filled with local Pigeons (hence the name we presume) and some other birdlife. We also enjoyed a cold beer in the bar/restaurant they have there.

One afternoon, we were relaxing in the cockpit, again (!), when a familiar boat pulled up astern. It was Pampero of Down who we had last met in Gran Tarajal on Fuerteventura. They had crossed direct from Tenerife to Barbados and we just missed them in Carlisle bay. It was great to catch up with people who you had last met 2500 miles away and compare notes on experiences. Needless to say, too much rum punch was consumed. They are on their way south for a while to visit the Tobago Cays in the Grenadines so we hope to catch up somewhere else in a month or so such as Guadaloupe.

More flora and fauna on Pigeon Island.

A cruise ship with a difference. It caught our imagination a bit so we looked it up and found their web site.

Barbados

We have been a couple of weeks here now - mostly anchored in Carlisle Bay where Bridgetown is and have been thoroughly enjoying it here. We did not expect to want to stay long but it has been an enchanting island which has delayed our departure. We will however have to move on and should be arriving St. Lucia on Wednesday sometime.

I will try at get more stuff up about here but we caught a bus to Basthsheba on the east coast yesterday so here are some photos. The coastline is quite spectacular there though we were a bit disappointed that the waves were not bigger. The other bit was the local architecture as you can see below.

Getting around here is very easy with a good network of publically funded buses at B$2 for each trip (there are B$3 to a pound give or take). It would be very easy to spend a long time here and we have met someone who is a repeat visitor here.

We have also met some interesting other cruisers - notably Charlotte and Dan who built their own Jay Benford boat and are on an Atlantic circuit like us. I will put a link to their blog when I remember to bring the details with me!