Updates are Coming!

On Feb 15th, 2013 Published By B.J.

 

Given the difficulty with trying to get to the Internet in St. Martin, I’ve decided extreme measures are necessary.  I’m falling months behind here and I hate playing catchup.  If nothing else trying to reach back through the sun soaked rum-addled recesses of my mind to recall exactly what happened when and where is just an all fired nuisance.

So I’m experimenting.

I’m looking for a good off line blog editor.  So far Microsoft Live Writer and Qumana seem to be the leading free choices.

So far Live Writer is everything I expected a Microsoft Product to be:  invasive and bloated, making changes to my system I do not want, forcing me to download software I do not need and asking me to set up unnecessary accounts for services I have no use for.  But…it DOES connect to the blog.  This post is evidence.

Qumana looks interesting, lower impact third party software that doesn’t foist a bunch of junk on me I don’t want or need.  But it can’t find my blog, even using the same login information I gave Microsoft (shudder).

Time will tell, once I’ve found a solution the blog updates should become more regular again.  They will come in batches maybe, but they will come.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Trip to St. Martin – Busted Backstay Edition

On Feb 3rd, 2013 Published By B.J.

In hindsight we agreed that to date, it was the most terrifying thing we’ve dealt with on the boat so far. Something in fact that most people hope never to deal with.

Everything started out according to plan. We took some Stugeron Thursday night and went to bed, no seasickness for us! The alarm went off at some ridiculous hour when it was still dark. Maybe a second alarm went off, or it was a snooze…this part was a bit blurry…but we got up, hauled anchor and were on our way by about 0430. In the pitch black we were motoring, picking our way out of the channel into North Sound on Virgin Gorda then heading East towards the Anageda Passage. We slipped out some reefed main and decided to motor sail until we could SEE the sails. The wind was cooperating, the waves weren’t too bad.

Around six in the morning the glow of sunrise has started to take the edge of the stygian black of the deep hours of the night and we decided we could see well enough to start sailing. Out came the headsail and we started to trim it then BANG! We heard a loud bang and crash and things felt wrong. It wasn’t quite light yet, but we quickly spotted our backstay whipping around in the air over our heads and our radar lying on the deck over the life lines. Major rig failure – one of the worst things to happen at sea with the sails up!

For those unfamiliar with sailboat rigging, Evenstar has a masthead rigged, deck stepped mast. In non-sailor speak, the mast is held on the boat by “stays” – large, long, and strong wires that are tensioned to the hull of the boat. Some boats have a hole in the deck through which the mast passes, then it rests on the keel of the boat – this is called “keel stepped”. A smaller number, including Evenstar, are “deck stepped”, meaning the mast rests on the deck of the boat with a strong compression post beneath it to carry the load. But the mast butt is resting on the deck of the boat, not through the deck and on the keel. The merits of either system are the subject of endless debate, but the Hallberg-Rassy deck stepped mast is a solid and safe design. The mast is held down by “stays”, a forestay (front), backstay (back of the boat…there is a pattern here), and the “shrouds” which run down the side of the mast. Two big shrouds from the top, and four smaller ones that probably have a more technical name than “other shrouds” or “lower shrouds” but I don’t know it. All of these wires are tensioned down and provide strength to keep the mast from falling over in the direction opposite the wire.

Unless, of course, one of the wires breaks.

In our case it was the backstay, or more accurately the SSB insulator on the backstay. Through an oversight at installation Loctite thread sealant wasn’t applied to the separator. Loctite stops threaded things from unthreading under vibration and load. The SSB insulators break the backstay up so that one central portion is insulated electrically from the rest of the rig so the wire in the middle can also be used as an antenna for the Single Sideband radio without passing currents elsewhere in the boat. The insulators are supposed to be stronger than the wire, but in this case the threads had vibrated loose and when we loaded up the rig the last thread stripped out.

So, back to the excitement. It’s dark still but the sun is rising, we are heading into 7′-8′ seas about five miles off shore from Virgin Gorda with wind blowing in the 20’s with gusts close to 30 knots. The backstay has broken loose and is swinging around, the boat is rolling and the sails are flapping and the radar is lying on the lifelines. What to do?

In a situation such as this the first things to do are to stabilize the rig so we don’t lose the mast while getting the loads off of it as quickly as possible. I handed off the wheel and grabbed the spare main halyard and connected it to the top of the deck connection for the back stay. Kathy and Will started trying to get the sails in while holding us pointing into the wind to keep the load off the sails, Danielle was sleeping but we got her up in a hurry to help. A team was dispatched below to get the rig removal tools and keep them handy. If you do lose your mast you need to cut it off the boat as quickly as possible in rough seas, as a few thousand pounds of loose, broken metal pounding on your hull can put a hole in the boat easily.

Furling the headsail wasn’t working, with the load off the back stay the mast was bent forward and the head stay was much to floppy and the sail was getting bound up. So I had to ratchet the tension on the extra halyard to firm up the headstay enough to furl the sail. We got this all done…pretty quickly! The main came in pretty easily at least.

With the rig initially secured, we did a quick cleanup and assessment – drag the radar back on the deck and clear any tangled lines. We also realized this would be a great time to put the check stays on – these are adjustable mast supports we need when flying the staysail, and would provide extra additional bracing against the back and forth mast motion we were trying to avoid to keep the mast on the boat. As we cranked down the first checkstay really tight the hardware that holds the checkstay to the deck exploded apart. OK, let’s start with the OTHER checkstay, so we did. Additional blocks and lines were procured from the emergency rigging kit and the second checkstay was jury rigged on as well.

Back to Vigrin Gorda…the safest close port. We pulled up on a mooring at the Bitter End Yacht Club and surveyed the damage. It wasn’t pretty, the backstay had swung around the front of the boat and gotten wrapped around the headstay furler. So with our jury rigged bracing in place we untangled the backstay, then hoisted Kathy up with rig to finish the job and secure it from further swinging and tangling in case we had to move the boat.

A few phone calls later we found someone that would look at the boat that day if we got it to Tortola, no one else could come to Virgin Gorda. Back to the weather window for a moment, do you remember from the last post how it was “slim”? After Saturday morning there was predicted to be a large (10 foot) Northerly swell and the winds were supposed to pick up again as well. So if we didn’t get out on Friday we might not be leaving the BVI’s for a week. We called my parents and told them not to cancel their plan tickets to Tortola quite yet…

During this I needed to go check in with Customs. As far as they were concerned we’d left the BVI’s and weren’t coming back so I needed to make sure our papers were in order. As it turns out since we didn’t make it 12 miles off shore they wouldn’t clear me in as as far as they were concerned I hadn’t left yet, and they politely told me I could just leave when I had my repairs done as long as my visa hadn’t expired. If someone asked for my papers they should just “call us, we’ll tell them”.

We buckled up the boat, found a slip, and headed for Tortola. We arrived there around 2:00 p.m. and called the rigger, he showed up about ten minutes later. A very prompt and professional fellow, he climbed up the rig and brought down the backstay. We repaired it there on the dock and hoisted it back up. Because we’d only lost the last thread on the insulator we were about to screw it back together with Loctite and everything was good as new. By 4:30 it was pretty clear we had a fully functional rig again. We ordered some takeout dinner from the marina restaurant, I repaired the SSB antenna and we were off, once again at 5:30.

I consider it a strong testament to how far our crew has come that Kathy and the kids were willing to turn right around, after the day’s near disaster and on little sleep, and head right back out there again to make the passage. A few years ago Kathy bumped a rock driving the boat out of Onset, MA and it seemed like she had the shakes about it for days. This was a hundred times worse, and this time SHE was the rock.

And for the rest of the trip…we decided to motor sail all night up wind. Boring, loud and roll-y. But nothing else fell off the boat.

Posted in broken things, scary, St. Martin | 5 Comments

Heading to St. Martin

On Jan 31st, 2013 Published By B.J.

Getting to St. Martin had sort of painted us into a corner. My parents were planning to meet us there on January 9th. Fortunately they planned to stay in a hotel for three days which gave us some flexibility, but we did have a sort of target to get there so as not to have my parents booted from their hotel on the third day and being left to sleep on a park bench in Marigot.

Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating.

To get from the British Virgin Islands to St. Martin one must sail East across the Anegada Passage, a trip off shore of some seventy miles or so if one leaves from Virgin Gorda, the most Easterly island we can get to with our eight foot draft. The prevailing winds here are the trade winds, which tend to be Northeasterly with a lot of East in there. This translates to what is most likely an upwind sail.

Sailing upwind doesn’t bother us much, yes the boat tips and it’s bouncy but Evenstar is a well found boat that sails to weather well. Our Autopilot, however, does not share this feeling and really sails upwind badly. But this isn’t much of a problem as we have three drivers on board that can hand steer pretty well up wind.

Upwind sailing can get more unpleasant in some circumstances. To drive the boat well upwind, one looks constantly at the “telltales” which are little bits of cloth that stream near the luff (aka “front”) of the sail. You keep them streaming well with the sails trimmed for upwind, and you go upwind. When it gets REALLY windy though we need to reef the head sail, which rolls up the telltales so you can’t see them anymore. Still not a real problem, you can watch the sail, with it starts to flutter you bear off a little…not as sensitive but still works.

Unless it is a dark and moonless night, and you can’t see the sails either. That makes it rather difficult to see how well you are sailing up wind and you are just as likely to stick yourself in irons as sail off in the wrong direction.

As we started looking to the weather to get to St. Martin after the New Year we quickly realized that the weather window was pretty slammed closed for maybe the next couple of weeks. Oops. Winds were predicted to be in the 30 knot range, gusting higher, with 10-12 foot seas. That is the other condition where upwind sailing is unpleasant…really big waves. So we made the call to my parents that maybe we wouldn’t be there in time, or at all, and we needed to explore maybe getting them to the BVI’s instead. Putting the boat and family in danger to get there just didn’t make sense.

As we were moving around the BVI’s it was indeed “blowing the dog off the chain” as the saying goes. We did have some nice, fast, and windy sails in 30+ knots of wind as we were seeking sheltered anchorages and trying to make final arrangements such as picking up our mail in Tortola and finding parts. The difference is that the Francis Drake Passage in the BVI’s is protected; the waves in those winds did not have space to get over four feet high so the sailing just requires that you reef in the sails, hold on tight and go fast.

So we watched the weather and we waited.

Eventually the weather forecaster we use indicated there was a slim window on Friday, January 11th for us to go to St. Martin. The winds were supposed to drop into the low 20’s or high teens for one day while the seas abated to 7-8 feet. Also the wind was supposed to back a bit towards the North, meaning we would not be headed straight into the wind the whole trip. It would still be upwind, but only on one tack – we wouldn’t have to zigzag all over the Anegada Passage just to get to St. Martin against the wind. So starting Friday afternoon one could leave and find passable, if not pleasant, conditions to make the trip.

Of course this window did bring up one minor issue – we would be leaving shortly before sunset and sailing upwind in the dark on a moonless night with our sails reefed. See paragraph’s 5 & 6 above if you skipped them. We expected a total trip time of around 12 hours, not unbearable by any means, but not easy in those conditions. So we decided that we’d be better leaving early Friday morning, around 4:00 a.m., and arriving in St. Martin before dark…therefore not breaking the “no entering strange harbors in the dark” rule either. The conditions would not be lessening until later in the day, but to our thinking the extra wind and waves wouldn’t bother us too much if we were sailing in daylight.

So with a plan in place we sailed up to Virgin Gorda and picked up a mooring at the Bitter End Yacht Club. The next day we moved the boat to Leverick Bay, did some laundry, and cleared customs…we were ready to leave on Friday at oh-dark-thirty!

Posted in St. Martin | Comments Off on Heading to St. Martin

Greetings From the Wasteland!

On Jan 31st, 2013 Published By B.J.

Hello all and sorry for the long absence!

We’re safely ensconced in St. Martin, also referred to as “The Great Wifi Wasteland” by another cruising blogger.

Internet isn’t so easy to come by here, which is the major reason I’ve fallen so far behind on the blog. I’ve got lots of good things to blog about, including almost losing our rig on the way over here, but I’m working out how to do his most effectively. THIS post I’m creating with my thumbs on my iPhone, which is painful at best. I attempted again to use Blogger’s remote e-mail posting and that failed again too. Even if it worked I wouldn’t be able to put up pictures.

But be patient, right now to get pictures up here I need to go to an Wifi enabled cafe or bar. But there will be more updates to follow…eventually.

Posted in St. Martin | Comments Off on Greetings From the Wasteland!

Bye Bye to the BVI

On Jan 11th, 2013 Published By B.J.

Tomorrow we head off to new horizons – we set off to Saint Martin in the wee hours of the morning. It’s about 70 miles across the Anegada Passage, plus some extra miles leaving Virgin Gorda and arriving in St. Martin making for about an 80 mile trip if we don’t have to tack a lot.  There is a weather window opening for a “less difficult” passage, so off we go.

For the last few days here it’s been blowing the dog off the chain in the BVI’s.  We sailed to Road Town with winds gusting over 30 knots, and sailed back to Virgin Gorda (the closest place to leave for St. Martin from) upwind with winds gusting into the mid to upper 20’s.  These are the Trade Winds which tend to be dominantly from the East.

St. Martin is to the East.

What this translates too is big wind directly from where we wanted to be going for the last week.  With waves, waves driven by the wind up to 10′ in height.  The predictions for the last few days were gale force winds, 10’+ waves and squalls and an upwind sail.  So we opted to wait it out, in spite of the fact that my parents were flying in to St. Martin yesterday.

Fortunately they knew we were likely to need some flexibility and sert themselves in a hotel for a couple of days so they are already in Marigot, the capitol of the French side of the island.  Yes, the island is split in two between the French (Saint-Martin) and the Dutch (Sint-Maarten).  More on the whole island later, once I’ve been there and had a look around!

For the weather though, the next 36-48 hours is bringing through a brief easing and change.  The wind is supposed to switch about 30-40 degrees North, making it NOT dead upwind so we can hopefully make the whole sail without having to tack back and forth.  Even though it will still be a basically upwind sail we should be able to stay on one tack pointed straight at St. Martin which is a huge plus.  Additionally the wind and waves should be easing somewhat.  Expected winds tomorrow morning are around 20 knots, by afternoon they should be dropping into the teens.  Wave heights of 8-9 feet should also drop to seven feet or so.

We don’t expect a comfortable sail, but certainly a manageable one.

So it’s off for an early night, and an earlier morning.

See you on the other side!

Posted in BVI, passages, Saint Martin | 2 Comments

St. John and USVI National Park, Part II

On Jan 5th, 2013 Published By B.J.
One of the many lovely beaches in the USVI park on St. John – Cinnamon Bay

A while back I did promise you ‘d get back to the fun stuff, so not a single whine about the refrigeration or stories about head rebuilds!

The USVI National park not only has a lot of beaches, there are nature trails all over the island, as well as some nice facilities and some beautiful reefs.  Cinnamon Bay on the North side of island has a camp ground with some interesting looking facilities and programs, though still too expensive for a night of kid camping like we are looking for.  There are also a couple of trail heads there, so we strapped on our hiking shoes and headed for shore.

One of the trails is a short loop that runs past the ruins an old sugar factory.  There are some historical plaques there that describe the process and how this was built.  St. John is dotted with the ruins of a lot of old homes and economic ventures – various starts and false starts to try and exploit the region.  Apparently he collapse of slave labor played no small part in the failure of some of these efforts, but there also was a fair amount of political upheaval as the various European powers swept through the region repeatedly.  The loop trail is an easy shaded hike, surprisingly cool in the morning hours.  Spiders, lizards and termites were what we saw of wildlife.  The termites build large bloated looking nests in trees they are infecting; in truth the idea of kicking one of those open gives me the willies with all those bugs spilling out.  There were also signs about some local large millipedes which could spray something nasty on you if you upset them, but we didn’t see any of them on the loop trail.

One side of the ruins covered with flowers

After the loop, we entered the other nearby trail which heads across the island.  The sign at the trail head read “moderate uphill”, which can be interpreted to mean “climbing gear, ropes, and mountain spikes not required” as it immediately takes off uphill at an angle that would flip you over on your back if you were riding it on a bike.  Halfway across the trail is a fork, with a sign labelled “Ruins on America Hill”.  More uphills, some switchbacks in the path as well as less shade.  But the view from the top is worth it.  The ruins appear to be a house, with some outbuildings near it.

The stunning view
The chart shows the elevation of the hill to be 526 feet.  Seemed higher, and the view is just stunning.  In the foreground is Maho Bay where we were planning to spend the night.  Off in the distance you can see West End on Tortola, the harbor were we originally landed and cleared customs in the BVI’s.  A beautiful breeze blows up there, and the foliage provides some nice shade.  It’s a pleasant place to catch your breath and cool off after a hot hike up the steep hillside.  And we saw our first of the spewing millipedes…and our 2nd through about 150th ones too, they seem to like it there.  I will spare you the pictures!

View of the ruins on America Hill from MahoBay

After our hiking we headed back to the boat and moved on to Maho Bay.  One of the recommended stops at Maho Bay is the restaurant at the Maho Bay Campground.  This Campground is a privately run Eco-conscious resort and quite different than the campground at the National Park.  From the small beach at the base of the hillside, a long series of steps and walkways rises up the hillside.  The camping is not in tents, but in screened in cabins.  The walkways and stairs are evocative of some of the tree dwelling scenes from movies (the Ewok Village on Endor, or Lothlorien depending on your Fantasy/SciFi bent), where houses rise out of the trees and walkways disappear under the foliage.  Ok, maybe it’s not that magical but it is a cool setup and looks like a fun place to stay if you weren’t on a boat.  Birds flit through the trees, there are a few chickens in the under brush, the ubiquitous lizards warm themselves on the rocks and there is quite a collection of resort cats lounging around and asserting their ownership of the place.

That’s Evenstar’s anchor light you can see there

The restaurant is on the top of the resort, you walk high up the steps to reach it and when you get there it overlooks the bay below.  Yet another stunning view from a high place…it doesn’t get old though.  This one faces west and it’s a good spot to take in the sunset as you eat.  We’d moved to the bay in front of the resort, you can see Evenstar in this sunset picture.

“Restaurant” is a bit of a misnomer, as it is the resort’s dining facility.  It’s a restaurant in that there is a menu and someone else cooks for you.  But you place your order at the register and pick up your food from the kitchen counter, and you bus your own dishes…not quite cafeteria, not quite restaurant.  That being said, the food is wonderful and reasonably priced – I’m guessing not having wait staff helps with that.  Each night they have a different theme and offer a meat, fish, chicken, and vegetarian dish to choose from as well as a salad bar and iced tea.  We caught Southern Night and feasted on ribs and Southern fried chicken with collard greens and mashed potatoes.  All in all a reasonable dinner in a stunning setting, so I’d have to give a thumbs up to those recommendations so long as you aren’t expecting to be able to speak to a wine steward.

All this hiking and snorkeling is going to do me in, whatever happened to sitting under a palm tree with a cold rum drink in my hand?

Posted in St. John | 2 Comments

Fixed Up!

On Jan 3rd, 2013 Published By B.J.

A few days in Red Hook on St. Thomas, and we’re good to go with the freezer, and the refrigerator problems are at least…better understood.

It’s not really possible to say enough great things about the people at Reefco in St. Thomas that got us sorted.  The technician they sent was another liveaboard cruiser they gets it about how we want to prioritize and solve things, and she was technically savvy and sorted us out in short order for a lot less money than we were dreading.  And she was more than willing to listen to me prattle on with all I’d observed and diagnosed about the system and took all I said into account when she was doing her own testing.  As opposed to the last guy we called when the freezer failed the first time.  He showed up when I was off the boat, flipped the breaker (that I turned off, since it was running and not making cold) and told Kathy that it wasn’t working because the breaker was off and left her a bill – this I do NOT need.  What was apparently happening is that a internal valve was intermittently seizing up, and we’re guessing the subsequent hot running exacerbated the situation by making the metal swell up a bit.  When the pump was shut down and reached ambient temperature it came right up and started working again – which is the exact same behavior that we saw down here.  But that valve was due to fail for good at some point and the whole system was unreliable.

The other day I posted a picture of what I believed to be a compressor.  There WAS a compressor in that picture, but there were also a bunch off additional hoses, pipes, coolers, heat sinks, and a computer attached to the “compressor”.  If one were to order the “compressor” on line it would come with all that stuff and cost well over $1,200.  However the actual “compressor” pump is the central black thing I’ve highlighted in this photo here.  Apparently you can pull all that external stuff off, screw in a new compressor pump and off you go for a fraction of the cost.

What I appreciate is that our tech easily could have sold me the whole new unit, I wouldn’t have been the wiser which is why I’m not doing this professionally.  I can get my head around the basics of how the system works but there is still a lot of detail I don’t know, like which part of the “Compressor” is really broken and how not to replace what works just fine.

All in all, we were thrilled to get away with this repair for far less than we feared it would cost us, including some diagnostics to sort the refrigeration a bit more.  There is still some electrical weirdness, but I know where to look.  And the slow leak in the refrigerant was also isolated.  Unfortunately it is in the evaporator plate which is one of those parts where the labor to replace it will cost more than the plate does.  In the mean time it is a slow leak, so we can live with topping off the refrigerant every couple of months.

We passed a quiet New Year’s Eve in Red Hook with the kids, took a safari bus ride ($1 per person vs. $10 per person for a cab!) to see The Hobbit, and still made the best of being not quite where we wanted to be for a few days.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Fixed Up!

Frozen Out

On Dec 27th, 2012 Published By B.J.

The best best laid plans of mice and me oft go awry…

Although I’ve not yet gotten the blog caught up with our physical location (I think I left you somewhere in the USVI National Park on St. John) we’ve been back in the British Virgin Islands for over a week.  We left St. John with the intent of staying here in the BVI’s until we leave for St. Martin on the first weather window after the new year.

That was until our freezer up and died on us.

This was two days before Christmas, but I didn’t mention it in my Christmas post because well, it didn’t fit the mood to be whining about more broken stuff.  But the freezer, which had acted up once before, finally seems to have packed it in for good.  The plus side is it was only half full, but it still holds a lot of food.   Fortunately for us we’ve been rafted to our friends on Troubadour and they had some space for some of our stuff.  But we’ve had a lot of bacon and sausage for breakfast the past week!

Evenstar has a separate refrigerator and freezer.  Both are large, cavernous and deep and hold a surprising amount of food.  Of course finding it and getting it out can be somewhat problematic since Kathy isn’t tall enough to reach the bottom of the fridge without climbing into it or standing on a step stool.  Picture your fridge as a deep, dark, hole without any shelves in it.  Sure it holds a lot, but you need to pack it right…and by the way anything that touches the sides will freeze solid.  Fortunately Will and I are here to help though Will’s not thrilled at being designated as the official “Cleaner of Fridge & Freezer Bottoms” because he’s the tallest one on the boat with the longest arms. 

The entire system is a hassle.  It is “water cooled”, as opposed to “air cooled” or “keel cooled”.  Which means that we have a pump that runs seawater through the compressors to cool off the refrigerant that runs the system.  The Air & Keel cooled people do not have this pump, and they do not circulate sea water (an intrinsically hostile substance filled with persistent living creatures) through their boat as a result.  When we were weekend cruising and vacationing on the boat it wasn’t such a problem.  Any critters such as barnacles, mussels, tunicates, sponges, algae or any other of the Legion of Gross Little Sea Critters that tried to colonize our refrigeration system generally failed.  They need circulating , fresh seawater to live, and when you turn the system off on Sunday night they get five whole days to dry out and die (Bwaah Haa Haa Haaaa! he says, while dry washing his hands and relishing their dessicatory demise…) before the system comes back on the next weekend.   But when you live on board you pretty much have the fridge and freezer running all the time which provides a nice, comfortable, and safe home for these things to proliferate in your water hoses and sea strainers.

It is a never ending battle to remember to clear these things out, and more than once we’ve had the system get clogged and had to resort to techniques such as back washing all the lines with fresh water (to my shouts of “Lyse you little b***ards!”), flushing the system with muriatic acid to dissolve their shells out, pushing various long, flexible pokey things through the hoses to clear them, and the ever popular Reaching Into the Disgusting Filter to fetch out the critters.  When the lines get restricted (which takes a while) you can start to tell because the water pump gets louder and louder the less water it gets until it starts buzzing like 400 pound bumblebee under the floor boards, drowning out conversations and movie dialogue.

A similar, but considerably less rusty
and beat up, compressor to ours

But interestingly enough the constant invasion of sea-life, while perhaps peripheral, tangential and maybe casual to our present freezer failure is not the actual failure.  The system is pretty clean right now and is circulating plenty of water.  What seems to have failed on the freezer is the compressor, which is of course the most expensive part of the system.  The compressor takes the refrigerant, which circulates as a gas, and compresses it into a liquid.  This whole liquid/gas compression cycle is how the “cold” is made – as the compressed refrigerant makes it’s way through the fridge it evaporates, sucking up heat from the surrounding environment which in this case is the “evaporator plate”, which pulls heat from the fridge or freezer to do this.  No compressor, no cold.  Ours turns on, it doesn’t seem to DO anything but vibrate, get hot, and consume power.

My theory is that the constant over working that this older unit has had to endure because of the restricted flow of seawater (to keep the compressor cool, and give it someplace to get rid of the heat generated by compressing the gas into a liquid.  This is such a great post for bio & chem geeks!) has finally worn the thing out.

Also, did I mention the refrigerator is wonky too?  We’ve got two problems going on there – a slow  leak in the refrigerant lines somewhere, and an electrical…”issue” in the system.  The refrigerant leak is a nuisance, the system just starts getting less and less cold, until I have to put some more 143a refrigerant in every couple of months.  The electrical issue is more vexing, because there is some sort of voltage drop in the system that makes the fridge controller think the batteries are less charged than they really are.   There is a “safety feature” to keep you from running your batteries down where the system will shut off if it detects low battery voltage,  so the refrigerator doesn’t always re-start when it has cycled off with the thermostat since it thinks the batteries are too discharged.  Turning on the generator for literally a minute increases the battery voltage enough to fake it out and make it start, but this is problematic if it happens in the middle of the night and the refrigerator sits for hours not running.

The net result of this is that we have to abort our current stay in the BVI’s and head back to St. Thomas to get the systems serviced.  The freezer may be due for a replacement of many of it’s key parts; we may perform a similar service on the refrigerator too because we’re just sick of dealing with it.  It gets very expensive when food gets spoiled because the systems aren’t reliable.  The refrigerator is the same age as a the freezer and our confidence in it is pretty low at this point.

Which is unfortunate because this makes a mess of our plans for the next couple of weeks.  There are still some spots in the BVI’s we’ve not been to with the kids (or been to at all, ever) that I want to see, but we don’t know how that is going to work out.  We’ve only got a bit more time left here – many islands in the Caribbean beckon and we don’t want to miss them either while we fritter away  the time waiting for parts and service.

But today we’re leaving Jost Van Dyke earlier than we’ve planned, taking the Christmas tree down before we wanted too, and our leaving our friends sooner than we’ve hoped.  I’d be thrilled to be clear of this problem by the New Year, but am not optimistic.  On the plus side though, when we ARE clear of this problem, even if it is by an expensive complete replacement of both systems, at least we will finally get to stop struggling with the system and just focus on killing the crispy critters trying to colonize it.

At least the mechanical end of it we won’t have to worry about, I’m still going to need to lower Kathy in by the ankles if she needs to get to the bottom of the fridge.

Posted in broken things, BVI, hard to find parts, maintenance | 2 Comments

Christmas in the Caribbean

On Dec 24th, 2012 Published By B.J.
Evenstar’s tiny but pretty tree.

The first holidays we are spending away from family hopefully will be the toughest – it should get easier from here on.  In throwing out a “traditional” American life style, one also risks losing the “traditions” around the times of the year that we treasure most with our families.

We’ve a lot of traditions, for example we always had a huge tree in our living room.  Really big, with a LOT of ornaments.  Well of course you can’t do that on a boat, in the Caribbean it is hard enough to find a live tree, never mind deal with the mess of needles everywhere.  And you have to store everything and storage space is a premium.  So out goes the humongous live tree decked out with hundreds of ornaments accumulated over several generations.  A select few of those came along with us, the rest are in long term storage.

Also the things you do…have to change.  Every Christmas Eve for years we went to my Uncle’s house, and then later to his son’s (my cousin…) where he hosted a get together for our family as well as his friends.  After that I’d take the kids home while Kathy went to midnight mass with my parents.  Obviously this has evolved over the years as we married and had children, and every year was just a little bit different.  But I’d stay home and put the children to bed, reading them ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (both the original and one of the silly Star Trek versions you can find on line which got a great laugh from the kids when they were younger).  Then I’d wrap the last presents, put the finishing touches on the house and preparations for dinner the next day, lay a fire in the fireplace for the next morning, then mix myself a drink and relax until the late night church goers came home.

Christmas day was always presents in the morning with the kids and grandparents, then dinner with my family later in the day, taking turns each year with my sister to see who would host (this year she got Thanksgiving and Christmas).  Traditional dinner, get out the china and silver and it didn’t change much, but with everyone getting a little older.

This year we re-write the traditions from scratch.  As I type this I know my cousin and his wife are cooking and preparing for tonight’s bash, my parents are getting dressed to go to my sister’s in-laws for their family get together before they drop by my cousin’s, and my grandfather is reclining with a drink and storing up his energy for tomorrow.  Here in the Caribbean we’re listening to Christmas music and getting ready to mix some drinks, listen to Christmas music and watch A Christmas Story later in the evening.  We put up our tree last night (which took a lot less time) and earlier in the week the boat was decorated with home made paper snowflakes.

The biggest Christmas display we’ve seen down here.

Christmas outside the U.S. is…different.  Maybe in Europe it is less so, but down here in the Virgin Islands there just isn’t the hype and noise.  We saw more Christmas hype in the states in November that we saw the week before Christmas down here.  Sure, Christmas is here and you know it is coming – you hear versions of traditional carols with a Caribbean or Reggae lilt and you see decorations.  But it’s without the in your face commercialism of the U.S.  Which is kind of nice, though you tend to not get the urgency of the season.  Partly I blame the palm trees – it’s tough to feel Christmas closing down on you when it’s 85 degrees and sunny and Santa is bracketed by palm trees.  But it’s not made into such a huge production, although you can tell that it is still and emotionally charged time that people are looking forward too.

On the other hand you don’t need the urgency.  It’s all scaled back.  We’re not entertaining much, and we’re not using the silver.  We’ve met up and rafted with some friends and will make a combined dinner tomorrow.  Gifts – well that’s scaled back for a lot of reasons.  First, you have to store everything so you want less, and you want it small.  Secondly being “retired” on a boat in our forties means the economic picture dictates more restraint.  Everything about the cruising lifestyle is about making more from less, and Christmas is no exception.  With less to buy, less to wrap, less to prepare, and less to do it takes up a whole lot less of the month of December.

Our children are having fun with it – today we visited “The Bubbles” which is a natural jacuzzi-like bowl that gets filled with frothy sea foam with you get large Northerly rolling seas.  Will noted that he’d never had to put on sunscreen on Christmas eve before.  Usually we are wearing shoes and coats too.  Being with friends who are in the same boat also helps.

Tomorrow we will talk to family by phone and maybe by Skype if the bandwidth is there.  We will miss them as much as they will miss us, and there may be a few tears after the calls end.  But we are still enjoying our holiday on our new adventure and we will be establishing our own new traditions.  We look forward to seeing how it will come out for us.

Well, it’s time to sign off and join the festivities.  I’d like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas, and the peace and love of the season to you all.

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St. John and the USVI Park – Part I

On Dec 23rd, 2012 Published By B.J.
Are you sure you wouldn’t rather hear about grocery shopping in St. Thomas?
I’m going to skip right over our return to Road Town and our “business” visit to St. Thomas.  I suppose I could regale you with the exciting powdered milk we found (actually tastes like milk!) or stories of hunting for the Home Depot and seeing some of the seedier parts of Charlotte Amelie…but why, when I have beaches, sea turtles, hiking trails and beauty to talk about?
We struck out from St. Thomas (actually nearby Water Island) hoping to make St. Croix.  It sounded like it was worth a visit, but the weather called for  20-25 knot winds and 8-10 foot seas which would make for a fast but rough 35-40 mile trip.  Given our experience we knew we could handle it, however we shortly realized we didn’t have to sail in these conditions willingly so we turned for St. John instead.  Maybe some day we will get to St. Croix, we got closer than the last time I didn’t make it there.

Heading for St. John we made for Rendezvous Bay on the South side of the island.  It’s one of the last bays before the National Park, where you can not anchor.  When we got close we were surprised that there were no boats there at all.  Wondering why, we tucked in and anchored.  As it turns out the reason was that some of that slop and swell we were getting in the open water seemed to make it around the corner into the bay.  We spent a night there with some rock-and-roll, but we slept and there was a pair of sea turtles swimming near the boat that kept us amused for some time though we didn’t get off the boat as there wasn’t really any place appealing to land.

Sunset in Cruz Bay

Leaving the empty Rendezvous Bay for something with less motion and more to do, we headed for Caneel Bay, which is right around the corner from the town of Cruz Bay.  We’d hoped to be near Cruz Bay to pick up some information about park and explore the town. 

We like Cruz Bay a lot.  It’s a much smaller town than St.Thomas and doesn’t have that icky feel of St. Thomas where the locals seem to be constantly huckstering the cruise ship visitors.  Or maybe I’m a sucker for all the competitive happy hours available in the cool little bars all over town – sell me a drink for a buck and I’m yours.  But the town does have some nice shops and restaurants, and we had a pleasant visit and a nice meal there.  We even saw wild donkeys in the town baseball field, much to the children’s amusement (“the outfielder better watch where he steps…”) and iguanas loose in the town.


The USVI National Park has a whole system of mooring buoys throughout the park which are reasonably priced at $15 per night with an honor pay system.  While we normally avoid paying to stop the boat whenever possible this system works for us.  It’s better for the coral and the wildlife, since anchoring is either prohibited or at least very strongly discouraged in most places and careless anchoring is one of the many causes of reef destruction.  Also the revenues are used to maintain the park and facilities, some of which are quite nice.

Trunk Bay is considered one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, and not without reason – it is.  There is also an underwater snorkeling trail and very good snorkeling there.  I saw my first shark in the open water swimming in from the dinghy – a four foot nurse shark, and the whole area is just stunning.  We picked up a mooring for the night (one of only three in this spot) and it was worth the stay.

It’s not easy to convey just quite how close all of these places are – a trip from Caneel Bay to Trunk Bay for example is a trip of only about two miles.  We are quite literally cove hopping, and in some cases Will has taken the Portland Pudgy and sailed to the next anchorage in the little eight foot dinghy while we move the big boat.  But they each a bit different in feel.

Sugar factory ruins

St. John offers many miles of hiking trails in addition to the beautiful anchorages and reefs.  On some of these trails are ruins to explore of various homes, agricultural and industrial efforts over the last few centuries.  We would be remiss to skip them – our next planned stop was Cinnamon Bay where we could easily pick up some of the park trails and do some hiking.  This was to only be a day stop, with a move along for the night to Maho Bay further along the North Coast.  I’ll pick up from Cinnamon Bay in the next post…

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