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| Goodbye St John |
You might have been under the impression that our life is
all blue seas and sunny skies (ok it is mostly – at the moment anyway). But it seems
that there are forces at work trying to tarnish our otherwise balmy days. Why
is it when one thing breaks, it starts a trend?
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| St Thomas - Cruise ship city |
After our fabulous time in St John we sailed over to St
Thomas to refuel and get water and do a few other bits and pieces before being
on our bonny way again. We have been to
St Thomas before and it is a big duty free tourist destination with two or
three cruise ships arriving almost daily.
It can be madness there. Plus the anchorage can often get very
rolly. So we do what we have to do and
move on. We set sail for the Culebra in
the Spanish Virgins islands, the last group of Virgins before Puerto Rico.
Latin America is kicking in; you can hear it in the music blasting from cafes
and car radios. We are anchored a mile
or so away from the main town behind the reef at Dakity, by our friend John
from SV Stingo. The anchorage is
stunning, open to the trade winds, the reef protecting us from the rolly
sea. Things start to break. No problem
Sim works his magic fingers – takes the electric dingy lift apart, finds the
problem and fixes it. The VHF radio
plays dead, no worries Sim fixes it. We
have hung out with John and said goodbye – it’s time for us to move on. Only the engine won’t start. No worries.
Sim runs a few tests and works out it’s the starter motor. Takes it off, takes it apart – verdict –Houston,
we have a problem! It is irreparable. Great!
Now we are stuck in a very small island six miles long by 3 miles wide. There is no one ashore here that can
help. They don’t even have a Fedex or UPS
office to get an item shipped. John
gives us some auto parts companies that might stock our starter motor in Puerto
Rico. But it is almost an impossible job
to try and match the serial numbers on our ancient machine to the modern day
versions. We do the best we can with
cross referencing (honestly, you would not believe how many different starter
motor there are out there) and think we find one, only the one in the picture
looks very different to ours. We Skype
the shop and with their pigeon English and our awful Spanish – we decide we
best go to their shop to order the part.
So we jump in the dinghy, walked across to the ferry dock, jumped on a
two hour ferry and then jumped in a taxi – almost there, we get our places
mixed up jump out of one taxi – walk across the motorway, call him back and hey
presto we are there! Jose has been expecting us, orders the part and tells us
to come back in five days. So we jump in
the taxi and dash back to the ferry - missing it by the skin of our teeth as it
leaves the dock five minutes early. Darn!! We wait two more hours for the last
ferry and finally get back to our boat at 10pm that night.
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| Dakity, Culebra - Wandering Star |
So here we are – we have no engine and our anchor was stuck
on a rock, with the possibility of a little more wind later in the week we
decide to take a mooring that freed up this morning – now our only concern is
that the water in front of us is very shallow – we currently have about 10cm
under the keel – but a gentle grounding is the least of or worries at the
moment. Now we just hope that when the
starter arrives it is the right part. I guess there could be worse places to be
stuck.
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On a mooring in very shallow water
Sim fixing the electric dinghy winch
On the ferry to Puerto Rico |
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