June 3-9 Little Harbour, Fat Hog and Trellis Bay, BVI

Tuesday June 3: Finding ourselves very pleased with the autopilot repair, we get up to discover that the inverter, which converts battery and generated power to AC, is wet and dead. How in the world is there water in the engine room?? We find two tiny screw holes in the propane locker, which is covered by its own fiberglass hatch, a cushion, inside the cockpit, around which there is an enclosure. We had a rain storm and a few drops dripped down those holes directly on the inverter. Buggers. Fortunately, between it being fresh water and the ambient temperature in the engine room, it dried out and came back to life. Whew. We take off for new territory and head over to Little Harbour, Peter Island. We meet some folks on charter from Savannah, GA: Toby, Karey, Forrest and Susie. Their trip ends soon and they have extra provisions. They graciously invite us over for dinner (New York strips with all the decorations) and give us extra treats/drinks from their boat. While cleaning up after dinner, huge yellow tail snapper swarm the boat. Game on! Craig retrieves our fishing gear and the remainder of the evening is spent catching snapper. Dave Damm is coming and I like to serve the boys fresh fish tacos on their first night, so Craig grills a few the next night and I tuck away the rest.
Friday, June 5: We go back to Road Town expecting to pick up our alternator. Not ready….regulator is not even in yet. Dorothy, you're not in Kansas any more! The anchorage is a bit rolly so we decide to move across the harbour or to a new spot altogether. Well, long story short here is that our windlass appears dead. Buggers! The windlass is what pulls the anchor and chain up and down, although this can certainly be done manually with great physical effort. Ours is four years old and got a new motor two years ago. We wonder if we need bigger, better, faster, stronger to manage our heavy ground tackle on a daily basis. Talk about first year blues…some of you will recall my friend Donn (S/V Falcon) who amputated his finger in a jammed windlass their first month out and had to fly to Lauderdale to get it sewn back on. This is a no-go for us and a critical repair. We decide to head back to Trellis in anticipation of the full moon party and to contemplate this new dilemma. Along the way, we spot another new place, Fat Hog and East End Bay, right around the corner from Trellis Bay, and stop there for the night. Craig meets a marine supplier who can order the new windlass from St Martin.

Views from Fat Hog:

Sunday June 7
We arrive in Trellis Bay around 1130AM, in the nick of time. Charter boats are jamming into the mooring field and on our arrival, there are perhaps 4 or 5 balls left which last about 10 minutes. There is no room to anchor so the 20-30 boats that arrive after us hopefully troll for a mooring ball and then head across to another anchorage, within site but across open water which makes for tough dinghy rides, especially post-party. We relax for the afternoon and head over to the party around 8PM. It is a carnival atmosphere with a steel drum band, picnic buffet, jugglers, etc. We watch the balls being prepared: they are stuffed with wood and newspaper and then doused (and I mean DOUSED) with crazy amounts of charcoal lighter fluid. It is not too hard after that to set them on fire.


Boats jammed into Trellis for the party....Night cometh....

This is a "hey ya'll, watch this" shot. Rubber boat. Fire. Call me silly, but I'm thinking not a good combo...

This is Donn performing a dinghy rescue at sea:

Tuesday June 9, 2009 David Damm arrived last night and quickly settled in on Hakuna Matata. David helped Craig bring the boat across the Gulf of Mexico from Kemah, Texas to Ft Myers, Florida so we are glad to have him aboard as we prepare to passage. Change of plans. We are leaving this afternoon for St Martin instead of St Kitts. Turns out that if we order the windlass in the BVI, FedEx wants $300 to ship it the 80 miles from St Martin (Fred Smith smokes crack) and customs wants another $300 in duty (they smoke crack too). So, we are just going to sail over there and pick it up off the shelf, not pay any shipping/duty and get a 10% discount to top it all off. Craig and Dave take a cab over to Road Town to retrieve the alternator, a never-ending saga. In a nutshell, the overnighted part which took a full week to arrive is the wrong one. Craig winds up instructing the bench tech how to make the alternator work with the part in hand. The boys return and get down to business on the install. It works like a dream.

David here less than 24 hours and already in the engine room. They are putting the alternator back on:

This is M/Y Viaggio en route to Virgin Gorda (they beat us there) which is available for charter in the BVI and belongs to a friend back in Dallas. Check out the full specs at http://www.virgintraders.com/MotorYachts/Horizon74/

We go over to Virgin Gorda to check out of the country. We owe 75 cents. After an afternoon swim, we are off on a 20 hour run to St Martin, passaging (albeit spread out over a few miles) with S/V Falcon and S/V Margaret Sharon. We have a dolphin escort as the sun sets and Virgin Gorda fades from view.