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Updated November 20, 2011 | |||
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This story is a somewhat belated summing up of our trip home via Bermuda and of the summer that followed.
With Carl's boat off the bottom and eventually watertight, the days in Boqueron went by. With the generator out of commission we could not run the watermaker, so one mornign we went alongside at Club Nautico and filled our tanks, as part of getting ready to leave. The afternoon of Sunday, May 8th, we went to a roadside bar in Las Arenas, an agricultural "suburb" of Boqueron, where an ex-pat friend has an apartment. The "bar" is really just a big open room with a small counter and a fair-sized kitchen behind it. |
Pig Roast at Las Arenas | ||
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There is also a hitching rail for horses outside, and while we were there a young couple rode up and stopped in for a drink.
On many Sundays the owner roasts a pig and for a quite small amount of money one gets a roast pork dinner that is certainly all either of us wanted to eat. The ensuing party goes on all afternoon. All of our friends came, and many people we didn't know as well. We were getting a sense, however, that, as the old chantey says, "It was time for us to go". |
Our Last View of Puerto Rico | ||
| We spoke with Herb Hilgenberg on the SSB and we agreed that Thursday the 12th was a promising day to start, after a low and its associated front had left, so on that gray and showery morning we hoisted the dinghy and started cleaning the growth off the anchor chain. Carl circled us in his yola and rang his bell, so we rang ours for him. Terry waved from his boat. Eventually we got the anchor up, and with one last horn blast we headed out of the harbor and up the west coast of Puerto Rico. There were squalls over the island, but they did not seem to come out over the water. In fact, as far as weather was concerned, we had a very easy passage. |
Sunset at Sea | ||
| There was a good deal of ship traffic as we crossed the shipping lanes leading to the passages into the Caribbean. We passed Cape Agnes for Santa Marta, Colombia, and Koala Bay for Marin, Spain, and many cruise ships: Carnival Glory, Freedom of the Seas. Cielo di Vancouver passed, headed for New Orleans, and Southern Bay, headed northeast for an unnamed port. |
Fort St. Catherine, Bermuda | ||
| One night we had a little adventure. A routine engine room check revealed water where there should not be any, and further inspection showed a crack in the heat exchanger jacket, spraying salt water. At this point I had no idea why the high-water alarm didn't sound or the bilge pump take care of the situation, but I simply shut the engine down and patched the leak with Rescue Tape, wrapping the heat exchanger as best I could. After the repair there was a little drip, but that was easily dealt with. |
The Rescue Tug Across from Us in Dockyard | ||
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Once in Bermuda, I took the heat exchanger off and our old friend Wilford (Outerbridge's Machine Shop) soldered the jacket so it was as good as new. Our good friend Steve Hollis (of Ocean Sails) gave me a ride both ways! After we reached home, I bought more rolls of Rescue Tape.
We reached Bermuda on Tuesday, May 17th, and anchored in St. George's Harbor after clearing Customs. We saw to the heat exchanger the next day, and on Thursday weighed anchor and ran over to Dockyard, at the other end of the Bermuda island chain. We spent the weekend there, spending time with our friend Doug and his daughter Caytlyn. We had Sunday breakfast at "Amici" with Doug and Caytlyn (a ritual). |
A Study in Scale | ||
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On Monday we stopped by the marina at Dockyard ("Pier 41") to fill our water tanks. We had intended to leave that day, but when we learned that the next day was Bermuda Day we anchored again in St. George's Harbor to see the dinghy races. The "Bermuda Fitted Dinghies" are awesome vessels. They are basically 14-foot dinghies fittes with rigs suitable for 40-foot boats. The boats will not stay upright with the mast in place but no crew aboard, and a very important member of the crew is the bailer, who is supplied with a long-handled dipper so he can scoop out water while sitting to windward. The spectator fleet mingles with the racers, becoming an integral part of the action.
We anchored in a strategic place, and decided to make a party of it. We invited Steve and Suzanne Hollis and Doug Sutherland and his new lady Lisa and had a wonderful time, marred only by the not-too-good performance of the St. George's boat. After a little more wine, the others left, and the next day we went ashore to clear out, hoisted the dinghy, and again headed out Town Cut for the ocean. We are always glad to spend time in Bermuda; we have good friends there and are always a little sad to leave. |
Our Neighbors in Dockyard | ||
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The trip home was mostly uneventful, sometimes a confused sea, but never any real wind. Early in the morning, the second day out, Barbara saw a school of about 20 dolphins, who played around the boat for a while, then went off to look for something more interesting.
The Gulf Stream was confusing this time. Herb Hilgenberg gave us a waypoint that was different from what I had expected, but while we had a little contrary current we didn't find the normal high water temperaature there. Then we did finally pick up a bit of current and high water temp, about where we had thought it would be. Again many ships crossed our track: Al Ghuwairiya bound for the Mediterranean, Erikan K. for Mersin, Turkey, Lady Christina for Eastport. on Saturday, the 28th, just as we were coming into the New York shipping lanes, heavy fog shut in, and we started the automatic horn, which we had not used for probably six months. As we crossed the caynons off New York and moved up into Great South Channel we ran into heavy fishing boat traffic and were very thankful for our radar. Late one afternoon I was on watch when I heard a rapping noise from the engine room (not good!). I stopped the engine and called Barbara to keep a lookout while I investigated. The noise turned out only to be an alternator belt that was getting ready to break (they are heavily loaded and do not last long), which caused a sigh of relief. To change these belts one has first to disconnect the Spicer drive that runs the hydraulic pumps, but the whole job took only a half-hour and soon we were making way again. |
A Back Corner of the Old Naval Base | ||
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The next afternoon the fog scaled and soon we made up the RACOR buoy off Portland (where the Lightship used to be). We went in and anchored, and the next morning went into Portland Harbor and cleared Customs, and by one o'clock on Memorial day we were on our own mooring. We had the usual back and forth from the mooring to the Stone Wharf on Chebeague to unload clothes and extra food, and of course we had to get the house going again, but we were soon settled in.
We had one very enjoyable chore: we had had email contact with the Chebeague School during the winter, and just before the school year was finished the teacher asked us to come in and talk about our trip, so we did. |
The Street Entrance to the "Frog and Onion" on a Nice Spring Day | ||
| The next week we went into Portland where two strong young men from Portland Yacht Services loaded new house batteries aboard, as the old ones would no longer hold a charge properly. I hooked these up, and after a little back-and-forth with Hansen Marine we were back at Portland Yacht Services again, this time to have the back end of our generator removed. It was sent to Westerbeke for "warranty evaluation," and we all held our breath. |
A Corner of the Old Keep Wall | ||
| Through June and July, whenever I was not commuting with the boat to Portland, I worked on the interior, installing the pilothouse overhead, bookcases everywhere, but especially in the aft cabin, and the bulkhead dividing the after head from the aft cabin. We also, of course, had all the distractions of summer on Chebeague: committee meetings, old friends to see, and a trip up-country for the anniversary party of our friend Steve's beloved daughter. |
Barbara With Spirit of Bermuda Behind Her | ||
| In August we took the boat to Rockland to attend the Maine Boats Homes and Harbors Show, and had the great good luck to run into our friends JB and Jen Turner (JB was Managing Partner of Lyman-Morse when Barbara was built) when we walked into the Waterworks for dinner. We later had dinner with our old friend Ann, a colleague from Cornell days who is now a photographer and spends her summers in Rockport. |
The Dockyard Gate, No Longer Guarded | ||
| Finally we got word that Westerbeke had approved our request for a new generator back-end and we arranged to have it installed at Portland Yacht Services, since they had taken out the old one. Barbara, meanwhile, was off to New York to visit her brothers and other friends, so I took the boat into Portland alone. The installation turned out to be complicated (for one thing, the unit weight about 500 pounds), and to require special tools that had to be fabricated. |
A Bermuda "Fitted Dinghy" Racing | ||
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The mechanic, Michael Smith (another old friend), was not finished at the end of the day, so with no one to go home to I simply stayed in Portland for the night.
One thing about spending most of my life in the marine business and on the waterfront in Maine is that this small world is increasingly populated with friends. |
The Spectator Fleet | ||
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By noon the next day the job was done, and I headed back to the mooring.
Hurricane Irene interrupted the even tenor of our ways, and because our mooring had not been checked in a couple of years we took Barbara around the point to anchor in the lee. There we spent a very pleasant night, and when the wind changed the next morning we went home again to our mooring, now itself in the lee of Chebeague. |
An Old Sailor Telling Tales with the Help of Google Earth on the Chebeague School Smartboard | ||
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We had decided that the new Front Street Shipyard, in Belfast (run by JB Turner) was a good spot to have |
Rapt Attention | ||
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Hauled Out for Bottom Paint at Front Street Shipyard | |||
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Early in October I took the boat to Belfast without incident, and Barbara met me with the car. On our way back the next day we stopped in Montville and collected a very important piece of equipment, a new pot-belly stove for the boat. Our friend Otto Kurz had one in his garage in Machiasport just gathering dust and declared that he would much rather see it on the boat than being used as a planter. So Steve brought it as far as Montville, where we picked it up.
I had mentioned to the shipyard that the generator was hard to start, and they worked on that; the solution turned out to be elusive at first, although eventually resolved. In Belfast we were happy to see Wanderbird, a converted North Sea trawler we had last seen anchored off Culebra. |
Barbara and Wanderbird on the Belfast Waterfront | ||
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The boat was finally ready, more-or-less, on October 21st, so that day we drove down in the afternoon with our friends Leila and Suhail, had a nice dinner in Belfast, and spent the night on the boat. Early the next morning Suhail drove the car back, and Leila, Barbara, and I set out in the boat for Chebeague. We had a good trip on a beautiful Fall day, and Barbara was back on her mooring just before 5:00.
We had meant to leave around the beginning of November, but the weather was good and there was so much to do that the date kept receding. I installed the stove, installed a hanging locker in our cabin, and we loaded wine, food, clothes, and the kits for several other pieces of joinery that I would actually build over the winter. I also loaded updated charts into the navigation computer and printed paper copies. It seemed endless, but eventually we were ready. |
The Front of a Hanging Locker being Dry-fitted in the Shop | ||