Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Windy Conditions

Since we have been back in Curacao these last two weeks, it has been very windy. Every day the trade winds are blowing over 20 knots and gusting to 30 knots (23 mph to 35 mph). As we continue our preparations to set sail, we are hoping for a break in the weather. Sailors call this a "weather window". The best forecast would be for 15 knots of wind or less, to give us the best chance of a calm, uneventful sail.
1926 Rolls Royce at a recent car show

Our route has firmed up in our minds, after much research and talking to other sailors, we have decided to go north-west from Curacao, through the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, up the Old Bahama Channel to Key West. It is the most direct route, and once through the Windward Passage, we will pick up a favorable current to help push us along.

We have each had minor illnesses which have slowed us down but are now on the mend. Our diligence in using bug spray has kept our mosquito bites to a minimum; the mosquito-borne illness chikungunya is what we do not want to catch. It is endemic on the island; most people who live here have had it, and it can take months to fully recover. No thanks!

In the meantime, we take walks up the hill every afternoon, where we see beautiful views of the sea.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Back Aboard the Debonair in Curacao!

It's back to the tropics for the crew of the Debonair! 85 degrees every day here, still warmer than Minnesota in the warmest fall many remember.

We stayed for three days at a wonderful funky hotel to ease our transition back to a non-functioning boat, before we got all systems back up and running. It's called The Ritz, which was a little pretentious. Clean, affordable, with a fridge, stove, and microwave, it also has an adjoining hostel (one of the few in the Caribbean).

All of the furniture was from Ikea. 

A pathetic Charlie Brown Christmas tree on our coffee table - along with the major defenses we will need here - sunblock, for the strong tropical sun, and bug spray with DEET to deter the mosquitoes which carry chikungunya, a disease most islanders have had. We hope to leave the islands without having contracted it, and the only way to do that is to use bug spray.

A lovely little pool creates a resort-like feel - we would have spent more time pool-side if we hadn't had so much work on the boat!









We rented a cute little Kia Picanto for a week, so we could easily restock the boat. It's a model not sold in the U.S., but we loved the little car - 3 cylinders, 1 liter engine, very high mileage, and all the room we needed. There are so many Picantos on the road here, they must have delivered a container-ship-load to the island.

So far so good with bringing systems on-line with the boat, but I am sure some surprises will await us. We don't mind taking our time with boat work, as the wind is much too strong for us to leave comfortably right now.


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Wind, Wind, and More Wind

Our little corner of the dock

Debonair

As we work on our to-do list to button up the boat for the summer, we are struck by the intensity of the wind.  Here in the boatyard and marina docks, the wind moans and whistles and rattles through the rigging of all of the boats all day and most of the night. We are reassured that we really  made the right decision, as the wind is a steady 25 mph, lashing through with gusts up to 35 mph. The seas are high, too - 8 to 11 feet right now. Much too high for a 30-foot boat.

A normal pattern in Curacao, as with most islands in the tropical trade-wind belt, the wind will die down close to sunset, known as a katabatic wind. "Katabatic" has a Greek origin, meaning to "flow downhill". As the land cools down at sunset, the heat given off rises and counteracts the steady trade winds coming out of the east. The stronger the trade wind, the less effect the land will have. Right now, our wind has a lull right at sunset and then starts up again a half-hour later, keeping up a fresh breeze until almost midnight. Then it starts up again at 4 a.m., lasting all day long.

What's with such stronger than normal wind? No one seems to know, but as I look at the weather forecasting tools, no let-up is in sight. It's not just here, in the south-central Caribbean, but the entire route we plan to take across the Caribbean Sea. So we did make the right decision - coupled with the first tropical storm of the season forming off the coast of Florida and the Carolinas last week, a full three weeks earlier than the "official" start of the hurricane season.

Today we finished the last big project to secure the boat - Larry went diving on the hull. We needed to have the boat's hull clean, bag up the propeller to keep marine growth off of it, and check the sacrificial zincs on the hull. Everything we do is made harder by the relentless lash of wind all day long. We have to pace ourselves for outdoor work, taking refuge below decks. Even there, the whistling of the wind is almost constant, at times moaning like a ghost. Our boat's cabin feels like a cozy sanctuary from the wind.

Dutch Word of the Day:
Poespas
 

A Dutch word we really like for a boat name is pictured above - Poespas, seen on the boom. The owner told us that this means "a collection of small problems". What a great name for a boat! Every boat owner knows that to have a boat means to always be working on one thing or another. We meet interesting people every week here.


Friday, May 08, 2015

Reluctant Decision

Based on the weather forecasts in the Caribbean (wind, wind, and yet more wind), we have reluctantly decided to put the Debonair up for yet another season here in Curacao and fly home to Minnesota for the summer. We'll come back in the fall and look for a better weather window.

Here in the boatyard, the wind has been almost relentless. We fight our way upwind just to get to the boat store or shower 100 yards from the dock, and everyone we see is commenting on the high winds.

We now have a whole new to-do list to button up the boat before we leave on May 20. Sigh.

One of our many tasks is to eat down all of the food that we bought for the passage, which means we will not be going to our favorite supermarket very often. A suitably almost-unpronounceable Dutch name, Vreugdenhil Supermarket sends a van to pick up any shoppers from the boatyard six days a week, a wonderful service for those of us without a car.

Stepping into Vreugdenhil is like going into a time warp. It reminds me of the store where our family shopped when I was a girl, Country Club Markets in St. Paul. The signage has not been changed in decades.
It does have almost everything we need - including fresh produce, a bakery, a meat and deli section, canned goods, and is very large by Caribbean island standards.

The time warp occurs from the feel and look of the place, and also the piped-in music. Suddenly, Karen Carpenter is alive and well and wanting to be "Close to You". Starship will "never find another girl like you" in "Sara". Loverboy is still "Workin for the Weekend". I am a Wayward Son that Kansas wants to Carry On. Van Halen is still encouraging me to "Jump!". Rush wants me to get back into the "Limelight".

It is very hard for me not to smile at the music whenever I step into Vreugdenhil. The images of the 1970s and 1980s in my life come flooding back to me as I stop to compare this product to that, sussing out the Dutch on packaging to figure out the ingredient list. Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" came on two weeks ago, and suddenly I was back in time, writing a political science term paper to his music.

There is a little cafe onsite that offers free coffee and tea for shoppers. This area looks like it has not been updated since 1970 also, but it's nice to be able to stop and drink a coffee.

Pretty ordinary, but an essential part of our lives here on Curacao. Driving to an impersonal supermarket in the Twin Cities is just not the same as an experience at Vreugdenhil, where nothing much changes.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Routing and Weather

As we get ready to (finally) leave, routing, charts, and weather are becoming our most important tasks. We have decided to take the route with the best chance of favorable weather and currents, a north-west sail across the Caribbean to the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, then west-north-west between the north coast of Cuba and the Bahamas to Key West, and finally north to Sarasota:




We have the option of anchoring for rest or to wait for weather at an island on the south-western tip of Haiti, Ile a Vache. This will be about half-way home. Once we get through the Windward Passage, we can pick up a favorable current called the Old Bahama Channel to help us along.

Right now, the wind is blowing in a fresh to strong breeze and will pick up mid-week, so we have time to stow more items that will become air-borne once we are underway, and make a last grocery store stop. Our last task, the day before we leave, will be to check out of customs and immigration. We still don't know when our weather window will be, and are relying on our weather router, Chris Parker for that information. Every day I look at the weather and it is still brisk with lumpy seas out on the open water.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Sea Trials

We've been pretty busy now, doing sea trials. What that means is we take the boat out for a short time to test out gear that we can't test at the dock and do shake-down sailing.

We first went out on April 16, and just tested the engine. We puttered around the inner harbor here in a fairly fresh breeze. The only weather we've been having are fresh to strong breezes. We came up with several small things to fix on the engine - a dirty air intake and a small diesel fuel drip out of the secondary fuel filter.

Then, last Monday April 20, we took the Debonair out into the open sea to raise sails. This was a strong breeze day, and we just raised the mainsail with two reefs in it (shortened sail area). We had 6 to 8 foot seas crashing over the bow on a beat, and wore ourselves out. We came up with some more things to fix and a *lot* of items to stow. Even with what we thought everything lashed down below decks, this really shook loose stuff that managed to crash onto the floor.

We decided that we needed a mainsail management system, known as a "lazy jack" system. This is a simple set of lines and blocks designed to keep the mainsail from being thrown all over the deck when we bring the sail down. We should have done this years ago, but it took going out into 25 knots of wind, gusting to 30 knots, to convince ourselves that we need one. Here's a picture of what the rigger will do for us:

This is as much a safety issue as ease of handling - when squalls come up, we can just go to the mast and dump the mainsail down without having to worry about it as the wind pipes up.

Almost ready!


Thursday, April 09, 2015

SCUBA

Lest the reader think we are all work and no play, on Easter Sunday we celebrated by going for a SCUBA dive. It was a beach dive, over at Caribbean Sea Sports at the Marriott Hotel. My dive buddy was Tom from the dive shop.
Getting all my gear together

Suited up
The hardest part - walking to and from the water with 40 pounds of gear

Putting on my fins
The coral reefs on Curacao's leeward side are still quite healthy, with more colorful tropical fish than I could name. We even saw a large octopus!

The dive shop is quite a welcoming view


Tuesday, April 07, 2015

More Plumbing

Well, most of you think we should be ready to leave by now, and we are almost there. Our last issue was yet another plumbing job. With everything apart under the lazarette, half of our batteries out and on deck, the engine's exhaust apart, we took a good look at the mysterious underpinnings to see what else might break. We also had the boatyard's mechanic over to get professional eyes on this area. Klaus, our favorite mechanic, pointed to the large exhaust hose that exits from the engine, and said that needed replacing. OMG! Yes - it had a groove worn in it from chafe through the plywood partition covering the engine. To have that hose break or blow out underway would be catastrophic - no more motoring! This is a large, double-ply, heavy hose, but - see the groove:

Here's the old hose in place

The groove that is working on a break in the hose
We finally got the replacement installed by the mechanic, with a sleeve to protect it from chafe in the future.
The anti-siphon water lock that the hose connects to

The mountain of stuff out of our lazarette, under a tarp
 So, now we have a cockpit back - the batteries have been re-installed, the waterlock is back in place, and all of the stuff is stowed away again. Our engine purrs without any drips, in goes into gear, and now we are ready to do a sea trial in the next day or two!


Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Bezoekers in the Land of the Dutch

Here in Curacao we are surrounded by the Dutch language.  Most everyone who lives here speaks it; some words sound a bit like German, and some words look like something we can suss out.  And it's the rare person who does not speak English as well.

However, this does lead to some times when we are left scratching our heads as to what a sign might mean.  And if food labels in the grocery stores don't have a picture, well, we're at a loss as to what the can or jar might hold.

Parking Lot Sign
Here's a good example.  Hmmm.... BEZOEKERS....some days that's exactly how I feel, Bezoekers!  Close enough to berserk.  Especially on days when we spell each other from diving down into the bilge, an airless, dark cavern, to do battle with the boat, as we have been lately.  What would we do without Google translator?  This really means "VISITORS" so I guess we are Bezoekers.

Bewaking!
Another example.  Camera Bewaking!  OK, Camera is easy enough, the sign has a helpful image as well.  BEWAKING.... looks a bit like English or German.  Beware?  I be waking, or walking?  No - it means "monitoring".

My favorite street sign
And here's my favorite.  LET OP!  DREMPELS  warning to motorists.  Let op!  take your foot off the gas perhaps.  Drempels, a good-sounding word that rolls off the tongue in a pleasing manner.  This sign never fails to bring a smile to my face.  This translates to "Pay attention - thresholds".  I think Google translator really means speed bumps.

We need some humor in our lives as we continue to struggle with the bilge pumps.  Both are still not working (the pumps have both been apart and test out just fine).  So - what we were dreading, the intake hoses need replacing.  This has meant major surgery, taking big pieces out of the bowels of the boat.  Yesterday out came one battery bank and its box, and then a large piece of the diesel engine exhaust system called a waterlock.  We have called in the professionals and a mechanic will be coming over tomorrow to take out the old intake hoses and install new ones.  We can see a rupture in one of the hoses.  As sturdy as they are, thirty years is a good amount of service from the hoses.

Way Down in the Bilge
You can just see the rupture in the hose on the left.  These two hoses go to our pumps up in the cockpit.  Hopefully tomorrow nice new clean hoses will be in place.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

For Want of a Ground and Two Screws

I guess the proverb reads "For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost."  Our bilge pump and switch problems turned out to be minor, but crucial, pieces of the whole system.

Our old bilge pump automatic switch, out of the bilge
The pump switch, an Ultra PumpSwitch JR, was not working at all.  Which meant that our electric bilge pump would not go on if the water level started to rise.  We found this out after deliberately filling the bilge with water from a garden hose.

After a couple of days of dinking around with it, testing the leads, trying to figure out why it's not working, my eagle-eyed partner noticed - "Deb, what's that black ground line connected to?"  Aha - we had lost our ground!  It had been connected to a strip of copper, which is all disintegrating under our floorboards.

It was an easy fix, once we located the problem - find another spot to ground the leads for the pump switch.  We re-installed a new switch - and voila! - it works!

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
 
New PumpSwitch - now installed in the bilge


 
Down in the lazarette, where our bilge pumps live
Our electric bilge pump
Next, we turned our attention to the pumps.  Why is neither the manual pump or the electric pump drawing out any water?  Unfortunately, both pumps live way down in the lazarette, under the cockpit, which Larry calls our "basement".  The problem here turned out to be two missing screws in the manual pump - causing an air pocket to prevent the necessary suction for the pumps to work.  Why were both pumps not working?  Because they share a common "Y" outflow.  This took some time to diagnose.  So now we have put two new, larger screws in the pump and are waiting for the goop bedding the screws to cure.  Maybe we will have this fixed too!

Ugly rust - unrelated but it must be addressed

As we dig deeper into the far reaches of the boat, we find all kinds of other problems or potential problems.  This electric junction box is filled with rust.  It leads to our stern light, a navigation light used while underway.  A jiggle might have caused it to go out - and cause us to be unlit underway.  So - fix up this too, while we are in the neighborhood.






Late afternoon at Kokomo Beach
Lest the reader think we spend all of our time working, here's a view from Kokomo Beach, where I spent a lovely day with some friends a couple of weeks ago.

Onward!

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

Oops...Houston, We Have a Problem

Close to the bottom on our to-do list was an item to check our bilge pumps.  These (usually) trusty pumps get water out of the boat when it makes its way into the far reaches of the bilge under our feet.  Normally it's fairly dry down there, but this is another safety item that MUST function when we need it.  Things happen out at sea, and a sudden on-rush of water into the boat is one of the events no one wants to think about.  But it does happen, and we have to have a plan for what to do about it.

Checking the bilge pumps was on the bottom of our list since we expected everything to work as it did the last time we used them two years ago.  The pickup hoses for the pumps also live in a neighborhood with almost total inaccessibility, way down in the bowels of the boat.  So, we put it off until we couldn't ignore it any longer.

We have a large capacity electric pump, set up with a monitor for the level of the water.  This pump is designed to be triggered and automatically go on when the water level gets to a certain point.  Then, we also have a hand pump in the cockpit to assist in water clearance.  We took a hose and filled the bilge, expecting the automatic pump to go on.  Nothing.  Nada.  So, we turned it on manually, and the motor kicks in, but no water is going out.  Then we tested the manual pump - same response.

The good news is that we are in a boatyard, and can fix anything that goes wrong.  This is a big problem and we must get to the bottom of it.  We've got three separate problems - why is the automatic switch not working, why is the electric pump not pumping, and why is the manual pump not working.  Oh boy.

The consolation to having one more show-stopping problem is that the weather is not good for our passage.  It will be blowing quite a bit above normal for at least a week.  So - we sit tight and fix our pumps.



Friday, February 27, 2015

Success!

We now have installed our new VHF radio.
Using the new radio, accessible from inside and out in the cockpit
 The installation was not quite plug 'n' play, but took only a couple of days once we set our minds to it.  We installed it right where the old VHF was located, which gives us access to the radio from inside the cabin and outside into the cockpit.  It has many features, including an internal GPS locator, and displays our speed, course, location, and other useful information.  Best of all, and the big reason we wanted it, is a feature called AIS - Automated Identification System.  All commercial ships are now required to transmit information about their vessel, including name, destination, and last port of call.  The new radio calculates the closest point for our two vessels, and has an alarm if a collision could happen.  Then we can take action - calling the ship to make sure they see us, and changing our own course or speed.  We're pretty happy to have it.
Installation - sorting out the rat's maze of electrical wires

Standard Horizon GX-2200

I have a new nickname, "Radio Gal", and I get up early to listen to the weather report and check in with our radio nets on our SSB radio.  It will be our lifeline when we are out to sea.  I also managed to get my laptop computer hooked up to the radio, through a small box called "Pactor", that enables us to send and receive short emails while at sea.

Talking away - to others hundreds of miles away!

SSB and Ham Radio

ICOM IC-M710 Marine SSB and Ham Radio with Pactor to the side
It's been a long haul, but we are getting close to setting sail!

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

New Engine Insulation

While we waited for a coolant system hose to be shipped to the island for our engine, we decided to tackle a job that we have put off for over five years:  replacing the sound insulation on our engine box.
Engine box after grinding down to the wood and glue


The engine box had foam insulation with lead backing and a nice shiny aluminum front at one time.  As it started to deteriorate, we tried taping it on and then just had to start ripping it out.  Finally we scraped the insides and just left it that way.  The sound of the engine was considerably louder when we were under power, and there is a greater risk of fire spreading more quickly through a wooden box.  We used the drill and a couple of different grinding wheels to get the rest of the crumbling insulation out.
A messy job
Once it was down to the wood, we took the box over to the boatyard's carpenter, Pedro.  He installed new insulation.

Pedro in his workshop, working on our new insulation
Pedro is the friendliest worker amongst a congenial crew here at the boatyard.  Being the only carpenter, he is busy all the time.  Schooled as an artist in New York, he came into carpentry by working at furniture-making to put himself through college.  He brings an artist's eye to some of the loveliest works of wood I have ever seen.  We are very happy to have Pedro to finish this project - and our voyage home will be quieter if we need to motor for some time to make our goal.

Meanwhile, back at the boat, we made use of a borrowed vacuum cleaner to scrape off the rest of the engine insulation on the stern wall.  This crumbling mess had deposited black, diesel-sodden bits over the top of the engine, which all had to be cleaned off.  Then I went after the engine's rusty bits with light sandpaper, Q-tips and Corrosion Block.  While we had the vacuum, we went over some of the far reaches of the boat, down into the bilge, behind the stove, all places that have not been fully cleaned for years.

Perhaps the best news is that our engine coolant hose came in.  We installed it, along with new hose clamps all over the cooling system, with a minimum of fuss and bother.  Best yet, no leaks or drips!  We have propulsion again!




Sunday, February 15, 2015

The People We Meet on Their Boats

Living on a boat has its challenges but also its serendipitous moments.  We meet some interesting people in the course of their travels.  People sail into the boatyard to haul their boats, work on them, and then store their boats or sail away.  It's a very different kind of community, one whose makeup changes every week.  Recently many boats have sailed away, their projects completed.

In the slip next to us was a boat that had just been purchased by an engaging Dutch couple.  It was their first boat, and they flew to the neighboring island of Aruba to see what life aboard a boat in the Caribbean would be like.

Wietze and Ria

Wiri, a Dutch boat next door

They sailed the boat from Aruba to Curacao, and were busy every day with projects, like everyone else around us.  They are appealing and friendly, quick with a smile and conversation.  Their boat is an aluminum cutter rigged sloop.  We don't see many aluminum boats; most sailboats here are made out of fiberglass, like ours.  We enjoyed their company for several weeks, and now they have flown back to Holland until next October.

Ferro-cement sailboat
On the other side of us is an industrious Austrian couple with a very unusual boat, made out of cement.  It is a tidy rig, with two masts, a ketch with many hand-made add-ons, and they are busy all day with new projects.  They are also friendly, but will be sailing away to other parts of the Caribbean next week.  They carry full-size bicycles on their boat to get around on the islands when they come into port.  It's still hard to believe that cement can make up a floating hull.

Sparkman and Stephens 1963 sailboat
Down the dock is one of the more compelling characters we have met recently, Pablo.  He is a US Coast Guard certified captain, and has been tasked with getting this boat ready to sail and delivering it to Maine.  It is one of the few wooden boats here, and was made in 1963.  Pablo is from New Mexico, and he relocated to New England some years ago to become a lobster fisherman.  He spent six years engaged in commercial fishing on the Grand Banks, like the Perfect Storm boats.  His tales of fishing in all types of weather off the coast leave us spellbound.  He was even swept overboard once, and lived to tell about it!  Whenever our projects leave us despondent we go talk to Pablo.  What he is working on with this much older boat dwarf anything we are doing, and leave us feeling like our projects are all very achievable.  When I first met him, his boat was sinking at the dock in late December - a wooden boat can ship water between its planks, and that's what was happening.  Thankfully it did not go under, due to the timely use of several emergency pumps.  Ibis is almost twice the size of our boat, and all of its systems are more complicated.

The Great Dane
Up "on the hard", as we say, still on land, is my favorite name for a boat.  Great Dane is a steel ketch from Nova Scotia, and has been in the yard for a long time.  We haven't met her owners, but perhaps they are of Danish ancestry.

Highland Breeze
At the end of our dock is the largest boat here, 112 feet long.  It has a crew of four or five, including a captain, cook, engineer, and deckhand.  Everything is automated on this boat - sails go up with the push of a button, the anchor comes up and goes down with hydraulics, along with many more systems that must be continuously maintained.  It is a wondrous machine to behold, but I wouldn't want its maintenance!  The boat has crewed charters, where people fly in to Curacao and spend a few days or weeks aboard, sailing the Caribbean.

Just a few of the more interesting boats and people we have gotten to know here in Curacao.