Weather

As other projects around the boat are being finished, we are turning our attention to weather forecasting and testing our methods of receiving weather information while under way.  We take for granted our connections while on land - especially the Internet.  Once we are underway, all of those weather sites which are so useful for planning will no longer be available.

Here's what we want to avoid:

So, we'll be using some tools to not go out in weather like this.

My favorite Internet sites for weather forecasting and planning our departure from Curacao:

http://passageweather.com/  This is a graphic map of wind, wave, and barometic pressure, out to a seven-day forecast.  It will be our primary tool to plan the best day to leave Curacao on the first long leg to Jamaica or the Caymans, five to seven days at sea.

windguru.com  This is a handy 10-day table of weather - wind strength and direction, wave and swell, temperature, precipitation, in four-hour predictions

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/marine/offshores.php  NOAA weather, in text and by sector on the Caribbean map, for the next five days

http://www.buoyweather.com/  Weather for any point on a map.  You can get a two day forecast for free, a seven day forecast for fee membership.

Marine SSB Radio

Once we are underway, our marine long-range radio will be our best friend for planning the day's sail.  We can receive broadcasts from a weather service in Florida, Chris Parker's radio broadcast.  For a fee, he will forecast weather for sponsoring vessels and help prepare them for what is to come.  Every morning he has a broadcast of weather forecast for the Caribbean, and then takes calls to provide a personal forecast for our position.  During the day, the US Coast Guard broadcasts weather information four times a day, where we can tune in to listen for more information.  The radio, an ICOM M710, is a wonder of sturdiness and reliability.  We've had it for fifteen years now, and works better than ever, thanks to a new receive antenna we installed two years ago.  It is not easy to use; I always have to go back to the manual and fiddle with it for hours to remember how it works.  But, perseverance pays off, and I was able to tune in the weather forecast from Florida this morning, and the afternoon forecast from the Coast Guard.

Rigging Complete!

Yesterday the rigger came for the final shroud replacement.  We have three new standing-rigging stays: two lowers on one side, and an upper on the other side.  Here are some photos of our old braided cable stainless rigging:

Not pretty!  And dangerous - as one strand in the cable breaks, the others are more stressed and more likely to bring the whole stay (and sometimes the mast!) down, usually under sail.

Larry went up the mast the other day to do some metal polishing and his own inspection.  We are happy with our mast steps, and he is glad he spent so much time at the gym this summer:

Hug the mast... and feel the sway, even at the dock

Gijs the Rigger, putting up our new stay, with all his tools and drill attached

The rigger had quite a time getting the old stay off.  The screws holding it in place were frozen in place, hopelessly rusted.  He had to use a torch to bring down the screw-holders and refashion a new plate.  All done now, and we can more safely sail the 1,500 nautical miles to Florida.  Just a few more projects to finish before we can start looking for a weather window to leave.

Sad-looking dinghy and brand spanking new motor

Another big maintenance item we are working on is the boat's tender.  We have two small boats that we use to get from boat to shore while at anchor, and on other explorations while in port.  One is a folding hard plastic, a Porta-Bote, which is now 8 years old and has seen some hard use.  It is now less than sea-worthy, so we turned our attention to our inflatable dinghy, a 15-year old Achilles.  One side no longer held air, so Larry has been working on patches for days now.  The result is not pretty, but surprisingly, it is holding up for now.

In the water, holding air - and it floats!

A sorry mess of patches upon patches

We are finally almost done with the dinghy-patching, only one left to attend to.  To power the dinghy, our 15-year-old Mercury 3.5 HP motor was more trouble than it was worth.  Its carburetor is held together with marine epoxy, and starts only when taken apart and put back together.  So we bought a new Nissan 3.5 HP motor, almost exactly the same as the old one.  The pluses of this motor are many - its weight, about 25 pounds, means that either one of us can lift it and carry it.  It is a very simple motor, and we know how to rebuild the carburetor and do all of the necessary maintenance on it.  It is a 2-stroke, which means it is a much simpler engine than the 4-strokes sold in the U.S.  So we purchased a brand new motor:

New Nissan motor

Dinghy and motor

We may be buying a new dinghy when we return to Florida, but we want this one to see us through the trip there.  It's got a lot of life left in it, it appears.

Which Way to Go?

One of the many tasks we are working on at the moment, in preparation to sailing across the Caribbean to Florida, is route planning. This is a fairly significant passage, with off-shore legs of 4 to 7 days at a time.  The total trip length is about 2700 kilometers, or about 1,450 nautical miles.  If we were to sail straight through that would take us 15 days, as we can sail about 100 nautical miles a day.  If you are looking for a fast mode of transport, don't pick a sailboat.  Larry can run faster than our boat travels most of the time.

We are looking at three different possible routes:

1.  North to Puerto Rico, through the Mona Passage, down the Old Bahama Channel (north of the Dominican Republic and Cuba) to Florida:

This route has a lot to recommend it.  We would be sailing through familiar waters, where we had been some years ago.  If we have a systems breakdown across the Caribbean we can get it fixed in Puerto Rico.   However, to get to Puerto Rico, sailing north from Curacao (or perhaps sailing first to Bonaire) means four to five days (and nights!) at sea, hard on the wind (sailing with the wind on our nose, at a beat).  The prevailing wind is always from the east, and typically north-east in the wintertime.  A beat is never very comfortable, and if the wind pipes up we could blow out a sail or end up motor-sailing to reach our goal.  We would anchor at Boqueron, on the south-west coast of Puerto Rico.
From there, the Mona Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico has a reputation for thunderstorms and other nasty weather.  We would need to wait for a good forecast to sail that passage.  Once through the strait, we can sail the Old Bahama Channel, with possible stops at the Turks and Caicos and the southern Bahama islands.  This channel tends to be an easy downwind broad reach. All told, we would sail about 2700 kilometers, or 1,450 nautical miles.

2.  Sail north-west to Haiti, through the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, and then the Old Bahama Channel to Florida:

The advantages of this route are that we would have a more comfortable sail across the Caribbean from Curacao, anchoring at Ile a Vache on the southwestern tip of Haiti.  It would take longer, perhaps five days at sea, but be an easier voyage.  The disadvantages are that we would not have any harbors of refuge to get things fixed.  Nowhere to refuel, top off our water, or buy fresh food, until we get to Florida.  Between Haiti and Cuba, then the sparsely populated southern Bahama islands, we cannot depend on restocking; we could only anchor for rest.  This route would be the shortest, at about 2550 kilometers, or about 1,375 nautical miles.

3.  Go west-north-west to Jamica, the Cayman Islands, through the Yucatan Straits between western Cuba and Mexico, and then north-north-east to western Florida:

This route would be the longest, at about 3000 kilometers, or about 1,620 nautical miles.  It would be the easiest sail across the Caribbean, with a beam to broad reach.  This sail would perhaps have a bit of a roll, and we would have to be alert for a possible accidental gybe if the wind turned to south-east.  This can be a dangerous situation, where the boom swings from one end of the boat to the other in an uncontrolled fashion, and goes "boom" at the end.  We don't want that to happen.

We would no doubt enjoy the stop in the Caymans, could fix things there, and we could stop to rest, restock, and refuel if needed in Jamaica as well.  This route would be the most days at sea - possibly 7 or 8.  The passage between Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and Cuba can be hazardous; the prevailing current would carry us north, but we would have to wait for favorable winds from the east or south.  We could also decide to stop in Cancun or Cozumel along the way.

We have lots of things to ponder as we continue fixing, polishing, and replacing systems around the boat.

Long-Neglected Maintenance

One of the most useful machines on the boat while under sail is a winch.  Non-sailors may not know what a winch is, unless it's on the front of a Jeep to pull a hapless car out of the ditch.  Winches are used all over our boat to provide an assist to hauling on lines.  In all but the lightest of breezes, it would be impossible to sail the boat without them.

Today I decided to stop neglecting our winches (we have 10 aboard our boat) and start treating them with the respect they deserve.  The manufacturer and every sailing expert recommends disassembling them, cleaning all the old grease and dirt out of the innards with paint thinner, re-oiling and re-greasing, replacing worn parts, and re-assembling.  All very well and good (and many thanks to you tube for helpful videos), but our winches had been faithfully serving without maintenance for over six years (ten years in some cases).

Pretty straightforward so far

The bearings

The gears slide right out - Yuck, this is filthy

A good look at the pawls (springs are inside)

I confess to having enough apprehension about our winches that I didn't want to do this, lest I put them back together wrong or cause other problems.  To replace a winch costs over a thousand dollars, so today was the day to take the bull by the horns and get to it.  The gears were so dirty and gummy with old grease it took hours to clean them up.  My crafts project for the day took eight hours to do two winches.

A job that is hard on our rag inventory

All done... and it works!

Amazing, a nice snick - snick - snick and it pulls the jib sheet taut!

The Rigger

On Monday we had a visit from the sail rigger on the island.  Around marinas and boatyards, a rigger is one of the specialist workers that handles the lines and stays holding up the mast and controlling the sails.  An important consideration, and one that we tend to take for granted, is how the mast stays up.  I do spend time with the fittings down on deck, the toggle bolts and the braided wire that I can reach from the deck, when I go around with my stainless steel polish.  But the rest of the rig - up to the top of the mast - is only looked at infrequently.  Before a major sailing expedition like we are planning, the rig is one of the systems we wanted to have inspected by an expert.

The rigger has his own mountain-climbing ascension gear that he attaches to our mainsail halyard to go up the mast.  He uses a hefty harness that he steps into, that makes kind of a seat when he leans back on it.  I am sure he appreciates the steps we had installed up the mast, also.  He inspects mid-way, at the spreaders, and then all the way at the top.  Each fitting and the wires on the way up are carefully examined, by touch, sight, and with a magnifier that looks like jeweler's loupe.

Up at the top (about 50 feet from the water line)

Mid-way at the spreaders

At the top

The good news is that most of the rig looks serviceable.  He did recommend that we replace two of the stays and one of the turnbuckles.  Compared with replacing all of it, almost a dozen wires, fixed and running, we were happy to hear of only two compromised stays.  If one of these stays were to fail at sea, the results could be disastrous.  It could mean that the boat would sink, almost certainly that the mast would come crashing down on deck and into the water.  From the accounts that I have read, a stay failing under sail (when all of the rig is under more tension than at the dock), it sounds like a gunshot.  If we were alert, we could change course, use spare halyards to shore up the mast, and other measures, but it would be a true emergency under way, and one that we want to avoid.

New Batteries!

On Friday we installed new house batteries aboard the Debonair.  Our batteries were only about three years old, but had been horribly mistreated, as we were gone so much.  These are old-fashioned "flooded" batteries, which need to be checked periodically and re-filled with distilled water.  While we were gone, they had gone dry and gone bad.  It was a sorry sight - the batteries were bulging on the tops, and they had leaked into the battery boxes.  It had to be treated with care so we did not spill any battery acid on ourselves or the boat.  Each box had to be carefully wiped out, all connections cleaned up, and everything hooked up exactly as it was.

We use six-volt golf cart batteries, which are rugged, take a lot of abuse, and deliver more energy per square inch than many other types of batteries.  We rig the batteries in serial, positive to negative, to achieve a twelve-volt house energy bank, in two separate house banks.

Old Deka batteries - a sorry sight, bulging, corroded, and sitting in leaked battery acid

We take careful photos to make sure we re-connect everything the same way

Bad corrosion on the terminal posts

New Trojan T-105 batteries

We had to lift each battery carefully - the old ones, dripping caustic fluid, had to be handled with gloves and safety goggles on.  Each battery weighs about sixty pounds, so bringing them aboard and hefting the old ones out was a chore.

Finally, two new banks of house energy, to power our refrigerator, lights, stereo, fans, and everything else aboard the boat.

Beehive on the Boat Next Door

One of the more interesting facets of living aboard in a boatyard is getting to know your neighbors.  Every boat is cheek by jowl next to each other, with boats being just a few feet away from each other as the yard tries to maximize the space for everyone.  At Curacao Marine, the yard has a long-term storage yard up a hill where boats stay unattended for months or even years while the owners are gone.  The upper yard is fenced, and nasty-looking Dobermans stand guard all the time, discouraging thieves.  When the owners are planning to return, they notify the yard and their boat is retrieved from the upper yard and repositioned in the working yard.

Right next to our boat was a steel-hulled sailboat whose owners came back just before New Year's Eve.  We had noticed a few bees buzzing around their cockpit, and watched as they seemed to have a home in the lockers of their boat.  Indeed, they had a beehive aboard!  The young couple from Belgium were very friendly and quite shocked at the unintentional pets that had made their home on their boat.  They found bee-keepers on Curacao who came to deal with the problem.

The bee-keepers arrived with an unmistakable license plate

First they had to climb the ladder to get aboard

And then persuade the bees to colonize a special box

The bee-keepers arrived one morning, complete with smoke-can, but no protective gear.  We watched from our cockpit.  Here he is removing the honey combs and the hive, into a box they would take later, after dark.

Some of the honey was harvested

An interesting diversion - the queen bee escaped and started colonizing the yellow vinyl bag of  safety gear.  They had to brush all of the bees out of the bag and carefully remove the queen to the special hive box

You can see all the bees buzzing around as he works

A close-up - bees crawling on his arms, legs, and back didn't seem to bother him

Finally the new box was ready, and the bees took to it during the day.  After dark, the bee-keepers returned to collect the box and all of the bees, once they were all tucked in for the night.  They said that the box needs to be at least three kilometers away from the original site so that none of the bees comes back to its original home!  The next day was bee-free at last.

Over the years on our boat, we have only dealt with pests infrequently.  One time we had an infestation of moths in our rice container.  A fairly benign problem, and easily handled - just get rid of all our rice, wash the container and the locker, and we were done.  In the course of 15 years of living aboard, we have only had six cockroaches.  We are careful about the cardboard containers we bring aboard - most cardboard stays at the dock or in the dinghy, and all foodstuffs are re-packaged.  Cockroach eggs live in the cardboard, and hatch easily in the tropics.  Other than that, we haven't had any other pesky flying or crawling problems.  However, we have heard from other boaters about mice that eat their way through electrical insulation and have babies aboard, mite and weevil infestations in flour and grains, snakes in the anchor locker or bird nests in the sails.  Occasionally rats have been found on sailboats, a problem since they can gnaw through plumbing hose that leads below the waterline and can sink your boat, a real day spoiler.

Work on the Hard ... and Then the Launch!

Original post - rusted in place

What a rusty mess to clean up!

Finally, all cleaned, lubed, packed, and back together

Work on the boat here in the boatyard at Curacao Marine has been hard.  When a boat is in dry-dock the slang is to say that the boat is "on the hard", i.e., not in the water.  Our work has been hard also.  After almost two years of neglect while I was undergoing treatment and recovery, the boat was waiting patiently for us to return to her.  And all of its parts were rusting together.  We have been all over the boat, deep down in the bowels, inside, outside - testing and repairing all of her systems.  On Christmas Eve and Day, we tackled the steering mechanism - in the "basement" of the boat.  The tiller in the cockpit connects under the floor with a stainless steel post to a plate, with Teflon packing to keep out the water, outside the boat below to the rudder and its large pintles and gudgeons.  The plate needed to be raised and the packing replaced.  But it wasn't going anywhere.  For two days, Larry was banging on the metal with a variety of hammers, wrenches, and other prying devices, using every lubricant we had to get the pieces free.  Finally - it came! And a rusty mess it was, requiring sanding, chipping, and then metal restorer and Lanocote.

A view from above at our backstay turnbuckle.  Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Another view from the side.  An accident waiting to happen

Another problem, easier to fix, I found while spending many hours polishing the stainless around the boat.  The backstay fitting above keeps the mast up, along with other rigging on the sides and the front of the boat.  If this had given way under sail, say, in the middle of the Caribbean, the mast would likely have come down.  So it has been replaced, with a sturdier fitting.

Our cutless bearing needed to be rebedded

Another multi-day project involved the propeller shaft.  We found the cutless bearing which surrounds the shaft had slid out past its spot in the hull.  We had to dig out the set screws holding it in place, and then new screw holes had to be re-tapped and bedded, the chips and old screw holes re-epoxed and painted.  Of course this happened over the New Years holidays, when everything on the island closed for six days.

The tractor, with the Debonair on its trailer behind

A view from the rear as it makes its slow way through the yard

Slowly, slowly, into the water at the slipway

Finally, on Tuesday, January 6, exactly one month after we had arrived in Curacao and started work, the Debonair was launched.  A tractor capable of hauling 60 tons, with five and a half foot tall tires, pulls a trailer with hydraulic arms to cradle the boat.  It is a slow process, and the workers and driver have much experience in handling boats far bigger than ours.  Nonetheless, special care is taken with each one, and we have never seen any accidents at this yard.  In other yards, we have seen boats dropped, boats that were sloppily put up on stilts and slid into one another, and other mishaps.

Just one problem - we were taking on water.  Not much, but enough to be concerned about.  As we were puzzling out where the water was coming from, a sixty-ton motor vessel, perhaps 80 feet long, was waiting to use the slipway.  They tried to nose past us:

A view from our cockpit - at the pushy behemoth next in line

We managed to back out in a hurry and get away from the slipway to let them use it.

We have figured out where the leak is - at the wood backing for a hole in the boat to pull in sea water to cool the diesel engine.  It's only about 1/4 cup of water a day.  We'd rather have a dry bilge, but we had some professional opinions on it.  We will have to replace the thru-hull at next haul-out but it is solid and not a big concern.  Of course, to us, any water in the bilge is a concern.

Work continues at the dock, meanwhile.