Advertisement
Published: June 17th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Geo: 18.2866, -65.6363
We stayed in Great Harbour JVD, on our last night in the British Virgin Islands. Visited Foxy's one last time for a delicious Roti, and then we were off the next morning, stopping in Culebra, Spanish Virgin Islands, for two days, with a final destination of mainland Puerto Rico.
There were large beds of seaweed on our trip to Culebra. Enough so that it all bunched up in our prop. As we were motoring, we noticed that our speed was diminishing. At times we slow down because of current but this was too much! We drifted to a stop, and shifted the boat back and forth from reverse to neutral. Clumps and clumps of seaweed ejected from the prop. After a few minutes we appeared to be free of seaweed. We put the boat back into gear and were back to motoring along at our usual 5 knots.
The trip from Culebra to Fajardo, Puerto Rico, was supposed to be an uneventful 5 hours. The wind wasn't ideal, and there was a swell coming from the north, so we decided to motor the whole way.
About half way there, two and a half hours in to the trip, our engine
sputtered to a stop. Despite feeling a bit queazy from the rollers, and the sideways surfing, I sprung to action grabbing the sheets to pull out the foresail. Tony went below to work on the engine, figuring that it was another blockage in the diesel line. And he was correct. I'm proud to say, we've come a long way! The first time this happened to us over two years ago, in Biscayne Bay, Miami, it took Tony about six hours to fix this same issue and I had no idea of what to do except refrain from getting seasick as we bobbed around after Tony dropped the anchor. Now, Tony (who never had a diesel engine before) can now clear a blockage, bleed the line, and pack the tool away, leaving the boat in a presentable state, in about an hour and a half. And I can sail the boat by myself. I managed to keep us on track towards the mainland, trimming the sails as necessary, and maintaining our speed despite changing wind direction and swell. When Tony popped his head up to ask me if I was okay, I nodded, responding, "Yup. I got this."
Within two days
Back in Culebra we thought we'd found CRAIG!
But considering Craig and Christa were around Grenada at this time, this was just a Craig Look-a-like. :) at a slip in the marina, we removed our sails, our canvas (dodger and bimini), did an oil change, and prepped the boat for storage in a hot climate. Once on the hard, Tony dug out the rebar embedded in long concrete trenches in the ground to tie down Inspiration with hurricane straps. We had not expected that we'd have to dig for the rebar ourselves, and therefore didn't have the necessary tools for the job. It turned out that Tony used a dessert spoon to dig the foam out from the metal bars! Very time consuming. Then, Tony disconnected the batteries, and our last task was to undo the lowest seacock so that if a hose were to break or disconnect in the event of a torrential downpour, we would not "sink" the boat while it's on land. This way, the excess water would flow out of the hole at the bottom of the boat. Unfortunately, this time around, the seacock was seized. Tony just couldn't undo it in the short amount of time we had left, so, out of desperation, Tony took a hack saw to the hose! Not ideal, but still serves the purpose.
When we return
to Inspiration in November, our first point of order is to replace that hose!!! 😉
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 9; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0294s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb