Antigua, day 4 – generator & sails back on

Saturday 19 May: Another busy day with maintenance, our 3rd in a row now. Mark, from Marine Power Services, arrives at 9:30 with the heavily welded end for our generator exhaust manifold. After about an hour in the engine room the silencer manifold is back together, the generator jacked down and rebolted on its mounts. After running it for a few minutes, Mark declares it all fine, packs up his tools and departs.
As soon as he is gone, Glen dives into the engine room to check out his work. With arm stretched below the generator Glen thinks he feels water on the manifold. After several wipes with kitchen towel it does seem to be leaking. With Oana’s mirror and a torch, you can actually see steady drips coming from the manifold. OMG, can no one simply do a job right the first time?? We call Mark back again. He is not too happy! We assume he simply hasn’t installed the pipes clamps correctly, but after 30 minutes of grunting and swearing he reappears with the repaired manifold end.
It seems the machine shop who welded it never bothered to actually check if it would hold water! Mark heads off and an hour later returns with said manifold covered with epoxy resin! Apparently, the machine shop is not back till Tuesday so epoxy will have to do. Ironic, because Glen was going to repair it with epoxy 2 days ago, but decided to call in professionals to do the job properly. Ha bloody ha! But Glen is so fed up with the whole thing, he just lets Mark reinstall it and hope it will at least last till we get to USA where we will replace the whole silencer with a glassfibre one. No more stainless-steel subject to sulphurous acid from the exhaust-seawater mix that passes through it.
While Mark is refitting it, the guys from the A&F Sails loft turn up with the genoa and mainsail. It’s very windy and we are rather worried how we will get them back up. After winching them on board, we lift the swim platform just in case we accidentally pull the anchor if the wind fills the sails as we raise them. In the first lull, we raise the genoa. Even on the electric winch the halyard it taught like an iron rod. Once up it’s furled immediately. One done.
The main takes much longer. Once up, we furl it away then bring it out bit by bit to install the long vertical battens, the longest 3 are longer than Cloudy Bay. There is a lot of friction and it takes a lot of pushing to get them in. No wonder they come apart so easily when trying to get them out. Luckily, Cloudy Bay is almost perfectly head to wind so while the sail fills occasionally, it mostly has no power. We are mightily relieved once it’s all safely away inside the mast. Another major job ticked. These guys did a good job.
Now for the bill. At first glance to the invoice Glen only see 2200 and nearly faints. But then realized this is EC$ not US$. US is $800. Still a lot, but a long way 2nd to our most expensive sail repair bill by Elvstrom in Mallorca 2 years ago. Maybe it’s true what motor boats say: that you can buy a lot of fuel for the cost of keeping or replacing sails, mast and rigging! Should we just cut it all off and motor everywhere? We have heard of another HR yacht here that lost its mast and they never replaced it – now just motor everywhere. Maybe we should ask them!
Once the loft guys have left we feel a bit lost … what do we do now?? No one to wait on the boat for, no urgent things to fix …. well let’s just get off this damned boat and stretch our legs. First, we walk to the fishing competition being held in Nelson’s dock where the boats are bringing in their catch. They all have amazing rods and equipment. Makes our lone rod look like a boy’s toy. But Oana reminds Glen it’s not about size it’s all about how many times you get your hook in the water! They each bring their fish in wheelbarrows to be weighed in front of the judge. Most are king fish and mahi-mahi. The biggest we saw was 38 pounds (16Kgs). On the jetty, we watch several guys filleting mahi-mahi. They make it look so easy. One big fillet off each side and the rest thrown back in the sea.
We leave the fishing competition and walk to the village. It’s 6pm and finally a bearable temperature. Most places are very quiet. We walk along the Antigua Yacht Club pontoon where there are several super yachts. We chat with the crew of a Spanish 140ft yacht that looks like new. But apparently, it’s 20 yrs old. Now that’s what we call good maintenance! Glen comments on the perfectly varnished gunwales. They are recently varnished few 2 days ago … and that they re-varnish every 3 months. Ooph, that’s serious dedication. They are about to depart back to Palma for the summer. Most yachts are either heading to the Med or to NE USA it seems. We will be one of them.
We then have a cocktail as the sun sets in a very chic restaurant in the Sand Hotel. We are a bit dirty and smelly from our day’s activities and not exactly dressed for cocktails …. maybe that’s why the constipated meet&greet waitress seemed a little reluctant to give us a table! They do make a great cocktail and it’s nice to actually sit and relax for a while. Once finished we leave before any real posh people turn up!
Back at Nelson’s Dock there is a very good band now playing at the Fishing competition. One singer can’t really sing but has boobs that defy gravity, but the other singer has an absolutely amazing voice. We watch them and dance a little. There are some others dancing but mostly people are just watching. We stay till the end which is a dizzy 9pm. Yes, 9pm the band stops for the evening and a DJ takes over. Most people were leaving anyway.
So, Saturday night and we are back to Cloudy Bay midevening for a welcome shower and tidy up. Tomorrow we will move to the west coast, and anchor in Jolly Harbor.