Tuesday 18 December, Jolly Harbour, yard day 8: Frustrations with bills, no service kit for vang, but we are in the slings and antifoul all around.
The travel lift is moving around in the yard, but not coming for us. At least not yet.
The morning can be shortly described as frustrating. And even that, won’t say it all. We venture to the marina office to settle the bill for the haul-out and on hard storage. Invoice was emailed to us yesterday, and we questioned some rates on this invoice. But when we got into the office this morning, of course nobody read the email.
So let’s start again. Listed electricity rate in the yard is $EC12.5. And we requested electricity only for charging the batteries, which is half the daily rate, this is what we filled in the contract.
“But the yard said you were connected to power the whole time”. And when yard supervisor is called, he says we’ve been using sanding machine. Well, we didn’t use a sander for 7 days, thank you. It was used one day. After a bit of chatting in the back office, they modify the invoice with 1 full day charged and the rest half the rate.
Not only we are invoiced full daily rate, but also at $EC13.5. And when we question, the answer is “but this is the rate we have in the system”. We don’t care about the rate in the system, we need to be charged at the rate that was given to us on the pricing leaflet, together with the contract.
After more chatting in the back office, they come out with yet another invoice. The full day rate is now the correct one. But the half day rate is still not changed. So yet more arguments, after which we are served with a final invoice, at the right rate.
It is not the few extra dollars that we were questioning, it’s the principle. We can’t stand to be taken for fools. But this is the Caribbean style, totally disorganized. And “ “no harm in trying it on”, seems to be the motto everywhere here.
Hyped up after this event, next stop is Budget Marine. Of course the ordered thru-hull fitting still didn’t arrive. So ordering something 2 months before you need it just doesn’t work.
Anyway, Glen manages to find some small screws he needs to replace, which are used to secure the rubbing strips to the teak gunwale.
And he spots some nice cable covers that would be good for all the various wires exiting the radar post. Really good stuff. Labeled $EC3/ft. But let’s better find the real price before we cut it. One of the shop attendants looks it up “it’s 6 dollars per foot”.
Then why is it labeled 3? And a minute later that same person shouts “it’s 7 dollars sir!”
So the price goes up every minute, or what? Forget about it, we’ll just go back to the boat and measure exactly how much we need.
Back at the boat, some cooling off is needed. And what better way to relax than sanding wood. Glen installs his workshop on the corner of the swim platform and sets about sanding the epoxy sealant he painted on the plywood wedges for the anchor. I suspect it will probably be a varnishing day today.
And while at sanding, Glen has a go at the damaged spots on the aft seats, where the Coelan was rubbed off. After sanding, the raw teak is a darker color than the varnished one, so not sure how we’ll proceed going forward. Clearly, repairs on Coelan are very difficult. This same old varnish predicament gets us a bit depressed, again.
Which brings us to the handrails, they are also varnished with Coelan. The teak plugs for the handrails are ready, and next he sets about to put them in, with a touch of epoxy. They are not coming out! But again, Coelan repairs are needed on these sections that were sanded off to renew the plugs. Hm, we’ll see how that goes.
Having no fridges, we have to eat out today. We aimed for the nearby Italian, to poison ourselves with some comfort food, pizza, which would cheer us up. But it was closed. And we end up at Lynda’s Cafe here in the yard, for another roti and creole chicken, which was both inexpensive and yummy.
Back at Cloudy Bay, we try to get hold of Stan (again). We left the vang with him a week ago and we haven’t heard from him. We don’t even know if he found if on the porch or not! No answer, as usual. But later he returns the call.
And what a surprise, he doesn’t have the seal kit to service the vang. It needs to be ordered in and will take several weeks to arrive. How is that possible? We have booked the vang service months ago, precisely to make sure he has the kit before our arrival.
Can there be any reliable services in these islands? You would expect a bit more professionalism from an expat who runs a business in these islands… Another reason to get us even more depressed.
After we hung up, the immediate thought is “screw that, we are not going to wait till after Christmas. We’ll just pick up the vang and leave.” It would have been nice to know they didn’t have a seal kit before we took the trouble to remove it and drive it 1/2 way across the island in a hire car that got 2 punctures!
Not long after 3pm the travel lift arrives to hang Cloudy Bay in the slings. Since we will remain lifted throughout the night, they lift us on two sets of slings. A bit of a debate on how to best position them all, which gives Glen time to wash the slings – they were covered in grit.
In the end we lift ok, all good, and fingers crossed the nice antifoul will not be too damaged by the slings when we get back in the water tomorrow. Luckily, the stepladder is long enough so that we can still get back onboard!
Even before the travel lift stopped, Jesse shows up and starts painting the chemical stripper on the patches that were under the stands. I guess he is eager to finish early. We let him do the cleaning only, then Glen steps in to paint the InterProtect and the antifoul. Enough paint wasted by Jesse. It’s a quick job, 9 squares 30x30cm.
The InterProtect dries quite fast, and the three coats are ready for the antifoul paint early evening. Glen fashions his “criminal” outfit for the last time. He does indeed look like he is about to dismember a body, dressed in this white paint suit.
At some stage, he comes inside and asks for another pair of glasses. I assumed he misplaced the previous, as he usually does. But it turns out they fell in the InterProtect paint. Hm, it was a while since he lost a pair.
By 9pm he is finished with painting the antifouling too. Both coats, as “he can’t be bothered to paint the second coat at midnight”. And when he comes in to get his towel for a shower, he cheerfully announces me “now I have a pair of gray glasses, and a pair of blue glasses”. The second pair fell in the antifouling paint. He has a fabulous record for losing/breaking eyeglasses.
Last evening in the yard. To celebrate jobs are finished and the launch tomorrow, we go out for dinner. At the nearby Italian, which was closed at lunch time. To our surprise, it is absolutely packed. 2 for 1 pizza night. That explains it. We manage to get a table but we are told there is no more pizza, they finished the ingredients. Hm… luckily for us, there is another Italian in the marina. We venture there, and we have a delicious dinner.
Walking back to Cloudy Bay we joke that tomorrow we will be upgraded to a smaller stepladder, from 12 to 3 steps. Our bow ladder that is. And that we can again use Cloudy Bay’s bathroom facilities, galley sink, and best of all, fridges and AirCon! This yard camping sure does make us appreciate simple things in life.
Tomorrow we launch (“splash” as they call it here) at 7am … so its off to bed by 10:30pm. Unheard of.