Martinique, day 22 – jobs: AIS antenna

Wednesday 9 May: A rather frustrating day. First, the Caraibe riggers don’t turn up. They were supposed to come and check the cutter stay tension. We go to their workshop, but as usual the boss is not there and no one seems to know about the appointment.
Next stop – the electronics shop to find out why he didn’t turn up yesterday. He says he waited for us, but truth is he had forgotten where we told him the boat was. But he jumps to action and comes to Cloudy Bay immediately. He is quite a character, a little bit eccentric with a dry sense of humor. Very quickly he gathers the tools he needs (from us!) and heads up the mast to make a new connection and reinstall the AIS antenna on the top spreader. He is not so amused that it’s so high up. Surprisingly, he is down in 30 minutes, job done. Whenever we go up the mast it seems to take several iterations up and down before we get anything finalized. We switch everything on and the TX error no longer appears. He then tries to fix a couple of the software issues in the Furuno. It’s nice to find someone who actually knows Furuno gear well. He quickly finds the issue: no input from the Raymarine to the Furuno, it has never been connected. So he leaves us with 2 cables to run and says he will be back tomorrow to wire it in. Good progress on this one.
Once he has left, Glen goes up the mast to see what he has done … or he tries to. 2 meters off the ground, the electric winch starts making a horrible sound. So the next 2 hours are spent rebuilding the mechanics of the winch. It’s a big Lewmar size 68, so not to be messed with. Once back together it seems to work just fine …. for now!
Following the inspection it’s off to the doctors to get the stitches removed from Glen’s lip. The doctor is from Spain and very soon he and Oana are chatting in Spanish. He pulls one stitch out and declares job done, but Glen can still feel there is another stitch still to take out. He takes a closer look, “oh yes, I didn’t see that one” he says. For this last one, Glen is on the couch with Oana holding a light while doctor tries to take last stitch out. Eventually job done – a bit sureal!
Back on Cloudy Bay, we start to grease engine mountings, which we de-rusted yesterday. But while preparing, we notice that the Mastervolt alternator is hot! How is that possible when the engine hasn’t run for 4 days? A few checks and we find that it is drawing 3amps. Looks like there is a short circuit somewhere. Maybe we shouldn’t have been so generous with the water yesterday as we cleaned the engine room.
OMG – just what can go wrong next. This week was meant to fix things, but thing are breaking faster than we can fix them, or at least, that’s how it feels. Maybe we should just go sailing!