Ringing in the New Year
New Year’s day in Portsmouth! The party ashore sounded like everyone was having fun, and all I could do was nurse a cold Kubuli beer aboard. Things had generally quieted down in hours before midnight. When the year changed there was a bit of shouting and fireworks. One boat fired a SOLAS red flare. I was impressed by how long the parachute held the bright red light up in the sky. Then, as I was in bed and preparing for a deep and long sleep, music started up ashore. As in St. Lucia, all I could hear/feel was the bass beat once I had the hatches shut, the fan on, and the earplugs inserted.
This music originates in town, at least one mile away. It is still incredibly loud and not particularly interesting to listen to. But I resigned myself and knew that they’d stop at 04:00 or 05:00 as they usually do. It is now 10:00AM and the music is still blaring away ashore!
Morning
I just went topside for a look and to take pictures of the surrounding yachts. I looked off the back and saw the bottom, very clearly. This was odd, as I was in 30 feet of water. Then I thought that the boat motion was off and thought I’d run aground overnight! Heart pounding, I turned on the instruments and after an interminable period of booting up they confirmed I was in deep water. I even used my handheld depth sounder and it, stated 30 feet of water. But I did have a couple of minutes of worry.
Worries continued to bother me, so I went for a morning swim to check the keel and the anchor. And spend some quality time with the paint scraper and some barnacles. The water was indeed 30 feet deep and there was lots of room under the keel. And my anchor was well-set, too.
After showering off the back, I sat down to finish my coffee when a gust of wind hit and I read a loud BANG on the hull. Rushing topsides, I was that the dinghy had twisted and was now hanging with the engine in the water. I lowered it (right-side-up) and tied it up aft. Now I’ll need to wash the engine off and apply some WD-40 to prevent rust. But first, the coffee.
Late Morning
Oh, and it is 10:30 and the music is still blaring ashore.
11:15 and I’ve hosed down, dried and WD-40’d the outboard and am letting the sun do the rest. I’ll now have to remove and clean the carburetor in case some water got into the system through the air intake system. And the VW TDI is also awaiting my pleasure. Since I don’t know where to begin, I’ll not do either and just update the website and pray to both Apollo and Muses that the cacophony ashore gets stopped. I’m sure they’d agree, if they were around to listen.
Noon
New Year’s day in Portsmouth is a working day so far. I’ve got my tools arrayed and the Tohatsu manual opened so that I can remove the carburetor and clean it.
I’ve cleaned out the contents of the carburetor and can’t quite tell if it was just 2-stroke fuel or water inside. But it is cleaned, greased and now I’m letting it air-dry to make sure that any water I’ve missed evaporates. Hopefully I didn’t miss much as those salt crystals are pretty nasty.
Early Afternoon
After putting the outboard back together several times due to putting pieces on in the correct order I was ready to give it a go. While doing this I was asked three times by passing pirogues and one guy on a paddleboard whether I wanted to buy anything, needed fruit or other items, or needed help on the outboard. This is typical Dominican and St. Lucian activity and one has to immure oneself to just saying “No”.
New Year’s day in Portsmouth is really a work day for me. Once the outboard was primed with fuel it fired right up on the first pull. Nonetheless, after 10 seconds it just died and refused to start again. The engine didn’t even sound like it was close to wanting to restart. My pulling arm got tired and I decided to take a break and try again later.
I’ll begin my removing some of the VW engine components now, but won’t be starting work on the diesel engine until tomorrow. I can run the engine tonight and might attempt to get the watermaker flushed and making water. So far the anchorages I’ve been in have been too dirty, but this water is very clear and shouldn’t clog up the filters too quickly. Since flushing the storage solution takes a lot of fresh water, I should start now before I run out of fresh water to do this.
Afternoon
Before starting on the watermaker I went back to the outboard, hoping to complete at least one task today. I removed and cleaned the 2 spark plugs and smelled the cylinders to see if there was fuel going into them. There was, and my fingers got shocked when I tested to see if there was a spark coming from the magneto.
After several combinations of choke and throttle I found a spot where it sounded like the engine was about to start. I was working a up a sweat from pulling the starter. Minute adjustments to the throttle finally got me ignition and soon the engine was running again. A bit rough, but a couple of whacks on the spark plug connectors got the 2nd cylinder to fire correctly.
Time for a celebratory Kubili beer for 16:30 happy hour.
Late afternoon
The one beer turned into two, although the bottles are only 250ml. Hydration is important in the tropics. Instead of the watermaker task, I updated this blog and am now psychologically ready to approach the next task.
New Year’s day in Portsmouth – maintenance instead of beach time. The watermaker purge cycle to remove the storage solution is running now. I’ll find out if the watermaker can still produce sweet water in 20 minutes when the watermaker should automagically start running. With my current streak of equipment failures I’ll be monitoring the bilge for leaking water the first product water will go into a bucket for a manual taste test.
Sometimes things do work out – the purge and clean completed and the watermaker is now making 1 liter per minutes. I have it set for 3 hours, so I’ll get 180l of potable water by the end of the cycle. Time for another celebratory Kubuli!
Evening
The watermaker is still ticking away and I’m ready to BBQ again – I’m tired of burgers, but they need to be consumed. I’m beat and have a bit of sunburn on my back – I worked too long the outboard. Luckily it isn’t painful yet, so I think I might have just scraped past a burn-and-peel.
There’s music ashore, but nothing worth earplugs. I think I’ll sleep deep and well tonight.