Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The night was incredibly windy and gusty, which is good for my wind generator and battery charge, but not necessarily ideal conditions for uninterrupted sleep, particularly when attached to a mooring ball of dubious quality. While an anchor alarm is usually useful in this case the moorings are so close together (and all taken) that the little beep-beep sound of the alarm would come roughly at the same time as a the much louder thud sound of my boat hitting another one. To compound matters the wind has been and remains very gusty, going from just a few knots to gusty highs that bang the running rigging around and then dying down. The gusts popped open my rolled-up aft sunshade and it was flogging around, I couldn’t roll it up again so opted to remove it completely for the night. I don’t have internet access here the Bight so I don’t know what the day’s weather is going to be like, it looks overcast and is still rather windy at 7am, but The Bight is known for being a wind funnel and conditions outside might be a lot better. If the wind and waves aren’t too bad later on, I might sail up to Trellis Bay and stay there for 2 nights, celebrating New Year’s there again this year. Otherwise I’ll head up to the North Sound for the celebration at Leverick Bay. I keep on hoping that the new piston rings and piston for the generator arrive so that I can get that installed again and finally head down island, but repairs like this in the Caribbean are slow. I’m still here at 13:15, and am going to stay the night. I did put a backup line on the mooring ball in case the pennant breaks and that will go a long way in helping me to a deep sleep tonight. The winds are strong, the first picture is the maximum in a 5-minute period and I am sure that some of the gusts are over 30 knots, WindGuru.com prognosticates a bit stronger winds tonight and then calming down over the next couple of days. I’ll use the cloudy and windy day to do stuff under deck as it isn’t very hot at all. Perhaps a bit more inventory and cleaning of the bilge and hidden areas.
I noticed that all of the stainless steel stanchions and fittings that I’d polished a couple of days ago was already starting to show signs of rust and realized that mere cleaning wouldn’t suffice and that I needed somehow to keep rust from forming again. I recalled being told that Vaseline is a good preventative measure. As I didn’t have any of that aboard, I used Johnson’s baby oil, of which I did have a small bottle in my medicine chest, and found that it worked pretty well in removing the small incipient rust spots and hopefully will form a protective layer and keep rust from reforming anytime soon. I didn’t have internet access during the day but did Google! the terms “Baby Oil” and “stainless steel” and was pleasantly surprised to find that I had made a lucky guess. Time will tell if my measures are successful.
The wind is still gusty and strong and watching the anchoring and mooring antics was better than TV, although now a Moorings charter boat is anchored somewhat upwind of me; but at least they are insured if they ding up my boat should they drag anchor overnight.
The wind generator has done a good job today, despite charging all sorts of electric appliances and running my notebook all day, the energy balance has gone from about -200amps hours to 122.1 since yesterday; with the Xantrex monitor still usually reading positive values despite the radio, anchor light and assorted electronics running.
I did have a burger at the Willie T and then partook of some fine alcoholic revelry at the bar. Fortunately I had remembered to take a couple of pictures earlier on, as the latter part of the evening is a bit of a blur.
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