Today marked the beginning of actual tasks for the 2015 Antigua Sailing Week and was also the first day of races in the pre-events running up to the regatta. The first race is the Guadeloupe to Antigua race and Phaedo 3, who had been at the dock in Falmouth the night before, sailed down quickly to Deshaies on Guadeloupe in order to start the race back and they racked up a new record time at 1:27! It takes me that long to get out of the harbour, set sails and reach the end of Guadeloupe…
I picked up the Committee “B” boat at Sunsail in English Harbour today, it is a Robertson & Caine 380 while the other committee boat is a bigger Lagoon 440. I had a very brief introduction to the boat from the Sunsail rep and a dock master took the cat from the mooring so that I wouldn’t have a chance to wrap the propeller in one of the many mooring lines. I had Susanne along to help and we quickly went around the headland and checked out the committee boat mooring before entering Falmouth harbour. I took the opportunity to try rotating in place and getting a feel for controlling the boat via the engines rather than by the helm and after a couple of circles we headed into the dock, Susanne setting up the fenders and flaking the dock lines. We got close and saw that it was a very, very tight fit. There was an occupied mooring used for a med-moor that went across our intended path and the ABSAR rescue boat was on the other side and I let us drift back while we contacted the dock masters on the VHF. They said it would fit and we proceeded to make a slow approach. There was more space than I’d thought and with the help of a couple of people ashore we soon had our “Sabina” connected to the other boat and the shore.
A bit later I got the shore power connected but the A/C system would only run for several minutes before stopping but I wasn’t worried about that – the winds would keep things acceptably cool at night for those sleeping on the boat. I turned on the battery charger to ensure that the house bank remained charged and also turned on the water pump to pressure the hot and cold water. The pump started running to prime, but after about 10 seconds I realized it wasn’t stopping and check both heads for the likely culprit – an open faucet. Both heads had no running water and when I returned to the top main cabin I saw water leaking out below the sink and turned off the pump immediately. Opening the sink cabin door revealed a very wet area (which also contained the battery charger unit, which I quickly shut off). It turns out that the high-pressure water hot water line leading to the sink had chafed through over time and had finally burst. While I knew that we could live without water in the galley, I realized that the whole water system was one unit and that the galley water could not be turned off. So we contacted Sunsail and they sent their new technician over (who had just come over from St. Martin) to look at it. We worked together for a while to get the A/C working (we had to bleed the cooling water systems) but then it turned out that the shore power connection was too weak to deal with the high running amperage of both A/C systems. The water took a lot longer, and when she had removed the tubing she realized that new replacement parts from the base were needed and left, leaving me to see if I could remove the faucet. This was more difficult than I’d thought as the fittings had corroded under the sink and nothing could be budged. But I got it done (getting soaked with sweat in the process, since the A/C wasn’t working) and when the lady from Sunsail came back we thought we could get going – but the fitting that she’d brought was of the wrong type. She did come up with an excellent idea of plugging the old pipe fitting with a 2¢ coin and that worked wonderfully until the plastic threads were over tightened on one water hose and then we were in trouble. In the end we bent back the plastic tube and used a constrictor knot (my idea to finally use that easy knot in a true application) to tie the system together to make it watertight. Finally, we were done… but then the shore power failed and couldn’t be fixed that evening.
I had a couple of beers up in the air-conditioned comfort of the committee room before returning to Zanshin for some cold sandwiches and a hot shower.
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