The winds are once again 15-20 through the anchorage but since it is coming from directly ashore there are no waves to make life aboard uncomfortable. Today I followed through on my plan to rid the underwater portions of my hull of those freeloading barnacles and other growths plus take a look at the wreck in the middle of Deep Bay.
The wreck is of a 3-masted Barque called the “Andes” which had a full cargo load of pitch from Trinidad in her holds. They had been improperly stowed and the rolling motion of the boat had caused heat buildup from friction and the load was smoking. The captain was denied entrance to St. Johns (since that was a busy port a burning ship would have been a major disaster) and anchored in nearby Deep Bay. When the holds were opened and oxygen was introduced the ship went up in flames and sunk with no loss of life. The wreck was in 1905 and since then a lot of marine life has taken hold on the steel hulls and superstructure. The boat lies in 20 feet of water and much of it is only a few feet below sea level, but I decided to dive on it to see if I could get any interesting shots. Unfortunately, the visibility was quite bad and I didn’t get to see this large wreck in her best light. Considering the wind forecast for the next couple of days, I don’t think that the visibility will be getting any better and doubt that I’ll do a second dive.
That photographic expedition accounted for half of my air, and with the rest I went about cleaning the hull again. There wasn’t much green slime or growths apart from barnacles, so the main portion of the work was using my big paint scraper and going along the hull, rudder and keel to snap off the barnacles. This was strenuous, as the gusty wind made the boat move about at anchor and I had trouble keeping up with the motion. In addition, I had to stay away from the parts of the hull that I hadn’t cleaned or had only partially cleaned, since the barnacles have hard and very sharp edges that easily cut into skin and they have the unfortunate tendency to get infected in these tropical climes. But I finished the task with less than 500PSI left in the tank and then had a long hard shower and scrubbing to get rid of any fauna that I might have brought up from the deep.
After cleaning the gear I saw some wonderful black rain clouds upwind and got out the brush for the decks. The whole boat was not only covered in lots of salt from the spray of the past passages but also with a reddish coat of very fine dust; either Sahara dust or pollen/dust from Green Island. As it hadn’t rained for a couple of weeks it was high time for nature’s “Boat Wash” to give the boat a good cleaning. I waited and watched the beautiful rain clouds drift by, less than a kilometre away, and drop lots and lots of cleansing water elsewhere!
I thawed out another of the thin T-Bone steaks for dinner and baked a large potato to go along with the simple meal. Now that I’ve figure out how to work my BBQ and keep it lit in higher winds, making the meal was quick and it was tasty, but not quite filling enough as a couple of hours later I had to eat some of the Nachos that I still had in the munchies-drawer.
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