This blog will also cover the same last 2 months that the previous one did but showing more of the day to day stuff of life on the boat and avoiding talking much about the dragon in the room. Although most of my time is spent watching TV, reading books, laying around bored and texting with friends… I did manage to get some boat projects done.
So what do you do when the whole world suddenly closes down and you live on a boat in the ocean…? Well number 1 find safe harbour, which WildChild did in Hermitage bay in Antigua. It is a GREAT and well protected bay on the western side of the island and … as you can see… I was not the only cruiser to decide to park here for this Covid thingy. I think I have mentioned previously how wonderful this country really is… and maybe someday I will get to go to land to explore it.
I think one of the most delightful things that came out of this was the social cruisers radio net that spontaneously formed. There are probably about 80 to 100 other cruisers that also got trapped in this area. We are used to having very much freedom and suddenly we all got stuck. But… sailors are a wonderful community, great people usually. There is a Canadian guy here named Merril from Montreal who decided to start a social evening cruisers VHF radio net in the evenings just to help us all feel less isolated and less alone. So every evening at 5:30pm on VHF ch 74 Merril opens up a social conversation where all the boats can call in and share what they did today and what evening cocktail they are enjoying for the sunset. Then afterwards they would do like a quiz or some type of puzzle show for fun. At 6pm everyday all the boats take a pause to blow their horns and make some noise to say thank you to the people of Antigua for their kindness and hospitality.
I have to say this evening radio net saved me from the total isolation and loneliness I have been feeling trapped out here almost alone. So to cope with the isolation of this prison sentence I decided it would be healthy to try to create some type of daily routine to follow to try and help me keep my sanity. Prisoners in solitary confinement talk about how working your daily “program” helps them to stay sane.
I set aside every afternoon to try to conquer one of my boat projects and every evening I sat down to play some chess alone and listen to the cruisers social radio net. I was still mostly alone and lonely but it helped so much. Sometimes I would have a partner to play chess with but more often then not my cell mate was in a bad mood and locked herself in the front room in silence not speaking to me for days. Surprisingly, when playing chess alone (against Teddy bear), as I got good at it, I did not always know which side would end up winning. I found that if I played the first 5 opening minutes kind of fast it would then develop on its own, because after that i could just do what was logical for each side individually even though I “knew” what the other side was planning. Every time I saw something new about the board I would give that insight to the color I was playing at the time. I got good at playing chess against Teddy bear and we were about evenly matched… 🙂
With not much to do everyday I started actually getting creative with my food. Normally I am not very interested in food or eating, but taking the time to prepare something delicious helped me convince myself to eat. I started to get creative with making these gourmet cooked sandwiches and that entertained me sometimes.
Other times I would sometimes cook me and my cell mate a nice big dinner. My favorite dinner time meal will probably always remain German Schnitzel. It takes a lot of work to make it and usually I don’t bother with this much effort, but luckily for me, I found everything I needed to make it on the last provisioning before the lockdown. Being well provisioned made a big difference in our quality of life during this thing
Eventually, with the whole tourism economy shut down, the local fishermen figured out they could probably sell their catches directly to us cruisers. I LOVED these guys. When they showed up it was like hitting the jackpot. When I think about how much a big thick juicy fresh Tuna steak would cost back home it hurts my feelings.
The first time they showed up I was a bit hesitant but figured, why not support the local population. As a Canadian I still just hate the bargaining and haggling process, where the price is whatever they think they can get out of you. These guys though were supper nice and more than fair. Whenever the locals answer your questions about price with the words “don’t worry about it” usually that means for sure it is double what the locals are gonna pay for the same thing. Not with these guys though. They said don’t worry about it we will be fair… and they were…! I was able to buy 8 pounds of fresh Tuna for like $100e.c. (divide by 2.7 at the time for conversion to usd). Everywhere else it would have cost me like $20 per tuna steak. I got like 10 one inch thick tuna steaks out of my purchase. I am still eating like a rich person.
A little project I recently discovered was that my spinnaker pole no longer opens up. Yeah the ocean rusts corrodes and just ruins everything I own so quickly. Given that all my sailing rigging is the most expensive HARRKEN gear this spinnaker pole would cost $6000usd to replace and even just the head they would charge me $2000 just for this dark grey end you see. As you can imagine I am trying to save it. It seems that this end piece I have shown you above is like a closed hand, palm up, and there is a pin inside that is supposed to retract to allow it to swivel open. When you have aluminum and steel together though you are making a recipe for corrosion. I think that probably the pin has just corroded in place. I have been trying to lube it with WD-40 and bang it and yanking on the pull cable and letting it sit in lube for days but still no luck. Grrr…
On a positive note though. I have done some rather nasty things to my poor cockpit table in the last several years, including getting muratic acid on it, but I decided to clean it up a bit and try to restore it with a little bright work. I admit to doing a quick job on it and not sanding it all the way down to do it properly, but it does look much shinier now though. So that is a nice visible type of progress.
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The Winches
This topic is so huge it gets its own section.
As you know WildChild used to be a race boat so she has like 5 winches on her top deck. These winches have been washed in nice salty ocean water thousands of times while sailing. Well it turns out that if you bathe your winches in salt water long enough they corrode tight. I have mentioned this before that I had lost a deck winch in Puerto Rico and recently lost the baby stay winch while here on lockdown. So I decided hey… I have all the time in the world… and although I have failed at this last time… I might as well give it another shot… because I am now down 2 deck winches and they are worth like $3000 each so IF I could save them… now is the time to try.
The problem is… that it seems that the drums have SEIZED onto the center spindles. I have tried and tried to get these freakin things loose. I have soaked them for days in lubricant. I have pried hammered smacked and pulled with all my might and yet these stubborn things refuse to freakin budge. How they could go so quickly from a working state to a completely seized un-serviceable state so fast is what amazes me. IF I could possibly ever manage to pull of the miracle of getting the drums to lift off then there would be at least a chance I could fix them…. BUT… nothing can be done until I get the drums off. I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF… I MUST GET THE DRUMS OFF…
AND I CANNOT…!
Never one to accept defeat easily Captain Lexi is a strong girl and a very determined girl sometimes.
I tried to keep at it, like be patient with it. Everyday I would go out several times a day and drown the spindle in penetrating oil and bang and hammer on it to try and loosen up the corrosion. I even tried attaching a halyard to it for a week and keep constant upward pressure so that maybe eventually the penetrating oil and hammering might start to loosen it up.
Still no luck… a month later I decided that I needed to call in help.
I asked on the evening cruisers net for advice. I did get a lot of ideas and I tried many of them but still no luck… failure was looming when a British sailor came to my rescue. His name is Bones and he is from the charter boat Emily Morgan. Bones used to be a helicopter mechanic and had many tools onboard his lovely boat. Bones was very encouraging to me, he was sure victory was possible even though hope of victory was fading fast.
These lovely sailors had come to my rescue two weeks earlier when I need police help with the dragon. Bones and Anna were sort of trying to help me deal with my crew problem and Bones was willing to sneak over to me on WildChild one morning despite the Covid lockdown restrictions forbidding it.
I must say a million thank you’s to Bones… He had a 3 arm puller on his boat and still the drum would not come off even under the extreme pressure of the puller. It started to seem like either the drum lip would break or the puller arm hooks would break off. My heart just sank… Bones is an AMAZING mechanic though and not a quitter either… he was not discouraged at all. He kept the faith the entire time. Bones knows his stuff and he is much practiced in ZEN and the art of fighting with stubborn mechanical problems. Eventually in about an hour of hammering twisting banging and fighting my HERO declared victory.
The second winch… the starboard baby stay winch was next. On this winch we got even closer to defeat and it just would not budge but bones had another trick up his sleeve… he said we need heat… not a torch but heat… heat will work wonders he tells me… hmmm… how to heat a winch drum when locked down in a secluded bay using only things available on the boat… hmmm….
Electrician Lexi has an electric heat gun for heating shrink wrap, think like high heat low fan speed hair dryer type thing… but it uses more power than my inverter can supply…. hmmm… run the generator and then run the heat gun and then heat the drum while it is under pressure…. and eventually… like a miracle…. we heard a loud CRACK..!
Hallelujah praise the lord sweet Jesus … BONES performed a genuine miracle… he got both drums off…!
I would have given him a big hug of pure joy but we were practicing social distancing for safety. I gave him a precious bottle of my personal Canadian ice wine as the greatest thank you gift I could think of… instead of a big hug and a kiss… !
So I got the two drums back to the cockpit table and began to try and get the bearings out. There was so much corrosion from the aluminum drum that the bearings were stuck right solid to the drum…! I had to basically destroy the bearings and remove them needle bearing by needle bearing and take them out one at a time. I then cleaned them all individually and cleaned and greased them. I had to sand the inside of the drums and clean them too.
I was able to get the drums reassembled with the damaged bearings and put them back together and they work again… cause you know… Sailors are winners by nature huh 🙂
I now have time to try and find replacement bearings when I can.
The drums work for now… and I am good with that… they are not high use winches… they will work when I need them.
Cheers sailors…
may the force be with you too…
🙂
Captain Lexi ….
. ………… the winner ….