SERENITY NOW

  Happy Twixmas! We’re in that delightful lull between Christmas and New Years, traditionally celebrated by forgetting what day it is and eating too much cheese. We’re anchored in Prickly Bay, about 100m away from the advertised ‘best fireworks display on the island’ due to detonate on New Year’s Eve. Our leaky canvas, which ineffectually covered the cockpit for the last few years, has been repaired. The work done by waxed moustached Frank from ‘Ever After’ (another yacht in the bay). He made a good, cheap, and quick repair for us on Boxing Day. With that done, and the canvas put back in place, I mixed up white spirit with silicon and painted it on as a homemade water-proofing. It worked a treat, the rain came down hard overnight and no leaks to speak of. This is good news, as Columbia has the highest annual rainfall of any country in the world. This and a few other little jobs are the last of a long list of items to tick off before we depart West once more. Our planned departure ...

  Well that was a funny old Christmas! Woke on the boat bobbing around once again in Woburn Bay, Grenada. One of our pre-arranged festive activities for the day is to head over to Whisper Cove and get a load of washing in the machine! The bar/restaurant is closed for the day, but Landlord Steve had OK’d us to come over, do the washing and use the wifi in his absence. Nice to catch up with the socials, and be able to wish people a Happy Christmas from all these miles away. What could have been a rather lovely morning sitting over there on the shady veranda, was a little spoiled by the loud compressor used by the guy power washing the bar floors. He was probably equally upset by our presence, as well as having to work on Xmas day, every time the washing machine pumped he lost all his water pressure. Having caught up with our far flung friends and families, we headed back to the boat for a light lunch… A couple of glasses of bubbly, some prawn vol au vents, mini scotch eggs, and lots ...

  Still anchored in gorgeous Woburn Bay, Grenada The stainless steel arch that supports our solar panels, somewhere along the way, had been blown hard enough to cause a concerning crack in the tubing. Having personally bodged it up with duct tape for some months, it’s now time to get it professionally welded before we head off again. Weldtec are a small company based in Clark’s Court Marina. I had previously agreed a price for the work with them, and collected two guys, Cody and Kimon, from the dinghy dock. They’re a smiley chatty pair, local lads who enjoy being out of the workshop on the water for the afternoon. The job doesn’t proceed all that well… Their little arc welding machine needs 110v so they’d brought a transformer to step down our inverter’s 240v. As soon as they started, the circuit tripped below, and after another couple of tries, with similar pops, I dug the petrol generator out. It wouldn’t start. I asked the Weldtec guys if they minded waiting; “No worries man!” D...