Grenadian Waffles (Grenada)

 

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!”

Dripping sweat, I started pulling the generator apart to work out what was wrong, while they sat on the transom and enjoyed a beer. Having had a good look around inside, I couldn’t see anything amiss, so cleaned up the spark plug and decided to give the rip cord starter a few more pulls. The string snapped on my second tug, the loose end disappearing deep inside the generator’s housing… Oh dear. This means more sweaty dismantling, then tying another bit of cord to what’s left of the original. Some more unsuccessful pulls followed. I then reluctantly concluded that it was dead (for now at least). I apologised for wasting their time, and the guys started packing up as I squared my tools away. I gave the generator one more frustrated tug on the starter cord… and sure enough it finally kicked in! The next little hurdle came 5 minutes later. Now that we have power, Cody accidentally dropped the tungsten tip of his arc welder into the sea. That was easily fixed with me giving Kimon a 15 minute round trip to shore to pick up a new one from the workshop. Once back, the job was finished in no time, and the solar arch is once again ready for more adventures on the high seas.

We popped along to Port Louis Marina to catch up with our recently arrived Aussie buddy Troy. He has just turned up in the island with the ARC rally, and was still full of the excitement of the trip. We spent a lovely morning chatting over coffee about how it all went, and his up coming plans - it’s good to have him here: a great fun guy and a lovely family.

We also managed this week to catch up with ‘Sailing Sunday’ our nearly famous YouTube vlogging mates. Always good to see those two - they once again have two little orphan puppies on board ( they foster and find homes for cats and dogs along the way ) - this in addition to their big fluffy German Shepard, ‘Jackson’. Their travels will see them heading further North, as we head West.. we’ve met them on 3 seperate continents now.. and the next catch up will probably be on a fourth.. back in Oz.

We’ve noticed that a lot of people here have mixed, hard to pick accents. It’s not one definable location accent, more a combination of multiple twangs and inflections picked up along the way. Strange bunch here - they probably think the same of us!

Another observation is the high number of Canadians and South African cruisers here. Having spoken to a good number of both, they’re here to dodge the snow and political turmoil respectively.. and I’d have to say, it’s a rather lovely place to do it!

I went up the mast yesterday, Chez winching below aided by Phil, her friend Hattie’s husband who she’d met in Trinidad. All good up there, lovely view. I just went up to check the rigging, which in the main was good. There was, as there always seems to be, one little thing that’ll need attention at some stage - I’ll add it to the list!

I seem to be waffling on about not a lot once again. I suppose this is a product of not actually doing any actual sailing to put in the ‘sailing diary’. That situation will soon be resolved, if, as planned, we leave here on New Year’s Day making our first leg West. The start of a pretty exciting journey across the Pacific back to Australia.