Jan 2024

It’s been an interesting month. The relationship with the new AA Divers owners is very much a work in progress.

Brownie is now working on the beach as Beach Attendant to help build a kitty for our planned May Haul out.

Boat projects are mostly in the acquisition mode – that is acquiring all the parts/ pieces/ knowledge to do them.

Planned projects include:

1. Pressure switches for the fresh water and salt water wash pumps – need a trip to Home Depot at some point!
2. Propane to Electric Conversion for the galley – this is a more long term project but we really want to do it!
3. Lower Rudder Bearing – we understand this a bit better and will be ordering the parts in the coming months
4. Keel cooler for the freezer – yup gotta order that part…
5. RO Membranes for the water maker need to be replaced…

Feb/ Mar/ Apr 2024

We worked to build up our haul-out kitty and have now moved into almost full-time logistics planning and work. Haul-out is now 3 Jun on the island of Carriacou at Tyrell Bay.

It’s been a good season with Lee surpassing last season’s Scuba student count to include some Open Water, Adv Open water and some specialty students. And LOTS of Basic Diver intro courses. Lee also worked with a second Scuba Shop Aqua Marine.

As we write this at the end of April we have purchased most of what we plan to need for haulout and are navigating getting it shipped and transported onto our boat so we can take everything with us.

The diving has been slow in April so we’ve started the boat projects early – especially as we have acquired needed parts. So our get a jump on things list includes:

• Fresh water pressure switch install – our fresh water pump is automatic once again!
• Removal of the Starboard Berth door and frame in preparation for the galley carpentry work
• Removal (and sale) of the Force 10 propane range. The new combo oven is on St Thomas and waiting to be released from Customs

Lee also traveled up to FL to bring back a bunch of items that could not be easily shipped and to finalize ordering many of the parts/ pieces that we will be using during haulout.

May 2024

First up, wake the boat up after sitting all winter on the mooring. Check fluids etc. With our relationship with Aqua Action Dive Center having soured, we needed to find a new shop to work with next winter so we turned our sights on St Croix so we did a day sail down to St Croix. The boat behaved pretty well, although when we turned the motor on it ran but we weren’t getting much power????

The St Croix visit was a success and we prepped to head south. We decided to head due East so we could have a better wind angle to sail later as Grenada was 3 days away once we started sailing. We checked a few things on the motor, but nothing jumped out as being an issue. We motored east for a day and the motor was running fine, using more fuel and also still not developing enough power. We made it to St Eustatia and decided to stop there. Clean the hull and try to figure out what was going on. Found an oil leak and discovered that one of the air inlet hoses was blocked. We were starving the motor of air. The hull is clean and the engine is now getting air. Oil is topped off. We were able to sail the rest of the way to Carriacou.

Jun 2024 – Haul-out

We stopped at Union Island just north of Carriacou as our timing was off to get there in daylight. The next day we moved down to Carriacou, got checked in and went to check on our haul-out plans with the marina. They didn’t have us on the schedule. They did some checking and discovered they had screwed up and they fit us in a couple of days later than planned. We were able to delay our AirBnB checking by that amount of time and used the time to relax.

With the stiff rudder and a stiff wind, we had a bit of a challenge getting to the dock by the haulout well but got secured so we could disassemble the steering quadrant ahead of time with the intent of dropping the rudder while still in the slings. Getting the quadrant apart was not difficult but it was really stuck in place and did not budge while we were hanging in the slings. The yard insisted we use the expertise of the yard mechanic to do the work so thinking he had more experience then us we agreed.

We got the boat settled and was forced to sign forms that basically agreed with how the boat was chalked and obsolving the yard of anything after that. RED FLAG.

We got to work over the next couple of days lining up the fiberglass guy, the carpenter, the sail loft and the yard work so everything could get started. This was a bit frustrating, but all in all everyone was pleasant and work commenced.

I gave the outboard and parts to the mechanic and they took care of it and also did the fabrication to convert the scuba compressor from electric to gas (we brought the new motor with us). The rudder wasn’t budging. We tried several different approaches thinking there might be corrosion or marine growth etc. This combined with some competing interests on the part of the mechanic started to drag the rudder removal out.

In the mean time the yard sanders used 18 grit paper on grinders to remove the bottom paint and tore up the gel coat pretty bad. I made a bit of a stink and they came back and smoothed it out a bit. The gel coat really needed to be reapplied and built back up but this was already getting really expensive. Copper Coat actually came out really nice

We finally got the rudder out by banging on the rudder stock from above with a 12×12 keel block and the whole bearing assembly separated from the hull. We then had to cut the old bearing off the rudder. When the cut was complete it broke apart with some significant force. In the end all 3 pieces needed to be replaced. But the previous replacement done wasn’t done with stock parts so we still needed to modify the rudder stock to accept the new bearing assembly. At this point we are almost 4 weeks into the yard period.

The carpentry and canvas work and associated electrical and electronic work I will describe over in the refit area.

Jul 2024 – Hurricane Beryl

The weather forecasters started talking about a tropical feature about 10 days before it arrived. We had plenty of warning but the boat was not ready to go back in the water. 5 days (Thur) before the storm I went into the yard office and asked them what their hurricane plan was and got told they really expected the storm to go around like it always does. If an owner called and asked to have their boat strapped down, they were complying. I said strap me down which they finally got around to on Friday.

We had already extended our AirBnB stay once and they couldn’t extend us further due to a follow-on booking so we found another place and moved on Sun around the corner to a new place while I made final preparations for securing everything. We removed the sails – this was painful and the half halyard system proved to be a challenge as the sleeves had been stretched and wouldn’t go through the “jammers” easily causing the sails to be out and flapping on a boat being supported on jack stands – this is a recipe or disaster but we succeeded in getting them down and put away. The main sail was a bit easier. We had also removed a bunch of the soft goods and had wrapped them up and stored them on the deck to be out of the way for the work below. This stuff all needed to be put away. We weren’t sure of the exact track, but we were going to get winds in excess of 100 knots.

The strap down job could be best categorized as best effort by non-mechanical engineers. We had buried anchor points on either side of the stern but nothing “permanent” for the bow. There was a 40′ concrete piling laying on the ground next to the boat that they used for anchoring in the past so they tied the starboard side of the bow to it and set a 6′ piece of Jersey barrier on the other side and used it as an anchor point for us and the catamaran next to us. I ignored my gut on the concrete piling usage and allowed them to secure us to the end of the piling as opposed to the center. In hindsight, there should have been 2 more straps on either side and at least double the number of jack stands. Ideally we should have been set down into a hole so we weren’t as high. There were boats in storage that were set into holes – they fell over anyway.

I set Starlink to Horizontal thinking it would have a better chance in that position, removed the solar panel wings and closed the boat up and headed for our AirBnB.

We scored the jackpot. Category 4/5 Storm direct eye hit mid day on Monday Jul 1st. This was cataclysmic for the island and the boats in the area. As I write this entry on the 10th of Sep most of the island is still without power and roofs are only now beginning to be rebuilt. The eye went directly overhead and we came out, saw the sun, surveyed the damage from part one and as the owner of the AirBnB also owned a bar on the beach, we went to the beach and had a beer. There had been a few boats that had remained on their moorings before the storm, they were on the beach and the steel commercial boats that had been left dock side where scattered about on the beach also. Our hosts had already lost the roofs off of the bar and their house at this point. When the first few rain-drops started to fall we hurried back to our shelter and started praying some more. The next 30 minutes where not something we will never forget. The winds quickly (less than 5 minutes) built back to 150 MPH and stayed that way for 30 mins or so as the stormed moved through. The winds before the eye came out of the north, but once the eye passed we were on the other side of the circulation so they were now blowing out of the South. With this complete wind reversal, anything that had almost survived round one stood no chance with round two. Our accommodations where on the 2nd story and we chose to move downstairs or round 2. Our host family had already moved out of their house and were already downstairs as their roof blew apart. The windows upstairs imploded during round two but the roof stayed on.

Once the storm passed I made my way back to the marina to see how bad it was.

IT WAS WORSE

Almost every boat in the yard was laying on its side, the many catamarans had been tossed around like toys, keels broken off and aluminum mast pieces everywhere. I was not hopeful of what I would find for our boat.

She fell over on her Port Side catastrophically. The hull was caved in, there were 3 other holes where she hit the Jersey barrier, and 2 jack stands. Surprisingly the solar array survived although 2 panels had impact damage from flying debris. The port stern cleat had been sheared in half and then pulled completely out of the hull. This likely happened when the piling rotated shifting all the load to the stern and it exceeded the load the cleat was designed to take.

I tried to bring Starlink online as we (the entire island) needed to be able to communicate with the outside world. Unfortunately it was basically pointed at the horizon and needed to talk to a satellite in order to come back online and reorient itself. So much for that idea. The batteries weren’t getting charged either as the panels were pointed away from the sun. We were able to keep cell phones charged for yard workers, etc for 5 days before the battery charge dropped to the point, I needed to shut down the system.

It was very frustrating over the next 2 weeks as I attempted to provide disaster relief help because my tool shop was in a jumble on the port side of the boat. She was laying at about a 70 degree angle. Moving around inside was challenging and most tool/ part related containers had burst open on impact.

All in all, I ended up wiring 5 generators into homes including the Marina owner’s and the bathhouse for the yard. A local dive shop owner and I did the underwater part of a salvage to remove a Catamaran from the travel lift well so the yard could start doing emergency haulouts and we removed the broken pieces of our brand new rigging and mast which broke at each of the 3 spreaders from the 2 boats next to us. We donated all of the food we had onboard to help feed the family that was feeding us and helped with the initial recovery of the yard as the workers were mostly living in wooden structures which blew apart during the storm and had to focus on taking care of their families. All in all everyone was in shock but glad to be alive and unhurt. Final tally was 6 dead from flying debris on the island.

Thursday before the storm, we reached out to our insurance broker to let them know where we were and what steps we were taking. He asked us to update our wind storm plan and Brownie submitted it that day. Tuesday after the storm I called and said we needed to start a claim and he told me the insurance company had denied our windstorm plan update. We were screwed. He asked me to write a compelling justification to why we ended up in the situation we found ourselves in and he added a nice push on top. The company asked us to submit a claim and after going back and forth -they asked for 3 quotes on what it would take to repair – we couldn’t even get to the hull area that was damaged – they finally sent an assessor.

The yard had contracted with a salvage company to bring a crane into bring order to the chaos. There is far more to this part of the story – but it will have to wait. Modern day piracy is still alive and well in the salvage industry.

We evacuated the island at this point. We had been working 8-12 hour days for 7 weeks (before and after the storm) at this point and the mosquito problem on the island was really causing health and emotional issues. We passed the Assessor as he came into Grenada and we departed.

He made it to the boat and asked that we agree to authorize the outrageous cost of righting the boat and that the insurance company would cover it so that he could properly and safely assess the damage. End result she’s totalled. She has several broken stringers and at least one rib. The hull has a vertical crack from the toe rail all the way down to a foot or so below the water line and a horizontal tear beyond that. The hull has separated from the internal stiffener grid system along a section that is about 15 feet long. The interior carpentry in that area basically exploded outward when the hull deformed. She easily meets the criteria for being totalled – now we wait for the insurance company.

Sept 2024

We flew back and met our friends on SV Black Tortuga who graciously agreed to host us while we recovered our belongings.

We spent a week going through the boat removing everything, selling off stuff and giving away more. We decided to just do our own 20′ shipping container as the amount of stuff we have to bring back to FL will justify the cost.

At this point we have started to look at new boats.