Return of the Blog

We left Montreal, after a lovely lunch with Dan, on the afternoon of Tuesday, Nov 5. At Dorval, we threw away our cigarettes and have been smoke-free (and grumpy) ever since.

We spent the night in Toronto, where Jordie met us for dinner at our airport hotel. In the morning, we caught our flight to Antigua and, thanks to a terrific tail wind, we arrived 50 minutes early. Our friend Arnold picked us up and brought us to the Dockyard. Django had been moved out of the mangroves and onto a mooring in Ordinance Bay by our trusty boat-watcher Roger. He was supposed to have brought Boffo the Dinghy in, but there was no sign of her, so Arnold took us out to Django in his dinghy. On the way, we saw Roger and he told us the outboard wasn’t working, also that Django’s port engine seemed to be seized. Ah, the joys of returning to a boat after six months.

While you’re sleeping, your boat is breaking.

Still, it was lovely to be back aboard, even if we had to paddle to and from shore. Roger lined up a chap to look at the outboard and, amazingly, he had it repaired in under two days. Obviously not a fellow clear on the “island time” concept. He even thinks he might, one day, be able to make it run on both cylinders. That would be achieving the outboard Nirvana.

I was actually quite ill for the first few days, possibly with food poisoning. Dunno, but very unpleasant and painful. However, by Friday I was all better and able to go to the tot and the fish dinner at the Copper and Lumber Stores.

WW had a mechanic out to look at the engine and it seems the problem is salt water that has siphoned into the fuel…not good. The mechanic thought the head would have to come off, but our friend Peter Carey said he’s had salt water in his fuel several times and gave WW tips on how to deal with it. So WW spent many hours embedded in the engine compartment, ankle deep in salty diesel. The upshot was a more cheerful sounding engine which, despite this, refused to start.

We had divers come to clean Django’s bottom where WW’s cheap Teflon-based paint, which he had high hopes of, proved categorically that you get what you pay for. The divers were not impressed as the chunked off large oysters and cement-like deposits and had to go get more tanks because the work took so long. WW paid them handsomely, so I think they were mollified.

Boffo is not long for this world, being not so much an inflatable and a deflatable. We have to pump her up almost daily. We patched her extensively last year, to no avail. So the sad decision has been made and she’ll be off to dinghy heaven when the new one arrives (ordered and due next week).

We need to have Django pulled, have her bottom pressure washed, possibly acid washed, primed and painted with anti-fouling paint. WW has some other bits and pieces he wants to get done while she’s on the hard. She’ll be pulled out at Jolly Harbour first thing on Monday morning. WW will sail her up on Sunday and spend the night there.

And where, you ask, am I while all this activity is occurring? Serendipitously, our friend Moya left on Wednesday for 10 days in Barbados for her daughter’s wedding. Her house-two-dogs-and-a-cat sitters had fallen through, so she asked if we’d do the job. This means that I am sitting on a shady porch by a lovely clear and cool swimming pool, typing this, cat to the right, dog to the fore and another dog at my feet.  We have use of her car as well, so WW can drive over to Jolly Harbour every day.

The work should be finished by next weekend, we’ll get her back in the water on Monday (enough time for the paint to dry properly), just in time for our first visitors who arrive Tuesday (you know who you are). Moya is back on Friday, so we may have to spend a couple of days in Django on the hard, but that’s not impossible. We hope the engine will be repaired by the time we launch, but that is far from assured. If we are a single-engine catamaran when our guests arrive, we’ll do something we’ve never done and sail around Antigua, exploring its many lovely bays and islets. I’ve been wanting to do that ever since we drove up to Crabb's Cove a couple of years ago and we saw the white sand beaches and turquoise waters.

Well, that's enough for now. Hugs to everyone1