If any of you remember the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, that is our life here the past couple of weeks. We are still in Great Harbour Cay in the marina. We’ve become quite fond of the marina. We now know many of the people on boats here, and some good friends from last season – Dean and Nina - are also here. They have a young Golden Doodle (Mango) that we fell in love with last year when we met them which is why we now have Riggs.
So in a sense, not having an engine improves one’s social life since you see other cruisers and the marina staff every day, do a lot of the same things every day, go to pot lucks and happy hours and dinners on each others boats and socialize with people and share experiences, etc. David and a friend played some music together one night. We are still doing odds and ends of maintenance on the boat so some productivity is taking place. And we are also having some fun. Yesterday we took our dingy with Dean, Nina and both dogs and went to a small secluded beach where the dogs could romp, swim and chase. We got a tasty dinner from some local people from whom you can order ahead and they cook it at the marina. We even managed to score ice cream cones in the village in the afternoon, and miracle of miracles, some things we had ordered from Amazon actually came to the right place in the village (Customs) and we picked them up (after paying duty and VAT)!
Today we rode in the back of the marina manager’s pick up truck out to the end of the island with a group of other cruisers. It was low tide so we waded out across the flats, trying to follow convoluted instructions on where to turn to find the shallow water where we could wade and not have to swim to get to a small island and hike up a ridge. It is a spectacular place (our pictures don’t do it justice) and it was a beautiful day for it although blowing about 25 knots. Riggs had a ball scrambling up the hills, eating unknown plants, digging in the sand and bounding through the shallow water.
We now understand how boaters stop in a marina and the boat never leaves again. The island life is seductive, and the sunny 80 degree days just start to slide by – just another day in paradise.
Hole in exhaust manifold
We have been here two weeks now, although not by choice. We finally diagnosed our engine overheating problem as a hole in our exhaust manifold. The hole allowed our coolant to leak out of the heat exchanges/radiator and mix with the exhaust gasses. So essentially we have been pouring coolant into the ocean. We debated about whether to try to get it welded or replace it. The one guy on the island who people thought might be able to weld cast iron is unfortunately off island until late February. Even if we had it welded, we would be worried that it still might fail. The exhaust manifold has a tough job with hot corrosive gases and sea water and fresh water all passing through it. So we decided to replace it. Of course there is not a Yanmar engine dealer on this island, but we found a boatyard in Freeport, about 65 miles north, that has ordered the parts we need from Fort Lauderdale for us.
Based on the current weather forecast we will leave here Monday evening and sail overnight in light winds to Freeport arriving there Tuesday afternoon. With the help of another cruiser who had some high tech epoxy, we have patched the hole and hope we will be able to run the engine for long enough to get out of Great Harbour Cay cut and then crank it up again to get through the shallow narrow channel at Freeport. Worst case, if our engine doesn’t run, the boatyard will bring a boat out to tow us in. The cut here at Great Harbor Cay is man-made. They somehow cut a channel through the high walls of coral and rock which is the only way in and out of the cay. If for some reason we don’t make it to Freeport we are in deep doo-doo since another major storm will sweep through Wednesday night. We would like to avoid large waves and heavy winds for the time being.
In other news:
As I write this Mary Beth is figuring out how to add a starting relay to our engine which should eliminate the intermittent starting problems that we have been having. Mary Beth somehow maintains an up-beat attitude even as we troubleshoot and fix both new and recurrent problems. I get pretty frustrated – fixing something that we already fixed or that is new can get me aggravated with the boat. I blame the boat for her failures. That’s very rational and reasonable I think.
Thanks for reading,
David and Mary Beth
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