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After spending something like 10 days in Rodney Bay Marina at the north end of St Lucia we were ready to be moving again. We did get a lot of boat maintenance done, including fixing the voltage regulator on the generator and finally splicing 50' of chain to our primary anchor line so that we have a full 300' of chain. Both have stories associated with them.
When we arrived in Rodney Bay we tracked down the local Fischer Panda service folks and had them come out to take a look at our generator. We'd been told repeatedly that the problem we were seeing, low voltage despite the engine running at the right speed, was probably "bad capacitors". Thinking I had no way to test capacitors I turned to the pros, and learned another lesson in boat maintenance: you can generally do a better job than the professionals.
The capacitors turned out to be located in a small box in the engine compartment, adjacent to the generator itself. A simple multimeter test of capacitance value revealed two of them to be bad. I let the service folks order the 2 replacement capacitors (these are, by the way, large aluminum electrolytics for those who know - about 6 inches long and an inch or more in diameter. Should have known better - I have a multimeter that measures capacitance; if I'd had just asked the right questions when talking with the service folks in Florida I could have diagnosed the problem myself. Instead we have the privilege of paying $50 to have this guy unscrew 3 screws and measure the capacitance on 6 capacitors.
These caps are pretty standard items, so I figured the service folks would get them either on-island, or maybe from an electronics supply in Trinidad or Puerto Rico. Hah. They called Fischer Panda in Florida and had them ship the new capacitors.
This was a pain on multiple levels. First off, we knew the parts guy in Florida as we'd stopped by when we were in Lake Worth, met him, and talked for awhile about spares. We could easily have ordered them ourselves without paying the markup from the service folks in St Lucia. Secondly, getting them from the U.S. meant we had to pay for a customs broker to fill out paperwork that basically says no import duty is due on parts imported for a yacht-in-transit, and we already had to pay a customs broker for another part - could have bundled them together. Thirdly, there were different physical sizes for the same value caps and we ended up with one of the two incorrectly sized. Oh well, live and learn.
One project that had been on the list for quite some time was to add another 50' of chain to our anchor line. We had 250' of chain already, and 50' of nylon line, but I wanted all chain. I'd asked at each chandlery we'd visited since the Virgin Islands, but nobody had the right size chain, or not enough of it. Finally, at the local hardware store in Rodney Bay we found 50' of chain. But I couldn't find a link that allows you to join two sections of chain together. Nobody had one in stock. Should of had the local chandlery track it down, but I figured I could order one from West Marine in the states and have it in 4 days. Of course the part costs $5.50 which meant shipping would have cost 10 times the cost of the part. So I ordered a spinning reel. :-) Hell, can't seem to catch anything trolling, why not try a different approach.
Anyway, 6 days after ordering the part we get a notice from FedEx that the package has arrived and that we need to clear it through customs. We'd planned to take a taxi tour of the island the next day, so we had the taxi driver stop at the customs building in Castries, the capital of St Lucia. Of course there was a bomb scare at the payment office of the local electricity company, so traffic was a nightmare. We finally got to customs and they told us we needed to go to FedEx. We'd passed FedEx earlier, so back to FedEx where we hand over our paperwork. 20 minutes later we're summoned into the customs examination room where the customs officer informed me that the form FedEx had partially completed was the wrong form. I asked if they had copies of the correct form. He showed me an example someone else had filled out and said, no, there were no copies of that form; customs brokers knew how to prepare them, but apparently mere mortals could not.
So we call the customs broker who nicely reduces his normal fee of EC$200 to EC$150 (about US$55) to fill out some paperwork that only he can do. This is not atypical of dealing with officialdom in the islands. But he did bring the box from the FedEx office to the marina, so we didn't have to return to the FedEx office ourselves.
Anyway, we did get the generator repaired and we did get our chain lengthened and we got a whole lot of other boat chores done, including having all the exterior stainless steel polished yet again (for something like the 3rd time in 9 months). It was time to leave Rodney Bay, despite the fact that being tied up with shore power and air conditioning was very pleasant.
We left Rodney Bay on Wednesday, sailing down the western shore of St Lucia to Soufriere, a lovely little town on the southwest corner of the island. Towering above Soufriere are 2 extinct cinder cones, the Pitons. It's quite a scenic place. I'm sure Maryann will do an update in the next few days about our St Lucia island tour which included yet another botanical garden and a drive-in volcano, both located near Soufriere. Meanwhile, new pictures are posted in the Photo Gallery.
Since we wanted to leave St Lucia for Bequia the next morning early we had to check out. I took the dinghy to town and caught the customs officer just before the 4:30 closing time. I filled out the customs clearance form and handed it to the officer who got slightly apoplectic because I'd used red ink. Apparently red ink is the exclusive province of the customs officer and using it was just about the worst thing imaginable. After filling out the form using blue ink we got our clearance. Then I had to clear out with immigration at the police station next door. Whoops, the form that I'd filled out in triplicate had been signed and noted by the customs officer as if it were a checkin and a checkout together. That would never do. I was sent back to customs where the officer simply crossed out one line and initialed it. Back to immigration in the police station. At which point all hell breaks loose. Something like 50 people come swarming into the police station led by a policeman who is marching along some scofflaw (presumed, of course) with some Brit lady yelling and screaming about credit cards and fraud and who knows what. The police constable that had been so correct about the customs form hands me our passports and shoos me out the door. He didn't look too happy to have a cruiser witness the seamier side of St Lucia.
Yesterday we were up early and set sail for Bequia at 5AM. It's a 50-mile trip, and we were concerned we'd get into Bequia sufficiently early. We were also bypassing St Vincent, as it's not a good cruiser spot due to obnoxious locals and high crime rates (the only island we've bypassed because of this so far). At any rate we needn't have worried. Once we got out of the lee of St Lucia we were moving along at 8+ knots, occasionally hitting 9.2! We did the 30 miles to St Vincent in no time, and then the 20 miles beyond to Bequia even quicker. We did pass a bay on St Vincent where they filmed the exteriors for the original Pirates movie; the dock structure is still standing. We also had a few moments of 30 knot winds between St Vincent and Bequia, but we're getting to find that not too difficult. Still scared us though, as getting whomped with 30 knots when you've been happy in 22-25 is not pleasant.
Bequia is a small island and part of St Vincent and the Grenadines. We arrived yesterday just past noon, cleared in with customs and immigration (no red ink for me!), and had pizza for dinner. I'd been here 18 years ago on a 2-week charter sailing trip and the place doesn't look substantially different. One of the characters we met back then was "Diver Bob", the owner of Dive Bequia. Turns out Diver Bob is still around and still running Dive Bequia.
And that brings us up to date. We're on a mooring in Admiralty Bay on Bequia, enjoying a breezy and occasionally squally day. Friends are arriving in St Vincent tomorrow for their yearly sail charter. I took them for their first sailing vacation in the Virgin Islands the summer after I was first here in Bequia in 1989. Never know what you might start. We hope to cross paths with them sometime over the next couple of weeks as we head south toward Grenada. Lots of short, easy hops between here and there, though the weather has changed and we're seeing very breezy conditions with nasty gusts in rain squalls. The rainy season has really begun down here.
After spending something like 10 days in Rodney Bay Marina at the north end of St Lucia we were ready to be moving again. We did get a lot of boat maintenance done, including fixing the voltage regulator on the generator and finally splicing 50' of chain to our primary anchor line so that we have a full 300' of chain. Both have stories associated with them.
When we arrived in Rodney Bay we tracked down the local Fischer Panda service folks and had them come out to take a look at our generator. We'd been told repeatedly that the problem we were seeing, low voltage despite the engine running at the right speed, was probably "bad capacitors". Thinking I had no way to test capacitors I turned to the pros, and learned another lesson in boat maintenance: you can generally do a better job than the professionals.
The capacitors turned out to be located in a small box in the engine compartment, adjacent to the generator itself. A simple multimeter test of capacitance value revealed two of them to be bad. I let the service folks order the 2 replacement capacitors (these are, by the way, large aluminum electrolytics for those who know - about 6 inches long and an inch or more in diameter. Should have known better - I have a multimeter that measures capacitance; if I'd had just asked the right questions when talking with the service folks in Florida I could have diagnosed the problem myself. Instead we have the privilege of paying $50 to have this guy unscrew 3 screws and measure the capacitance on 6 capacitors.
These caps are pretty standard items, so I figured the service folks would get them either on-island, or maybe from an electronics supply in Trinidad or Puerto Rico. Hah. They called Fischer Panda in Florida and had them ship the new capacitors.
This was a pain on multiple levels. First off, we knew the parts guy in Florida as we'd stopped by when we were in Lake Worth, met him, and talked for awhile about spares. We could easily have ordered them ourselves without paying the markup from the service folks in St Lucia. Secondly, getting them from the U.S. meant we had to pay for a customs broker to fill out paperwork that basically says no import duty is due on parts imported for a yacht-in-transit, and we already had to pay a customs broker for another part - could have bundled them together. Thirdly, there were different physical sizes for the same value caps and we ended up with one of the two incorrectly sized. Oh well, live and learn.
One project that had been on the list for quite some time was to add another 50' of chain to our anchor line. We had 250' of chain already, and 50' of nylon line, but I wanted all chain. I'd asked at each chandlery we'd visited since the Virgin Islands, but nobody had the right size chain, or not enough of it. Finally, at the local hardware store in Rodney Bay we found 50' of chain. But I couldn't find a link that allows you to join two sections of chain together. Nobody had one in stock. Should of had the local chandlery track it down, but I figured I could order one from West Marine in the states and have it in 4 days. Of course the part costs $5.50 which meant shipping would have cost 10 times the cost of the part. So I ordered a spinning reel. :-) Hell, can't seem to catch anything trolling, why not try a different approach.
Anyway, 6 days after ordering the part we get a notice from FedEx that the package has arrived and that we need to clear it through customs. We'd planned to take a taxi tour of the island the next day, so we had the taxi driver stop at the customs building in Castries, the capital of St Lucia. Of course there was a bomb scare at the payment office of the local electricity company, so traffic was a nightmare. We finally got to customs and they told us we needed to go to FedEx. We'd passed FedEx earlier, so back to FedEx where we hand over our paperwork. 20 minutes later we're summoned into the customs examination room where the customs officer informed me that the form FedEx had partially completed was the wrong form. I asked if they had copies of the correct form. He showed me an example someone else had filled out and said, no, there were no copies of that form; customs brokers knew how to prepare them, but apparently mere mortals could not.
So we call the customs broker who nicely reduces his normal fee of EC$200 to EC$150 (about US$55) to fill out some paperwork that only he can do. This is not atypical of dealing with officialdom in the islands. But he did bring the box from the FedEx office to the marina, so we didn't have to return to the FedEx office ourselves.
Anyway, we did get the generator repaired and we did get our chain lengthened and we got a whole lot of other boat chores done, including having all the exterior stainless steel polished yet again (for something like the 3rd time in 9 months). It was time to leave Rodney Bay, despite the fact that being tied up with shore power and air conditioning was very pleasant.
We left Rodney Bay on Wednesday, sailing down the western shore of St Lucia to Soufriere, a lovely little town on the southwest corner of the island. Towering above Soufriere are 2 extinct cinder cones, the Pitons. It's quite a scenic place. I'm sure Maryann will do an update in the next few days about our St Lucia island tour which included yet another botanical garden and a drive-in volcano, both located near Soufriere. Meanwhile, new pictures are posted in the Photo Gallery.
Since we wanted to leave St Lucia for Bequia the next morning early we had to check out. I took the dinghy to town and caught the customs officer just before the 4:30 closing time. I filled out the customs clearance form and handed it to the officer who got slightly apoplectic because I'd used red ink. Apparently red ink is the exclusive province of the customs officer and using it was just about the worst thing imaginable. After filling out the form using blue ink we got our clearance. Then I had to clear out with immigration at the police station next door. Whoops, the form that I'd filled out in triplicate had been signed and noted by the customs officer as if it were a checkin and a checkout together. That would never do. I was sent back to customs where the officer simply crossed out one line and initialed it. Back to immigration in the police station. At which point all hell breaks loose. Something like 50 people come swarming into the police station led by a policeman who is marching along some scofflaw (presumed, of course) with some Brit lady yelling and screaming about credit cards and fraud and who knows what. The police constable that had been so correct about the customs form hands me our passports and shoos me out the door. He didn't look too happy to have a cruiser witness the seamier side of St Lucia.
Yesterday we were up early and set sail for Bequia at 5AM. It's a 50-mile trip, and we were concerned we'd get into Bequia sufficiently early. We were also bypassing St Vincent, as it's not a good cruiser spot due to obnoxious locals and high crime rates (the only island we've bypassed because of this so far). At any rate we needn't have worried. Once we got out of the lee of St Lucia we were moving along at 8+ knots, occasionally hitting 9.2! We did the 30 miles to St Vincent in no time, and then the 20 miles beyond to Bequia even quicker. We did pass a bay on St Vincent where they filmed the exteriors for the original Pirates movie; the dock structure is still standing. We also had a few moments of 30 knot winds between St Vincent and Bequia, but we're getting to find that not too difficult. Still scared us though, as getting whomped with 30 knots when you've been happy in 22-25 is not pleasant.
Bequia is a small island and part of St Vincent and the Grenadines. We arrived yesterday just past noon, cleared in with customs and immigration (no red ink for me!), and had pizza for dinner. I'd been here 18 years ago on a 2-week charter sailing trip and the place doesn't look substantially different. One of the characters we met back then was "Diver Bob", the owner of Dive Bequia. Turns out Diver Bob is still around and still running Dive Bequia.
And that brings us up to date. We're on a mooring in Admiralty Bay on Bequia, enjoying a breezy and occasionally squally day. Friends are arriving in St Vincent tomorrow for their yearly sail charter. I took them for their first sailing vacation in the Virgin Islands the summer after I was first here in Bequia in 1989. Never know what you might start. We hope to cross paths with them sometime over the next couple of weeks as we head south toward Grenada. Lots of short, easy hops between here and there, though the weather has changed and we're seeing very breezy conditions with nasty gusts in rain squalls. The rainy season has really begun down here.
posted by Ken at
1:54 PM |
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