Posted by John
I’ve read more than once that going cruising means working on your boat in exotic places. I’ve also read that if you go cruising, you will, sooner or later, run aground. More recently, I’ve been told that you never really say goodbye to the other cruisers you meet along the way because you’ll keep running into them again and again further down the road. Now, after two years of being a cruiser, I can see the truth in these sentiments.
It seems like we’ve certainly done our share of boat work, but, so far at least, we haven’t run aground. However, there is something somehow disturbing about seeing your boat sitting on the grass like some tossed aside pool toy. Could this count as our grounding?
The idea of the pit is that boats shouldn’t fall over—as boats up on stands sometimes do during cyclones—and start a domino effect with other boats in the yard. We saw a boatyard in Mexico where that had happened. Many of the boats were still there, lying on their sides, on top of each other. It was troubling to see.
On the other hand, the boat on the left above really did run aground on a reef in Musket Cove. That’s why it’s pointing in a different direction than the other anchored boats, and its bow is sightly out of the water. It was floated free on the next high tide. Lucky for them, their inevitable grounding is now behind them, and they didn’t appear to suffer any serious damage. That was not the case for others. We heard the drama unfold on the radio on three different occasions as boats went aground and their crews were rescued. The first happened early in our trip, when a fishing boat ended up on the beach on the wrong side of the jetty at Westport, on the Washington coast. We don’t know the ultimate fate of that first boat, but the other two were cruising sailboats, and were destroyed. One happened in Mexico during the Baja Ha-Ha rally, and the other in French Polynesia. All three happened at night.
From day one we’ve been frustrated with breakage, finding replacements for things and having to make repairs. The first thing to go was part of a latch on the forward hatch. We drilled out a rivet and put in a screw to fix it. By the time we got to San Diego the list was up to thirty-five items that had failed, broken or had accidentally gone overboard. We stopped adding to the list. It was just extra work to keep it up. But if we had, the list would be hundreds of items long by now and include everything from badly corroded, crumbling metal parts on supposedly “marine grade” products, to multiple repairs on each sail, including the complete replacement of one. We even had to replace our dinghy. It seems that just as we repair one problem, a new one turns up. Even our bottom paint failed. The Vuda boatyard manager had the local representative for the paint company come out and look at our boat. We’ve heard from others who also used the same paint and collected a ton of barnacles in a short time. It shouldn’t happen like that. High cost bottom paint is for preventing barnacles in the first place. It’s supposed to last longer than four months.
After two years in Mexico and the South Pacific, we’re not sure what an exotic place to work on the boat would be anymore. But Vuda Point seems like it would qualify. Plus it’s scenic, and feels less industrial than most. There’s even a picnic spot with a gas barbecue and a great view of the sunset.
Of course, if you don’t want to do all the work yourself, you can always hire a crew of “casuals.” For us, that would really be exotic.
As much fun as our nice little cottage with the backyard clothesline was, we had to move out (someone else had pre-booked it). But we moved into the twice-as-big apartment instead. That’s it, the whole upper floor of the brown building on the left.
The deck on the apartment is big, sits above the open air restaurant with its live music on Fridays and Sundays, and overlooks the boat traffic in and out of the marina.
And here comes Jeff and Katy on Mezzaluna, back in from a sea trial. They’ve been working for weeks, including three travel lift round-trips, trying to solve problems with their propeller shaft, motor mounts and transmission. One thing leads to another. They finally have it down to some minor remaining vibration. Katy is on the bow talking with Ingmar from the Swedish boat Hakuna Matata, who we ran into a number of times in French Polynesia, and who has some professional experience with vibration problems in a former working life.
When we first arrived here, we shared a taxi into town with Jeff. We noticed curious train-like rails along the road. They were too small for a real train, and looked like something you’d see in an amusement park. Jeff said they were for the sugar cane train.
Having seen the small rails, when he said sugar cane I immediately thought of “sugar plum,” or maybe “candy cane,” and imagined Santa Claus hanging out of a tiny locomotive pulling tiny train cars. I had to see one of these for myself.
The locomotives are bigger than I imagined. The operator fits completely inside and doesn’t hang out at all. Still, they’re pretty small. The tracks all lead to the sugar cane processing plant in Lautoka.
We hadn’t expected to run into Mezzaluna here, and they hadn’t planned to be here. They came because they suddenly needed repairs. Windrose never planned to still be here, expecting instead to be in Vanuatu by now. They’ve been waiting for repair parts for their engine. They loaned us their water hose and a cart. We gave them some of our food stores. Me Too was here, but is headed for the Marshall Islands where they plan to leave their boat next year while they go home and hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. They left early in the morning. Jill saw me sitting on the apartment deck and shouted, “Hey Mysticeti, get on Facebook.” Terrapin sold their boat and are leaving it here for the new owners to pick up next year. It’s hard to give up your boat, it becomes so much of your identity. Sky Blue Eyes dropped in for a couple days to pick up a new propeller for their dinghy outboard, and then stayed for pizza night. Elysium, another Westsail 42 which we had met previously, had been involved in an accident in Suva harbor and came here for repairs. We’re going home with a long list of things to figure out before we come back next year. For one thing, we need to find a new third crew member. Robyn has been formally removed from our official crew list.
Such is cruising.
No one ever really says goodbye.
Next up: ”Oh hey, you’re back. How was your trip?”