Puttering and Dithering

Well hello Faithful Reader!

On the way to the airport I told Bruce to watch out for wandering goats and wild donkeys. The area is full of them. We saw none. I'm not sure he believed me. On the way back by myself I saw goats, wild donkeys and mongooses (mongeese?)

So with a full afternoon ahead of me I started on some of the chores. Putting Blue Pearl to bed for 7 months is a hard job and without Pam here I'm going to actually have to do some work.

Bruce had helped me get the sails down, folded and temporarily stowed on the cabin top. I started in on the new Lofrans Tigres windlass. Curious that it was cheapest in Canada from Binnacle in Nova Scotia, even factoring in the $450 shipping.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how it was to be done, changing course several times. It was helpful to have bounced some ideas off Bruce, so when I got back from the airport I started in on the process.

The unit comes with a template so I layed out the position. I will have to patch up some previous holes and make one new one. I decided to use the existing wiring since it was way over specification and should be good, right?

In position

New and existing holes

Very impressed that this little machine was able to cut through 5" of solid wood.

Wired up... but try to get the cover on... not happening

Well, the wire was so over specced (sp?) that I could not get the lid on. I read in someone's post that you need to flatten the wire between two pieces of wood to make it fit.

I checked the manual and with my battery setup I only needed 2 AWG wire, not 2/0 AWG wire. A huge difference in diameter. They didn't have all the material I needed at the Budget Marine at North Sound I had to drive to Jolly Harbour. They didn't have all the materials I needed at Jolly so I also had to drive to Falmouth. Fun, fun, fun... and lots of swearing at traffic and herds of stray goats!

Antigua Tour

Imagine my pleasure when I got to the turn-off near the marina and found a roadside stand selling goat water.  (Look it up! It's delicious.)

So installation is complete (except for some small details) and I have an operational windlass! Need to replace some bolts next season that I couldn't get here but I'm really impressed so far.

I had errands to do in the morning: drop off laundry and pick up top-off fuel. Imagine my delight when I spotted a roadside food stand on the way back. They had conch water, goat water, tripe and rice pudding. Obviously I stopped to purchase some conch water (conch chowder) which was delicious by the way. But I was intrigued by the rice pudding. Was it as good as my mom and granny used to make? Did it have raisins - 'cause rice pudding worth its salt has tons of raisins. But it was not that kind of rice pudding... and they gave me a taste. It's made from rice, blood, oil, tons of pepper and stuffed in an intestine casing like a sausage. It tasted good but not wonderful... until I got back to the boat and started thinking about it. I'm considering going back for more! 

Lots left to do. It's really hard work. I wish Pam was here to do it.

Only a few more Antigua days left. Looking forward to some Abbotsford sunny spring weather!

Ciao for now!