Our first 'green' flash

Jeff took Mark & me to Coconut beach to watch the sunset, we saw our fist green flash but the camera was a little late (Diane is in Florida visiting her daughter, son-in-law & granddaughter.) We unanimously decided to go to the Sushi place again – no pictures of that. I am getting bad about a) taking the camera b) taking it out of my backpack and c) actually taking the pictures. For example we have our friend ‘new’ John here and we have not taken one picture of him!


All from the islands – need to finish getting the boat ready to go on the hard.

Gulfstar 50 on the rocks

We saw this boat in Hartman Bay, left since hurricane Ivan struck in 2004. It is (was like ours is) a Gulfstar 50 CSY – so you now know why we will be putting our boat in the yard for the season on a hurricane cradle and going to the states. Mark says it is comforting to know our boat is strong enough to go on the rocks…

Radar reflector bird nest...

We have been told that this type of radar reflector chaffs through the lines and falls off but Mark rigged it properly and it works great. The down side is that birds seem to think that it is a good place to nest. Once we left Hartman Bay to go to Le Phare Bleu (batteries needed to be equalized and it is hard to do via generator), the momma bird lost her nest.

The finished windlass

Mark and the finished windlass – and oh, by the way the rebuilt windlass runs like champ and is at least twice as fast as the original – WOW!

Old parts, depart

We went to Ross Engineering and had them make a new shaft. This is the old driven gear, which is part of the worm gear system in the trash. The bronze teeth were so worn that they had sharp points instead of square. Since the unit was 27 years old we really could not complain and would recommend an Ideal windlass to anyone who asks.

Ideal Windlass' rock...

The good news which I forgot to mention is that we had all the spare parts except the main shaft. While we were still on Lake Lewisville one of the workers there mentioned that they had an Ideal windlass just like ours except it did not have the chain gypsy. They had it on a shelf for 20 years and just wanted to get rid of it. Well, seeing that a new windlass is about $3500.00 we thought that the asking price of $85.00 was more than fair. Mark is seen here reassembling the windlass which was MUCH easier than taking it apart let me tell you.

Diane hard at work.

Diane hard at work.

Jeff

Jeff

Dinner on Jabulani

Diane made dinner for us one night…this is Mark on Jabulani.

New dock friends from Germany

We meet a very nice German couple, his name is Thomas and hers’ is Ulrike (nickname for us non-Germans is Uli – pronounce Oulee) aboard Toriba. They were on the dock getting their boat ready for 6 months on the hard. We took time out to have dinner together at Whisper Cove Marina. We enjoyed our time with them and hope to see them when they come back.

Us

Us

Jeff and Diane

Then we all went out for Sushi – this is Jeff & Diane.

Jeff and Diane come to help

Our friend Diane (aboard Jabulani) was anchored in the same bay and came by with a friend (Jeff) to say hi. Well, I immediately asked and received help from him – he and Mark put in a hard days work while Diane & I fetched tools and stuff.

POP goes the windlass

We get to Grenada and attempt to drop our anchor in Prickly Bay and the darn thing will NOT go down…drat. We motor over to Mt. Hartman bay and tie up at the marina dock there to begin work on rebuilding the windlass. Now you might think why not drop the anchor by hand, the reason is that Mark & I have previously tried to pick our 110 pound anchor up by hand and could not budge it.

Name the 1/2 fish contest...

Since this was just half a fish we don’t know exactly what it is so thought we would have a ‘name what kind of fish this is’ contest. Send all entries to our email address m.lignoul@gmail.com . The winner receives nothing except accolades on our blog in the next update.

We caught 1/2 a fish...

On our last passage to Grenada from Carriacou we fished. We caught a barracuda first and though Mark took a picture of me holding it I look like a wretch and refuse to publish it on the blog. Then, we caught another who gave us a really good fight for a while..then most of the fight went out of it. Guess another fish got our dinner, drat!

Misc Pizza...

Unsure of where we are in this picture…darn…I hate when this happens. Well, we must have been in a Pizza joint as there is a ‘leftover’ pizza box on the table.