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Haul out, The other stuff

Haul out, The other stuff

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We have already covered our actual haul out, rudder stuffing replacement, and the repainting of our anti-foul, but we got up to a few other things on land too.

The boat jobs we won’t bother diving into any detail for include:

  • Permenantly fitting our saloon fan
  • Fixing 1 piece of wood in the dinghy floor & painting the wood
  • Applying new mast boot tape
  • Resealing the shower sump pump
  • Removing twists from the anchor chain
  • Replacing the Mizzen boom topping lift
  • Painting the inside of the cockpit roof
  • Fixing a hinge on the aft cabin doors
  • Replacing the hinges for the cockpit seat lockers
  • Removing a worn piece of rope from a reefing line
  • Cleaning behind the stove
  • Adjusted stove locks to make them lock the oven off better

And now for a couple of boat jobs that have some nice pictures 😃

Chain Paint

Back in June 2022 our anchor chain had some lovely paint marking every 10m of chain.

As the boat was on the hard we spent a bit of money on some cold galvanizing spray and also red spray paint and gave the anchor chain a bit of love and care.

We never had much luck with the paint hanging around for that long, so we also tied small pieces of string every 10m. One at 10m, two at 20m, and so on.

Dinghy

The dinghy has been having quite a start to 2023, getting punctured in the Grenadines, starting to leak water in, and also at some point being flipped over with the engine on.

We were hauled out for a number of days so this allowed us to properly patch all the holes we could find to stop the various leaks.

After a few days of applying Sikaflex, waiting for it to dry, and again filling the dinghy with water to see where the water leaked out, we had a totally sealed dinghy once again. Yay, now we won’t have to pump it up and bail it out every time we use it!

Relaxing on land

While hauled out we spent our evenings in 2 different Airbnbs. We had some pool time, lots of space in the kitchen to cook, a microwave, etc 🤯. One of the features of both of our Airbnbs was the fact they lacked glass in the windows into the kitchens, so you frequently got birds coming to say hello nibbling on your bread or bananas. After we found that this was pretty normal for them to be in the house we started leaving bread outside on the balcony for them.

We had a few meals out, including some birthday celebrations too, including a creole massage at a spa. 💆‍♂️

One of the features of our 30min morning and evening walk to the boatyard while staying at the first Airbnb were 2 dogs that seemed to live in a pile of rubbish at the side of the road.

It was very sad to see, but we think someone was feeding them and we gave them water, they were super friendly and came to say hello.

The boat dropping

Don’t worry, Hannah didn’t get dropped!

While we were hauled out in the boat yard though, there was an almighty bang followed by a bunch of shouting.

One of the boats that was about the be hauled back into the water had slipped out of the slings holding it and landed on the floor.

Not a great day for the owners here.

The keel was dented and paint had come off around the weld for the keel attaching to the main body.

They were still hauled out after we had finished painting and were back in the water, we assume waiting for a survey and for insurance companies to decide what to do.

Next up, back in the water for us!

The Grenadines, Mayreau resort

The Grenadines, Mayreau resort

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In the last post we said about a resort day.. Well here we are! We decided to go all out and have a fully inclusive resort day with lunch and dinner and all the cocktails we could drink!.. 10am cocktails here we come.

We made friends with the manager, and after dinner he took us to Dennis’s Bar where we learnt the lyrics to “Rock your sexy body” by Dennis himself. There were goats sleeping on the road on the way back so of course had to give them a cuddle and one last custom cocktail in the resort bar before heading back to Hannah Penn for the night.

Dennis’s Bar near Mayreau beach resort

It was a very relaxing and enjoyable day and night, though the night resulted in a very lazy next morning!

But here began the next round of dinghy pains 🙁 And a fix that unfortunately didn’t hold. The three of us paddled home in a very sad dinghy that night, because at some point during the day it had got caught under the jetty and punctured a tube, luckily we found the hole with some soapy water and repaired it quickly.

All patched up

With our dinghy fixed, we went to explore a wreck nearby to the resort

That strange looking fish is a porcupine fish, a particularly big one, they can puff up their bodies much like a puffer fish can. This was the first time we’ve seen lobsters too 🦞
We have since been to clearer wrecks so more pictures to come!

Next we are heading around to the east side of this island to anchorage only protected from the Atlantic ocean by an underwater reef, fingers crossed we get some sleep!

Find out more next time…

Barbados to the Grenadines

Barbados to the Grenadines

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We set off for our 100nm sail from Bridgetown, Barbados in the afternoon to give us a little daylight before sailing through the night and arriving with plenty of daylight the following day. This was Anna’s first night-sail experience so we were keen to have a fairly relaxed downwind sail. She took it all in her stride without even a hint of seasickness, Woop woop!

We set out with a fully reefed main and gull-winged genoa as we expected a brisk 20 or so knots, all went perfectly to plan and we were in view of the islands as dawn came around. We did end up a little farther north than first planned, due to wanting to maintain our sail plan, which meant the wind pushed us to where it wanted! Although this actually made the transition from deep water to shallower water around the islands easier, and then the sea was flatter on the west side of the various islands.

We stopped at the island of Canouan to check in, get some local currency (now Eastern Caribbean Dollars) and stop at a little beachfront cafe for some lunch. They even had a cute treetop table that we had to try, but aborted halfway through eating when a torrential downpour came through and everyone made a beeline for the cafe interior.

We knew sy_danae and sy.artemis were already a little way south of us on Union Island so naturally we set off again for a few miles more to reach Chatham bay. It was a busy anchorage but luckily there was room for us to squeeze in close to Danae.

We were very glad that the sea bed was sand (the best holding for an anchor) as the bay was incredibly gusty, one minute there would be no wind and Hannah Penn would bounce forward on the anchor chain and then there would be 30+knots. Interestingly when a gust comes and the boat was not already pulling back on the anchor, the bow will get pushed downwind, meaning you’ll turn sideways onto the wind, and then as the chain tightens, the boat gets slow motion whiplash as the bow is pulled back around.

This happened every half an hour or so all day and night, so we definitely set our trusty anchor alarm!

After being happy with how the anchor was holding, we headed to shore with everyone to have a great catch-up on how everyone’s Atlantic crossing went, and how many things got broken! We think Danae did the best in terms of not breaking anything but it catches up with them at a later date, stay tuned for our time in St Lucia for the story!

So during our chatting, we got onto talking about dinghies flipping over, which Artemis had experienced a couple of times now.. with their engine on…

The next morning a couple came by and knocked on our hull, about something, and you’ve guessed it, we forgot to take the engine off the dinghy before we went to bed, a gust had flipped it in the night and we looked out to find a sad looking little propellor sticking out of the water.

Time for the dinghy engine resuscitation procedure!…

I cleaned the seawater out with lots of fresh water and then got to work taking it apart and meticulously cleaning and re-greasing everything to prevent corrosion. For a while, the gear had been fairly stiff and we thought this service would be exactly what it needed. So all back together and working perfectly we set off to pick up Michel from Artemis for a snorkeling session, we got to their boat and changed from forward to neutral, loaded him and gear in, and went to change to forward only to find it was jammed in neutral :|not ideal!

Getting memories of our outboard engine oil change back in the Isles of Scilly.

We all went in his dinghy and afterwards I took the engine apart for the second time that day!… now we have a dinghy engine permanently stuck in forward, so slightly more useful than neutral but still not ideal. Beggers can’t be choosers I suppose!

After a mildly stressful day we were looking forward to a Full moon party on the other side of the island so we sailed (with motor too because we were running late and didn’t want to arrive after dark) to clifton harbor. The mooring field was packed and as the sun had just about set we got ourselves on a bouy instead of worrying about anchoring.

View from southeast side of Union island, heading towards Clifton Harbour

It turned out the party was canceled for some unknown reason so we all went to the Happy Island Reef bar instead and had the place to ourselves, it was a lovely time to talk to other boats we hadn’t seen since before the Atlantic ocean

More island exploring to come as we head to Tobago Cays and lots of others.

Day 50: Tack, tack and tack again

Day 50: Tack, tack and tack again

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Waking up in our anchorage, we found ourselves rocking violently from side to side after 10am. (This was due to all of the large ferries speeding past the area).

We had a little bit of this the night before, so we’re already expecting it. A quick spot of breakfast, and off we went.

We let captain Warren take command for the day, which lead to quite an interesting initial route. (Hence the name of this post).

A few wiggles, and a few accidental tacks, and we were out in the wind again, heading south toward Vigo.

Dolphins were quite a feature for the sail.

As was fishing, but once again no fish were caught (not having much luck this past week).

We headed to an anchorage on the north side of Ria de Vigo that we had spotted both Zoe from day 43 and Blue Note from Day 48 at on Marine Traffic.

We made a tasty egg fried rice on the way into the anchorage, so we’re eating moments after the anchor dropped

Zoe invited us all over for some drinks with Blue Note also attending.

We chatted late into the evening, even popping back to Hannah to continue until around 3am! All in all a very fun day, night and into the early morning!

Day 41: Escaping a rockey anchorage

Day 41: Escaping a rockey anchorage

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As said at the end of day 40, we were in a new anchorage with only 1 review. It turns out it was a bit rubbish for the conditions we were in, and it was a bit of a rockey night.

Moving anchorage

You can see in the picture below, these were not exactly glassy conditions.

Choppy water in the anchorage

We were up early because of the rocking, and decided to head off before breakfast in the direction of a shortlist of better anchorages based on the conditions.

The wind was having quite a “mad one” and flipped the dinghy over while we were beating through wind waves that were breaking over the deck.

Dinghy upsidedown out of the back cockpit window

We sailed using a mixture of Genoa and mizen, leaving the main down, and the first anchorage we passed looked great so headed in.

Much more pleasant location in these winds, I expect we will be here for a day or 2.

Boat jobs & relaxation

Let’s skip the boat jobs part and just say that Adam managed to drench the inside of the boat with salt water while trying to wash the deck (the window was open)…

We tried out the water, it’s still quite cold, but went and found the anchor with our wetsuits on.

A collection of underwater pictures

Dinghy engine oil change

Dinghy engine oil change

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Arriving in the Isles of Scilly we found ourselves with some extra time, and also the desire to explore some nearby islands.

We had a long list of jobs still to do back on 2022 splash day, one of which was the dinghy engine oil change.

So before exploring anywhere, it was time to tick off another job. Dinghy engine oil change.

Speifically, Hannah’s dinghy is a Zodiac with a 3.3 HP 2-stroke Mariner outboard engine.

How to replace the gear oil

I imagine outboards are normally serviced on land. But we had no easy option to do that.

All of the guides that we found also said that you are meant to use a special gear oil pump of sorts, but we didn’t have one of those to hand.

You can get an overview of what this process is meant to look like in this video.

Mounting the engine

We didn’t really want to replace the oil in the engines normal positions, hanging over the side of the boat, or ashore, in case of spills.

So we rigged the engine in the cockpit with numerous ropes to suspend it in mid air with the floor covered in plastic beneath.

We used one rope heading out from each side of the engine at least to keep it stable.

Conveniently we were in a very flat anchorage.

Replacing the oil

As was mentioned in the video, there are 2 screws that you need to locate.

Here are the screws on our Mariner 3.3 HP.

Undoing the bottom screw allows a little oil to start trickeling out into a container we had prepared. The top one released the flood gates and we waited a few minuites for the flow to slow.

We found a random site online that said that the gear oil capacity for an engine like this was around 140ml, so this is what we were aiming for.

To get the new oil into the outboard we used a syringe whoose nozzle happened to just fit inside the hole opened up by the screw. Pouring oil from our new container into a small bowl, then sucking it up with the syringe and shooting it into the hole, covering the hole with our fingers between synringes (as we needed multiple to reach 140ml).

You can see the syringe we used and difference in our oil colour below. Grey / blue being the oil coming out, and yellow being the oil going in.

We won’t talk about the time we accidently fired oil across the cockpit using the syringe, thats better left in the past.

Doing the screws up, and cleaning the engine off, we were all set for our next dinghy trip!