The second week of our passage from Salvador to Grenada, was dominated by 200nm days. The wind, sea state and currents were in our favour. We ate up the miles, sailing on the tilt most of the time, averaging 9-10 knots, which is very fast for Amelie.
The sailing is exciting and not scary at all. Stephen is in his element. With the issues affecting Amelie and her crew, this has tainted the sailing for Debbie. as Stephen says, it’s “boys’ sailing” - very little washing, the galley sink piling up, sweaty bedlinen, coffee grounds everywhere and cigar ash all over the cockpit. At times this has made life miserable for Debbie, being the cleanliness fiend, she is, but she mostly keeps a positive demeanor. Emailing her friends and kids back home has helped enormously. Once we touch land in Grenada, we will have ‘Hollywood Showers’, pre-wash and boil wash the bedlinen, ventilate the cabins and spring clean Amelie inside and out and enjoy a champagne celebratory meal ashore.
The camaraderie on the OWR fleet still out at sea has been great. Amelie has been the butt of many stinky jokes, causing a lot of laughter. It keeps our spirits lifted.
The sky has been hazy and grey most of the time although remaining hot. This is unlike anything we’ve seen before on this rally. Visibility is relatively poor and thank goodness for radar and AIS. An example of this was during a night watch. The radar suggested either a squall or a unidentified blip. Debbie watched this for ages, ready to adjust the sails if the squall hit us. At 2nm from Amelie, the night sky didn’t show any signs of bad weather or vessels when suddenly a huge ship cleared the mist heading straight for Amelie. A VHF call to the captain of the Nikkei Dragon, alerted him to us and politely and efficiently he changed course to avoid us.
We crossed over from Brazilian to French waters (opposite French Guyana) at midnight on the 3rd of March.We have been asked how we will cope without the Oyster support after the rally. We have learnt so much about Amelie both on our own and with the support of Eddie Scougall. Luckily we’ve got his mobile number on speed dial! Seriously, we have plenty of spares and always buying more. We are capable of most things but at times, you accept your limitations and hand it over to an expert. There are plenty of very capable specialists in their fields throughout the world. When there are issues, we either fix it or watch others at work - learning all the time, hoping to become even more self-sufficient. Preparation is essential and we should be better at this. Having the right tools for those unusual jobs is a must and our collection is increasing and periodically used by us and others on the rally. Lastly we bought an Oyster because of their world renowned aftercare service and for us, this has been spot on. We have Eloisa back in Ipswich who always gets us the parts we need and posts them to Jaz or Jon or whoever is visiting us. Oyster experts are at the end of a telephone with contacts with all the manufacturers of the equipment on board. We feel comfortable and positive about proceeding on our own and continuing the learning curve.
Another drama on Amelie happened the other day. We had a close escape from a medical catastrophy. In working out our emergency water supplies, Stephen had included 10 litres of distilled water for the batteries, which he bought and had delivered to the boat in Salvador. Today after using some spanners to do another ‘fix’ on Wally in situ, we needed to wash the seawater off them. Not wanting to use our precious supply, Stephen opened one of the bottles of battery water and commenced cleaning up the tools. They started to fizz. It was immediately apparent that we’d been sold battery acid and not distilled water for the batteries, as requested from our ‘English speaking’ contact in Salvador! This was confirmed using our hygrometer to test the pH of the contents. The description on the bottles was in Portuguese and we need to be more vigilant and cautious with the language barriers.
Wally..... the main pin that holds the unit together is bent and we were unable to tighten it. The forces involved are phenomenal and yet another problem associated with it. We persevered all day but the vibration noise through the hull woke Stephen and we were concerned that the continuing vibration could cause more damage. Wally was lifted in the dark and we are now relying on a sickly generator to charge the batteries whilst continuing to top up with coolant.
We arrived in Port Louis, Grenada at 17.30 on Friday evening to a warm welcome. Celebrated in style and suffered hangovers the next day.
The watermaker is fixed and ‘pickled’ until it is used again. The yankee is going off to be repaired tomorrow and the new red heat exchanger will be in situ by tomorrow afternoon. Amelie and Crew are now squeaky clean and shiny.