October, 2010

On Tuesday, the 5^th, I had my next bout of boat troubles. Bear in mind that we’re in a marina, plugged into the local electricity. That keeps the battery chargers energized, and we have no idea that our batteries have reached the end of their lives. We use four Group 31 absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries in the “house bank”, and another as the starting battery. I observed something was wrong when I tried to start the diesel generator and nothing happened. These batteries were not quite four years old. I had expected perhaps five years out of them. Anyway, there’s nothing for it but to start battery shopping. The last set were from West Marine in Texas in early 2007. I was lucky to buy them using a friend’s wholesale account and paid $900. This time, I paid retail, plus Grenada VAT, amounting to a little over $1,600. The brand name was Deka, but they were identical to the West Marine batteries. The cost is one painful part of new batteries. The other is actually changing them. Our battery bank is located in a cubby beneath the quarterberth mattress. Each of the five batteries weighs 69 pounds. It’s cramped and hot and dark in there. I’ve got to carry them up the companionway ladder and out onto the dock, then carry the new ones back down, connect them, and clamp them in place.

Traveling abroad can be so mundane or so exotic. On October 8^th, while shopping at the IGA, I bought one of the cheaper packages of frozen fish filets. It was labelled “Banga Mary”. What is this, I wondered? A search on the internet revealed that this is the local name for a freshwater fish of the Drum family, inhabiting several rivers in South America. The commercial fishery is concentrated on rivers of Guyana. Neat stuff! On the 9^th, we walked a good ways to a creole cafe where we had stewed chicken, plantain, cou-cou, rice, and ginger beer.

About the second week of October, world grain prices went crazy and shot skyward. I had already marketed much of ’10 production, but still had some to sell. I watched grain quotes hourly, waited for tenant harvest reports to arrive, and gradually sold the balance of the year’s grain.

It appears the hurricane season is winding down, so I’m making preparations to leave. I’ve shopped for such essentials as inkjet cartridges, which won’t be available in the smaller islands. I’ve also bought a ream of 8 ½ x11 paper, as most islands only sell A4. I’m also making arrangements to have a diver clean our bottomsides, and for another fellow to polish the stainless steel and wax the topsides.  

Late October: With the (sort of) handy marina clothes washers, we stripped the beds and washed mattress pads, spare blankets and settee throws. On the 26^th, our friend Bonesy came and started polishing stainless steel and washing and waxing the boat. The divers came to scrub down the bottomsides and clean barnacles off the shaft and propeller.

Also on the 26th, the National Hurricane Center took note of a powerful storm situated on the Intertropical Convergence Zone about 500 miles east of Africa. On the 27^th, this storm was given the designation “Invest 91 L”. On the 28^th, this storm was intensifying and beginning to rotate. By Friday, the 29^th, this system had reached Tropical Storm intensity and was bearing down on the Southern Windwards -- us. After buying groceries, I deployed another three dock lines and moved Wight Skye about three feet away from the finger pier, so heavy winds and seas wouldn’t rub us hard against the pier. We also took down our shade tents and canvass and doubly secured all loose items on deck. We took the outboard motor off the dinghy and rowed it to shore, carried it into the mangroves and secured it with a couple of lines. By 5:00 p. m., Tropical Storm Tomas had become Hurricane Tomas. This added internal rotational speed gave him a bit of steering off to the right, and before midnight Saturday, Tomas passed over northern St. Vincent, with the dangerous quarter winds striking southern St. Lucia, about seventy miles north of our location. St. Lucia suffered nine deaths, building damage, flooding and mud slides. For us in southern Grenada, the passage of the Hurricane was sort of a non-event. We saw light winds and some rain. After the passage, though, we found ourselves in a feeder band and had a couple of days of winds in the thirties and twenties blowing right up the long axis of the bay.