On our way north

We sailed up to St George's, Grenada and then on to Carriacou to see some old friends. On the way we stopped at Moliniere Bay to look at the underwater sculpture garden. We spent a night at anchor off Ile de Ronde which was fabulous if rather rolly. The water was crystal clear, the best we have seen in the Caribbean and the snorkelling excellent. Tomorrow we sail up to St Lucia.

Back in the water

As week 7 of our haulout began on Monday we were working frantically in 2 days of torrential rain to be ready for our splash time of 9:30am on Tuesday morning. Having worked until after midnight we got up at 6am to find our charger had blown a fuse and our batteries would need a minimum of 4/5 hours charging to be full to go back in the water. We talked to another boat near us who were going to launch at 1pm and they very kindly agreed to swop the slot with us.
It was a tense time when they finally lowered us into the water but, after all the work and modifications on the shafts, we stayed afloat and went out to anchor in Chaguaramas Bay. What an incredible relief!
On Wednesday we finished our last errands and persuaded customs to allow us to check out and spend the night in Scotland Bay before setting off for Grenada on Thursday morning. We had a very enjoyable late lunch onboard Irony with our friends, Scott and Colleen from Argo Navis and set off. We were at anchor having our first swim off the boat in over 7 weeks by sunset (5:30pm here now).
We slowly got ourselves going on Thursday morning, getting the boat ready to sail again. We left Scotland Bay at 11am and arrived into St George's, Grenada at 11pm. We had a cracking sail, Irony clearly wanted to prove that all our hard work of the last few weeks was worth it! We averaged 7 knots, seeing over 9 knots at times. The weather was perfect and the night stunning.

Birthday Blues

We had to cancel our splash today and so begins our 6th week out of the water. Today's launch date was already looking in doubt on Saturday as we still didn't have all the parts back Nic is having fabricated for both the keel mechanism and the shafts. He then discovered, in re-assembling the shafts, that they appear to be misaligned slightly. We decided that, with everything out and while we are in a place where we can get things sorted, it was best to tackle the problem head-on and make whatever modifications are necessary. So here we are and it's my birthday today - celebrations are deferred until we're back in the water!

Hell on the Hard

Today is the start of our 5th week out of the water and we haven't had a day off. Working long hours in the heat and humidity is no fun at all. Irony seems enormous out of the water - it takes hours to paint the hull and it's had at least 6 coats of varying paints (more in some places). Just tackling re-antifouling would have been enough but we've also had the dent to sort out and issues to deal with on both shafts and the keel mechanism. Not only have we had the mess outside but a large part of the inside of the boat has been ripped apart and disrupted. The yard have been fantastic but progress is slow and we are completely exhausted. We are now booked to splash next Monday, if we manage to be ready then it will be my birthday present to be back in the water!

Clash of Steel

No, we haven't crashed the boat! We went to a steel band competition on Saturday night called "Pan, Parang and Pork" at Queens Park Oval in Port of Spain! Parang is traditional festive music from Venezuela and provided our entertainment during a delicious dinner. Then the "clash of steel" began with 6 steel bands performing for the judges. They were excellent, one even managed a impressive rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah! Getting back to the boat at 2am did not make it an easy work day on Sunday.