Nano tech surveillance, La Paguera to Boqueron

Boqueron bay is flat calm in a pale sunrise, the bay is huge, perhaps two miles across and protected from the ocean by a sunken reef that stretches across the entrance, about a mile from the shore. We came in through a cut in the southern end, called Canal Sur, (South) which was marked by a big green buoy, at about three in the afternoon and anchored about 200 yards  from the palm fringed beach that stretches a good mile from end to end.

The passage from our last port of call, La Parguera, took us round a particularly nasty bit of Puerto Rico called Cabo Rojo, pronounced Roho, which means cape red in Spanish, named seemingly by Christopher Columbus, who must have been colour blind. I thought it looked more mucky brown than red, but Jackie was a little more gracious and reckoned it was perhaps more tan. So Cape Tan it is then; the entrance to the dreaded Mona Passage. The seas around us turned from deep blue to turquoise and far from being tempestuous, were slight to moderate, as we nautical fellows categorise these things, this indicates that we're in shallower waters, and even though we were at least two miles off shore the depth thingy was showing about 30 feet. The wind was on our tail, which always makes for awkward sailing, trying to keep the sails full of wind is difficult. We want to head north east-ish, but so does the wind so we fall away from our course and put the wind more on our beam, or side if you like, but this takes us off our course and away from the coast. Jackie, who has an intuitive feel for this sailing business now, says that it'll be ok, we'll head out for about an hour, then turn and run in the opposite direction on a beam reach, the best point of sail, which will take us slap bang into Boqueron. There's not a lot of wind, about 12-15 mph,  we've only got the genoa and mizzen up, I suggest we hoist the mainsail, but Jackie who has an intuition for this sailing  lark decides we don't need it, and an hour later she's proved right.

About this point we're visited by a big brown seagull type bird that dips and swirls around picaroon as though it's some kind of scout for Homeland Security, and I scrabble to find the camera, but by the time I've got it we look around and there's no sight of it at all, like a will-o-the wisp it's gone. Earlier we had a butterfly that fluttered about the rigging, we're three miles off shore, what an earth is a butterfly doing three miles off shore, another eye in the sky no doubt working for Homeland Security with some fancy nano hi-tech camera system.

 You may think I'm a bit OTT about these US Homeland security folks but in La Parguera they had this huge air balloon thing tethered at least a mile high that the conductor of the Lake Taho symphony orchestra says can spot drug runners coming out of Columbia, which is a long long way from here so I wouldn't put it passed them to be tagging birds and butterflies with mini cameras. Oh, that conductor, just a part time resident of La Parguera out for a morning punt on his paddle board who stopped by to say hello, and had we been staying until Thursday, don't ask me why Thursday, he would have invited us across for cocktails. He mentioned being a bit of a tri-athlete,  maybe he was on a strict training schedule, that ruled out cocktails till Thursday, I don't know, you work it out.

But I digress, having turned Picaroons' bow to face the western shores of Puerto Rico, and with the wind now on our starboard beam, she picks up speed and the winds freshens. Looking at the projected track on our chart plotter we're bang on course and trying to catch sight of the buoy that marks the cut through the reef. There's a strong current running up this coast, and although it feels like we're flying along we're only doing about five knots, and heeled over the wind picking up to a healthy twenty-five knots now.  By the time we're passing the buoy, with the reefs safely avoided the wind has increased somewhat and although we've only the mizzen and genoa up Picaroon is heeled more than is comfortable. "A good job we didn't put up that main sail" I said. Jackie gives me one of those looks, that says, "listen to your wife"; time to reduce sail and haul in the genoa. With Jackie at the helm, able seaman Col wrestles with the sails as we turn into the wind, trying to manipulate three ropes. One winds the sail in, the other two are the sheets that need taming to avoid a bad wrap, or furl as we say.  Now like most people I've only got two hands and with the wind now blowing at thirty knots this operation proves a trifle messy, as the genoa crashes and flaps madly, sheets get stuck on bits of the boat they shouldn't, or should have been uncleated before we began to furl. Finally I get the job done, now time to drop the mizzen, and sail into the anchorage safely on Mr Engine Sir, now purring away below. "I'm afraid I can't drop the mizzen" I say, "looks like the halyard has got itself jammed around the winch". No amount of tugging and heaving will free it so we resign ourselves to keeping the mizzen up, and just spill the wind from it. Anyway it always looks good from the shore when you see a yacht coming in under sail, and it impresses other cruisers that may be, no, will be watching.

Greta May, with the Welsh couple Dave and Jane aboard who we met in Salinas and La Parguera, have just weighed anchor, off to clear out in Mayaguez,  as we glide by and we give her a wave. Jane calls out from the helm, there's plenty of water, bye. That was sort of stating the obvious, I thought, I suppose she meant you can get quite close to the shore before dropping the anchor. After our experience with La Parguera we're a bit more cautious, and still sporting a mizzen full of wind we decide to drop the hook about two hundred yards from shore. Picaroon swings to face the wind, the chain tightens and we stop, take transits, engine off.  An early G&T rounds off a successful days sailing, we can tackle the mizzen later when the wind drops, for now it's just steadying Piccars as she lies at anchor in Boqueron Bay.


(Jackie to John Parlane, (RYA Instructor); maybe we shouldn't have missed out on the 'Competent Crew' course!)

Continued by Jackie:  The G&T slipped down easily but no time for another; we had to go ashore to clear in with Homeland Security at Mayaguez. With the sail covers on and the dingy back in the water we headed for the shore, not knowing where to tie up, how we would get to Mayaguez and just hoping that we were late enough for them to tell us to come tomorrow morning.

 We found a rickety dock close to a small sandy beach and hopped ashore. Walking into a small square we headed for a bar and ordered a couple of cold beers. Col asked if there were any public phones around and immediately two locals offered us their phones, a fellow cruiser who had settled in Boqueron for over thirty years was the first and I phoned HS to announce our arrival. For most cruisers this would be enough but as we had been naughty by not clearing in at Culebra from St. Thomas, HS in Ponce had told us very clearly that we would have to appear at Mayaguez in person, after phoning of course. The officer on the other end of the phone was about ready to go home and I suppose thought we were calling from the boat, he said, "Yes, just come tomorrow after 8am; do not leave your boat; do not bring anything ashore with you apart from your papers" etc., etc. Phew! Well that was a relief and we ordered another beer. OK, now how do we get to Mayaguez tomorrow we pondered and no sooner had this thought crossed our minds when another phone was thrust at us with Raul on the other end. "I'm out of town just now but I can give you another number to call". We call Elvin who agrees to pick us up at 8am for the thirty minute drive to Mayaguez.

 Elvin is a very friendly and chatty local chap who had lived and worked in the US for many years so his English is perfect and Col chats with him all the way about the history of Puerto Rico, America, Dominican Republic. Soon we pull up at an impressive Georgian building and approach the first HS Officer who waves me towards a glass-fronted counter which looks remarkably like a Bank at home. Behind the glass another Officer indicates we should sit down and wait.

 A couple of minutes later, he beckons me to the counter and a strange exchange begins.

Me; "We have arrived in Boqueron from Ponce and I have come to clear in"
HS; "When are you leaving"
Me; "Well I am not sure, it depends on the weather"
HS; "Why are you here"
Me; "To clear in"
HS; "You don't need to clear in if you have paid in Ponce, you only have to come to clear out"
Me; "But the Officer in Ponce said we had to come because we had been naughty and they want to teach us a lesson"
HS; "Who was the Officer, ah yes Rxxxxxxz, just a minute".
HS goes off to phone his colleague in Ponce and ten minutes later comes back to the counter;
"Officer Rxxxxxxz says you have misunderstood him and you don't need to be here, just come when you're ready to clear out".

Both Col and I know this is not how it was explained to us but I am not arguing and a little light comes on; maybe we can clear out now and save another trip so I ask "How long after we clear out do we have to leave?"  (We've heard its only 24 hours but worth asking.)

HS; "You give me the date you're leaving and I can fill in the form" he advises rather confusingly.
Me;  "I can't give you a date because I am not sure when we'll be leaving".

Now I can see that I am beginning to try the mans' patience, so I decide to give him a big smile, thank him for his kind assistance, collect Col and Elvin and get the hell out of there, only dashing back for my hat which I left on the seat. On the way back we call into a supermarket for supplies and I muse on whether the quick dash back for the hat was a little risky and, with my back-pack on, I could have been mistaken for a terrorist and got shot.

Oh well I live to fight another day and it may have cost us $35 for an unnecessary trip but at least we are legal, have restocked the wine cellar, and are not 'invisible' as Officer Rxxxxz had warned us against.

Once that weather window opens we'll be back in Mayaguez where we may have a more sensible exchange, who knows.

You wouldn't credit it | Sailors to seadogs

You wouldn't credit it | Sailors to seadogs

Close to the wind

Fred and the tank

Fred has a lived in face, like a Christmas walnut, a knowing half smile and a quiet and measured American drawl. He’s a thick set man who moves slowly through the world in old T shirts and well-worn shorts with the residue of an engineers’ work that seldom sees a washing machine. He’s a convivial character, a quiet man, but engage him on any mechanical or seafaring issue and you could be there all day. He may have an appointment but now he’s in conversation it’s going to have to wait, there’s a story to tell, and it just may take a while.

Although Fred looks like he hasn’t got two pennies to rub together he flies a small plane, has a forty foot yacht, and houses here in Puerto Rico and another in the nearby island of St Thomas. He tells stories about being at sea on rescue tug boats, and of trouble shooting large oil installations all over the world, Fred is an uber engineer, who has a way to fix anything that’s mechanical. If Fred gives you some pearl of wisdom regarding anything mechanical, you need to listen, and listen good, his advice is probably spot on. We paid a visit to his boat yesterday which was strewn with tools as he  tackled some job or other. On the stereo an aria from some obscure opera played in the background, Fred is cultured.

Before we set off on our adventure to St Thomas Fred had warned us about our fuel tank, and how we needed to make sure it was clean. “You need to cut a hole in it” he had said, which seemed a bit drastic at the time, but after all the problems we had on that trip to St Thomas we’re now taking his advice.

There’s about thirty odd gallons of diesel in our tank, it’s about three quarters full, and lies under the floor in the middle of the boat. The plan is to empty the tank, cut a new access hole in the top of the tank, which is aluminium, and make a new hatch cover to cover the hole. This will enable us to get to the rear of the tank which at the moment is inaccessible as there’s a baffle running across the middle,  it’s there to stop the fuel sloshing about too much when the boats sailing.

Fred has given us a small sheet of aluminium and I borrowed a jig saw, from Freds’ friend Bob, to cut a new hatch cover. I spent yesterday cutting and drilling the new hatch cover, now I have to set about cutting the hole in the tank. So the next task will be to empty the tank and to do this I’ve borrowed, from Fred, a pump. It’s not a fancy pump, just an electric motor with a switch taped onto the side of it, and some plastic hose. Fred reckons it can pump about twenty gallons a minute, but here’s where it could get messy as we are going to use five gallon jerry cans to collect the diesel. It could all go horribly wrong as our jerry cans could be full in seconds spilling fuel all over the boat. But if it all goes to plan we’ll have an empty tank that we’ll be able to scrub out, and a new access hole.

Well it turned out to be more than messy, we hooked up the plastic tubes, poked one in a jerry can, and the other I held under the surface of the diesel and flicked the switch. There was a gurgling sound and a bit of foaming in the pipes but no diesel came out of the end Jackie was holding in the jerry can. Fred had said “you’ll need to prime the pump, it’s centrafugal” as if I would understand. I sort of knew what he meant so prior to starting we had poured some diesel into the pipes and filled the pump, but I obviously had missed something. We tried filling the pipes a bit more which entailed decanting, very messily, via a small funnel, a bit more diesel. Jackie holding one end up in the air, me with my finger over the other end. We plunge my end into the tank, losing some on the way and switch on, but still only a gurgle, not twenty gallons a minute, not even a trickle.

After a few repeated attempts we finally got it going, the trick was to have my end of the tube completely full of liquid and held under the surface of the smelly stuff in the tank. At last the jerry cans started to fill up and after about an hour we had sucked all the diesel out, except for a half inch that we had to use a hand pump, before mopping out the last of it with one of those towel mats you find on pub bars. Safe to say it hadn’t been the best start to a day, and we both reeked of eau de diesel, now it was time to cut the hatch, but first a fag-break out on deck where the fresh morning breeze cooled our sweaty selves.

Cutting through the aluminium tank was easy and we soon had a 9 X 7 inch hole which revealed a mess of black congealed gunge on the bottom of the rear of the tank. We set too with scrapers and metal scrubbing pads, Jackie took the rear of the tank, brave girl, I did the front half. We scrabbled about, getting into weird positions to reach all four corners, like playing some demented game of twister. It took all day but finally we had two, if not shiny, but almost pristine halves, which we decide to let air till tomorrow when we’ll put the fuel back. We go ashore for a cold beer where we meet Fred at the bar, who’s impressed that we’ve managed to get the job done, we’re just pleased it’s all over.

“You put the diesel back in the tanks yet?” says Fred, “because you know what I would do. Whilst it’s empty you should check the bottom of the tank. You just need to disconnect those four hoses and lift it out and take a look.” Well what could we say, we knew he was right, but we also knew that the tank was sitting on a rubber mat in a rank bilge that was going to mean another horrible job, but if Fred was advising us to do it, do it we must. So the next day out came the tank, which was fairly easy but it revealed a gunge ridden mess beneath it. I paddled about bare foot scooping up sludge into a bucket, mopping with rolls of kitchen towel, whilst Jackie hauled the disgusting heavy rubber mat on deck where she scrubbed it with sea water and Dr Mechanico. “This is a much worse job than yesterday” she said, and she was right.

The bottom of the tank turned out to be still in good nick, just a bit of old flaking paint, and some pitting but not badly. So with a nice clean bed for it to sit on we put the mat back down, reconnected the tank, fitted the new hatch cover, along with the old one and filled it up using the Baja filter. We went ashore for a well deserved cold beer, and bumped into Fred.

 “Shame you put it back, I could have ultra-sounded it for you” but I show him some photos and he reckons it’ll be OK. “Show Richie those pictures” Richie is sat on the bar stool he seems to occupy most of the day, another quiet man, who always says Hi, but little else. If Fred defers an opinion to Richie, I’m impressed, must be another master engineer, maybe, or just a tank expert, I don’t know. “Hell, I’ve seen worse pits on my face” says Richie. They agree that the tank should be good for a few more years. “Just make sure you keep that bilge dry” says Fred and he ambles off into the night.

So that’s the tank job, done and dusted, a major headache out of the way, and one less thing to worry about, now we just need to sort out that broken bolt on the stuffing box, replace the morse cable and we’ll be good to go, that is unless we uncover something else. As Freds’ boating friend Bob says though, “If it ain’t broke, take it apart and find out why”.

Shakedown sail, testing the mizzen

Rocket science

Picaroon has thrown up quite a few challenges in the five weeks that we've been living aboard, in Salinas bay. We arrived with a plan, which very soon went out of the porthole, whilst we solved one problem after another. First it was dead batteries, then fresh water pumps, then fan belts, the list went on, as we entered the world of being boat owners. Now we know why boats spend 90% of their time in harbour, there's always something vital that needs fixing.
On the up side, as we keep being reminded, it's better that we discover these problems in port rather than out on the open ocean, or some far flung atoll, chance would be a fine thing, and it means we've also had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with the inner workings of the good ship Picaroon. Pipes and wires snake beneath the floor hatches, disappearing through holes to some seemingly inaccessible space only reachable by midgets who were also contortionists. Tracing pipes and wires seem to have become a daily quest, to pin down how this or that system works as I slowly unravel the mysteries of Picaroon. Luckily it's only just basic plumbing and electrics, it's not rocket science.
Mind you there's stuff on here that I've got no idea what it does. Take for instance a small blue box that has the title of "Lifeline" printed on it, and a strapline beneath that reads, "the heart of you system". Shielded beneath a Perspex cover, it has a green LED that glows, and lots of wires going to it. There's a couple of holes in the Perspex lid where I'm invited insert a screwdriver and adjust the absorption voltage, and another similar hole that says, adjustment times,  along with a time test point and an error indictor lamp that fortunately is not lit. I've not got a clue what this does, but as it calls itself "Lifeline" I think I should.

There's stuff like this lurking in every nook and cranny, that may, or not be working. Even the workings of the fridge, which isn't working, baffles me, even after reading the workshop manual, I'm at a loss to see why it all looks so complicated, and that's before we get to figure the Garmin chart-plotter that's hooked up to a radar, I think, and depth transducers, all handily displayed on the friendly looking screen in the cockpit, as long as we've got the supplementary, Blue chart g2 Vision data card installed. Sonar, of course is only available with an "S" series unit.

 The thing is we did all our training with old fashioned paper charts, dividers and compasses, but the world moves on.
We've been in touch with the previous owner, via email recently, with questions about Picaroon that we thought she may be able to help us with. Yesterday, we had a reply to one or two of our queries which threw new light on the myriad of esoteric systems aboard. Apparently she was also overwhelmed by so much of the gubbins on Picaroon that used to be owned by her father.

 It turns out that her father was actually a rocket scientist, so that explains it.   

Playing the money markets

So that's it, BVI yacht sales have received our money for the final settlement of our purchase of Picaroon.
One to four days was what the banks website said and we expected it to take at least four, but no, we hit the send button on Wednesday and on Thursday we had an email saying that they had received our payment in full.

Have you ever sent a shed load of cash across currency zones, it's not without its heart stopping moments. Our money is held in a UK bank account and of course is in sterling, good old fashioned pounds to us and we had to pay the sellers in Dollars.

Now all this finance stuff is way beyond my brain but luckily Mrs W is a bit of a whiz at numbers. She somehow seems to understand stuff like spreadsheets, for instance, which baffle me beyond words, so I leave all this to her, which is how we ended up with an account with World First Bank. Now as far as I can understand they are in the business of moving money around the globe in unimaginable amounts everyday. At the top of their website it tots up the money it has moved about that day. The day we were transferring our money the ticker at the head of the page read something like £15,769,566,201,578,330.164. or some ridiculous  figure that was a bit like how far it is in light years to get to the edge of the known universe.

Somewhere lost in this enormous number is our meager contribution, which is a might disappointing as it's our life savings, which will hardly cause a ripple on the global transactions of the day which I read somewhere amounts to about three trillion dollars a day. Luckily this doesn't have to be counted or carried about by men with big sacks and vans with those blacked out slits for windows, no it's all done by computers talking to other computers, linked to other computers across the globe by fibre optic cables. Satellites whizzing above the planet about a couple of hundred miles up travelling at upwards of 20,000 miles an hour, spewing out data in a mind bogglingly endless race towards the end of the days trading on the money markets.

So here we are after Mrs W has cracked the esoteric codes, checked and rechecked the SWIFT code settings, rechecked and rechecked the three accounts that our funds have to be passed to. First our money will fly off to Wells fargo in New York where it is put on a stage coach, pulled by six white horses and at breakneck speed they get it to a bloke somewhere in a bank called First Caribbean, which I suppose is an ex cruise liner floating somewhere off the Cayman Islands, I suppose they catch a ferry from Miami to do that. Then he gets on a helecopter and takes our sack to Tortola in the BVI. Once they've counted it in the BVI bank the manager will telegraph our broker to say that our payment for that boat Picaroon has finally arrived

Maybe not, not in the 21st century.

The World First website shows us in Real Time what the going rate is for the exchange of one pound for the equivalent in Dollars. This particular day we'll get 1.6075 dollars for a pound, no wait, less than a second has gone by and we can now get 1.6077. A second later and it's 1.5987, and then 1.5998. Wizz wizz wizz go the numbers, up, up, down down all happening at the speed of light, or in this case electricity, I suppose to be wholly accurate. Then its had a sudden slide and it looks as the British  economy is pants but then you realise that the graph is split into 1000ths and that that big slide represents just less than half a cent.

Now all this matters because our funds are locked into the starting stalls of the money market race day. Our mouse hovers over the continue button. Once we click that button we get the exchange rate at that particular nanosecond. It could be the difference of £200 if we click at the wrong moment, so this is serious! After about a half hour of this mesmerising dance of numbers we give up on the idea that the rate will make so little difference in the end and we quit the game and press continue.

Thank you for choosing world First, is the next page displayed. Your money has now been sent to our Russian Mafia boss in Monte Carlo who will try to double it before sending off what remains to the recipient named below.

HAVE A NICE DAY.

Somehow miraculously Karen at BVI emails the next day to say they've received our final payment and they are preparing the final paperwork which will be shipped next week by Fed Ex. A man in a van will call at our apartment in the Dominican Republic with the ownership papers for our yacht.

Funny old world.