Hurricane forecast
In early August there was news of a hurricane heading our way. It had been given the name Alan which meant it could be serious. On Saturday the centre was 800 miles east of Barbados. This was Carnival Week and all shops offices and banks would be closed until Thursday. Loud music blared from massive speakers on trucks. Gaily elaborate parades in costumes with huge plumed headdresses marched along the streets and whistles were blown.
We discussed hurricane preparations with other boat owners. We came to the conclusion that with no engine we could not go far. The best we could do was drop back into the mangroves with lots of lines ashore and both anchors forward. We acquired extra fenders in the form of used car tyres.
By Monday Hurricane Alan was 100 miles west of St Lucia. It was alarming to hear on the BBC World Service “The most dangerous hurricane in the Caribbean this century.” In fact in the Virgin Islands we just had gale force winds a deluge of heavy rain. The worst had passed well south of us and the eye was by then heading towards Haiti and Jamaica. It would make landfall in the USA the following week. That evening Jethro passed Jon the bottle of Scotch saying, “Here you are daddy. here is your whisker!” Meanwhile in Road Town the carnival continued.
The new anchor chain was delivered. We had 40 fathoms (or two hundred and forty feet) of three eighth inch galvanised chain. We lined it all up and down on the dock in front of Camelot so that we could mark it with white paint and cable ties at each five fathom point. Then we stowed the whole lot in the anchor locker through the deck. It was secured to the 65 pound CQR anchor on the bow. In due course, once we had power, we could connect it to the electric anchor winch.
Jon made a Bimini cover on the little Read sewing machine. He then fitted it to the frame we had ordered and we had simple shade over the cockpit. Next he made additional zip-on sections with see through plastic windows to add to the main frame in bad weather. Effectively we had a storable version of the old fixed wheelhouse.
“ We could collect rain water if I put a sink drain in the middle,” he announced.
So that was arranged with a few feet of 2 inch flexible hose to connect it to the water tanks set into the cockpit floor. When the water pipe was not in use, we could rig a hanging light with an upturned waste paper basket into the same hole for a lamp to illuminate the cockpit after dark.
From then on whenever heavy rain was anticipated we jumped up and fixed the extended Bimini rolls of canvas to the wheelhouse capping rail with the turnbuckles as Jon called out to me,
“Screens please, nurse!” And the water pipe directed welcome fresh rainwater into the water tanks.
In a fabric shop in Road Town I found some brown velour fabric to recover all the yellow Naugahyde cushions of the seats and back rests in the aft cabin and saloon. For the cockpit and aft seat cushions I used the same brown Sunbrella fabric Jon had used for the Bimini. With a seashell fabric for loose cushions our accommodation was brought firmly into the 1980’s.
Dining out at The Last Resort
To celebrate my birthday in August we booked a table at Tony Snell’s Last Resort restaurant in Trellis Bay and went by taxi. Mr Snell himself collected us from the jetty to ferry us and some other guests over to the little island. The boat he used was called The Last Retort. Tony joined us for the first course of curried soup and introduced us to the couple at the next table. Bill Kincaid was a pilot from Kentucky and his English wife was Tricia. They had been living in the BVI for twelve years and knew Nigel and Elizabeth Jon’s Fastnet friends. They had recently visited our mutual friends in Guernsey.
It was a splendid evening. After a Main course of Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding with loads of vegetables, Tony came on stage with his donkey called Chocolate. He entertained us with a string of clever parodies on well known songs. “Rhinestone Captain “ instead of Cowboy was one. “You took a fine time to heave up Lucille, with six hungry charterers and the chops on the grill” instead of “ You took a fine time to leave me, Lucille.”
Then there was an hilarious song about the infamous Seagull Outboard Motor, where “the only moving part was the string, and you wound it three times round and pulled the ruddy thing.”
The donkey drank beer and Jethro clapped his hands with absolute delight. Bill and Tricia drove us back to Nanny Cay as they lived in one of the new waterside apartments there.
My birthday present from Jon was a second hand dive tank and all the kit I would need to dive down and clean the hull.
“Think of it like mowing the lawn,” he told me.
Completing my SCUBA course
By the end of August The theory part of the dive course was completed and we all passed with flying colours. After we did the practical we were awarded our Open Water PADI certificates. From then on there was a dive session every weekend. We usually did one dive late morning, then had a picnic lunch and a second dive in the afternoon. We explored the wreck of The Rhône, a Royal Mail ship that was sunk in a hurricane. There were lovely dive sites on walls like The Indians. James and Julia came along as well as Jon and Jethro, just for the ride.
New engine at last
The engine was not delivered until September 22nd. Camelot was hauled out again so that Jon could remove the cutlass bearing. It was a two and a half inch one and there were no replacements on the island. Ashton knew a place in Puerto Rico where we could get one, and our new pilot friend would bring it over the next day. Ashton had an apprentice with him called Smiley, who helped install the new engine mountings. The engine was craned in on Wednesday morning.
We touched up the anti fouling and topsides once she was in slings and were lowered back into the water on Monday morning. Ashton and Smiley got the engine fired up for the first time by five o clock on Wednesday 8th October. I cracked open a bottle of Californian champagne, toasts all round- but Smiley would not drink alcohol on religious grounds so he and Jethro had some canned grapefruit flavoured Ting instead.
