Passage by Paul...

Cruise Date May 29th 2009 3:47 CDT 60 miles north of the Honduras Coast.
Been a while since I have added to the blog. Joyce has been doing her usual excellent job keeping you all informed as to our adventures, where we are , where we have been and most importantly properly photographed and published for you all to see. We get more compliments on her pics…so why should I take up the time and space. The sail from Curacao will have been a week when we drop the hook tomorrow afternoon. The first 5 days we had good winds on the butt..from ENE, E to ESE. This keeps us busy making sail changes so the sails do not flog. We have developed a stressed spot on the new main. I have not pushed the sail since I noticed it 3 days ago. We have not put up the twin headsails and poles since we cannot furl these sails due to the customs fiasco in Curacao. Wonder if and when we will see that part. For the last 1 ½ days we have been motor sailing as the wind has dropped along with our boat speed. Just to make things interesting the wind has shifted to the ESE so the engine exhaust blows into the cockpit and down below. Joyce’s sinuses and my eyes are hoping for a major wind shift. The windlass situation, well we have decided to use our temp windlass till we get up the Rio. No parts were available in the Caribbean and to get them down to Roatan with Matt would have put his already near weight limit( he has 3 pumps to bring to us) over and a 2nd overweight bag on Delta is $200 bucks. I have almost decided to buy a new windlass for $2100 since Imtra, the sole distributor of Lofrans parts in the US wants $1300 for the motor alone. Hell when I was a kid you could buy a VW Bug for $1295.00. I will use my Gold Status with Delta to bring the thing down when we return next fall. I plugged the forward head up on Sunday. Thought it would be an easy fix, but put it off till Tue….well those readers that remember from last years cruise…the concrete in the head hose that took a day and a half…well seems I did not get the whole thing cleaned out. I started at the bottom and worked my way up with the plumbers snake we had bought last yr for this purpose. The hose diameter changes from 1 inch to 2 inch then into the holding tank. I suspected that the snake was catching on the diameter change fitting. I was able to break loose some of the concrete stuff, but gave up for the day..and the next and next. This AM I went back at it with a vengeance. Must interrupt here, we, mostly Joyce has not been sleeping well at all this week. Usually it takes 3 days to get into the routine. Well as of this AM, Joyce is still only getting a few hours sleep per night. Might be best called irratiable sleep disorder. As I was sweating away in the head with all the "good stuff" ; I needed Joyce to turn on the water to flush the hose. After 3 or 4 of these I was informed she was tired. Yep she was asleep in the saloon. I ended up taking off this larger 2 inch hose to find it filled going down to the smaller diameter hose and solid going up into the holding tank. Using a variety of avaibble svrewdrivers, saw blades, I was able to get most of this opened. Tomorrow AM, we will flush out the hose and cleanup the mess. Oh, aren’t boats fun. Also on the boat front, while furling the Jenny, the motor stopped…damn…sent Joyce below to reset the breaker, only to be informed that it was not blown. Remember a few months back when the outhaul motor stopped and I had ordered new brushes for both the main furler and outhaul motors. Figured if one was worn so would be the other. So why didn’t one of you readers suggest that I also order the jenny motor brushes too… another job to do while up the Rio this summer. Well enough of my rambling on boat jobs..stinky head repairs and broken windlasses… I’ll let Joyce get back to the good stuff. Just wanted you all to know we the bad with the good. Look forward to a few down days before Matt arrives next weekend.