Squall in the night; proper tropical one that dumps several litres of water on you in a minute or two.  Compounding the normal squall rain were the rain scoops, sorry windscoops.  A mad dash to get the hatches closed.

Up around 06:30, with a breakfast of Tea Times, tea and oats.

On the ‘Sailing’ channel, we noticed that the gent sailing the board with anchor trouble had his head in the anchor locker again, so Dad and I loaded the toolbox into the dinghy and rowed across to see if we could lend assistance.  Alas, we could not; the windlass had cheared the bold that is used to mesh the clutch.  Result?  No windlass and 150 feet of chain to haul by hand.  Nick, the charterer, said he’d been in contact with the charter company.

Repaired the dinghy today.  The plastic engine mount on the transom had sheared two bolt heads, so we cleaned off some paint and bonded the plastic to the metal with some epoxy.  1 hour later, perfectly set.

Around 11:30, tired of the construction noise, we headed for Chatham Bay (lee side of Union Island).  A slight hash with the windlass, as I didn’t notice the chain building up as it went into the anchor locker, and jammed the windlass.  Easily sorted.

Motor-sailed over to Union, with just the jib up; ~40 minutes at 7 knots.  Dodged Grand Col reef and furled the jib off of the bay, motored in to anchor.

And so problem number 3 arrived; our windlass stopped working.  Dead.  No time to worry about it, so I started paying out chain the old way – bare-handed, hand over hand, length by length.  Paid out much more than we needed, so much so that a later inspection showed that the anchor hadn’t buried, and we were held in place by sheer weight of chain.

Dad and I (Dad mostly) traced the windlass problem to the bulkhead behind the for’ad head.  Whipped it off (well, not quite, we would have had to remove the entire head to do that, just bent it out of the way) to hear a relay clicking, but no action from the windlass.  Dad narrowed it down to one lump of wire and tape.  Disengaged the batteries, shut off the engine and stripped the tape off of the lump to find that the nuts holding the wires together were far too loose to permit current to pass properly.

Fixed the bolts using wrenches of the wrong size (we had 12 and 14mm, needed a 13mm) and re-wrapped the cabling and nuts in new electrical tape.  Presto, working windlass.  We might have to charge Barefoot for that one.

With the windlass fixed, we tuned in the ‘Nature’ channel; pelicans and brown boobies fishing in the northern part of the bay.  They’re only ~200 ft away, so the splash is quite audible.  A turtle or two show their heads, but not much more.

Mid-afternoon, we went ashore to ‘Sun, Beach and Eat’ for drinks and a light meal.  Three red snapper stuffed with seasoning and cooked on an open grill.  Excellent taste, though the fish were a little lean.  Pleasant environment, good reggae and an excellent view; 150 EC for three (40 for each fish).  Had to run back to the boat for the money, got the dinghy up on a plane, and a big grin on my face.

Motored the dinghy over to the north of the bay on the way back from the beach-bar, and then paddled along the shoreline watching the pelicans and boobies dive for fish.  They have completely different styles, with the booby doing a vertical dive, tucking in the wings, lancing the surface and bobbing up a few seconds later.  The pelican, in contrast, wheels in at an angle, tucks in its wings, and as it hits the water, appears to extend the wings and do a pivot around them so that when it comes back up, it’s facing the way it came.

Windscoops are up, and the A70 appears to have fried the CCD.  Dinner was last nights’ curried chicken served in submarine rolls with melted cheese.

Winds: Probably katabatic.