Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

We reported for duty at 9am on Pikorua, despite a slightly fussy head and were treated to some toast made from home baked bread and fresh coffee to start our day off slowly. Kevin then got to work with Barry winching him up the mast to check their rigging, tighten some fittings and replace others damaged on the trip across. A job made considerably easier by their substantial electric winches onboard. They swapped the large genoa headsail with a smaller Yankee more suitable for double handed sailing from now on with Barry and Marie-Jeanne. It really brought home to me the difference from Invincible helping to flake the Genoa, which seemed heavier than our main, everything is on a much bigger scale for them and they need to plan ahead well to manage Pikorua with the two of them. Invincible by comparison can easily be sailed single-handed, so I think what we loose in seaworthiness and speed in a smaller boat we gain in manageability which can also be a big factor in safety.

Marie-Jeanne and I spent the day getting their iPod installed on their laptop which turned out to be a pretty long winded job as the version of iTunes I had was not high enough for their iPod and the newest one had to be downloaded on a fairly slow Wifi connection. Next the tracks which they had been given by their friend Inke (crew for the Atlantic crossing) had to be manually removed from the iPod using some trial software I found which only did 10 tracks at a time. Otherwise iTunes would delete the lot when it first synchronised the iPod, blah blah blah. I can understand why most people hate computers so much! Anyway, we just managed to get it all sorted and synchronising when the power went off for the whole pontoon and the laptop went into standby disrupting the synchronisation and leaving it blank! Luckily this was resolved when the power was resumed later that night.

Kevin and Barry went to the boatyard to negotiate some work to straighten and stiffen Pikorua’s bowsprit which bent on the passage. Edwin the excellent boatyard manager, gave him a good quote and got someone working on it straightaway. He even gave Barry some marine plywood he needed to fix his pushpit for free. Later Kevin and I went back to check on Invincible and get a shower before we all went out to the newly opened Bosun’s Locker bar/restaurant for a nice meal out after all our hard work.