Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, BVI

After another loaded hint from my Mum, one of our most loyal readers, I was prompted into catching up on the blog today. I therefore spent the day at the computer, I had been dreading trying to compose something interesting as we’ve been in Cane Garden so long now, but as I sat down to write it I realised how much we’d done.

Kevin went over this morning assist in winching Mike up his mast to resolve a problem with his anchor light, as calm conditions in the bay were suitable this morning. Mission successful, problem identified, though typically more parts needed to fix it and none are available locally so they couldn’t complete the job today.

Meanwhile, Kevin was keeping busy, he was inspired by assisting Mike with servicing his winch to attend to our mast mounted winch. He had read on a forum from another Mahe owner that had had difficulties doing his because the brass winch had been mounted on an aluminium bracket cause corrosion due to the dissimilar metals. Our last boat was aluminium and we know only too well the problem that it can cause. Kevin managed to remove it without too many issues and stripped it down, cleaned it out and re-greased. The position of this winch means that it is particularly expose to the elements and had received more than it’s normal share of Canarian dust. It was still functioning well enough but having serviced our other winches we could now detect the difference. Kevin made a plastic gasket to insulate the metals from each other and remounted the winch. Another good job done, we’ve often discussed how difficult it must be to keep on top of such jobs when not living aboard.

Finally, Kevin spent this evening setting Mike’s fishing rod up for him, which had been left tangled up by a previous charterer, the coiling mechanism having jammed. Kevin stripped it down and loaded some spare line and gave him one of our lucky lures, so there could be no excuses for not catching! Jean is a particular fan of fresh fish and poor Mike has been set a challenge now after hearing how well our fishing was going.