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Dominica Mas
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Queen Emma is both home and transportation but it's also a great big toy filled with smaller toys. Some were inherited when we bought the boat and have never been tried. Sails (rags): we have a sail called a spinnaker which basically fills the area under the forward cabin. We have two sail bags stashed in different places which were never opened. One labeled "storm sail" and the other "reacher". Susie tried a peek at the latter and exposed rusting fittings and quickly closed it up again. Opening it on board exposes us to the likely hood of rust stains everywhere. These things are big and awkward to carry so we decided to go down to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia where we could stay a day on a dock and roll them out on carts to a lawn for examination and cleaning. We also have friends there who seem to know what they are doing who had offered to help us try the spinnaker.
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Ste. Anne, Martinique
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We've been fixing broken critical items so long, it is actually nice to work on some finer points. We had been sitting in clear waters where we could take swim breaks and focusing on stopping leaks. We redid the mast boot. The mast boot should keep water from leaking around the edges where the mast passes through the deck. We put new gaskets on the forward facing windows and bedded (and re bedded) new hatches in the forward head. Now you can use the head in the rain and stay dry. All the bits which molded are cleaned up and staying clean. Shower curtain, salon curtains - much nicer without the black spots. We even got started on stabilizing some of the water caused delamination of the paneling. However, it is not all work and no play aboard Queen Emma. We passed through Dominica for Carnival there and stayed in St. Anne, Martinique for their carnival. But we have a mission now and stayed nowhere long.
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Skateboard Shopping in Le Marin, Martinique
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We've decided to take our toy out to play with others. Oyster Yachts (the builder of our boat)is holding a Regatta in Grenada in April. Half a series of races and half a series of parties, the regatta will be a chance to learn how to sail this boat. We figured it was an opportunity to ask our betters how you are intended to sail her and plunked down our 500 pounds (that's money to you Yanks). Turns out we will not be the smallest boat there. Only the second smallest.
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Butterfly in Ste. Anne, Martinique
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Not wanting to disgrace ourselves and our country, we hurried on down to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia to pull out the molding sails and at least clean them up. With the help of Tony Fessel, a Lucian, we dragged the sails out. They are big, heavy and awkward. We laid them out on the big lawn and spent a few hours freeing up the hanks (the hooks which actually connect the sail to its stay). We then repacked them and put them out where they could be used. While Tony gave the boat a good polishing, I located all the bits of string (called rope in the store and line aboard) we would need to use all these sails. Cleaned pelican hooks. Polished rails and fittings. Lubricated all the blocks. Susie polished the deck areas. We are ready.
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The sock slithers up
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But for one thing. Real racers fly a spinnaker on the downwind leg of the race. This is an enormous balloon of a sail which flies directly in front of the boat, pulling it along when winds are light and from directly behind the boat. Phil and Di on Matira claimed to have used their spinnaker. They were willing to help. We even recruited Mark, a Brit who looked big enough to help tame this monster. Winds had been light for weeks so things looked good for "flying the kite". Susie laid in some Mahi Mahi steaks and enough beer to keep the crew happy. We were ready to set out.
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| Pole, strings & rag |
Susie drove the boat out of the anchorage as Phil and I readied the pole. Lots of bits of string to hold the lower left hand corner of the sail down and out from the boat. We got the pole all ready and were just getting ready to get the spinnaker when the winds piped up. This sail is big. How big? It may be like the fish that got away. In my minds eye, I remember a huge expanse of nylon balloon easily 60' tall and 16' across. Nice sail to use to get the boat moving in 7 or 8 knots of wind on a flat, calm day. By the time we were ready to hoist, Susie was calling out 15 knots of wind, then 20. The captain remained resolute. We had the people. We had eaten the steaks. We had bought the beer. We had wrangled the pole into position. Damn the torpedoes. We hoisted. The giant condom which holds it closed slithered up the sail and it inflated. It's really beautiful: A dramatic rainbow design.
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| Big spinnaker |
The boat shot forward and was quickly surfing down the big northerly swells which had suddenly shown when we cleared the headland. Breathtaking. However, we were headed rapidly for Honduras and the swells were swinging around to the side. Quickly the clear eyed captain gave orders to bring it down. The way it is supposed to come down is one pulls on a line that is hoisted when the giant condom (called the "sock" or "dowser") goes up as the sail inflates. It is attached to a large ring of plastic which is supposed to collapse the sail as the ring descends. Caution, more salty language follows: the plastic ring, I was informed by Mark, is known in the UK as "the elephant's foreskin". I will call it a dowsing ring.
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| Rag wranglers |
The dowsing ring is attached to the big silken tube and when pulled on, should collapse the spinnaker and transform it from a raging, gigantic kite into a compliant, silken worm which can then be easily stuffed back into the fore peak. Pulling on our line had no affect. I sat on the rolling fore deck putting all my weight on the line to no effect. Little puffs of wind would lift me off the deck and no combination of easing sheets, easing the halyard, moving the pole could get the dowsing ring to come down. We really needed to stop the freight train before we would be faced with an unacceptably long slog to windward to get back to Rodney Bay. With all of us pulling on the free corner of the spinnaker and lowering the halyard, we were able to wrangle the mass of blowing, wet nylon on deck. A tangle of lines needed straightening. One tangle required pulling the whole thing through a loop of line and back along the deck. I was able to keep Phil from taking a knife to my lovely toy, but only barely.
We got the crew back to Rodney Bay after a fast beat in a rising wind. The wet, exhausted but happy crew was very grateful for the beer and eats and a very good story. The captain and crew spent the next day trying to dry out a mass of nylon larger than the boat (without losing it overboard in the wind) and then stuffing it back in the fore peak. There, I suspect it will rest for a few more years. We have decided not to enter the spinnaker racing class.
Next stop: Grenada; maybe we can out dance them.
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