 Wild Horses is over 20 years old now and with constant moving (and bouncing through waves and swells), new problems seem to come out of the woodwork far too often. Most times these are small issues and quicky fixed. Other times, not so much. In St. Thomas, USVI, we took a mental inventory of the current woes of Wild Horses.
Yeesh. We knew some of these issues could only be fixed once we could get to a proper marine store in St. Martin. But, for many of the problems, we still had to troubleshoot the cause. Time to call in our boat buddies! Dave (Indigo Lady) is a retired physics teacher and Barry (Caretta) is an electrician by trade. Talk about a dream team! Slowly but surely Dave, Barry and Mike worked together to resolve most of our boat issues. Their successes include:
The biggest issue, and the most challenging for our dream team, was finding the stray electrical current that was depleting our engine zinc. The solution to these types of issues is usually found using a process of elimination. With a multi-meter, you test wire after wire, connection after connection, until you finally find the stray current. Yikes! There are a lot of wires on Wild Horses – this could take awhile. Thankfully, Mike had a good starting point. We had been having a weird buzzing noise with our water temperature alarm since the Bahamas. Could that be part of the problem? The guys set to work, poring over the electrical schematic for Wild Horses and getting their hands into the circuitry with multi-meters and jumper cables. Watching these guys work the problem was incredible. And, after six hours + missing lunch + many litres of sweat (it was hot!) + a hundred or so engine tests, they found the problem. Let me yell that from the mountaintops - they found the problem! Or, rather, the TWO problems. Problem #1 was a faulty trip breaker and, very close beside it, was problem #2, a burnt connection wire. The burned wire was likely a second victim of our engine issue back in Canada. Wow. I mean, wow. These guys are incredible and forever in our debt. While thanking them, their response was “but this is what boaters do, help each other” and it is true. Our community is always there for each other. Always. And that is what makes this community so special. We just happen to have a few of the star players in this community as great friends 😉. And, yes, if you were keeping track, our anchor light issue remains unresolved, but we will get to it. It is just lower on the priority scale. Until fixed, we will just keep our eye on “blinky”.
Even with all the boat fixes, we are still having a grand time and fitting in some pretty cool adventures. This past week, Lisa on Indigo Lady arranged for us to go to a pirate-themed Escape Room in Sint Maarten (Dutch side of St. Martin). Finding the activity was easy, but she also made sure that Ocean could come along. So cool!! This complicated things though – Lisa then also had to figure out how to get all of us plus Ocean from our anchorage in Marigot Bay to the Dutch Blonde Beach Bar (home of the Escape Room) in Philipsburg, a 20-minute drive by car, which we don’t have. Dog-less people have lots of options, of course. There are buses and taxis that run regularly between St. Martin and Sint Maarten. The solution for us? The owner of the Dutch Blond Beach Bar, Sunil Vaswani, offered his services! For just $40, he would come and pick us up (and Ocean) at Marigot Bay and return us at the end of our day. What??? I have to attribute this amazing opportunity to Lisa’s exceptional people skills converging with a restaurant owner who aimed to please. Incredible! And the car ride to and from the Escape Room wasn’t just a car ride. No, it was a guided tour of Sint Maarten provided by Sunil himself. Not only did he point out various landmarks but we learned about the economy, culture, history and geography of the island. Oh, and then there was the Escape Room. This was a challenging puzzle for the six of us. The concept was that we were captured by Blackbeard and had to escape the room using only the clues around us, many of which were in secured boxes that we had to figure out how to unlock. It was a fun and exciting 60 minutes. We failed to escape but we were super close. Perhaps we would have been successful if Ocean had used her search and rescue talents instead of sleeping through the activity!
This week has been jam-packed and we have thoroughly enjoyed St. Martin. Still, we have to keep moving. A few days ago we decided to move along to the Grand Case anchorage, a little north of Marigot Bay. And today, Friday, we arrived at St. Barts, another French island. We are happy to be on the move!
We keep heading south.! Check out where we are today by clicking the link below.
Oh my, we are thrilled to have Wild Horses back in the water. The work on the bow thruster tube seam was finished early last Friday morning. Rich at Daytona Marina & Boat Works did a stellar job of repairing the seam and sealing it to prevent any more water intrusion. We really appreciate all that Rich, David and the rest of the team in Daytona Beach did for us.
We were launched too late in the day on Friday to make our planned anchorage spot so we decided to spend the night at the Marina and to take off first thing on Saturday morning for Titusville. This is an easy anchorage right off the ICW - perfect for a quick one night stop over. Plus, it gave us a great view of the NASA rocket launch late afternoon on Saturday. It was too cloudy to see the launch clearly but we did get to hear the loud sonic boom! The other cool thing is that we were anchored beside a boat we knew from the Thousand Islands – “Parbleu”. Our sailing friends from Ottawa, Nick and Lynn, were the owners of Parbleu but sold it this past August to a couple from Trois Rivieres. It was great to chat with the new owners and to see Parbleu looking fabulous as she heads to the Bahamas. What a treat!  "Parbleu" in Titusville, Florida After Titusville, we continued south to Eau Gallie. This was another anchorage right off the ICW but it had easy access to shopping so we took the opportunity to not just stock up on groceries but we also decided to purchase a Honda 2200 portable generator. We haven’t been having power issues with the boat but we do like the idea of having a back up in case we are anchored for a long period of time with a serious string of cloudy days (where our solar can’t restore enough energy in our batteries). We found a Lowe’s that had the generator in stock but it was a good hour walk away. We love walking but carrying a 50 lb generator for an hour on our way back to the boat did not sound inviting. Enter Uber Pet! For just $14, we had an excellent drive back to our boat, with Ocean and our generator with us. Yes!
After Eau Gallie, we headed for Vero Beach. Our boat buddies, Sensai and Brise, are still 2 days ahead of us in Fort Worth so our original plan was to stay just one night at the Vero Beach anchorage and then to catch up with our buddies. But, with heavy rain in the forecast, we decided to stay an extra night. This also gave us a chance to do some shopping. There is an amazing Dive shop in walking distance of our anchorage and we loved the opportunity to finally pick up some wetsuits. Deep Six Dive Shop had everything we were looking for and more. We were able to pick up our wetsuits, a lobster snare, a fish knife and even our spear gun. Once we are in the Bahamas, this gear (plus lots of practice) will mean lots of fish and lobster dinners. Yum!!  Our new wetsuits and spear fishing gear But before we can fish in the Bahamas, we must wait. The weather doesn’t look good to cross the Gulf Stream for at least the next week so we will spend Christmas stateside, likely in Vero Beach. Yes, Vero Beach, that anchorage we were only going to stay in for one night. Now we are contemplating spending a week here. I guess that is why they call it “Velcro Beach”. That’s okay! We are in a lovely anchorage with access to a marina that lets us use its facilities (laundry, showers, dinghy dock), close to shopping and the ocean, and with good sailing friends that we have met along our journey. And we have lots of phone data to connect with family and friends back home 😊. Happy Holidays!!
Huh? Yeah, it has been a challenging week for both boat and crew. We arrived in Marineland early last week with our heads swimming with stuff on our “must do” list. Miami and our crossing over to the Bahamas is imminent and our list of things to get done before we leave the affordability and accessibility of US shopping and repairs is long. Once we are in the Bahamas, grocery stores won’t be available at every anchorage and, where they are, the prices can be fairly steep. Repairs and getting spare parts will be even more challenging. We need to do our Bahamas 3 month provisioning ASAP. And, boat projects? Certainly, we have a few small boat projects to tackle but the biggest challenge is the water intrusion issue in the bilge under our V berth. This issue first popped up in Cape May and has plagued us ever since. First, the bow thruster was leaking. We shored that up and the leaking abated… for a hot minute. Then we assessed the anchor locker and sealed several areas where water could find its way into the inner boat. This slowed down the water but didn’t stop it. Finally, in Marineland, we figured it out. Not only did we definitely confirm that the water was salty (eliminating condensation or a leaky water tank as possible sources) but we actually got down and dirty in the bilge, visually and manually checking every square inch…and we found it. We couldn’t see the leak but we could feel it. A small dripping bit of water in the starboard bow thruster tube near the hull of the boat. Yay…but yikes! This is not a situation we want to have when we cross the Gulf Stream. Marineland is not near anything walkable so we decided to head to our next anchorage and hope for the best. We knew we needed the boat hauled out and to have the bow thruster tube properly assessed (it sits under the waterline). But we knew we had our work cut out for us. Finding an expert to work on your boat in a timely manner has been the biggest challenge of this journey. There are a lot of them but they are all fully busy, usually booking new clients weeks or months into the future. Sigh. Arriving in Daytona Beach, we were discouraged. We decided to shake off our worries with a dog walk along Beach Street towards the touristy area of Daytona Beach. Within minutes, we came across Daytona Marina and Boat Works. A quick discussion with the receptionist and we had a remote “maybe” that they could help. A phone call from the owner later that same day took it to a “sure, I think” but not until the following week. It was the best we could ever hope for. Long story short, we were hauled out today at 0900 hours and the bow thruster was immediately assessed. Yes, the bow thruster tube was failing at the seam where it meets the hull. Apparently, the seam was not correctly sealed at installation and it was just a matter of time before water found its way in.
This is all very shocking and unexpected, of course, but the good news is that we have an amazing expert from Daytona Marina and Boat Works on the job (thank you Rich!!). Weather permitting, we will be back in business, heading south, by early next week. Whew.
In the interim, the crew of Wild Horses is nestled comfortably in a hotel. But we are not wasting our days! We have spent the last several days provisioning for the Bahamas (we have a rental car) and we still have access to the boat during the day so we will be washing, waxing, finishing small projects and otherwise making her feel like the awesome home that she is. It is not the adventure we were expecting but it is still part of our learning journey. And, guess what? If you were to run into us these days, you would still see big smiles on our faces. We are happy that our crew is all healthy and soon our lovely boat will be too. 😊
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AuthorVictoria is a hiker, dog-lover, blog writer and planner extraordinaire. Oh, yeah and she is kind of fond of living on a boat. Categories
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