Researching water makers

Position 10°40’614N 061°38’4184W

At anchor, Chaguaramas bay, Trinidad.

Hi dear friends, thank you for following our journey. Here’s is this week’s update.

This is our second week here and I did not want you to get the idea we were just ‘liming’, that’s a local word meaning many things depending on;

‘lime’ = to relax

‘liming’ = relaxed

Getting the idea!

Anyway, we have stripped down three deck board from down below and spend the last seven days building up the layers of rubberised varnish. The last coat applied only minutes ago. We will start on the next three tomorrow once these are back in place.

I have spent the week researching water makers, anchor winches and the latest thing to hit the chandlery out here, LED navigation lights. For those who might recall, on our trip here we were running low on power and we worked out the navigation lights require some 19 amps for a 10 hour usage’s. These LED lights use on 300 mAmps an hour, a saving of 1.8 amps an hour and could be a great asset on my next long passage which will take place next year, the destination, the South Pacific. This trip will take some 38 – 40 days and the navigation lights alone would require some 760 amps while the LED lights would require only a fraction of that amount. Less energy used means less energy I need to generate.

Also I might replace the inertia halogen lighting with the latest LED version, again requiring a fraction at around 120 mAamps. I have also arranged for the sails to have a look over and alterations to one mainsail to make it more efficient. Next I will be fitting a new lazy bag, this is a sail cover which fits at the bottom of the mainsail and basically collects it when being lowered. Making it easier to control when sailing short handed. Then a Bimini, which is a sun cover, covering the steering area. A replacement of the spray canopy then last of the canvas work will be a sun canopy to cover nearly all the upper deck to reduce the heat below by keeping the sun of the decks.

The last upgrade will be the fitting of two, 200 amp batteries, or better known as 8D’s. This will increase Pinta’s battery capacity to around 900 amps.

Life onboard:

It has been a little difficult moving around with the missing deck boards but we have managed.

The boat:

No work carried out other than that previously mentioned although she is showing a few rust stains but there is only so much you can do. It is too hot too work after 10:00hrs. After routine monthly checks both topside and below I noticed a fracture in the auto pilot bracket which connects the liner arm to the rudder quadrant, this will has been removed ready for me to take ashore tomorrow for repairs.

Whoops nearly missed this one so I will mention it here, I will also be replacing the current rope and chain (anchor) with 100% chain with a length of probably 80 – 100 metres, I am contemplating using ‘high test chain’ rather than American ‘BBB’ or the European ‘hot dipped galvanised chain’.

There are two reasons why, they are;

Greater strength per link than the other chain mentioned, for 8.7mm high test chain 3,900lBs compared to 8mm galvanised chain at 929lbs or 10mm at 1452lbs. With this greater strength come the option to reduce the size, say from 10mm to 8mm and at the same time not only reduce weight by some 30%.

Have a great week just ‘liming’, I know we will. Unfortunately that’s not true, to much work, shame.

Fair winds and calm seas.

David.