Real Time Update - 17.03.2023 (Patreon)

Hey lovely people,

We are just about to upload our next episode but before we do that we just wanted to give you a quick heads-up on our current situation. At the moment we are anchored in St. Anne, Martinique.

A few days ago we were about to leave CUBA at anchor, to go for an extended hike. As a safety measure, whenever we leave the boat for a whole day or more, we close all of the seacocks. 

One is located right behind the engine, and it brings the raw water into the engine. Unfortunately, when we tried to close it the stem that connects to the handle and the ball valve broke. 

On the pictures you can see we actually held the handle in place with duct-tape.

The only solution to fix this, is to replace it. Now to replace a seacock with a 1 inch opening through the hull is a little scary. But we only had the choice to try or to lift the boat out of the water. 

Our biggest fear of changing the ball valve in the water was that we could break the skin fitting's seal by turning it. We knew this risk was involved but we tried it anyways. We managed to change the ball valve but the skin fitting did move and now we are left with a leak in our boat....

It is nothing that our bilge pump cannot keep up with, but we cannot leave the boat alone nor do we have a working engine. 

Because while we tried to change the seacock - we also broke the stem tube that cools the propeller shaft - Yeay!! It literally fell of just by touching it. 

In the past few days we made arrangements to sail to Carriacou, Grenada. There we can haul out CUBA for a cuarter of the costs that it would be here in Martinique. 

We are not thrilled to sail without a working engine and a leak in our boat. But it is only a days sail away and in our bilge, we got 6 large bilge pumps hiding that are capable of dealing with a large leak and fortunately our leak isn't more than 5 Liters per hour.

Hopefully, we will be able to leave next week at some point. For the moment we are still waiting for the veterinary permit for our furry crew. 

Once we arrive to Carriacou, we will give you more of an update about our situation, the haul out & repairs.

Lots of love from Enrique & Sarah ⛵💛🙂