St Martin

One of the reasons to sail to St Martin was to get new batteries, as there are well stocked ship chandlers here, with especially Budget Marine and Island Water World's huge shops. I had been in contact with Budget and ordered six of the big batteries (165 Ah), just in case, which is about 44 kg and cost USD 422 each. I also bought a Battery Load Tester which together with my voltmeter, I can now better test the batteries. 

My test reveled that one of the 185 Ah batteries were loosing the voltage, once I put the load meeter on, as it dropped to 9 V. Then I did what most sailors tells me is incorrect, namely to only change that faulty battery and not to dump otherwise good batteries. People always state that one need to change all the batteries if the are linked together. Six of my eight batteries are linked to give 24 V and this is in one bank. But to change them all is yet another large cost, so I got just one and until now it works well and is keeping the voltage fine and the charging is OK again. I monitor the 24 V bank daily and it looks promising. So I cross my fingers that it will work in the long run, but if it does not work, I will have to change them all.

As some of you know the two crew I had agreed to sail with me for the Pacific, did not work out well. First "W" from Canada was pushing us to get to Antigua and Chris and I had to rush north for his arrival on 29 March. We were installing the second hydraulic hose for the back stay when he arrived and New Dawn was dismantled and a in big mess. But we finished the work and it all worked well and I put back the panels, floorboards, etc., so New Dawn looked fine again and W could install himself. The following three days W did not stop taking especially to Chris about his girlfriend and we found out that, contrary to what he had  told me, he was not really an experienced sailor and seemed to have problems even making the most simple knots. In any case the day Chris flew home W announced to me that he was too homesick and flew home the day after. That after he was only on-board for four days and after he wanted to sail with me to NZ and be on-board until mid November. He is 61 years old and might have to grow up a bit.

The second chap was Kerry, a nice Scott of 48 years old, that had already circumnavigated during the last three years. He was highly motivated to sail with a HR-53. He was on-board an yacht sailing from Jamaica to Cuba and it transpired that the skipper and another crew members had, in Jamaica, been "smoking" and the Cuban sniffer dog went berserk as it could small ashes, but there were no drugs on-board. So they ended up for six weeks in jail and I heard nothing from him before he arrived in Guatemala, where he apologised and told me of his experience and that he was happy "to be alive, but in a state of chock". Ugh....

Thus, I got a bit fed up and have now changed the plan.