Long Productive Weekend in Horta

Well, the weekend here has turned out to be quite successful. We arrived on Friday afternoon with a number of issues to be resolved, and discovered a serious new one, but it looks like everything is now “go” for departure on Tuesday, June 17. The issues involved the wind instrument, the depth instrument, the GPS sensor for the chartplotter, a need for propane, a loose radome, and rig tuning issues.

After dropping off the propane bottle on Saturday, we went around to the harbormaster’s office to see about coming in from the anchorage, and they told us to go to the jetty and raft up there. We up-anchored, and got into a raft to fill up fuel tanks, and then went to the jetty to raft up for the rest of the weekend. We were originally the outermost boat of 3 in the raft, next to a Beneteau owned by a couple of fussy Brits, who fretted over the possibility that our dinghy might hit their topsides, and could we please shutdown our windmill, and take off our shoes when we crossed their boat, and go forward during the day, but aft at night, etc, etc. We acquiesced to their requests, and got ourselves nicely tucked in for the weekend.

We spent Sunday doing grocery shopping, in the very modern supermarket up the hill. We bought so much stuff we had to take a taxi back to the boat, which was quite worthwhile because the taxi was able to go out on the jetty right next to the boat. The afternoon was spent stowing groceries, and then we swapped places with the inboard FBs, who said that they were going to leave the next day, so since AS and NL were going to be gone all day, we decided to do the swap on Sunday. Rxc used the dinghy as a tugboat to move both boats out from the deep raft, and then back into place. Quite well done, and even the FBs were satisfied that we could move boats carefully and re-raft.

In discussing rafting with other boaters here it is curious that few seem to have much experience with it, like we used to do all the time in the Chesapeake. They use all sorts of really heavy lines to tie the boats together inside a very well-protected breakwater, and are all quite apprehensive about having another boat alongside. This prompted a sea-story session, relating a number of memorable raftups on the Chesapeake, and interaction of large rafts with exciting weather and changing tidal flows…

rxc then went up the mast to see about the wind instrument. It turned out that the sensor on top of the mast was not quite tightly screwed into its socket, and the tail of the vane was a bit distorted, so some judicious bending straightened it all out, and it now indicates the relative wind much better. He also aligned the Windex indicator better, so it is now symmetrical.

On the way down he took some time to look over the state of the rigging and even pulled off the cover of the radome to see if there were any loose wire connections, but all the wires were secure. Fortunately, though, he noticed that the radome itself was not securely attached to the mast. In fact, it was missing 5 of the 12 attaching screws. The mount for the dome has four feet that are screwed to the mast with 3 screws each. One foot was completely unattached, while two other had one screw missing, and all of the remaining screws were loose. The bolts that attach the radome to the mounting feet were also quite loose. This was a major discovery, as it identified the source of the some of the screws that had been dropping down out of the sky on us. Unfortunately, the screws were all metric, and we had none on board, so repair had to wait till Monday AM. It was a miracle that the dome had not come off at sea, and it was lucky that we decided to go up the mast to check out the rig here in Horta. After securing the worksite, AS and NL went off for dinner with some friends, while rxc and ch had another dinner ashore at Peter’s café sport. We also noted that the WiFi connectivity became noticeably worse after this boat swap.

On Monday we were up early. NL and AS went off for the day to an adjacent island to do some hiking and sightseeing, while rxc and ch spent the day being productive. This included (1) tuning the mast so that it is now straight and vertical, and hopefully the roller-furling main will be easier to operate; (2) re-doing the propane connections in the propane locker to try to trace a very slight propane leak that has been draining the bottles faster than expected (this was not a safety issue, because the box drains overboard); (3) pulling out one of the tool buckets and emptying it of seawater that has dripped in during the gales, so that the tools do not rust too much; (4) heading over to the marine supply place to find screws for the radome, which were available, and purchased; (5) talking to the electronics technician at the marine supply place about the depthsounder, and getting the suggestion to apply a dealer reset to the instrument; (6) finding out that they actually had a Raymarine GPS unit available for sale, if necessary, so that we could do some exploratory surgery on the installed unit; (7) coming back to the boat and performing the reset on the depthsounder, so that Voila!, it now works; (8) opening up the cable into the GPS unit and finding that it was in fine shape, and was probably only flaky because excessive twist probably got some of the individual wires too close together; (9) going up the mast and re-attaching the radome securely to the mast; (10) going further up the mast and applying some tie-wraps to some wires and antennas that needed to be better constrained; (11) going off to buy some more paper towels; (12) picking up the full propane tank and a replacement bulb for one of the flashlights;(13) thanking the technician for his idea about resetting the depthsounder (he was quite surprised, because he had tried the same thing today on another boat that was showing the same symptoms, and it had no effect); (14) stopping at a local bakery for afternoon coffee and a snack; (15) filling two water tanks in preparation for departure tomorrow.

We now have essentially one task left, and that is hoisting the dinghy onboard, before we can leave. We will also have to pay our slip fees and checkout.

It is not clear when AS and NL will be back tonite, so rxc and ch will probably be dining out again. Hopefully there will be more restaurants open, giving us a better selection than last night.

The FBs did not leave today. They said that there was not enough wind, and they hate to motor, so they would prefer to lie here against the jetty than bob around in light airs. They really seem to be purist sailors, which is nice to see, rather than sailors with goals and missions and timetables to meet. On the other hand, they are also extremely low-tech, with no radar or solar cells (but 2(!) windmills) on a 46 ft boat, and they also collect rainwater, which they manage to use 3 times before it goes overboard. Ms FB commented that when she gets back to the UK, she will never be able to take a bath again, because the idea of bathing in an amount of water equal to the contents of one water tank is too distressing. They much prefer showers out of sun-shower bags. We did not comment on the size of our water tanks, or on our watermaking ability… They are actually nice people, once you get to know them. It was too bad that the initial contact was so confrontational.

The boat inboard of us is another Brit with a Jeanneau 40 CC, and he has some significant steering problems due to a leak in his hydraulic steering system, and a failure of the autopilot (a dual failure!). Some of were quite surprised to hear that a production boat in the 40 ft range had hydraulic steering, but he explained that there is no was to run cables thru the interior of the boat, so hydraulics are the only solution. He is a second (or maybe third) owner, and laments the way the boat was “upgraded” and maintained by the previous owners. Very nice guy. We are starting to wonder if Jeanneaus as a class are prone to steering issues…