Well… so much for the idea there would be plenty of time to write a weekly blog, keeping you all up to date on our adventures! In reality, boat maintenance has been kicking our butt and taking all our time and energy. It seems we’ve finally turned the corner to a more manageable load and am now finding the time to put pen to paper. So mea culpa on the tardiness and I promise not to fall into too much of an island way with the blogs, “no posts tis week, check back next week mon!” 
Apologies aside, it’s time to catch you up on where we are and how in the world we got here. I’m writing you from the hammock on our boat in a beautiful emerald colored bay of St John.
Not bad, right?
Certainly hasn’t been this pretty the whole time though…
Our adventure started in earnest after we arrived in Puerto Rico. We spent a week getting the boat prepared for launch, Checking out all the thru-hulls, replacing zincs, getting the bottom painted, replacing our prop and cutlass bearing. For the the last two jobs we contracted with Bobby from FJ propeller whose machine shop was about a 100 yards from where Heritage sat on the hard. I can’t imagine it’s any boat owners dream to get to know the shop owner so well your invited to thanksgiving at their house but can honestly say Bobby was the best thing to happen to us.
More on thanksgiving later and back to the matters at hand. It’s a joy owning a boat such as Heritage where you can sail the world over and won’t find another like her, but along with the uniqueness also comes plenty of quirks.
The heavy weight and medium horsepower on Heritage demanded a very unique propeller, combined with the fact that the shaft was metric made finding a propeller in the states a needle in a haystack sort of deal. Luckily, after only about 40+ phone calls we tracked one down in New Jersey and had it sent on down.
The next problem was changing the cutlass bearing. Usually a straightforward job, It involves taking the old one off the shaft and putting on the new one. When inspecting our shaft though we found no way to grab the old cutlass bearing. With nowhere to grip onto we had to move to plan b, this meant dropping the rudder and pulling out the shaft. Also, not that tricky of a job except for when the shaft keeps getting stuck on something… two days later of trying we finally homed in on the problem, apparently a previous owner had this same problem. Their solution was to bang on the shaft with a hammer, causing the metal to expand, and the shaft to get more stuck, Brilliant! Gotta love a used sailboat. So shaved down the shaft where it was expanded and voila, shaft was out and we were back on track. All the while we’d been moving on all of our gear to the boat and trying to make it all fit (impossible) and ordering a ton of parts we thought we’d need for the upcoming trip, including some fancy new solar panels, woohoo, more power!
The week wasn’t enough but soon we had to hop on a plane to fly home for a bit, myself to help my parents move out of our childhood home, and Alyssa to Florida to spend some quality time with the fam before being gone so long. We rendezvoused a week later to head to the Bahamas by plane to check out wedding spots, had a great time and then flew back to Puerto Rico for the splash of Heritage feeling like luxurious globetrotters.
We returned and our girl looked all ready to go with a beautifully painted bottom and shiny new propeller. We waited with bated breath, as the big girl was lifted up and motored over to the water, to our astonishment, she still floated and the engine even started, Away we go!!! Well, at least all the way to the end of the dock to a slip to continue boat work… but it was a big day and we were happy.
We set to work again but didn’t take long for us to get our first visitor. Thea had called a couple days earlier to say she had some time off and so we got things somewhat presentable and we were welcoming her before we knew it. There was still much to do and I was itching to get to it, but Alyssa had a friend here now and fun one in a 2-1 vote over boat maintenance. On a recount after I looked at the surf report it became a 3-0 landslide. We booked a cheap airbnb over in rincon, on the other side of the island and took off in a rental car.
Next two days were a blast, the waves were well overhead so the girls left me to surf all day while they went off exploring. Even trying their skills at boogie boarding at a smaller break. I caught some good waves and had some good waves catch me, I was fine but unfortunately, my new surfboard got a little dinged up. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed though so spirits stayed high and the drinks went down easy at night.
Two days in Rincon flew by and before we knew it we were bidding adieu to Thea at San Juan airport. We used the stop in the big city to pick up all the boat parts we could fit in our tiny rental car and headed back to our humble abode.
With sore arms I dug back in to boat maintenance. Luckily, reinforcements were on the way. Our friend Sean, also from Connecticut, was due the next day. Sean’s skill set with everything maintenance/repair seems to know no bounds and he certainly was our ace in the hole for getting our boat into fighting shape. Over the next couple weeks we would conquer a laundry list of items on the maintenance list, I’ll throw out the few I can remember to give a rough idea without boring with too many details:
-Repaired coolant leak (two different times in different spots)
-repaired/replaced broken transmission oil removal line
-Broke and repaired fresh water pump on engine (long wait for the part)
-Installed solar panel system (big project that essentially turned into rewiring the entire boat, one look at our old wiring and we knew it had to be replaced. Whoever did the past wiring needed a prize for creativity and to never be allowed to touch wiring again)
-installed new batteries with new battery cables
-Fixed leak in fresh water system
-installed new water heater
-Finished standing rigging (also big project)
-Installed new SSB wiring
-repaired wind generator and rewired
… and a ton of small things too numerous to list but can be so critical to the boat running right.
It has been a busy couple weeks, with the floors torn up, tools everywhere and two guys smelling a way that hadn’t been sniffed since the Neolithic era. It was a shock Alyssa stuck around within a mile yet alone in the same boat.
We fit in fun as well, completing repairs in beautiful anchorages, lobstering at night, and visiting giant waterfalls and trying to swim to the underside (the only time Sean and I managed to smell slightly normal, only took a couple thousand gallons delivered at pressure any firehose would love to reach).
One of the great days was thanksgiving, we had needed some serious tools for some repairs and Bobby had given us a run of his great machine shop. Generosity didn’t end there when he invited us to his rainforest retreat for turkey day.
The directions he gave to us we’re very indicative of Puerto Rico, almost every road seems to be labeled 3. So we took the 3 to the 3 to the 3 and then pass the lake and go till your in the woods and it will be on the right. Needless to say getting to the actual spot was an adventure in and of itself but the surroundings were beautiful and we somehow arrived in plenty of time. We suddenly understood why it was referred to as the rainforest retreat. So high up in the mountains of the Puerto Rican rainforest we were the only people for miles and
truly were in the heart of the rainforest. As Sean and I ran off into the wilderness we left Alyssa to play with the kittens and help get the feast ready. Puerto Rican thanksgiving did not disappoint and as soon as we had helped ourselves to thirds we felt the all too well known nostalgia of a thanksgiving nap! We left dinner with new friends, full bellies and Alyssa begging for a kitten.
Following our thanksgiving feast we said farewell to Puerto Rico and headed for St Thomas. Our weather report had said 5kts and calm seas the morning of our departure from Culebrita (a beautiful little island off of PR and beach so perfect it was worth the stop over). After rounding the shallows on our way out of the bay we were hit with 15-20kts and some serious swells. As soon as we made the decision to truck it across and just have a bumpy 3-4hr crossing Sean’s says,
“hey ya the dingy looks a little crazy back there…”
As Alyssa and I turn around the dingy is slipping through her tie downs and flying off the boat! Sean runs and jumps onto the dingy platform and grabs an attached rope, I do one better and hop down into the flooding boat while Alyssa takes over Heritage. What the hell just happened!?
We’d tightened the dingy straps before we’d left PR a couple days before but we forgot that our dingy was leaking air! She had lost enough to slip her straps and now was in dire straits. I put in the drain plugs and started bailing! I had Alyssa toss me our portable bilge and it soon had things under wraps. I filled up the dingy with air to be safe and took stock. Alyssa had slowed Heritage down and was doing her best to make the ride easy for me getting towed.
In the slow motion fall, I’d seen the worst happen to the motor as it was held underwater for a short time. I feared the worst and knew if we didn’t get it running soon it may never run again! I gave a light tug on the starting line and the heavy resistance told me water had found its way in, my heart sank a little bit but there was no time for moping. Luckily, had Sean to guide me through the steps. I pulled the spark plugs and pulled the cylinders through a couple times to force the water out, we dried the spark plugs best we could, wd-40 everything on the engine and tried to crank her again. No resistance but no luck getting it started either. Tried everything in the book to get it going, using starting fluid and working on the plugs some more but to no avail.
The ache in my back from trying to pull start the engine told me to take a second. While taking the breather I looked at the ridiculous scene. I’d been so engrossed on the engine I hadn’t noticed the wind picking up to 25kts, we were darn near where we started and Alyssa looked like she’d had enough steering in this mess. I figured I’d done enough to get the water out of the engine and getting it running could wait. I hopped back in and we turned tail to get back in the calm bay at Culebra. We found a nicely protected anchorage, navigated the tight channel and finally got a breather once we picked up one of the mooring balls, whew, That was interesting!
My back didn’t get any rest as it took quite a few more pulls but we had the motor running by sundown and the victory lap around the anchorage felt pretty sweet even if all we managed was to beat up our boat and selves and now be about 1/4 Mile further from our destination than we started.
The promised 5 knot winds showed up the next day and we had an uneventful crossing to the Virgin Islands where we’ve been ever since. We picked up some more boat parts, got our watermaker fixed and have been slowly checking things off the to do list before our first big crossing to Turks and Caicos!
Things were finally getting under control as far as the maintenance load, I took the opportunity to get out spearfishing for the first time. Managed a nice yellow jack that made for a lovely poke bowl. Everything was great till we all woke up that night feeling terrible! the very first fish I bring home and it’s no good, what luck? What was supposed to be a fun last day for Sean was anything but as we were all down for the count with seriously upset stomachs, oye! Feeling slightly better the next morning, we said goodbye to Sean as he headed back to colder climates, Private bathrooms and a bed longer than 5ft 10ins.
Heritage is finally starting to look like she’s in fighting shape in large part to his efforts so we can’t thank him enough for his help at the start of this adventure. Thanks bud! And thank you for hanging in there for this longer than usual post. We’ll get the next update out sooner, telling about our last couple days in the VI and our first big crossing to Turks and Caicos!!
