SJ log for Feb 26 - Fixman arrives for stove and sink repair

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

After I finished an abbreviated visit to the Sunshine School this morning and ran a few errands in town, I returned to the dinghy which I was accustomed to leaving at the new central dock closest to town. The dock is always busy at the middle of the day, but today it was even more crowded than usual, and now there was a third dinghy on the beach side (inside) of the dock where I had left my dinghy, and getting around that one to leave was going to be tricky considering how fast the water shallows off there. I started the engine and then decided to push my way around that dinghy using it as a brace – it took some finagling and patience, but eventually I got my dinghy around it enough that I felt I could round the corner and head out to deeper water without getting caught in the shallows. Some patience and perseverance paid off and I was soon on my way across the harbor back toward Princess Margaret Beach.

Wooden sailing schooner Friendship Rose of Bequia (if you look closely you an see a crew member near the top of the forward mast).

When I arrived it was to find Sacajawea almost hidden behind Friendship Rose, Bequia’s beautiful classic wooden sailing schooner painted pastel yellow and blue which makes day trips to Tobago Cays, Mustique and other nearby islands. It appeared they had tried to anchor in front of me, and they were swinging a bit too close, so when I arrived they were trying to move off a bit. They moved over from my starboard bow to my port bow, and then eventually they slid back until they were behind me, which seemed to be much more comfortable for them and me.

Later I went below and put on my swimsuit, came up top and donned my snorkel gear, and pushed myself over the side where I swam out to check my anchor again. I had wanted to check it again anyway since I’d been here for a week now, and as boats come and go daily I check it once in a while to be sure my anchor is not getting fouled with anyone else’s. I swam through the cool azure water following my anchor chain for about 100 feet until I came across the anchor itself. The top forks of the plow anchor seemed to still be buried as before, so after assuring everything looked copacetic I leisurely swam back to the boat, enjoying the feel of the cool water and the sunny day.

As I’ve mentioned before the water in this part of the anchorage is about 20 feet deep and visibility was good, so I could see a few fish and some coral below. After getting aboard I dried off before going below and threw a couple of fenders over the port side just in case Fixman came in a larger boat. He arrived around 11:30, just as I was starting to wonder if I should radio him to be sure he could find me. I was sitting up top writing in my journal when I saw a gentleman in a dingy scouting out the general area nearby, so I stood up and as he approached I stepped down onto the swim platform and when he got close enough to speak over the engine, I asked if he as Fixman and he said his name was actually Robin.

Robin squeezes himself into the galley cabinet to repair the sink hoses.

Robin retired here from Scotland and took over the "Fixman's workshop" from someone else. (I was later to find out that was Peter – of Mariann and Peter whom I mentioned earlier. Mariann is a friend I’ve met through the Sunshine School and she and Peter build a boat in Norway and eventually sailed it to the Grenadines). Robin appears to be in his 60’s, slim and with thinning white hair and a big smile. He was dressed in a grey tshirt and old slacks and a well worn baseball cap. He hooked his dinghy painter to a stanchion and hopped aboard and I showed him to the galley below.

Since he was here I decided to ask him look at the water system too, and it was interesting to see him cram his long body (good thing he’s thin) practically INTO the cabinet under the sink. I’m finding that working on boat systems requires a limber body, and some contortionist skills wouldn’t hurt since the joints and connections tend to be in very tight spaces. After looking at the broken pipe, he quickly diagnosed the problem and suggested we just remove the bad hose and then move the good hose into the slot previously vacated – so simple it was brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that? That job only took about 15-20 minutes and I had water again in the sink and I can now leave the water pump on without fear of in-house fountains.

Removing the stove to take it ashore for drilling out seized screws in the burners.

The stove repair was more complex, and after asking me what symptoms I had noticed earlier, he tried to open the top of the stove to check the pipes underneath. But the screws on the top burners are seized which made it impossible to remove the top cover. Fortunately we were able to pry it up enough to see that, as Tim had suspected, a pipe inside the stove that has rusted and completely corroded. While he worked we talked and I found out he had been living in Bequia three years, and his earlier profession in Scotland was racing cars. It’s always interesting to see how people wind up down here, and everyone has a different story to tell – all of them interesting.

When Robin lit both top burners the stove worked fine, but when he lit the oven it flamed up both inside the oven and up the back (what I saw last time.). He worked on it as much as possible, but it soon became apparent that he’d need to take the entire stove (he called it a “cooker”) to his shop where he could drill out those seized screws to get access to the pipes below. So he carried it up top and lifted it down into his dinghy, and soon he was motoring away with our stove braced under his arm in his dinghy as he headed back toward shore on the north side.

There goes my stove with Robin ("Fixman") for the next few days. Cold meals aboard for a bit.

Later in the day I went ashore again to use the Internet and charge my computer, and I also treated myself to lunch out today with a shrimp salad at the Gingerbread. Shrimp is not native here so it was actually imported, but I was in the mood for a cold lunch and it tasted great. As I was ordering I saw Kristina come in and I invited her to join me, and we chatted about working at the Sunshine School during lunch. Kristina is a young attractive woman with blond hair who teaches school in Switzerland, and she is spending 2 months here to experience working abroad. She mentioned that in Switzerland the teachers keep the same children through each grade, so instead of the kids moving to different teachers, they stay with the same teacher as they advance through primary school. That’s certainly a different concept than what we have in the US.

Kristina at the Sunshine School. She is a teacher from Switzerland on hiatus to teach here for two months.

After lunch she went about her errands and I spent some time looking for flights paid with points on Delta, United and US Airways to see if I could find something that would allow Tim to return to Bequia before I left on March 12. St. Vincent is hard enough to get to because the most direct route usually requires a connection through Barbados and sometimes Atlanta too, and then a hopper flight from Barbados to St. Vincent. And then to get to Bequia, there was still a one-hour ferry ride or another hopper flight. Tim and I were both looking and it seemed no matter how we tried the itinerary – via San Juan, St. Lucia, Barbados or Grenada – he just simply couldn’t get to Bequia from Maine in one day, so he’d need to overnight somewhere. This is just one of those places where that expression that “you can’t get there from here” is pretty apt.

Cheers! cy

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