Life in General

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Life in General

I snapped some pictures the other day on the way to the grocery store, and thought you might like to see what my life is like now, here on Isla de Roatan, just for a simple trip to the store. The dink ride, which I have shown in a previous post, is short - perhaps 1 or 2 miles. I arrive at the "Shrimp Dock", owned by "Mr. Bobby". Because of his benevolence, we cruisers have a safe place to park our tenders, and a nice walk to the big grocery store, or other stores. It also saves a few dollars, should you need a taxi. I have never yet locked the dink there, even though I am sure our outboards and junk in the tender is a great temptation for thieves. But they seem to value their jobs, and respect us. Most times, they do not even have eye contact with me, although a couple times a lone man will smile and nod with a friendly, "Hola."

I find my way through whatever shrimp boats are parked there for maintenance. (I learned yesterday that shrimp boat owners are putting a lot of money in repairs and maintenance here, in hopes of profiting from the oil spill in the Gulf that is ruining the US shrimp boat fleet.)

Here is another tender tied up and you can just make out my green-painted 15hp Yamaha, in the bottom left of the picture.

Another shot of the same, with my dark brown back pack sitting on the dock. (Thanks, Denise. It is still going strong, but the salt air and water is taking a toll on the zippers.)

At the end of the dock, I walk over these boards that will make moving something heavy on a handcart a bit easier. Forward, and I am faced with a nice walk up a hill. Sometimes a chihuahua comes out of one of the homes or buildings to harass me a bit.

Up this hill - it is a longer climb than it appears here - past a lovely home on the left. Probably a manager's or child's of Mr Bobby, as the vehicles there are always clean, and new, and expensive looking.

This is the house that is on my left as I climb.

On my right are several beautiful pastures, usually with 15-20 Brahma cows, but the day I took these pictures, they were no where to see. But is a beautiful climb.

The second pasture:

Obligatory chickens and rooster, running around, wild, as far as I can see. On the left side of this hill is a riding pasture and stables, as I guess Mr. Bobby likes horses and riding. He has a riding ring out at the front of the property, in front of his house, which also has a guard shack, with a guard always with a 12 ga slung over his shoulder, which discourages me to take a picture of his home.

If you look carefully at this home, yiou will see 3 front doors. It is the home to 3 diffferent people.

The obligatory broken-down school bus, just at the crest of the hill.

And another 100 feet, and you are standing near the road, looking down at "Eldon's", one of 2 grocery stores.

Snapped this picture the other day. This guy is not like the other iguana's here. He is a carnivore, and I enjoyed watching his hunting prowess and strategy for 10 or 15 minutes, as he passed.

So, that is a little taste of my day to day life here on Roatan.

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About Annah Foster

Annah Foster is a 1980'ish Morgan 462. She is a USCG Documented vessel and the year on the document is 1979, which I believe is the year the keel was laid. She is known as a ketch, which means she has 2 masts, and the aft mast is forward of the rudder. She also is a center compartment boat, which means the helm is located between the 2 masts, which are, by the way, the main and the mizzen. She is equipped with roller furling on the jib/genoa sail which is the big triangular sail on the front. Her empty weight, or rather displacement, is 33,000 lbs, which is fat for her length. Mr. Morgan believed in thick fiberglas for strength and I am told that at places it is often found to be 2 inches of solid fiberglas. Her keel has encapsulated lead weighing 8,000 lbs.

She boasts 2 staterooms, - v-berth forward with separate head and twin beds aft with separate head, including the famous bathtub. The configuration of the aft stateroom could easily be changed with a change in the mattresses to an almost queen berth, port to starboard, but currently she has twins, running fore and aft, with 2 large mattress cushions separating them. There is also a ladder and sliding hatch aft for egress in an emergency, to the aft deck, which I call the back porch. I bought some director's chairs for it and have sat there many evenings enjoying a drink and sunset. The aft deck is also the location of the propane gas grill, storage for the 2 outboard motors, Yamaha 4hp 4cycle, and a Yamaha 15hp 2 cycle, which power a new Apex Lite 10'6 inflatable dinghy, which can hang from the installed davits.

The main sail has 2 reefing points on jiffy reefing and the mizzen has 1. No lines lead to the cockpit but the jib, main and mizzen sheets.

She has a Switlick 6 man life raft mounted aft the mizzen mast. And, an emergency tiller aboard.

She is equipped with a Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine, powering a Hurth transmission and turning a 4 bladed Max Prop, which feathers when sailing, and reverses pitch in Reverse so that she has the same thrust as in Forward. One unique design flaw is that the propeller shaft exits the boat at 3 degrees off center, making the port prop walk in reverse, even worse. The engine is equipped with about a 90 amp alternator with a very good voltage regulator.

She also has a Westerbeke 5.7 kw diesel generator, which produces 110 v AC power, and charges the batteries thru a 40 amp charger. I also have a Honda 1000 watt gasoline powered generator for emergency 110v, and an automotive battery charger aboard.

She came with an old Windbugger wind generator, not quite perfectly mounted. Stowed in the V-berth, there is a replacement AirX marine wind generator and 8 foot mast waiting to be installed, along with the controller, and 2 solar panels, which are half the possible wattage the controller can handle.

She has 3 4-D AGM batteries for the house bank and a type 18 start battery - all are 12volt.

The 4 gallon water heater will heat with both engine cooling water and 110v AC power and is equipped with a mixing valve to prevent scalding.

Tankage - Water - 110 gallon port and 85 gallon center tanks
Fuel - 175 gallons
Range when new at 2250 RPM is almost 800 nm.

Currently, her refridgerator and freezer are 110 volt AC, with several holding plates each which must be manually started and stopped. She has waiting to be installed, 2 Cool Blue 12 volt systems, with automatic controls, but truthfully, I don't know where the new holding plates will fit.

Electronics -
She is equipped with 2 VHF marine band radios, one at the helm and the other at the nav station, with repeater at the helm, and a hand held low power VHF 'walkie talkie'. Also, at the nav station, she has a Single Side Band HF radio - SSB with a Pactor 2 modem making her capable of downloading NOAA weather fax and Sail Mail emails and Grb files. onto a dedicated IBM laptop. She has as primary a Raymarine E-80 Chartplotter at the helm and a smaller Garmin Chartplotter for back up at the helm, a handheld Garmin Chartplotter, and an older Furuno GPS at the nav station. She has an older Raytheon black and white 24 nm radar at the helm, with a repeater at the nav station. She has a RapidFix 406 EPIRB, emergency locator beacon, that is hand activated. She has a new Clarion AM FM CD player, with input for computer or MP3 player on 3 sets of individual speakers - cockpit, salon, and aft cabin.

For those who do not know me, I named her for my parents - Annah Margaret and George Foster Doak. It is through their beneficence that I am able to live this dream and I felt that I should dedicate my boat to honor their memories.