Still in Marigot Bay, St. Martin

As I write this I am sitting on the porch at a nice yacht club drinking a beer and reading The Drifter (Sacramento Valley Porsche News). Ruth is attending a cruisers ladies lunch which includes a swim in the pool. We are still anchored in Marigot bay St. Martin. The wind continues to blow hard 20-25 knots with gusts to 35 knots for days on end. The weather station today gives small craft advisories with seas 7-11 ft. Besides, Ruth is still a bit laid up with a lot of black and blue, but getting better! It has been 2+ weeks since the accident. She made her first trip ashore last Tuesday a week ago for a promised nice lunch. Very difficult getting into and out of the dinghy.

Fixed the lights and switches in the starboard hull. That was a very interesting experience:

I took off the wall switch and found wire #72 to the switch hot with 12 volt power. The light fixtures have a # 70 wire coming to them? Puzzling how to get power to the lights? I crawled waay under the chart table and opened electrical box #7. Inside I found a connection for wire #72 and another for Wire #70, each in a different part of the box. If you connect the red and blue wires at the switch, you blow a fuse. If you switch on the light, then disconnect the wires from the switch, the light remains on. ???. It turns out that when you turn on the wall switch, it sends a very short signal to the relay inside the box which sends power through #70 wire to the light fixture. This relay stays on until it is blipped again by the switch. The switch does not go on and off like switches in the USA

The Heineken Regatta is underway here on the other side of the island. It is jam packed with boats so we stay anchored where we are. The race course came around our side of the island today. It was a colorful show, with many colorful spinnakers flying. Ruth and I like our spinnaker, but don’t fly it in winds over 20 knots. We don’t have a 5 man crew of hot shots. They will then crash and smash windward and get all salty, but then after the race go into the marina, wash off the boat and wash down some Heinekens. There appeared to be several, all carbon fiber Gunboat catamarans – made in USA – cost $2M+. They were often up on one hull with full sail going about 20 knots windward. One large 60 -80 ft. trimaran had 2 hulls out of the water. Yahoo!!

Still looking forward to getting this show on the road.