At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Dinghied ashore to Lagoonies. Noticed that all of the water in the cove down here is completely brown. Wonder why ? Doesn't smell like sewage, and we haven't had any heavy rain. [A couple of days later, Charley from "Cameloha" told me it's probably very fine creek-silt churned up from the very shallow bottom here. But I'm not buying that explanation.]

Did Wi-Fi ($3 for Diet Coke plus tip). No word from KISS about the bracket. No word from the car rental place about the repair cost. Lots of Friend requests on Facebook ! Downloaded various NPR podcasts to listen to later, and saved lots of web pages to read later.

Disposed of a couple of bags of garbage. To the office, where I exchanged 4 books in the book-exchange. Overheard someone upset that the Wi-Fi was so busy today; maybe they're in a slip and feel they should get preferred access. It's prime season now, so lots of people in slips and a fair number in the bar.

Stopped by IWW to get some gasoline, but there was a boat waiting for fuel, no attendant in evidence, and a dismasted trimaran being hoisted into the yard. So I gave up and headed home.

Saw an odd-looking grey powerboat in one of the marinas; never seen a bow/deck like that one (pic). [A reader says: "... designed by Norman Foster, a much-heralded English architect specializing in skyscrapers ..."] Saw two more grey/black/silver powerboats, but with normal bows. Interesting color, but seems that it would be hot in the sun and invisible at night. Marinas look to be full of expensive boats now; only Plaisance seems to have a few empty slips.

Back to the boat for lunch. Wasps still buzzing around, and I killed three of them and sprayed a nest inside the boat's old air-horn; wasps have nested in there before.

Ashore again in midafternoon, over to the airport side. To the Shell station dock; got 4.95 liters of gasoline for $5, which is about $3.85/gallon. Pump had a dollar sign next to the number, but really was showing NAF's, not dollars. Moved the dinghy to Portofino marina. Walked to the post office, which is a small branch office but has an armed guard and tellers behind bulletproof glass, I guess to protect money used for money orders. Mailed two letters to USA for $1.65 each.

Then to the Gourmet Marche small supermarket, which seemed to have same prices as the related Grande Marche I went to a few days ago. Bought a few things, including a bottle of wine: a 2007 Dienhard Riesling for about $9. Haven't been able to find a 9V battery in the supermarkets here; they have plenty of batteries, just not 9V. I need one to test the auto-pilot problem.

Headed back to the boat. Noticed a couple of sailboats anchored right off the end of the runway; doesn't seem very smart to me. And how do they stand the noise ? I'm further away, and sometimes the takeoff noise wipes me out.

Salad and cheese sandwiches and a glass of wine for dinner. Very civilized. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Some interesting things for sale on the morning cruiser's net: a kayak, and a rowing dinghy (but only 7 feet long). Maybe tomorrow I'll ask if anyone has a sailing dinghy for sale.

The cruiser's net is on VHF 14 at 0730, and has several sections: weather, security, arrivals/departures, buy/sell/swap, general. A good way to start the day.

Took a look at the batteries. They're all Trojan 6-volt batteries. Four of them are fine, and I'm using them every day. The other three each have one badly damaged/eroded terminal, and I suspect that some of them have bad cells too. I was hoping to find two decent batteries out of three, but the voltages I see (after leaving them disconnected and self-discharging for a month or more) are 5.3, 4.7 and 3.9 volts. I had been trying to use the first two, but getting decent contact on the damaged terminals was becoming near-impossible. So I think I might as well get rid of all three of them. I'll make do with the four good ones; new batteries are $160 apiece.

Made a small start on the "get rid of the genset" project, taking out pieces of the sound shield. It's a 35-year-old Onan MDJE that I haven't used in more than 5 years. I'll probably end up throwing it all in the trash. But if anyone has the same model and wants some vital parts, speak up now ! I think it's based on a Yanmar block; it's a two-cylinder diesel. Whole thing weighs 400 pounds or so, so I'm going to take it out in pieces. Getting the generator core and the engine block out will be challenging, because of the weight. If I get some valuable-looking pieces out intact, I'll offer them free on the cruiser's net.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner. The pasta was almost too bug-intensive to use, but I combed out most of the bugs and ignored the rest. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

I spoke up on the cruiser's net this morning and said I was looking to buy a sailing dinghy. Other boats said they wanted to buy a Mercury 15 prop and whisker poles, both of which I have and want to get rid of. So lots of radio traffic after the net, and then two people stopped by the boat. A sailing dinghy for sale turned out to be an inflatable with a 9.9 outboard on it; not what I want. I'd forgotten that my prop was for a Mercury 20, which I thought was the same as a 15, but turns out not to be. Both guys who stopped by had Mercury 15's, but neither wanted my service manual or leftover spare parts. And "Snowaway" will call me tomorrow about the whisker poles.

Guy from "Meander" stopped by with his dog, looked at the prop, and I gave him an outboard zinc to try later. He just did a 27-day crossing of the Atlantic with his wife and 14-year-old son on a catamaran. Nice guy, from Australia, I think. Then Charley from "Cameloha" stopped by, and looked at the prop and the whisker poles. He said the shorter, thicker pole probably is a "reaching pole", for use with a spinnaker when it's so far out that the sheet has to be held clear of the shrouds with a second pole. The longer, thinner pole looks too thin for a jib on a boat the size of mine, and the fitting on the end looks strange, so who knows what it is ? He's been to St Martin a few times before, and just sailed down from Maine a couple of months ago. Interesting guys, both of them. I'm finding a much more interesting and well-travelled bunch of sailors here than there were in the USVI's.

Was reading Friedman's book about globalization, when it occured to me that:
internet searching is like hunting, and
blogging is like agriculture.
[Just thought I'd record that amazing insight.]

After lunch, launched the dinghy and headed ashore. To Lagoonies, and saw a nice-looking woman in a bikini working on a boat as I approached. Disposed of a bag of garbage and four pieces of genset sound-shield. Water down here has brown patches; I think it's growth of some kind. To Budget Marine, and bought a 9V battery ($3). Went walking around the neighborhood to explore a bit and get a little exercise. I always seem to go walking in the hottest part of the day. Found a nice NAPA Auto store, various other businesses, and then a fairly cheap supermarket. Got groceries, back to the dinghy, and back to the boat.

Later, took off another piece of the genset sound shield, put it in the dinghy, and headed ashore to Portofino marina. Put the piece in a dumpster. To the mail store, and the wind-generator bracket hasn't arrived (probably hasn't shipped yet). To Palapa marina, to exchange 3 books in their book-exchange. Walking back, passed a very beautiful woman going the other way. I smiled and said hello, and she ignored me completely. Beautiful and intelligent ! Back to the boat.

Richard from "Snowaway" stopped by to look at the whisker poles. He (and family, I think) started cruising from North Carolina about 9 months ago, and has been down to Trinidad and back up already.

While Richard was aboard, I noticed a lot of yellowish dust on my solar panels. Must be volcanic ash from Montserrat; the wind's been from the south a lot in the last day or so. Up onto the pilothouse roof and wiped the panels clean.

Saw a motorboat with a guy and decent-looking woman in a bikini tie up to a nearby small sailboat and go aboard for a little while. Heard them tell someone else that the boat had been broken into while someone was in Dominica.

Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches and an apple for dinner.

Very still and warm night; uncomfortable. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Loafed most of the morning. Tried running the auto-pilot board off the 9V battery, and that seemed to fix the problem. Will have to test it further. But it looks like the noise is getting into the board through the power connection, not the relays on the board.

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Paid $3 for soda and tip, did a couple of hours of Wi-Fi. Still no email from wind-gen-bracket people or rental-car-repair people.

Back to the boat. Couple from "Loveshack" stopped by, to offer hull-diving services. They realized they'd talked to me before, when I was anchored in the other spot, before Christmas. I said one reason I'd moved from there was to get away from all of the high-speed traffic, and they said they'd been hit by a high-speed motorboat a little while ago. He just wasn't paying close attention, while going full-throttle close by anchored boats, and he clipped the port-aft corner of their skiff while they were in it, I think. They complained to the Coast Guard and the motorboat got a ticket.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Looked out a port after midnight, and there was the Big Dipper and the North Star. Pretty sure it was them; never seen them before. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey morning. Rain at 9:30. Cool, damp, still. Rain at noon. Again at 12:30. Stayed grey all day.

Tested auto-pilot board running from 9V battery, this time with electric motor connected, and it still worked fine. Problem definitely is in power connection.

Took off last two pieces of generator sound-shield, and a piece of exhaust pipe.

Rain at 2:30 and 7:30.

Salad and cheese sandwiches and a glass of wine for dinner.

Ran engine for 30 minutes to charge batteries.

Grey and rainy all night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey again, and frequent rain.

Dumped 7 gallons of rainwater from buckets to water tank, and 5 gallons to jugs.

Starting to get some sunshine around 11.

Dumped 4 gallons of rainwater from buckets to water tank, and 2 gallons to jugs.

Dinghied ashore to Portofino marina. Disposed of a bag of garbage and two pieces of sound-shield. Got a few groceries in the store.

On the way back to the boat, saw a yellow sailing-dinghy with a guy in it, outboard tilted up and no sail. Looked like he might be in trouble, so I swung by to check. Turns out he had a small trolling motor running, and was making about a tenth of a knot. He also had solar panels, and oars. We chatted for a minute, he thanked me for checking that he was okay, and I headed home.

Weather totally grey again by 2:30.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner. So many bugs in the pasta that I threw almost a whole box of it away.

Ran engine for 30 minutes to charge batteries.

Rainy all night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Grey, breezey and gusty, cool, very rainy.

Around noon, getting some sunshine between the rainsqualls. Plenty of rainwater in the buckets, but I think the tanks are full, so no point in emptying the buckets.

Some real sunshine by 1. Gone by 2 or so.

Salad and cheese sandwiches and a glass of wine for dinner.

Ran engine for 30 minutes to charge batteries.

Rain stopped in the evening. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny at 8, grey and rainy at 9, sunny after that.

Dinghied ashore. First to Plaisance marina, to look for a book-exchange. Lots of security guards. Found a tiny bookshelf in a cabinet, but it was locked and everyone was busy.

To Lagoonies, to do Wi-Fi ($3 for soda and tip). Still no email from KISS. But they have charged $187.14 to my credit card, a few days ago ! That's a good sign. Still no email from the car-repair people, and my brother says no paper mail about it in NJ. Downloaded a lot of podcasts: Car Talk, News From Lake Wobegon, etc.

To the Budget Marine dock, and walked to Daily Extra supermarket. Got groceries and back to the boat.

Grey and rainy at 2:30. Sunny by 3:30 or so, and for the rest of the day.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-mushroom-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Nice, non-rainy night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Someone seized control of the cruiser's net to give a long, impassioned plea for help to take supplies via boat to the earthquake victims in Haiti. It went on and on; I turned off the radio for a while. And they have a DVD of past relief missions they want to show at one of the cruiser's Happy Hours; sounds like fun.

Back on the cruiser's net, I offered my old navigation-light spares and pieces for free to anyone who could use them. Rob on "Linda" came by later and picked them up.

Did a bucket of laundry.

Pumped up the dinghy tubes. Dinghied ashore to Portofino marina. Disposed of genset parts. To mailbox store, and my package has arrived ($3) ! To the grocery store for an item, then back to the boat.

The wind-generator mizzen-bracket looks pretty good (pic) ! Price was $140 (not the $145 or $245 on the web site) plus $47 shipping. Metal is pretty thick, 5/16" aluminum. But the holes are pretty close to the edge, and the instructions show it being mounted with only the very last set of holes being used. Wonder if I should drill a second set of mounting holes in bracket and mast. And the sides are just far enough apart to handle the width of my mizzen-mast; not much extra room for vibration-damping stuff.

Up onto the pilothouse roof with the bracket, and tried placing it on the mizzen-mast. Quickly became apparent that I can't do this job from the roof; the bracket sticks out too far and upwards, and it has to be placed high on the mast to clear the mainsail's topping lift. And once the generator is on the mast, I won't be able to reach the blades from the roof, to tie them off or remove them in case of a storm. Everything will have to be done by climbing the mizzen-mast.

So got out the mast-climbing gear (pic). Up the mast, and tied the bracket in place at a reasonable-looking height. Back down to deck, to look at it from various angles (pic) and try to measure how far the blades will stick out and whether they'll come too close to the topping lift. Looks like it will work as placed, but may be better to move the bracket up another 6 inches, as close as possible under the spreaders and shroud attachment points. [During the night, thought more about it and decided to put the bracket above the spreaders; what's another 3 feet of climbing ?]

Climbed the mast again, and brought the bracket down. Enough for today. Want to think about this a bit.

Opened up the access plate at the base of the mizzen-mast. Looks like the wires inside the mast (backup VHF antenna, and RADAR) are inside a PVC pipe inside the mast. Good news and bad news: less likely that I'll damage the wires when drilling holes, but if the first hole lines up with the pipe and I can't move the pipe, I'll end up with an extra hole in the mast. More bad news: looks like the path of the wires through the base of the mast and the ceiling of the cabin is not straightforward; I may have to consider drilling a new hole through the deck to pass the generator-cable through. More to think about.

Salad and tuna-salad sandwich for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Patched a cracked water-bucket with JB-Weld.

Sunny at first, then grey by 9. Supposed to be rainy all day tomorrow, I think. Rain at 1.

Just couldn't get started this morning; loafed all morning. But after lunch, put in a good 3 hours of work on the wind-generator project. Drilled two more mounting holes in the bracket. A pleasure to work with farly thick aluminum, something I've really never done before. Easy to drill. Spent a lot of time sanding and filing the inside of the PVC collar to make it slide over the vertical pipe. Spent a lot of time filing and cleaning the threads on the outside of the collar and the threads on the inside of the generator housing, so they mate smoothly. Drilled and tapped holes in the pipe. Kit came with a wrong-size screw, but I found the right size in my stock aboard. Drilled holes in the grey PVC pipe-cap, then installed the screws to hold the cap in place, with some TefGel to prevent galling (pic; screws are holding grey cap in place; white collar will screw into bottom of generator; grey cap will keep white collar and generator from lifting off).

Put the generator on top and screwed the collar into it, to see how everything goes together (pic). Collar sticks a little and generator doesn't rotate very easily, but most of that's because I need to grease a couple of surfaces before final assembly. Looks good, except that I'm still unsure about those mounting holes being too close to the edge of the bracket. I think I'll ask a machinist about them tomorrow.

Chili and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Ran engine for 20 minutes to charge batteries.

Light rain off and on all night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Fairly sunny morning. I guess the forecast rain arrived last evening instead of today ?

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Disposed of a bag of garbage. Showed bracket to machinist, and he said it probably was okay, he wouldn't have drilled the holes so close to the edges, but it probably was okay. Walked to IWW and bought three bolts with washers and nuts for total of $15. Back to Lagoonies to do Wi-Fi ($3 for soda and tip).

Finally got an email response from the car-repair people, just to say "your claim is being processed". Over 3 weeks to process a very simple claim; the body-shop probably was done with it the day after I gave them the car.

After Wi-Fi, walked down to Daily Extra supermarket and got a few groceries. (Always liked this street sign: pic.) Back to the dinghy, back to the boat.

Plenty of rain starting at 1:30. Watched the weather all afternoon, thinking of climbing the mast, but it never cleared.

Dry-fitted the generator onto the bracket again, using lithium grease to lubricate it. But I managed to mangle the spring in there, which in turn damaged the grey PVC cap a little. Then after I took the generator off, I managed to drop a big pair of pliers on it and damage the hub threads a little. Yoicks !

Worked on some rubber pieces for vibration-damping. Cut and drilled them a bit.

Salad and cheese sandwiches and a glass of wine for dinner.

Very windy all evening and much of the night. Wind is supposed to die out by the weekend, just in time to ruin the "Classic Regatta" race. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Loafed in the morning.

A little drilling to finish off the rubber pieces. Gathered lots of stuff into the pockets of the bosun's chair. Then climbed the mizzen-mast, carrying a drill trailing an AC power-cord connected to the inverter. Just then a tour of jet-skis came by, rocking the boat slightly. Climbed up to the spreaders and tied off a line to catch the drill if I drop it, and another line running down to the bracket, sitting on top of the pilothouse roof.

Measured carefully, making pencil-marks on the mast, then held my breath and started drilling. Aluminum chips blowing off into my face; adjusted chair height to get a more convenient angle on the operation. First hole through, 1/8" diameter, and bit didn't hit anything inside the mast. Over to the other side, drilled another hole, and again nothing hit. Put my eye up to one hole, and I can see through to the other hole on the other side ! Success ! No obstacles, and the holes seem to line up pretty well.

Lots more drilling, shuffling progressively bigger bits into the drill. Uncomfortable moments while I have to use both hands to fiddle with the bits, meaning I don't have a hand free to hold onto the mast. If something fails in the climbing system, I'd fall 20 feet and probably get badly injured.

Finally get the holes up to 3/8" diameter. Put the drill away, get out a bolt, and run it through the mast. Looks fine. Take bolt back out and pocket it. Then use the line to hoist up the bracket, and work to run bolt through the bracket, with various washers and rubber pieces in the right places. Then lift the bracket to the mast, struggle to line everything up and run bolt through mast. More fiddling to get it lined up to come out the other side. Should have brought up a hammer and wrench to help with this stage; bolt doesn't want to slide very easily with weight of bracket on it. Finally get it through, but looks like my rubber pieces are too thick; not enough thread sticking out of far side of bracket. Skip a rubber piece, get nut onto bolt, and take a rest.

Use a line to tie bracket up to level, pivoting on the single bolt in place, and it looks good. Decide I've done enough for today; it's been a long session up the mast. Climb down, get out of the rig, turn off inverter, start putting stuff away. Bracket looks pretty good from down here (pic). Seems to be pretty straight.

More work on rubber pieces and rubber washers, to get ready for more climbing tomorrow.

Dumped 2-3 gallons of rainwater from bucket to water tank.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-saffronrice and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

During the night, wondering about how the blades fit onto the wind-generator. The blades assemble onto an aluminum hub, which spins onto the threaded shaft of the generator. But nothing locks the hub onto the shaft; normal rotation of the blades keeps the hub spun tight against the body of the generator. Not a problem for a generator on a pole, which can spin 360 degrees if the wind clocks around. But a mast-mounted generator can't spin 360 degrees; there isn't clearance for the blades. Still not a problem if the boat spins with the wind, at anchor. But if the boat can't spin, and the generator gets back-winded, the hub-and-blade assembly could spin right off and come crashing down. Some situations where this might happen: boat anchored but pinned in place with a stern anchor; boat in marina slip; boat on the hard in a boatyard; boat sailing downwind.

So, how to add a locking mechanism to keep the hub from spinning off the shaft ? There is an unthreaded square section on the end of the shaft; maybe I could make something to hold onto there. No hole drilled through it, for a cotter pin, and I think it's stainless steel (hard to drill). Thought for a while, but no brilliant ideas. Maybe just a bunch of electrical tape wrapped tightly around the shaft, held on with seizing wire ? At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny day with light wind, mainly from S and SW.

After an early lunch, up the mizzen-mast again. Took out the double-wide rubber piece and put in the smaller pieces I made, and they look good. Used a square piece of wood to adjust the bracket until it was square to the mast, giving it a slight upward tilt because I assume it will "settle" a bit when I put 20+ pounds of wind-generator on the far end of the bracket. Marked the holes to be drilled, tilted the bracket up out of the way, and started drilling. Had to wait for some jet-skis to finish waking the boat.

Finished the lower holes, and they look good (that is, nothing in the way inside the mast). Swung the bracket down and tried to push a bolt through the new holes, and one of the holes is off by maybe 1/16". Swung the bracket up and started drilling the middle holes, and also widening that lower hole in the direction it needs to go.

A guy came over by dinghy, and I took a break to talk to him. Turns out he has a computer problem, and heard somewhere that I work on computers. Not really, but I offered to help if I could. But he has an Acer that suddenly won't start up Windows, and neither he nor I have an Acer startup CD, so I said he'll have to take it to a computer shop.

Finished drilling, swung the bracket down, pushed bolts through, and that lower hole still isn't right, and one of the middle ones needs a slight adjustment. More drilling, and finally I was able to force all of the bolts through, mainly by screwing them through with a wrench. They're very tight against the sides of the holes, but that's what I want. A bit of a hunt for one last rubber washer that was hiding from me, then I had all of the washers on, applied some TefGel to the threads, and put the nuts on. Tightened everything quite a bit, and it looks good ! Nice and solid. Took the extra line off the bracket, untied various pieces of gear from the spreaders, and climbed down. Looks good from deck level, too. Pics. Stowed everything and took a shower to wash aluminum particles off me.

Rested a bit, then launched the dinghy and headed ashore, mainly to get off the boat for a little while. To Portofino marina to dispose of some garbage and about 10 pounds of old boat-equipment catalogs. Then across to the abandoned dock at Plaisance to walk to the big Grand Marche supermarket. Water very shallow, but poled the dinghy in close to the rocks and was able to step ashore. Walked up to the main road. Got cash at the ATM. Into the supermarket; found it was $14 to get a "membership card", so I didn't do that. Bought meat, boullion cubes, Munster cheese and some cheap cheddar, and a bottle of 2004 french Bordeaux for $6.

Back to the dinghy, stepped down between two rocks, and of course a broken bottle reached around the side of my sandal and poked a hole in the side of my next-to-little toe, and it started bleeding nicely. Second time I've been cut while landing at this dock. Back to the boat.

Got a lot of sun today, while up the mast and in the dinghy. Burnt on forearms and tops of thighs.

Salad and cheese sandwiches for dinner.

Very still evening and night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny and still morning. Must be a biker rally today; been hearing lots of motorcycles on the nearby road since 7 AM. Kept going until 9 or so.

Weather getting grey by 10 or so. Did a little work in the cockpit, looking for a way to run the generator wire without having to drill a nasty hole through the fiberglass deck. Found a path: down the outside of the mast, across the deck and into the cockpit, through an inspection port, into a locker, then there's an open path down into the engine compartment. Can use this locker-to-compartment path for the GPS-to-autopilot wire, too, if I ever get that working.

Dinghied down to the south end of the Lagoon. Water is brown again, and this time it smells like sewage. IWW closed; never have gotten a handle on their open hours. On to Lagoonies, where they're closed as usual on Sundays, and the Wi-Fi password from Thursday no longer works (they've been changing it frequently). Plugged in to AC power and used my laptop for a while anyway. To Budget Marine, where they were closed and the gate to the street was locked, so I couldn't walk out to the supermarket. Back to the boat.

Weather stayed very grey most of the afternoon.

In the afternoon, found a place to mount the wind-generator control box, and mounted it on the wall inside the engine compartment. Then measured and figured out a list of all of the wires and connectors I'll need to finish the electrical part of the installation.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner. Such a luxury to have pasta with absolutely no bugs in it.

Ran engine for 30 minutes to charge batteries.

At 8, plenty of rain and wind, followed by lots of wind for an hour or more.

From 11 to after midnight, rain, very heavy a few times, and lots of wind. Then very windy most of the rest of the night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Looks like the primary anchor may have dragged 10 feet or so in last night's wind. No problem. Supposed to be windy all day today.

Dinghied ashore. To IWW, and bought $66 of electrical parts (mostly wire) for the wind-generator installation. To Lagoonies, to do Wi-Fi ($3 for soda and tip). Disposed of a bag of garbage.

Finally got an amount for the repair of the small scrape on the rental car: $548 ! Now I have to figure out a way to print it, so I can pay it; I don't have a printer aboard. Then mail a copy to the people who hit my car, so they can reimburse me. Could ask my brother in NJ to do a lot of the mechanics for me, but I'll see if I can get it done here so I don't have to bother him.

Ordered flowers to be delivered to Mom for her 80th birthday. What a scam these online places have: at the very end of the ordering process, by the way: extra $10 for Saturday delivery, $10 standard delivery charge, $3 "care and handling" charge, $3 tax. Got rid of the Saturday delivery; bit the bullet on the others.

Bank deposit I mailed from here on 1/11, fourteen days ago, still hasn't shown up in my account.

Now Lagoonies has started charging $1 to plug into the AC power, while doing Wi-Fi. Partly because they just had to buy some new equipment for their Wi-Fi network.

To Electec to look for a switch for the remote-starter; no luck. To Budget Marine. Disposed of some alkaline batteries. They didn't have the switch either. Asked about disposing of golf-cart batteries. Then walked to the supermarket, got some groceries, back to the dock, and back to the boat. Very windy conditions. Rough dinghy ride.

After lunch, dinghied down to the Red Cross building. Spent 3 hours helping to sort donated clothing into boxes, to be put on a container-ship soon going to Haiti. Sorting the clothing was difficult, because the women doing it didn't have a very clear system for what went where. Then I got on to sorting the shoes, and that was a lot clearer: search for matching shoes, tie the two together, and dump the pair into a big box. Two or three of us did maybe 500 pairs of shoes. Lots of unmatching shoes left over at the end.

Rough dinghy ride upwind back to the boat.

Salad and cheese sandwiches and a glass of wine for dinner.

Very windy night, with sudden huge strong gusts. The next morning, heard on the net that a boat (out in Simpson Bay, maybe) had their rope anchor line cut through on a wreck, and they ended up on the rocks. Coast Guard and rescue service pulled them off. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey and rainy in the early morning, then sunshine by 9. Wind easing, but still getting some big gusts.

Dumped 2-3 gallons of rainwater from bucket to water tank.

Drilled a second hole in the tail of the wind-generator. This is for the line that will keep the generator from turning far enough for the blades to hit something. That would be a very bad thing, so I decided a little redundancy would be good.

Took the spring (pic) out of the base of the generator; I've decided I don't need it, and it will be hard to get the spring properly inserted into the hole on the grey cap when setting the generator on top of the mount.

Climbed the mizzen-mast. Lubricated the grey cap on the generator mount and the pipe the white collar will turn on. Put a little TefGel on the PVC threads. Then used a line to hoist the generator up to the mount. Fortunately no strong gusts while I was doing that; it would have bashed the generator into things. With the generator secured, pulled up the thick wire and fed the end of it down through the center of the pipe.

Climbed up a little higher, got a leg over one spreader so I was facing sideways to the boat, and lifted the generator up and set it on top of the pipe, and a little wiggling got the last of the wire to slide down, so I could get the generator on all the way. Glad I took out the spring; getting that in properly would have been very hard. Screwed the white PVC collar up into the bottom of the generator, and it looks good ! Doesn't pivot quite as freely as I expected, but probably installing the blades will fix that. Climbed back down. Looks good from deck level. Pics.

A little later, did the electrical wiring. Oops: almost came up short on the big length of 3-conductor AC wire. Ended up with a spare 6 inches instead of the spare 2 feet or so I wanted. Partly the fault of the big ugly splice I made out in front of the mast (pics). Slathered it with caulk to protect the wires and connectors from water. Looks hideous, but I can't think of a better way to do it with strain-relief. Maybe later I can find some kind of junction-box to put there ? Or some kind of clamp to hold the cables solidly next to each other ? Good enough for now.

Ran the wire in through an inspection port ( pic; a bit cheesey, but it avoids drilling a hole in the nice fiberglass of the deck). Opened up the electrical panel in the engine compartment (pic), and installed that end of the DC cables. (Here's how I install lugs on cables: pics). Need to exchange a couple of lugs for slightly different sizes in order to finish the job, making the connections into the control box (pic).

Chicken-onion-cabbage-mushroomsoup-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny morning. On the VHF net, the controller started out saying we're going to have winds of 30-35 for the next few days, then realized he had the WindGuru web page displaying speed in kilometers/hour instead of knots !

Started to put together the blade-hub assembly, while waiting for rainclouds to pass, and ran into problems with a couple of the bolts. Wouldn't go all the way in, for some reason. But they went in fine from the back. Maybe some gunk in the threads.

Dinghied ashore. To Lagoonies, to dispose of garbage and use the book-exchange. To IWW, to return a couple of cable lugs and buy different ones, plus some shackles ($9). Looked at a waterproof junction box to replace that hideous splice, but the box costs $20, so I decided to think about it.

Then to Business Point in Simpson Bay marina, to print the car-repair bill and do internet and use the book-exchange. $5/hour for an internet connection that wasn't very good, but I needed to get the printing done, and that wasn't too expensive (25 cents/page for B+W). Had a lot of trouble uploading pictures and log file. Finally got it done. Paid $4.25 for the printing and effectively a half-hour of internet. Back to the boat.

After lunch, unbolted and bolted the blades and hub, and finally got all of the bolts all of the way in (pic). A bit shocked to read that a replacement set of blades costs $300 ! (Later found price of $195 on KISS order form; forget where I saw it as $300.) They look like some kind of cast epoxy to me. They have to be carefully balanced, both when made and then before installation.

Dinghied across to Portofino marina. To the Post Office, to mail two letters to the USA about the rental-car repair. Last time I mailed two letters to the USA, it cost $3.30. This time it was $5.15. I didn't try to ask why. To a pharmacy, to buy some multi-vitamins, then back to the boat. Rough, wet trip back in gusty winds.

Did most of the wiring to the wind-generator control box. One of the screws on the switch wouldn't grip, but I swapped it with another screw and that worked. I'm a little nervous about the close tolerances for the terminals inside this aluminum box; don't want anything to short out, especially the two 6-gauge cables coming from the batteries. Put some electrical tape on the inside back wall of the box, and some liquid tape on edges of the big cable lugs. Put everything together except the final positive cable from the battery; I want to let the liquid tape dry, and think about how to keep from having a short.

Rain at 4:45.

Added oil to the outboard.

Salad and tuna-salad sandwich and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Spent a fair amount of time during the night lying awake worrying about a short-circuit in the wind-generator control box. Decided on a strategy. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Up early, to work on the final connections in the wind-generator control box. Turned the battery switch to "off"; now a short as I do the wiring will short only current coming from the solar panels, and there isn't much of that right now. Better to have a 1 A spark instead of a 200 A spark. Used cable-ties to hold the wires and cables in position, made the final connection and tightened the nuts, slid the front of the box down onto the rest of the box, did a couple more cable-ties, and it's done ! Turned the battery switch back on, and everything's fine.

Listened to the VHF cruiser's net, then launched the dinghy and headed ashore, taking tools and the blade-assembly. To Lagoonies before they opened, and used two of their tables to do the blade-balancing (pic). Each blade has a strip of sticky-backed soft lead or solder tape on it, to be trimmed away as necessary to make the blades balance. You position a blade horizontally, let go, and see if it rises or falls. That tells you whether to trim some tape from that blade. When done, each blade should stay horizontal when you let go of it. Took an hour or so to do it; one blade was consistently too heavy, and I kept trimming away 1/8" slices, when I should have been going in 1/2" jumps. Ended up trimming 3 to 4 inches off that one blade before I had the balance as good as I could get it.

Stowed everything back in the dinghy, then walked up to the ACE MegaCenter store. Bought a plastic junction box ($1.50) to try on that hideous splice in front of the mizzen-mast. Also bought more crimp-connectors and some caulk. Back to the dinghy, where later arriving dinghies had wedged me in solid. Had to find someone in the bar to unlock their dinghy and move it out so I could get out. Windy, wet ride back to the boat.

Took apart the ugly splice in the wind-generator cabling, and installed the junction box I just bought. The box could be a little bigger, and a little easier to make watertight, but it seems to work and looks a lot better. Pic.

After lunch, prepared all the parts I need to take up the mast, and started climbing. Hoisted the blade assembly up right away, so it doesn't get blown off the pilothouse roof and damaged. Installed the shackles in the holes and retied the rotation-limiting lines. Slathered Tef-Gel on the generator shaft. Then straddled the spreaders, reached forward with the blade assembly, and started screwing it onto the shaft. A bit tricky, since it's almost at the limit of my reach, the hub doesn't really "bite" on the tapered shaft until you get it screwed around 4 or 5 times, and I don't want to drop my $200 blades onto my $900 solar panels. I should have left the rortation-limiting lines untied; this would be easier if I could turn the generator body further sideways. But I get it onto the shaft.

I end up untying the lines anyway; can't get enough reach forward to tighten the hub onto the shaft and install lock-nuts. Get the generator sideways, use pliers to hold the shaft (which has a squared-off end) while I hand-tighten the hub firmly. More Tef-Gel and then a nut, and then a problem.

I want to put on two nuts and then seizing wire tight on the shaft, to keep the hub on the shaft in case the generator gets back-winded. KISS says just leave the hub alone on the shaft; normal rotation will keep it threaded on. But they don't account for the case of a mast-bracket mounting, where it is possible for the generator to get back-winded. Theoretically the hub could spin right off the shaft and come crashing down. So I planned to add two nuts and a seizing. And I tested this before putting the generator up. But that was before I bolted the blades onto the hub. The width of blades and bolt-heads means I can get only one nut onto the shaft, with barely enough room for a seizing afterward. Not good.

So I put on only one nut, and struggle for a while before getting the seizing on. Not sure it will hold. I'll have to consult KISS and other owners. Might have to bring the whole generator down again and have a machine-shop drill a cotter-pin hole sideways through the end of the shaft.

Anyway, I climb down. Looks good from deck (pic). Time to throw the switch (the electrical brake has been on, so far), and let it make electricity ! So I throw the switch, run out on deck to watch it spin, and ... nothing. No spin. Maybe the wind isn't strong enough ? But I hear a few nearby generators spinning on other boats. Finally we have a gust strong enough to spin my generator, and it looks good. But by the time I get below to see what the battery monitor says, the wind has eased and the generator is still again.

Soon we do get enough wind to see some results, with charging voltage spiking up to 14.3 or so from the 13.9 the solar panels were producing. I can barely hear a low-pitched hum as the generator spins, and even on deck the "swish" of the blades is not very loud. Will have to see how it sounds in 25 knots of wind; we're probably getting 10 knots with gusts to 15+ today.

Still, a good feeling: project pretty much done, and generator working ! And I didn't fall from the mast, or donate any blood, or drop anything, in the process.

Carried one of the damaged batteries up into the cockpit; I'm going to get rid of them in a few days.

Chili and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Listening for the wind-generator a bit during the evening, and a couple of times in strong wind-gusts I jumped out of bed to look at the battery-monitor. Most of the time I was too slow. But a few times I saw the generator putting out more than 10 amps, in stronger gusts. In tonight's light, gusty wind, the generator is just taking the edge off the nightly drawing-down of the batteries (by the refrigerator). At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Grey dawn. Overnight, batteries usually go down to 12.40 V or 12.35 V under load, but last night they went down to 12.45 V, even with fairly little wind.

I'm slowly getting a read on the wind-generator. No bits have flown off it during the night, which is good. It's very quiet, even in reasonably strong wind. But it takes a good bit of wind to get it started turning. Once it starts turning, it will keep turning in lower wind, as the wind gust tapers off. Given its bursty nature, I'm glad I followed instructions and just wired it straight to the batteries with no charge-controller in the way; don't want to waste any of each burst of energy.

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Paid $4 for soda and tip and Wi-Fi. Skype-called Mom (tomorrow is her 80th birthday), and actually got her on the line ! We chatted for quite a while; very nice. Flowers I ordered for her should be delivered today.

My bank deposit went through on 1/25; mailed it from here on 1/11.

Dinghied to Budget Marine, walked to supermarket, got a few groceries. Back to dinghy and back to boat, through windy conditions. Battery-charging voltage up to 14.5 and higher; solar panels never get it that high by themselves.

Disconnected and hauled the other two damaged batteries up into the cockpit, in preparation for getting rid of them (pic; notice that each has one bad terminal). [The history: I bought the batteries damaged, about 3 years ago, for $10 apiece. The terminals had been snapped off in shipping. I drilled holes into the remaining lead and put in heli-coils. Worked fine for a year or more, then the acid started coming up and corrosion started working down, and it was a fight to keep contact going after that.]

Checked water in the four good batteries, and only a couple of cells needed any topping off.

Mostly grey afternoon, with little solar power but some wind power.

Salad and cheese sandwiches and a glass of wine for dinner.

Fairly quiet evening, but then a fair amount of wind from midnight to 3 AM, then plenty of wind from 3 AM to 6 AM. Wind very gusty, as usual here. Saw bursts where the wind-generator was putting out over 20 A. The control box got a bit warm: the diode block in there is converting from 3-phase AC to DC, and probably converting about 1/4 of the AC power into heat in the process. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny morning. Batteries never got below 12.55 V last night; not bad after a grey afternoon.

A little headachey this morning, from that one glass of red wine I had with dinner yesterday.

VHF cruiser's net had a report of people who came back their boat at 2 AM to find two thieves aboard, perhaps armed. So they left, and will report it to police today. Apparently this has happened a fair amount here in the past.

A question on the net from someone who's gotten all screwed up about how you check in and out of the two countries on this island. Sounds like they're checked in to both countries simultaneously, which is wrong. And I don't understand why anyone is checked in to the Dutch side any more, but I see plenty of boats anchored on that side. Here are the basics: the Dutch charge something like $30 to check in, and another $35 to $50 per week to stay (depending on boat size). The French charge $8 to check in; stay as long as you like for free (except if you anchor in Marigot Bay). So why does anyone check in to the Dutch side any more ? Going in and out of the Dutch side does give more direct access to the islands to the south and east (St Bart's, Saba, etc). I think most people just don't know the rules.

Grey weather by 9.

Launched the dinghy. Hauled the three batteries out of the cockpit, across the deck, and down into the dinghy. Over to Budget Marine, where I lifted the batteries onto the dock, and used my little grocery-carrier to cart them around the building to leave them near the warehouse entrance. Couldn't get the rail of the carrier up, so I had to bend over while trundling the barriers around the building. My back was pretty tired by the time I got done with them.

Over to Palapa marina. Used their book-exchange. Then walked down the street with my gas-can to the big Shell station, only to find that they're out of gas ! [Later found out that the station is changing ownership.] Back to the dinghy and a wet, windy ride back to the boat.

A little rain at noon. Heavy rain at 1:40. More rain at 2:45. Rain at 3:50. Rain at 5:45.

Grey all afternoon. Saw wind-generator charging voltage up to 15.7 VDC in one strong gust. But then at 4:45 I was surprised to see the battery voltage at 12.45 V under load. I guess the solar power has been zilch and the the wind power comes in such brief bursts that not much current is going into the batteries. And yet the surface (no-load) voltage is high.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Battery voltage pretty low overnight; had to turn off the refrigerator a couple of times. Probably should have run the engine to charge batteries, but I hate to do that. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny, windy morning.

Aha ! At 12:30, noticed battery system voltage down to 12.8 under load and current draining out of batteries, even though plenty of sunshine should have the solar panels keeping it up into the mid-13's. A short investigation found the solar controller flashing some error code, which turned out to be "high voltage disconnect". I guess it didn't like high voltages produced by the wind-generator, and so decided something was wrong and stopped charging from the solar panels ! Flipped a switch to bypass the solar controller and connect the solar panels straight to the batteries, and things started looking better.

Within an hour, battery system voltage is routinely at 15 VDC, and during wind bursts the wind-generator is putting out 10+ A at 15.5 VDC or so. I think I'm going to have to watch battery water carefully, as I'm overcharging the batteries. And I may have to turn off the wind-generator during sunny days.

And this brings up another point: on a fairly windy, very sunny day, I think I get more energy out of my 240 W of solar panels than I do out of the wind-generator. System voltage sags without the solar panels.

While digging out the solar controller manual, I found another copy of the outboard service manual I bought over Christmas. Forgot I already had a copy, bought in St Thomas. $40 wasted.

Wind suddenly stopped around 2:15. Then started again at 2:45.

Saw wind-generator charging voltage spike up to 15.95 VDC at one point.

Worked on the auto-pilot a little. Plugged board into main power, confirmed that it runs fine with auto-pilot back-end turned off, and fails when back-end turned on (noise through power line). Then took a stab and added a capacitor across the power leads on the back-end, a "HDK .022" capacitor I salvaged from the old control electronics. Didn't fix the problem. Tech support for the board suggested "a series inductor, then a 100uF capacitor in parallel with a 100nF capacitor", so I'll have to look for something like that.

Worked on removing the genset. Pumped out coolant, got the coolant tank off, and eventually got the exhaust manifold off (pic). A messy job, and then had to dump 5-year-old rusty exhaust seawater out of the manifold.

Salad and cheese-and-crackers and half a glass of wine for dinner.

After all of that aggressive charging today, refrigerator was dragging voltage down to 12.5 VDC in early evening. Maybe I'm getting fooled; I know voltage really doesn't indicate charge state very well, but it's worked for me in the past. Batteries ran the refrigerator okay all night and were down to 12.4 VDC in the morning. No wind during the night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey and still morning. Light rain at 7:30, 8:30, 9:05. Finally a little sunshine at 9:15.

On the VHF cruiser's net, heard from a guy who just crossed the Anegada Passage from St Thomas to here, and lost his dinghy in the process. Probably happens fairly often; towing a dinghy is not a good idea. John Alden said the smallest practical size for a cruising boat is "a boat large enough to carry a dinghy on deck".

Dinghied ashore. Saw a guy working up at the top of one of those 120-foot-tall masts in Plaisance marina (pic). Of course, he had someone at deck level using a power winch or something to raise and lower him, the wimp. I climb using my own leg-power.

To fuel dock at Simpson Bay Marina, to get a gallon of gasoline ($1.09/liter). Then to Lagoonies for Wi-Fi ($4 for soda and tip and AC power). Downloaded more than a dozen podcasts, to listen to later.

Turns out a new set of blades from KISS is $195, on their order form. Don't know where I got $300 from (probably elsewhere on their web site).

A downside of having never had a loan of any kind to pay off: recently I applied for a cash-rewards credit card, and they denied me. I persisted and asked them to review the decision, and they just keep saying "due to information in your credit history; go complain to the credit-reporting companies". But there's no bad info in my credit reports; just not much information at all, except for one credit card and some previous addresses. Guess I'm out of luck.

After Wi-Fi, went next door to Electec, an electrical/electronics place. A real candy-store of a place, if you're interested in that stuff (I am). But no cheap DC line filters, no small capacitors and chokes (everyone said go to Radio Shack in Phillipsburg). Looked through a couple catalogs they had, but no joy there either. Back to the boat.

Grey and rainy and a bit of wind just before 2.

Took some more pieces off the genset: fuel pipes, heat-exchanger (pic).

Chicken-onion-cabbage-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Light rain at 5. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Mostly cloudy morning. Rain at 7:15.

Added water to the batteries. Each cell was down a bit, not badly down but enough to be noticeable.

I can't quite figure out what's going on with the electrical system.
- voltage was low (12.35) at dawn, but when sun suddenly came out later, didn't see big flow of current I'd expect from solar panels into batteries.
- charging voltage is high most of the day, but I don't see big charging currents in the morning. Except that I did when I first found that the solar had disconnected itself, and I flipped the bypass switch.
- even when system voltage is high during the afternoon, close to 15 volts, a big surge of strong wind will make the wind-generator drive 10-20A current into the batteries. If the batteries are well-charged, they shouldn't be able to accept that much current, should they ? Unless maybe they're turning it to heat.

But I am using my laptop a bit more, especially during the day.

Loafed all morning.

Rain at 12:15.

Took some nasty-looking fuel injectors and other parts off the genset. Rust city. Pic.

Apple and salad and PB-crackers for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Heard "Paramour 3" on the net this morning offering a windsurfer for sale, so at about 8:45 I headed over there to see what he had. Offered $300 for a board, mast, boom and two sails. He's asking $350 and another guy might be interested, so he's going to wait. Nice boat, a Morgan 46 with lots of toys aboard, but his wife has given up sailing and left, and I guess they're separating or divorcing, and he's trying to empty out the boat and sell it.

Over to "Ventoso", to say hi to Janet, and ended up staying almost 5 hours. Nice long chat with Janet about lots of things. Then John came back from errands, we chatted some more, ate some nice stew for lunch. They have lots of projects to do: have some hatches repaired, fix a gas generator or buy a new one, some hydraulic problem. They've been in Antigua for the last month or so, and say the megayachts there are indecently expensive.

Then I headed ashore to Portofino marina and caught a taxi-van ($2) to Radio Shack in Phillipsburg. Bought a couple of switches I needed, but individual capacitors and inductors were pretty expensive ($2 apiece) and I don't know exactly which ones I need. Ended up buying a grab-bag of each for $5 apiece; total of $17 spent. They had some packaged 12V noise-filtering units for $10 to $20, but they're intended for keeping audio-frequency noise out of your car stereo, so I'm not sure they'd work for me. Also looked for a capacitor for "Ventoso" to fix their gas generator, but didn't find anything for them.

Walked a mile or so back up the road to Cost-U-Less. Found the stuff I wanted, but the vans here have cramped seats, so I couldn't buy as much as I'd like to. Bought $40 worth of cereal and crackers and snacks; probably would cost $60 or more in the supermarkets. Van ($2) back to the marina, and back to the boat by 3:45. Tired.

Heard a dinghy approaching and banging into my hull. By the time I got onto deck, it was going away. Saw that some guys had thrown an advertisement for the coming flea market / barbecue onto my boat. In fact, they threw two copies.

At 5, dinghied down to Turtle Pier (turned out to be further down than I expected, almost all the way to the airport terminal). This place has a happy-hour for cruisers every Wednesday. Chatted with a couple of interesting guys, had a beer and a hamburger for $4, wandered around a bit.

One of the guys used to do mainframe programming for Boeing in Seattle; has been here for 16 years, living on a catamaran. He's cruised a lot up and down the eastern islands here, but never to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. When I suggested he go there, he said "oh, no, the fees are high and the police hassle you and they charge 7% of your boat value if you go there". Well, I've been cruising there the last 3 years and most of that is nonsense. Yes, police hassles at St Thomas are increasing. If a USA citizen tried to register a boat in Puerto Rico and had never paid sales tax on purchasing it, there might be a 7% sales tax imposed; that's what happens in the USA if you buy a boat and don't pay sales tax in the state where you bought it. But I cruised PR for a couple of years and never had to register my boat.

The other guy was visiting from Tortola, and had sailed a charter boat up and down the island chain for a couple of years. The bar had parrots and monkeys in cages. Nice enough, but most of the cruisers had clumped up into table-fulls, and the food was no bargain (yes, $3 for a hamburger, but fries cost another $3). Stayed until 6:15 or so and then decided to get back to the boat before it got totally dark. Long, fairly wet dinghy-ride back.

Ate a PB-sandwich to tamp down the hamburger and beer.

Batteries still are acting strangely. Used to be that after sunset, voltage (under load) would zip down to 12.70 or 12.65 (no more solar charging), and then slowly ease down during the night, eventually getting to 12.35 by dawn. Now at sunset, voltage (under load) zips down to 12.45 or so, then slowly eases down to 12.35 by dawn. Strange. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Listened to the VHF cruiser's net, as usual. This guy Harry on "Fairwinds" is still trying to gather boats to sail to Haiti, loaded with clothing and water-containers and something else. He gets on the net every couple of days and gives a long spiel about the whole project. I've started turning off the radio for a few minutes until he's done.

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Disposed of a lot of garbage. Paid $4 for soda and tip and Wi-Fi. Skype-called Mom and chatted with her. As expected, the solar-controller support people say: there's no way to disable the high-voltage disconnect feature, and the wind-generator shouldn't be driving the voltage so high.

Tried to find another book-exchange Janet told me about it, but couldn't find it. Saw a big prop sitting outside FKG; looks like it's left out as sculpture; has about a 4-inch diameter shaft. To Budget Marine dock, walked to supermarket, and got some groceries (including a nice chunk of Gouda). Back to dinghy and back to the boat.

Just found out the fee to cruise in St Barts is 4€/day; ouch ! That's close to $200/month. Looks like Antigua/Barbuda costs about $20/month. Hard to figure out these fees; the guidebooks don't quite agree with each other, prices vary by season and boat length and what harbor you stay in, and prices are given in a mixture of $US, $EC, and €.

Took some more parts off the genset (pic).

Salad and a big sausage-onion-cheese omelet and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Not a lick of wind all night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny, still morning.

Launched the dinghy and untied the rope anchor rode and untwisted it from around the chain rodes.

Did a bucket of laundry.

Turned off the wind-generator around noon. Solar panels (unregulated) are putting 6-8 A at almost 15 V into the batteries.

Opened up the genset control box to see if there was anything good to salvage, but there wasn't. Mostly 40-year-old relays in there.

Went ashore to Portofino marina. Disposed of garbage. Got a wad of cash at the ATM (in case the guy selling the windsurfer comes back to me). Into the grocery store, and came out with only one item. Back to the boat.

More work on taking apart the genset, and got the starter motor off (pic). I remember taking this motor off, taking it ashore to be fixed, putting it back on, 3 or 4 times, years ago. A lot of effort put into something I'm discarding now.

Straightening up and cleaning the boat a little; might have visitors tomorrow.

Apple and salad and Gouda cheese sandwich and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Around 5, the system voltage under load was still up at 12.7 or so, and I thought maybe turning off the wind-generator today improved something. But by 5:30 or 5:45 it was right down to 12.4 under load, so no change. Stayed at that voltage under load all night.

No wind all night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

The guy on "Paramour 3" was on the net, advertising his wind-surfer again, saying that someone had offered $300 but he hadn't been able to contact them. That was me. So after the net, I called him, but he wasn't happy when I said I'd cooled on the idea a little, and was now offering $250. He's going to see if someone else will give him more.

Dinghied ashore at 9:30, to meet visitors from a cruise-ship at 10. They showed up at 10:30; since they forgot to bring the directions with them, the taxi had let them off at the wrong marina. Took David and Steve and Steve's daughter out to my boat, where we chatted for an hour or so; very pleasant. Then back ashore, so they could catch another taxi to a bay to go snorkeling.

Turned off wind-generator at 1:40; charging voltage was over 15 volts.

Hmmm: wiring near the solar-controller is pretty warm, even the 8-gauge cables. Should have only 2-4 A going through it (according to the battery monitor). Need to revise the wiring there anyway to add a new switch, so I sketched out a total reworking of it. But the stores will be closed tomorrow, so I can't get the parts until Monday.

More work on taking apart the genset (pic).

Wanted to do something new for dinner, but found the bag of flour was full of bugs, so threw it out. Chili and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Grey, damp and still at dawn. Sunny by 8.

Loafed all morning.

More work on taking apart the genset (pic).

Looked at the parts I bought to deal with the auto-pilot noise, and some of the leads on them are pretty short; I'm going to have to do some soldering.

Sketched out another, better way of re-doing the solar controller wiring.

Salad and Gouda cheese sandwich and half a glass of wine for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny, still morning. On the net, one boat said they just sailed from BVI's to here on one tack; another said he left St Thomas on Wednesday and arrived here on Sunday, tacking and tacking and working hard to get here.

Dinghied ashore. To IWW, and had a long talk with the salesman, who has the same model of KISS wind-generator I have. He repeated that he never sees more than 14.6 VDC or so in the system, even with solar panels and high wind. He made a couple of suggestions I could try, but nothing that sounds like a solution. Everything he suggested (bad cell in a battery, defect in the wind-generator) sounded like a reason voltage would end up too low, not too high. I diagrammed out my electrical system for him, and we chewed that over for a while. Like every boat system of any complexity, it has some quirks for various reasons.

What the heck, I'll give you a few of the quirks: Since I took out the damaged batteries, I have 4 six-volt batteries, but they're all in bank 1. One pair of them has negative going through the battery monitor's shunt, but the other doesn't (because it's sort of my starting battery pair, and I wanted to keep cable runs to the started short). So the battery monitor shows only current going through one pair of batteries; I have to double it to get total charging current. There's a combiner between positives of the two pairs, but for a while now I've had a jumper nullifying the combiner, because I want to use all four batteries as house batteries. All of the loads (light, fridge, etc) and both solar and wind charging come into the battery switch common post; only batteries come into the battery switch A and B posts. I really should diagram this up, but I haven't found a good way of displaying a diagram on a web page (other than drawing it as an image file).

Then I looked for connectors for rewiring the solar controller, and immediately ran into a paradox. The switch I bought is rated for 25 A, but has only 1/4" spade lugs. 25 A should demand 6-gauge or 8-gauge cables, but you can't get 1/4" spade connectors for such thick cable; the biggest available seem to be for 10-gauge wire. Why do they make high-rated switches with small lugs ?

To Lagoonies, to do Wi-Fi ($4 for soda and AC power and tip). Disposed of some genset parts and a bag of garbage. Sent a lot of feedback to KISS about the wind-generator.

Went next door to Electec to look for connectors for the solar controller, but same story there. I may have to pry open some 12-10-gauge connectors and force them around 8-gauge cable. It was late and I was hungry; gave up for today. Back to the boat by 1:30 for lunch.

Hmmm: today is sunny and still, so this morning I turned off the wind-generator and got the solar working in non-bypass mode (intelligent 3-stage charging). Now I see it putting 6-8 A into the batteries at 14 VDC, at 1:30. Seems a bit much current. What the heck is going on with my electrical system ?

Checked the battery water. Not bad; only had to add a little to a few cells. And couldn't find any of the batteries running hot, although it's hard to get a hand down inside the battery boxes.

Did a little work on removing the genset. Got the valve-cover off, and worked at getting the flywheel off. Put the cast-iron pulley back on, with extra washer and nut in position to try to force the flywheel off the shaft as I tightened the bolts; no movement. Pounded it with a sledgehammer; no movement. Pried at it with a crowbar; no movement. It's been on there for 35+ years.

I notice that the solar wiring still is running hot. A section of the wiring is 8-gauge instead of the 6-gauge in the rest of it. That section is smaller because it has a fuse-holder built into it, with a 30 A fuse inline. Running 6-8 A at 14 VDC through 8-gauge wire shouldn't give this heat, I think. Maybe the fuse itself is running hot ?

Chicken-onion-carrot-cabbage-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Called "Ventoso" after the net, to say hi, and they ended up inviting me over for dinner tonight !

Loafed most of the morning. Then climbed up the mizzen-mast. Checked for any loose nuts or bolts, any cracks in anything, anything loose. All looks good. Then took the seizing wire and nut off the generator shaft. Added Tef-Gel and ran the hub out and back in on the shaft; it was stuck pretty firmly onto the shaft at the start. Snugged the hub back on, then added seizing wire on the shaft to try to prevent the hub from spinning off if the generator gets back-winded. Hard to do a good job twisting the seizing wire on, 20 feet up in the air and reaching forward 3 feet or so, trying not to drop anything. Done.

After lunch, dinghied ashore. Went to Lagoonies and found the book-exchange next door that Janet had told me about; in fact John and Janet were there when I arrived. Always a good day when you find a new book-exchange ! Exchanged about 8 books, and gave a couple more to Janet.

Walked to IWW to look at their switches and crimp-connectors again. Then walked up to the ACE MegaCenter, looked at their switches and crimp-connectors, and still no joy. 25 A switches with small 1/4" spade-lugs on them. No one makes connectors to connect from 1/4" spade lug to 6- or 8-gauge cable. Bought some 12-10-to-spade connectors; I'll see if I can open them wider or add solder to "improve" them. Also bought some 8-gauge lugs. Back to IWW to buy a 6-gauge lug and 1 foot of 8-gauge cable. Spent about $10 total. Time to get this project over with. Back to the boat.

Took a few more things off the genset.

Had a salad as an early part of dinner.

Dinghied over to "Ventoso" at 5:45. Soon we were joined by Canaday McCloud (I think) from "Far Star". He brought a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, which we all enjoyed very much. Janet gave us a very nice dinner (pork-chop, potatos au gratin, salad, red cabbage). Later I had a gin-and-tonic. Lots of nice conversation; these people have sailed to many more places than I have. John told of two solid weeks of pea-soup fog around Cape Breton (is that near Nova Scotia ?), having to navigate everywhere by RADAR. Canaday just came down from Newport to Bermuda to here.

The evening was enlivened at the start (before sunset), by Teresa on her nearby boat wandering around on deck fully nude. As usual, she was singing along with her iPod or whatever, at the top of her (not so great) voice. John offered me the binoculars a few times, but I resisted. When she stood up for a while, I had a fine view anyway. Passing boats appreciated the show too. Lots of fun.

Janet gave me a couple of books, and lent me two more that she wants back. Headed back to my boat by 9:30, holding up a lit flashlight as I worked my through the anchorage. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Got busy on rewiring the switches around the solar controller. Pulled apart the old wiring, and wired panels straight to batteries (getting a few sparks as I put together a live connection with maybe 4-6 A running through it). Found that the old bypass switch is worse than I thought: a switch rated at 20 A but with spade lugs even smaller than 1/4": they're probably 3/16". What are these switch manufacturers thinking ?

Spent a while chiseling insulation off some connectors, so I can solder extra wire to the outside of them. Cut and stripped wire, crimped connectors, soldered extra strands of wires to connectors, and added some electrical tape. Into the engine compartment and installed everything. Looks a bit sloppy, but it works. Compared to the previous wiring, this uses thicker wires, the bypass switch no longer shorts two terminals on the controller (manufacturer said that was okay, but I always wondered), and now there's an on/off switch so I can reset the controller after the "high voltage disconnect" is triggered by the wind-generator.

Took down and put away the mast-climbing gear.

An hour later, solar wiring looks good, but that section with the inline fuse is running hot again. All of the new wire, the same size, is fine, but the wire built into that fuse holder is hot.

After lunch, launched the dinghy. On the way over to Marigot, stopped by "Ventoso" to loan them a couple of guidebooks and chat briefly. Long ride over to Marigot. Cleverly I had arrived during "siesta" time (what's the French word for that ?), so the marina office (the "Capitanerie") was closed. Tried to find the library ("biblioteque") in town, couldn't quite find it, got directions from a couple of different people and they both turned out to be wrong. Gave up on that.

Walked to the ferry dock Customs/Immigration office and asked them a couple of questions about regulations; a lot of rumors float around the harbor and I wanted to nail down a couple of them. One was that you can't stay on your boat in the Lagoon during a hurricane; not true according to the officers. Another was that only part of Marigot Bay incurs an anchoring fee; the officer says all of it is controlled, although he seemed a little less positive of that, as if there's been some dispute about it.

Decided to get some exercise, so I climbed up to the top of Fort Louis. Nice views (big pics; Lagoon is to upper-left, Marigot Bay is to lower-right), and I had the place almost entirely to myself. [A reader sent me a stitched-together copy of those two pictures: pic.] Club Med boat anchored NE of town (with Anguilla in background). Also an odd-looking boat; seems to have a wing/ama on one side, but none on the other side ? Maybe it just never quite swung around to where I could see the other wing.

Back down the hill, headed back toward the marina, and stumbled into the library (it was around the side of one of the buildings I had been looking at). Nice place, but just about every scrap of material in it is in French. Read a few issues of the International Miami Herald, and enjoyed sitting down in cool conditions.

To the marina, asked the same two questions at the Capitanerie, looked at their tiny book-exchange, then back into the dinghy. Long ride back to the boat, getting back around 4:15.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Mostly sunny in early morning, but a few grey clouds hovering in just the right position to block the sun from my solar panels.

Dinghied ashore. Swung by the Dutch bridge, went into the Harbor office, and asked the question about staying on your boat during a hurricane; same answer: there's no law about it. To Lagoonies. Did Wi-Fi ($4 for soda and tip and AC power). No response from KISS about my comments/suggestions on the wind-generator. Skype-called Mom and chatted with her; they're having their second major blizzard in a week (she's in the Philadelphia area).

Power started failing on my laptop; had to stop early. Used the book-exchange. To Budget Marine, took a quick look at switches, then to the supermarket. Power failed for a minute or so while I was in there. Got groceries and back to the boat.

Wind is light and from SW and W today; had to wipe some Montserrat dust off my solar panels.

Charged laptop battery in 5-minute shots, so I think the power problem I had was in the AC adapter.

Soldered capacitors and an inductor (putting it in wrong place) and tried auto-pilot; didn't fix the noise problem. Pic. At least nothing blew up. The inductor needs to go on the positive cable between batteries and auto-pilot back-end, not on the capacitors between the positive and negative power lines. And probably need two inductors. I'm trying to suppress the noise at the back-end before it gets into the DC system; if I can't do that, I may install a DC-DC converter right at the circuit board to protect just that.

Took the injection pump and a couple of other pieces off the genset (pic).

Salad and Gouda cheese sandwich for dinner. Then I got creative and fried up a dessert: flour and brown sugar and eggs and salt and baking powder and cinnamon and water and a cut-up apple to make a sort of apple cobbler (pic). Tasty. Should have rolled the apple pieces in the dry ingredients to coat them before adding the egg and water. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Very still, slightly damp morning.

On the net, I announced free engine parts, from my genset removal project. Afterward, Bruce from "Our First" came over and took both water-pumps and the heat-exchanger. A little later, another guy came and took the starter motor and coolant header tank. I'm glad to get rid of them, especially if someone can get some use out of them. Bruce has an old 3-cylinder Onan genset that he ditched the generator-head from; now he uses it to run a dive-tank compressor and a 220 A commercial alternator to run a welder.

Laptop working fine this morning, on adapter into 12 VDC boat power. So the AC adapter either has died or was having a bad day yesterday.

By 10 or so, low grey clouds hovering, cutting off the solar power and not even giving any useful rain.

Worked on the genset some more. Flywheel still won't budge; I'm going to try a slightly different approach, using a piece of wood instead of the pulley, so I can see what's pressing on what. Finally got the head off (pic); one head-bolt was sheared off (a long time ago), had to take off the rockers to get at two more bolts, then found two more bolts hiding back in dark recesses on the far side of the genset. Getting down to the big pieces of the genset; here's what's left: pic (about 3.5 feet long). Probably 300-350 pounds, and it should come out in 3 or 4 big pieces.

At 4, the real Bruce from "Our First" came over to look at the engine parts. I don't know who that first guy this morning was, but it wasn't Bruce !

Tightened engine fan belt.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-mushroom-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Ran engine for 20 minutes to charge batteries and exercise engine. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Grey morning, with some wind. On the morning cruiser's net, lots of boat-arrivals, taking advantage of the light wind and SW wind of the last couple of days to come east from the BVIs. Also heard there was a "dome collapse" on Montserrat on Thursday, sending ash up to 50,000 feet. But the wind here is from the SE now, so we shouldn't get too much ash from it; the ash is going to Puerto Rico and the USVI's.

Right after the net, dinghied ashore to Simpson Bay Marina. Did a little Wi-Fi at Jimbo's, for free (since they weren't open yet; two other guys there doing the same). AC adapter seems to be working fine; wonder if it (or the battery) overheated in the sun the other day at Lagoonies ?

To Business Point, and paid $10 for an excursion tomorrow. Into the dinghy, and to the fuel dock. But there was no attendant, and when I called on their internal phone, the operator said she'd "try" to get someone to go there. No one showed up after several minutes, so I left.

To Budget Marine, where I disposed of a bag of garbage and left the genset exhaust manifold-and-elbow and the genset head next to the dumpster. That head is really heavy, maybe heavier than usual because it has "pre-ignition" chambers that glow plugs stick into ? To the supermarket for a few groceries.

Back to the dinghy, and up to the Shell station for $10 of gasoline. Back to the boat by 10:30. Mostly cloudy this morning, but getting some wind as well as solar power.

After lunch, started drilling holes in a piece of wood to use to force the genset flywheel off. But halfway through, the drill stuck and the fuse on the inverter blew. Guess I was drilling too soon after running the inverter to charge the camera battery. Tried to get the fuse out of the inverter, but the idiot who installed the inverter (not me, some other idiot) gave no thought to providing some access to the fuse; it's wedged way up under a corner of the cabinetry with wires and terminals close around it (pic). Can't get it out. I've run into this problem before, and always managed to get it out, but my notes say "may have to remove inverter from wall to get at fuse". This time, I think I'm going to reposition the whole unit, which means emptying a couple of cabinets and moving another switch, too. Not today.

Worked on the genset some more, and eventually got the end-cap off. Weighs a lot, maybe 25 or 30 pounds. Picture of cap and picture of remainder.

Starting to bash my toes into things as I walk around on the boat, usually a sign that I'm tired and should stop working. Done for today.

Sunny and breezy; lots of battery-charging going on.

Salad and Gouda cheese sandwich for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Wiped some of a pretty good layer of Montserrat dust off my solar panels.

Dinghied ashore to catch a 10:30 excursion van to "Art in the Park", in a park north of Phillipsburg. Nice conversation with a cruising couple, on the way over. The park turned out to be close to the main road to Phillipsburg; could have caught a $2 bus and walked the last mile, if I'd known exactly where it was. And the event is smaller than I hoped: just 20 or so booths (pics), selling prints and sculptures and jewelry. Nice people, a few pretty women, and a pleasant day, but not very exciting. Checked out the wares and then sat around in the shade. Saw a colorful van (pic).

Had a very nice conversation with a just-retired guy, who was born in the Netherlands but then raised livestock in Saskatchewan. He's having a vacation in Marigot for a couple of weeks, and his wife and daughter are here, and his daughter's fiance works on a megayacht which is about to leave to go back to the Mediterranean. Sounds like it came from there just a couple of months ago.

Looked at the food for sale, but it seemed pricey. $8 for a chicken dish that looked like what I cook aboard for about $1; $10-$12 for more interesting dishes that still didn't look like a lot of food. I'd had an apple on the bus ride over, so now I bought a Diet Coke and ate a power-bar I'd brought with me. Call me cheap, but $10 for a small lunch seems a bit high.

Another nice conversation with a cruising couple, recently arrived from the BVI's; they got a nice south wind and sailed 2/3 of the way across the Anegada Passage, then motor-sailed the rest of the way.

They were in the Dominican Republic last February, and said they liked how cheap it was. That wasn't my experience, and they admitted they had to pay $120 in fees for their 8-day stay. They really meant that restaurant meals there were cheap.

Van was 20 minutes late picking us up; not such a big deal, but it was a hot afternoon and we'd been ready to go early, and we had 4 or 5 kids with us.

In the bus on the way back, chatted with another cruising couple. I had been talking with a couple about the Dominican Republic, about how the DR wants you to go straight from port to port (no coastal cruising). This second couple gave me an earful about how the USA does the same to foreign boats cruising in the USA; I didn't know that. I also mentioned reports of crime from Trinidad, and they gave me an earful about that too; they've been spending hurricane season in Trinidad for the last few years, and consider the reports greatly exaggerated.

Back to the boat by 2:20, a bit tired and hot. Sunny and fairly windy afternoon. Batteries are up to 14.20 VDC on solar power alone; I turned off the wind-generator before I left this morning.

Wiped more of a pretty good layer of Montserrat dust off my solar panels. Wind is from the south, so we'll probably get more.

Chili and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

More boats arriving; big empty space next to me is getting filled in. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Up early, took the inverter off the cabinet wall, and replaced the blown fuse.

Right after the net, dinghied ashore to Simpson Bay Marina. Did a little Wi-Fi at Jimbo's. But after 10 minutes, a groundskeeper came by and said he was going to spray for mosquitoes. I thought he meant the bushes outside, but then he came inside the restaurant and started spraying just about everywhere except the tabletops and food-preparation surfaces ! I left and headed over to Lagoonies, to do Wi-Fi there ($4 for soda and tip and AC power). A lineup of people doing their laundry in the laundry room, and doing Wi-Fi in the bar while they waited. I disposed of a couple of pieces of the genset into the dumpster.

One woman was talking about a year they spent in the Mediterranean recently: she didn't like it. Any time the wind got up to 15 knots, the seas got up to 8 feet and close together. And the economic recession killed their investments, so they couldn't afford rental-cars and expensive excursions to go see things.

Chatted a little with John and Janet in the bar.

After Wi-Fi, over to Portofino marina. Walked across the street to the doctor's offices to ask about flu shots. They said first you have to buy them at the pharmacy, then the doctor will do injections for $20 (each ?). To the pharmacy, and they said first you need a prescription, then they have only the seasonal flu vaccine, for $16.

Back to the dinghy and back to the boat.

After lunch, reinstalled the inverter in a slightly more-accessible location (pic). A little difficult, reaching into a cabinet and up, left-handed, to start and then drive in screws.

Drilled holes in a piece of wood to use to pull off the genset flywheel. Finally got the drilling done, but the wood is a little too thick, and is compressing under the pressure. Gave it couple of tries and then stopped for today.

Gave myself a haircut.

Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Despite a fair amount of wind during the night, batteries still down to 12.45 VDC or so under load by dawn. So the wind-generator production is far less than the solar panel production, so far. Sometimes the wind-gen produces 150 W (10 A at 15 VDC) but in very short bursts; the "240 W" of solar panels will produce say a steady 70 W (5 A at 14 VDC) for hours and hours. And if batteries are low and sun comes out suddenly, I'll see the solar panels produce full rated current (14 A) for a while.

Made a stab at diagramming my solar wiring. Doesn't work in Internet Explorer (which doesn't support SVG), but works in Firefox and should work in many other browsers.

Tried to remove things from both ends of the genset, and failed. Tightened down bolts until I was afraid the 2x4 would shatter, pounded on the flywheel with a sledghammer, but the flywheel didn't budge.

Started messing with remaking the noise-filter on the auto-pilot back-end. The usual problems: want thick wires but need the connectors to fit into a terminal strip that has small spacing.

There's supposed to be a Carnival parade in Marigot this afternoon, but nailing down the time is difficult. Best I was able to get was "maybe 2 or 3". So around 1:30, I launched the dinghy. Headed over to "Ventoso", where I returned a couple of books they'd lent to me, and ended up picking up Janet to go to the parade with me. Over to Marigot, where it looks like a holiday: a lot of the stores are closed. Asked someone on the street, and they told us the parade route and that it starts at 3. So we walked a couple of miles through town and out to the parade gathering point, well out on the road towards Grand Case. Just five or six big sound-trucks, with a couple of hundred dancers in costume, but maybe more will show up later (pics). Some of the music was so loud that it made the internal organs in my body jump around. We didn't stay for the actual start of the parade; we'd seen enough. Nice to get some exercise. Janet and I sat for a while in the shade near the courthouse, and chatted a bit, and we had a brief chat with some cruisers she knew.

Saw a store that made me laugh; a little hard to see, but it says "The Happy Shop" and then "Self Service" (pic).

Back to "Ventoso", where they invited me aboard for a Happy-Hour drink. We talked for a while, about such heavy topics as Marxism, culture versus biology effects on behavior, and politics. That's why we enjoy talking to each other; most people aren't very interested in serious topics. And I think John and Janet are trying to educate me a little; this time when I left, they lent me a book about Iran, and a very serious-looking book by Noam Chomsky.

Chicken-onion-carrot-mushroom-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Right after the net, dinghied ashore to Simpson Bay Marina. Did a little Wi-Fi at Jimbo's, but they were doing some kind of video-shoot inside the restaurant, so I couldn't plug in to AC power and thus couldn't stay long. Over to Budget Marine, where I disposed of a bag of garbage and bought some crimp-connectors. Walked to the supermarket and got a few groceries. Back to the boat.

Charged the laptop battery in 5-minute shots (to avoid overheating connectors).

Soldered up a noise-filter for the auto-pilot back-end. A thing of beauty: pic.

Added oil to the outboard.

Wiped some dust off the solar panels.

Ran out of energy and loafed all afternoon.

Salad and Gouda cheese sandwich for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Right after the net, dinghied ashore to Simpson Bay Marina. Went to Jimbo's, but the Wi-Fi seemed to be turned off. So over to Lagoonie's to do Wi-Fi ($4 for soda and tip and AC power). Used the book-exchange. Back to the boat.

Added water to the batteries, but they really didn't need much. Since it's been sunny with a bit of wind for the last few days, I've been turning off the wind-generator in the afternoons. The system voltage gets up to 14+ VDC and stays there, under solar charging only. I turn the wind-generator back on at 5, when the solar is fading.

Loafed all afternoon. Almost no wind, very light from the SW and W.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Totally still evening and night; warm and uncomfortable and a bit buggy. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Climbed on top of the pilothouse roof to wipe dust off the solar panels.

On the net, Business Point announced a van to and from Grand Case on Tuesday evening, to go to the monthly "block party" there. The price is $30 per person ! Insane. Should be able to get a taxi-van for $4 each way, but I'm not sure they run at night; I'll have to find out.

Finally getting a little breeze at 10.

Solid low grey clouds starting at 11 or so and lasting all day.

Installed the noise-filter on the auto-pilot back-end, and it made no difference at all.

Got the end of the generator (the stator) loose (pic). Weighs a ton. May have to leave it in place until I build a slide across the top of the engine.

Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Right after the net, dinghied ashore to Simpson Bay Marina. Tried to do a little Wi-Fi at Jimbo's, but this time the Wi-Fi signal was up but there was no internet connection behind it. Gave up and headed over to Portofino marina. Disposed of a bag of garbage and bought some groceries. Back to the boat.

Grey and humid and still from 10 or so, through the rest of the day. A little rain at 11:45.

Just read a really cool little book: "Quirky QWERTY" by Torbjörn Lundmark. It's about the alphabet and numbers and symbols and punctuation and keyboards, and how all of those evolved from older to modern forms. Fascinating. For example, since various languages wrote in different directions, not only right-to-left but also up and down, the letters got rotated and mirrored as they were copied from one language or society to another. Different forms of letters were used for carving into stone and for writing on a page: straight lines were good for stone, and fewer strokes were good for writing. Until about a thousand years ago, writing used no spaces between words: all of the letters were written out in a continuous stream, and the reader had to figure out where the word boundaries were. And the printing press (1400's) marked a change from written language being mainly for a speaker to read and speak to an audience, to written language being mainly for a person to read silently to themselves, which imposed different requirements on a language (including standardized punctuation).

Rain at 2:15, from 2:45 to 3, and at 3:20. Dumped 9 gallons of rainwater from buckets to tank and jug.

Sausage-onion-batter-cheese concoction and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Ran engine for 15 minutes to charge batteries.

Damp and still night. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey and damp and still morning, with low dark clouds hanging overhead. Light rain from 5:45 to 6:15. Heavier rain starting at 6:55, going through 7:50 or so. Batteries down to 12.30 VDC.

Ran engine for 45 minutes to charge batteries.

Dumped 6 gallons of rainwater from buckets to tank and jug.

A little rain and a little wind around 11:45. A little sunshine after 1.

Apple and salad and Gouda cheese sandwich for dinner.

Couldn't get comfortable during the night, then developed a headache. Started taking pills. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Headache.

Frequent rain from 5 AM to about 7:30. Grey and damp and still after that.

Dumped 5 gallons of rainwater from buckets to tank.

Took pills and laid in bed all day, mainly.

PB-sandwiches for dinner.

Bad headache all night; alternating acetaminophen, ibuprofen, antihstamines. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Headache still bad.

Windy, sunny morning. Since battery system voltage was well up into mid-13's, shut off the wind-generator as I left the boat. Solar is enough today.

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Disposed of two bags of garbage (mainly genset parts). Did Wi-Fi ($4). Afterwards, to Budget Marine dock and walked to supermarket for a few groceries. Back to the boat. Quick lunch and then to bed; head still aching.

Head feeling a bit better by midafternoon.

Dumped 2-3 gallons of rainwater from buckets to water tank.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-rice for dinner.

Windy evening; getting lots of power from the wind-generator. Turned it off a couple of times to avoid overcharging. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Headachey again, not as bad as before. Listened to the cruiser's net, took some pills, went back to bed. Felt better by 10:30 or so.

Did a bucket of laundry.

Mostly grey and humid and windy by noon, but hasn't quite rained on my drying laundry.

Worked on the genset. Got a few more bits off (pic). But the flywheel still isn't budging, despite lots of pounding on it with a sledgehammer. And used a puller on the bearing on the generator end, but couldn't get it off.

Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Rain at 5:15.

Headache gone in the evening. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Feel pretty good; headache just about completely gone.

Sunny, calm morning. Chatted with "Ventoso"; they're still struggling with their hatch-replacement project, and getting pretty frustrated, it sounds.

Dumped 6-7 gallons of rainwater from buckets to jugs.

Pumped some oil out of the genset and took more parts off it: oil filler tube and bracket, oil filter, oil filter base, chunk of metal behind the flywheel, various bolts. Unbolted the housing between flywheel and block, hoping the flywheel was mounted to that, but it came loose and the flywheel still is fixed on the end of the crackshaft. Pried and hammered at bearing on other end of the shaft, too, and no progress there either.

Sausage-onion-mushroom-batter-cheese concoction and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Supposed to be very light winds for the next week or so, which will make it a bit hot and muggy. And bad sailing weather for "Ventoso", who has a guest arriving today, I think.

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Disposed of garbage, mainly genset parts. Paid $4 for soda and tip and Wi-Fi. Used the book-exchange. Skype-called Mom (they're having their 4th or 5th big snowstorm of the winter up there in NJ/PA). Had half-expected to see John and Janet from "Ventoso", but they didn't show up.

Several dinghies tied up to a part of the marina outside the dinghy-dock area, and the marina had a charter boat coming in to there. So after asking all of us in the bar several times if those were our dinghies, they ended up having to cut their locking cables free with an angle-grinder. Going to be some unhappy dinghy-owners later in the day.

To Budget Marine. Left a bottle of old antifreeze by their disposal. Walked to the supermarket and got groceries. Back to the boat. Warm afternoon, with light wind from SW.

Salad and cheese sandwich and PBJ-sandwich for dinner.

Rain at 3:15 AM and 6 AM. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Weather forecast this morning is a bit different from yesterday morning's, in terms of wind strength over the next week or so. Guess the forecasts here aren't too stable.

Morning started out a little grey, but looked like it would turn sunny any minute. Instead, it got greyer, and low grey clouds socked us in. Occasionally enough breeze to make the wind-generator spin a little.

Tried running the auto-pilot circuit board off a cheapo DC-DC converter, on the hope the converter would condition the power coming into the board and filter out the noise. No difference. But such a cheapo converter probably just is using resistors to drop the voltage. Maybe a fancier converter would have circuitry that does some filtering.

Rain at 11:30 and 12:20.

Read an interesting solar-power site a reader sent to me: HandyBob. Among other things, he says those inline fuses are no good, run hot (as mine does), and eventually melt. Maybe I should just get rid of the fuse entirely. I have it at the wrong end of the cable anyway; should be as close to the batteries as possible.

Started reading the manual for my Link battery monitor; I've never used the fancier functions that track AH and such. Might as well give them a try. The manual has some useful battery info, such as suggesting the batteries shouldn't be in a hot engine compartment (mine are). Maybe I could move them under a settee in the main cabin ?

Dumped 3-4 gallons of rainwater from buckets to tank.

Sunshine starting at 4 PM.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Loafed all morning.

Before 1, headed ashore in the dinghy. Noticed the cooling water wasn't coming out of the outboard; something must be clogged. So when I got to the dinghy-dock, I prodded at the water outlet with a screwdriver and a Swiss Army knife. Will have to get out the service manual later.

Dumped a heavy chunk of genset in the garbage. Walked across the street and over to the beach at Simpson Bay. First woman I saw was topless (pic); nice. Fair number of boats anchored here today, including a bog sailboat pretty close in to the surf (pics). Walked north, to the far end of the beach. Nice to splash my feet through the surf. Hot walk through streets to come out at Maho Beach (pic). Watched some planes land (pics); didn't see any big planes take off and blow anyone off their feet (pic). Some pretty women (pics). Sun is strong today, and some people are really getting fried. I'm wearing a T-shirt and floppy hat and sunscreen, and I'm still getting more sun than I like. There's almost no shade on the beaches here.

Eventually left and walked through resort area and past a golf-course, to Mullet Beach. Walked a bit and admired the women (pics). Had planned to take a $2 bus back, but decided to walk it instead. Need the exercise, and want to see Maho Beach again.

Good move; pretty woman on the beach (pics), and watched several more planes come through. Back through streets, long walk down Simpson Bay beach, seeing one more pretty woman (pics), and then across to the dinghy-dock. Hey, the cooling-water on the outboard is working ! I must have cleared the clog. Back to the boat by 4, sweaty and tired. Nice to drink some water and have a nice shower and rest. Probably walked 6 to 7 miles today, much of it on sand.

Salad and PB-sandwiches and an apple for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

On the morning net, someone offered a Pelican waterproof case for sale. Thrown in for free: "a dead Dell laptop that unfortunately wasn't in the case when it went into the water".

Dinghied in to Lagoonies. Disposed of garbage. Paid $4 for soda and tip and AC power and Wi-Fi. Used the book-exchange at Maintec. Backed up files from laptop to external disk.

Dinghied to Budget Marine, walked to supermarket, got a few groceries. Back to dinghy and back to boat, almost getting run over by some jerk driving a huge inflatable at high speed.

Roofed over with low dark clouds and no breeze from noon to 3.

Dinghied over to nearby mangroves to check out a couple of abandoned dinghies, to see if one of them could be salvaged. First one looked blown out at bow and maybe cracked through on one side. Other one turned out to be an edge of a bigger wreck. No way.

Polished up the camping stove I cook on in the cockpit, and boy did it come out good (before, after) ! Maybe I should polish the whole boat.

Sausage-onion-mushroom-batter-cheese concoction and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Loafed most of the day.

Took fuel lines off the genset. Later occurred to me: this boat has always had a too-small vent line on the fuel tank, and no good way to fix that (the vent line fitting is buried under a bulkhead). Maybe I can use the genset return line fitting on the fuel tank to add a second vent line.

Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Windy, starting at 4 AM or so. Less windy in the afternoon.

Couple of guys brought over a new neighbor around 10:30: a new-looking houseboat (pics). Hardly any windows on the thing, and it looks unpainted. Haven't seen any houseboats in the Lagoon, I think. Maybe one or two.

Loafed all day again, reading and using the laptop. Did a tiny bit of work: got the genset fuel return line off the fuel tank without damaging the built-in tank fitting, which would have been bad.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Dinghied ashore. A couple dozen sailboats maneuvering to go out through the 9 AM Dutch bridge opening; the general-class race of the Heineken Regatta starts this morning. I probably should go watch it, but I haven't been impressed with races in general. This is "Heineken weekend"; maybe I'll go to one of the starts on Sat or Sun. [Looked online for the race schedule, and these race web sites don't give details such as start and approximate finish times. Very irritating. Looks like today is not a race day, it's a registration day. Sent some email to the race organizers, complaining about lack of times on their site.]

To IWW, to look at fuel-line fittings; not too much luck, and they were too busy to ask. To Lagoonies. Disposed of a lot of garbage. Paid $4 for soda and tip and AC power and Wi-Fi. Used the book-exchange.

Turns out my friends on "Angel Louise" arrived here Monday; I'll have to hook up with them.

To Budget Marine. Left a bottle of old oil by their disposal. Checked out fuel vent line parts, here's what it looks like: $4 for pipe-to-hose fitting, $12 for vent through-hull fitting, and $3.60/foot for 1/2 fuel line hose. I need about 11 feet of hose, so that's a total of $56 for the project ! Not sure it's worth it. Could skimp and use some cheaper non-fuel hose, but if there was a serious fire in the engine compartment and the hose melted, that would open a path into the fuel tank.

Walked to the supermarket and got groceries. Back to the boat.

Did a little caulking on the edges of the pilothouse roof. Worked a little to remove the genset intake strainer.

Put the fitting back on the fuel tank; I think I'll just remove it each time I need to fuel up, using it as a vent that way. Just have to be careful not to overfill the tank and spill fuel into the engine compartment.

Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner.

Very still evening and night.

I've been thinking about the auto-pilot. Maybe the way to go is to power it from a separate, rechargeable battery. Will have to look into that. Would be nice to get a small 12 V lead-acid battery (same technology as my house batteries), so I can just plug it into my house batteries to recharge it. If I have to get a NiCd or something, I'd have to have a special charger for it, using AC from the inverter. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny and slightly breezy morning. Should be good sailing for the Heineken Regatta. But the information about the race is maddeningly vague: today's starts range from 9 AM to 11 AM, from Simpson Bay to waters E of there towards Phillipsburg. I think I won't bother to take the long dinghy-ride out there and take pictures of sailboats in the distance.

Chatted with Ed on "Angel Louise" on the VHF for a while.

Into the engine compartment, and started Dremel-ing to cut the small bearing off the generator-end of the crankshaft. Nice display of sparks in the dimly-lit compartment. Cut through the bearing shell, chiseled it off, and got the balls out. Then looked at the other end of the crankshaft, and noticed that the flywheel was loose ! Maybe the daily temperature-change let it work loose, or chiseling on the bearing vibrated the shaft ? Took the flywheel off, and the sucker is heavy, maybe 25-30 pounds. Took off the housing behind it, and started working on gears behind that. Took off part of the oil pump, and then got the whole camshaft out (not in the approved way, I'm sure; pounded on the end with a sledgehammer while prying with a crowbar). Pics. Started Dremel-ing to cut off the base of the small bearing on the generator-end of the crankshaft. Got it off, and still unable to get the big generator-rotor loose from the shaft.

Added water to the batteries.

Chili and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Dinghied ashore. First to IWW, to look for a rechargeable battery to run the auto-pilot circuit-board. As expected, everything they had was either too small or too big or not rechargeable. And all of the chargers run off AC, not 12 VDC.

Chatted with the salesman about it for a while. I also mentioned that the KISS wind-generator alone probably would satisfy only 25 percent of my daily power needs, where the solar panels satisfied 80-90 percent of my needs. But he said we're having a very light-wind season this year; in fact, people are worried about what it means for hurricane season. So I guess in a normal-wind season, the wind-generator would be doing much better.

To Plaisance marina, and walked to the fancy supermarket. Bought a lot of cheese: some Feta, cheap Cheddar, Camembert, Gorgonzola, and a sale grab-bag of cheeses (Brie and something unidentifiable). Also cranberry juice, and a package of bratwursts. And wine: a Glen Ellen 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, and a 2008 Luberon (maybe a Pinot Grigio ?). Total of $41, which I thought was pretty reasonable. Back to the boat.

Worked on the genset a little. Used the Dremel to cut off a couple of aluminum rod-bolts that were in the way. Still can't get the generator-rotor off the shaft. I notice that both pistons came to the top together as I rotated the crankshaft; I thought they were supposed to be offset to minimize vibration.

After lunch, dinghied ashore to Portofino marina. Just about exhausted myself carrying that stupid flywheel and a bag of parts to the dumpster. Across the street and over to Simpson Bay beach. A couple of nice-looking topless women. Walked the length of the beach, westward. Can see sailboats racing past, fairly far out (pics). Wind blowing hard from the S or SSW this afternoon; great for the race.

Saw an anchored catamaran with lots of dinghies trailing behind it (pic); must be that a dozen boats in the race are affiliated with this boat, and left their dinghies here while racing. Hope it's okay; this anchorage is rough today, and that catamaran was really pitching heavily later in the afternoon.

Up through streets and out onto Maho Beach. In time to see most of the raceboats going past, but I hoped they would be close to shore here; instead they're still fairly far out, most too far out to take a picture (pic).

Enjoyed the airplanes flying over the beach (pics), and the women on the beach (pics). Nice sailboat came past, going south (pics).

Walked back, and the wind is strengthening, and dark clouds are coming over, with a few rainsprinkles. A few more topless women on Simpson Bay beach. Back to the dinghy, and found Ed and Sue from "Angel Louise" have dropped their boat-card in my dinghy. I'll catch up to them sooner or later. Back to the boat. Tired and sweaty and sandy.

Dark clouds and strong wind. The wind-generator has driven the charging voltage high enough to trip the high-voltage disconnect on the solar controller. Sunny and windy an hour later.

Salad and a Feta cheese sandwich and a Gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of Bordeaux for dinner. Very civilized.

A bit windy in the evening, then wind flipped from SW to NE and mostly died out. A little rain at 2:30 AM. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey and cool and damp and trying to rain, and just enough wind to turn the wind-generator occasionally. A little rain at 8 AM.

Steady light rain from 11 to 12:45. Lots of sailboats coming in through the Dutch bridge at noon. Pretty good wind in the afternoon.

Dumped about 6 gallons of rainwater from buckets to tank and jug.

Some sunshine starting around 2.

Chicken-onion-cabbage-mushroom-rice and a rum-and-coke for dinner.

Cool, grey evening. Windy after midnight. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Totally grey and cool and damp and trying to rain.

Dinghied ashore. Lots of sailboats heading out to leave via the Dutch bridge; this NE wind makes for a great opportunity to head SE to St Barts, Antigua or Guadeloupe.

To Lagoonies. Disposed of garbage. Paid $4 for soda and tip and AC power and Wi-Fi. Used the book-exchange.

To Electec to look at rechargeable batteries, but no luck there. Maybe something like this from powerstream is what I should get to run the auto-pilot board. The tech support guy at the circuit-board vendor said the board should run for about half an hour off a 9V alkaline battery, and it looks like those hold about 600 mAH. So if I wanted to run for 24 hours, that might require a 7 AH battery ? I think maybe he was being conservative; board should run longer on a 9V battery.

Skype-called home to PA and chatted with Mom and my sister. Helped Ned from "Passion 3" get his computer connected to the Wi-Fi.

Wet, rough ride back to the boat, upwind in stiff wind.

Wind suddenly stopped around 1:30. Glow of sun through grey clouds is getting a little brighter. Windy again by 3 or so.

Salad and a Camembert cheese sandwich and a Gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon for dinner.

Ran engine for 10 minutes to exercise it and charge batteries a little. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Mostly grey and cool and trying to rain, but some sun by 9:30. But soon grey and still for the rest of the day. Rain at 2:30.

Spaghetti and a rum-and-coke for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Sunny and windy by 9 AM.

Loafed most of the day. Took some parts off the genset, but still can't figure out how to get the big rotor off the generator end.

Salad and a Brie sandwich and a Gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon for dinner. At anchor at Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Martin.

Dinghied ashore. To Business Point in Simpson Bay marina, to use the book-exchange and get some shipping info.

To Lagoonies. Disposed of garbage. Paid $4 for soda and tip and AC power and Wi-Fi.