here and had it marked on their charts as an area of hazard. A Spanish Captain,
Bermuda??? is credited with being the first to visit here.
Ships from one of those seafaring nations had the foresite to sail close
enough to push pigs overboard, just in case. The pigs of course swam ashore,
thrived and multiplied. The thinking was that eventually a ship would get
wrecked there and at least there would be bacon for breakfast for any
survivors.
About 400 years ago an Englishman, captain George Somers, was sailing from
England to Jamestown, Virginia, with supplies to prop up the struggling English
colony. They had had a long, bad passage and, out of food and water were near
death. He'd instructed all on board to make their peace with God.
All of a sudden land was sighted and the Sea Venture wrecked on the island.
It was a bad time for the pigs!
Over the next 8 months they built 2 ships from local timber and equipped with
gear salvaged from their wreck. They loaded them with their original cargo plus
salt pork etc and continued their mission, leaving 2 men to tend the island.
Their arrival in Jamestown saved it and set the course of history. Jamestown
was in such a bad way that the inhabitants had resorted to cannibalism.
Today Bermuda is a community of about 60,000 friendly, helpful people, about
half white and half African descent. They were brought here as indentured
labour, not slaves, and during the Boer War England brought POWs here. Many
stayed when the war was over.
Now there is 100% employment and wages are high. It's also tax free for
individuals and companies, but there are high import duties on everything so the
cost of living is high. The people seem happy and we have yet to see any
graffiti. What a pleasure.
With some of Tom's old contacts here we soon had recommendations for getting
our repairs done, but it was going to take a few days before they could weld the
goosenecks and a week before they could weld the davits.
We took the goosenecks out of the booms and came up with a modification that
would stop them rotating and keep them extremely strong. We dropped them in to
a fabrication company, Mass Ltd in St George Boatyard and they did a
great job. They have Irwin, a Philipino welder with the reputation of being the
best on the island, and he is brilliant.
The bill for the goosenecks was enough to make your eyes water and the davit
job was far bigger.
On Sunday afternoon we motored down to the small, rough dock and Tom took a
line ashore in the dinghy, payed it out for 300 feet and I brought Wind
Wanderer in close enough so we could catch the line and have it ready on
board for the primary winch.
We motored out as far as the line would let us and dropped the big anchor. We
then let out chain in stages and winched the line in, dragging ourselves stern
in to the dock so Irwin could stand on the shore and planks to do all the davit
welding.
That night Tom and Sandy had both turned in and I was doing a final check
around the decks. As I looked up at the rigging the top spreader on the main
mast, starboard side seemed to be throwing a strange shadow. I went below and
grabbed a torch. Sure enough the top spreader was seriously out of alignment
with it's proper position on the mast.
I didn't wake the others, it had been a big enough day already, but I went to
bed with very mixed feelings. Frustration that we had yet another repair to do,
a gut wrenching realization at the close call we'd had, but far greater was the
sense of relief that we had not carried on to Antigua.
That spreader would have let go with the next few big jolts and unsupported,
the top 20ft of mast would have bent badly, but could in fact have broken. I did
not sleep too well on Sunday night.
Early Monday morning we did all we could to make Irwin's work flow smoothly and
quickly and it went like clockwork. He'd estimated a day, his boss said to double it
because there are always 'unforeseens'. By 9:30 all the cracked welds were
beautifully rewelded and we got stuck into making templates for gussets and
bracing struts. By lunchtime it was complete! It turned out to be about a third
of the cost I was expecting.
We motored back to the anchorage, anchored and reassembled all the stuff we'd
removed from the davits.
Monday afternoon it was back into the bos'ns chair and up the mast yet again.
I really don't do heights well.
The difficult part was leaving the relative security of the mast and working
on the outer end of the spreader. Eventually I managed to cut away all the
seizing wire binding the spreader to the shroud. It took over an hour with wakes
from passing boats not helping.
The weld holding the spreader to it's base fitting had torn completely away
and it was half off the plate, being held in place by the compressive pressure
of the shroud. Tom had to loosen the deck turnbuckle so I could spring it out.
Two hours up a mast is more than enough for any day.
On Tuesday morning I had the spreader back to Mass to be welded. It would be about a 36
hour turnaround.
While I was there I met Charlie, a retired rigger who had sold his business a
few years ago and now does odd jobs around the yard, but mainly works on his own
boat. He'd had the misfortune of his dinghy being stolen by a couple of crack
heads. It was found, but he lost his engine and got a few holes in the
bottom.
Charlie was happy to take on the job of reinstalling the spreader for me and
tensioning the shrouds. I wanted the peace of mind that comes with a
professional doing the job.
That afternoon I dropped Tom off at the dinghy dock to catch his flight back
to the USA. It's been a long haul getting the boat to this point and Tom has
been a big part of the whole project so far. But the boat is now manageable for
a couple and it is time.
Until next time...