Cruisers vs Charterers

The last few days have been quite relaxing. With no gearbox, we’ve had little to do than fettle the boat at our own pace whilst enjoying the warm sun and the conversation of fellow cruisers. Everyone is headin’ north and everyone has time for a chat and to share a tale or two. It is very different to the ostracism we experienced among the charter crowds in the Caribbean, when everyone was out for as much raucous fun they could cram into a week and nobody had time to spare.

We recently rediscovered one of the books loaned to us by Tim Blackman of Infanta. Les Weatheritt has a few wise words on charterers in his book ‘Caribbean Passagemaking’:

“I always like to see board sailors out in winds and waves that are just beginning to bother me. If they are coping on their tippy little boards then surely our heavy displacement, round-the-world sailing classic should cope too. Here in the Caribbean it isn’t the board sailors I take most comfort from but the charter yachts. I mean, there are so many of them that some, at least, must be skippered by rank incompetents and yet there they are, miles offshore but still afloat in a boat whose condition they neither know nor care about, and are not dismasted as they hobby-horse wildly in the short seas or infuriatingly overtake us hard on the wind.”

We have a new gearbox. By lunchtime tomorrow we will have applied three coats of varnish. We have laundered, showered, pumped out and filled the water tanks and tomorrow we will set off for Great Bridge.

Remains of our gearbox