Martinique

The main reason we spent some time in Martinique was to have our bow thruster looked at. During the survey Olivier mentioned the bow thruster had not had a recall done. This is a piece that prevents the torque transfering to some bolts (that keep it in the boat!).

It's amazing that Amel still supports their boats 15 years after they were first made. And the recall was in 2002! It took awhile to get it done, so we spent some time on other boat projects too.

We also started trying to figure out what was wrong with our dingy. It was always full of water! Salty water too. We found a very small hole in the hyperlon fabric. Thinking it must be that we had the dingy repaired (under warranty) and put it back in the water. If anything, the water ingress was worse! We took the dingy back out and I filled the dingy with water (too see where it came out). To my surprise, it came out of a weld holding the transom on! It seems we got a "friday afternoon" dingy with some dodgy welding. Highfield, to their credit (and some convincing on our part), agreed to replace the dingy. More about that next time.

Someone also tried to steal our dingy here! The only place we've had trouble (fingers crossed).