A few weeks before we left Grenada for the US, we had noticed a few little ants crawling here and there. They were tiny, and there weren't many of them, but they seemed to be in every part of the boat. Open a forward locker, and a little ant crawled out. Take out the dinner dishes, and there was another ant. Goodness knows how they got on the boat in the first place; probably on our shoes, or on some fruit I hadn't washed properly. At least they weren't cockroaches, we told ourselves. Maybe they'd be gone when we got back.
Yeah, right. When it became clear we wouldn't be flying out on September 11th after all, I called Eric, who was looking after Windom for us. (He's British, and used to be a cruiser. He sailed into Prickly Bay thirteen years ago, and just never got around to leaving.) He said there was no problem, just call him when we would be arriving, and he and the whole world sympathized with America, and by the way, did we know that we had ants? In our absence, they'd multiplied, and were in a fair way to taking over the boat. I told him where to find the bug spray; meanwhile, since Britt and I unexpectedly had extra time in Boulder, we paid a visit to McGuckin's (the best hardware store on the planet) and bought some of the anti-ant stuff we used to use back when we had a house.
Eric had done a good job with the Raid in our absence, so when we got back there were still only a few ants visible here and there. We had no clue as to the location of their nest until a few days later, when we were eating sandwiches in the cockpit and one of us accidentally dropped a morsel on the cockpit seat. Instantly a cloud of ants surrounded the food, and from the trail they made it looked to us as though they were coming out of somewhere in the lazarette (which is the equivalent of a garage or a shed; I'd rather have their nest there than in the "house" part of the boat -- like maybe under our bed!). So we laid down some poison for them to take back to their nest, and with luck we will soon have an antless boat again.
It's been unusually hot here, even by tropical standards. Coming from dry cool Colorado, we're wilting in the heat of the day. So one chore we were actually looking forward to was cleaning off the bottom, since it would be a good excuse to get into the water. At least, this is what we thought until we finally jumped in and took a look below the waterline.
I was the first in the water. After one look, I immediately surfaced and told Britt, "We can't do this."
"Why not?"
"I'd feel guilty about destroying the healthiest reef in Grenada!"
It was, indeed, a pretty impressive reef. Sea grasses and fernlike fronds waved gently in the current; crabs scurried across the craters formed by layers of a lichen-like growth, while fish darted from crevice to crevice. Too bad it was on the bottom of our boat. We pulled out the scrapers and brushes and got to work.
Scraping the bottom underwater is a yucky proposition during the best of circumstances. The bottom paint is pretty toxic (although I guess it can't be too effectively toxic lately, if so much has grown on it!) and scrubbing just releases big clouds of it into the water -- not what you really like on your skin. But this was worse. So much animal life had moved onto our keel that I got serious heebie-jeebies from the thought of all those tiny crabs and shrimp and who knows what other microscopic sea creatures all floating around and crawling onto my body, nibbling and pinching and....needless to say, I didn't last long in the water before freaking out and running for the shower.
This is why men were invented. Men don't mind squashing icky bugs, and they don't mind swimming in a toxic soup of equal parts sea water, paint flecks, and sea lice. At least, Britt didn't mind. He gamely scrubbed and scraped most of the big nasty gunk, scooped the crabs off and tossed them out into the deep, and got the prop spinning and the rudder turning again. A few days later he went in to finish the job, and since most of the forest had been trimmed I went in to help. I had sworn I wasn't going to scrape the bottom without putting on my full wetsuit, but it was awfully hot out, so I just put on a one-piece swimsuit. It wasn't too bad, until I noticed a huge school of lovely silvery fish darting this way and that below us in the cloud of debris.
"What do you suppose they're eating?" I asked.
"Probably the little shrimp and stuff that's crawling all over you."
That did it! I raced for the swim ladder, tore my suit off in the cockpit heedless of who might be watching, and dashed into the shower.
We have three gallons of serious antifouling, formulated for the tropics (and away from the watchful eyes of the American EPA), sitting in our lazarette. We had intended on getting the bottom done here, but the local yards are full up and not taking reservations until November, so we're putting off the work until we get to Venezuela. Ideally we'll have the boat hauled and worked on while we do an inland trip, so we don't have to swelter on the hard. It would of course be less expensive to do the work ourselves, but it's nasty work with unpleasant stuff, particularly in the heat. Until then, though, our wimpy American bottom paint [*], which is no doubt losing efficiency because of our scrubbing, will have to do. I have a feeling we're going to have to step up the frequency of bottom cleaning to keep "Keel Reef" under control for the next couple of weeks!
This will particularly be a problem if we go to Trinidad next; it's got a reputation for fouling bottoms quickly, and the water's brown and muddy, not good for swimming (or for bottom cleaning). It's supposed to be barnacle heaven. Unfortunately it's not a good place to get hauled for bottom painting either, as it rains every day during the wet season. But we'd like to see the place, at least for a short visit. Then we'll be set up for the downwind run to Venezuela's Isla Margarita.