Saturday March 20, 1999  Dominica

It has been a great day. Especially after a not so great night.    No,no,no the weather was fine (for a change). It was just a lot of trouble in the engineroom. First the genset busted a belt. Of course it was one of those belts that take hours to change (because you have to remove the Hydraulic Power-takeoff). And then the Aircon broke down.  Both compressors just would not kick in. Trevor and Steven were still busy changing the belt, so I started to analyze the situation. But I did not get anywhere. It just did not make any sense. Trevor and Steve did not make a lot of progress either late last night, so most of us ended up sleeping on the floor in the Salon....

Monika, Steven and Valerie in the Salon this morning.

But once the night was over and Dominica was in sight, Trevor and I took another fresh look at the Aircon situation, and after a while Trevor found the problem:  A little wire to one of the pumps that apparently got exposed to Seawater and corroded.


Derek, Yannick and Ginette Perryman

After that, things went straight up. We checked in to Dominica without any hassle, called Derek Perryman from Dive Dominica ( http://www.divedominica.com ) and were ready for our first dive only minutes later.  Dominica is fortunately not a very popular tourist destination (even though it has lot to offer), so the reefs are still pristine and intact.


Seahorse on our afternoon dive near Scotts Head

We had a great afternoon dive with Derek's team and look forward to some more during the next 72 hours. We saw a Seahorse, Scorpionfish, Turtle, Eels and lots of other fish.

STARSHIP anchored and tied to a palm tree aft in Dominica

For the rest of the day everybody was working very hard and the STARSHIP shines and is as clean as new ! We had a great dinner and now things have turned mellow and I guess it will not be a long evening, as everybody has to catch up on some sleep.

Talk to you tomorrow !

Michael