Caturday with Simon's Cat

It's Caturday today. It is a beautiful sunny morning in St Croix. Seems like a good time to do a spot more work on the mast, but we really must walk up to the grocery store first. So It Goes...

By the way, we bought gasoline for our dinghy yesterday. Last time we filled our 6-gallon tank for our 5HP Tohatsu was April 7th... That's 72 days on less than 6 gallons. See why we prefer our 5HP to our previous 15HP? It might not go as fast but what's the hurry? We can still move So It Goes with it, if necessary, too.

Gas is still $4.55/gallon (I heard that gas prices have fallen in the USA) but at least it hasn't gone up.  I don't understand why we have to sign a "Fuel Tax Exemption" form as you can buy gas cheaper at a service station. You'd think that if I bought tax-exempt fuel, it would be less expensive. Oh yes, this is St. Croix Marine.

Here's a new Simon's Cat. I enjoyed it and hope you will, too.

Simon's Cat in "Hidden Treasures"

What's under your fridge?  I'm scared to look :)

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Gasoline Prices at fuel dock in St Croix, US Virgin Islands

Yesterday we bought 4.5 gallons of gasoline at St Croix Marine in Christiansted, US Virgin Islands and surprise... the price has gone up yet again!

Fortunately, we don't use much. We have a 5HP two-stroke outboard motor and we only use it 2 or 3 times a week. Our new Honeywell generator doesn't seem to take as much fuel as the Honda. We've had many cloudy days so it has been necessary to run it more to keep up with computer consumption.

2011 (price per US Gallon):

• May 17: $4.55 (a 21+% increase in 5 weeks)
• April 23: $4.25 
• April 7: $3.75
• Feb 4: $3.65
• Jan 6: $3.35

Diesel is currently (May 17 2011) 10 cents cheaper than gas at $4.45/gallon

At least their water has been a bit cleaner lately :)

So It Goes...

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Marina Gasoline Prices in St Croix, US Virgin Islands

Today we bought 4.5 gallons of gasoline from St Croix Marine in Gallows Bay, Christiansted, St Croix, US Virgin Islands... The price has gone UP...

• On April 7, 2011, the price for gasoline at the gas dock was $3.75/gallon
• On April 23 (today), the price has gone up 50 cents to $4.25/gallon

Wow!!! St Croix is supposed to have "cheap" gas because of Hovensa fuel refinery. It is less expensive at the gas stations. We have to sign a piece of paper each time we get gas at the marina because it is supposed to be a special price, thus you'd think cheaper...

It is, what it is...

So It Goes...

Honeywell HW2000i Generator Inverter - Part 2

Yesterday we received the carb elbow for our new Honeywell HW2000i generator-inverter. Thank you very much, Tom (Fall Mountain Small Engine in New Hampshire).

You can read our previous installments here:

• 2011 January 8: Honda 2000i Generator quit. Honeywell HW2000i next up? 
• 2011 January 31: Honeywell HW2000i Generator Inverter - Part 1

We went and bought new oil and gasoline, then Bob replaced the carburetor elbow. Started up after a few pulls and it is running our battery charger.

Doesn't seem much louder than our Honda EU2000i. I thought it was going to be twice as loud.

Click on the photos below to enlarge...

Here's the damaged elbow on the left. On the right, you can see the damage to the ribs on the inner side of the covering panel where I assume that somebody was in a hurry and gave the panel a good whack to close it rather than seating it properly... Maybe it was the last unit of the day.

Interior of cover panel / Broken off carb elbow part attached to motor block

New part installed / "Old" carb elbow as it arrived new in the box

Of course, the Honeywell has a different orientation than the Honda so we'll have to position it differently. The Honda has its control panel on the front with exhaust in the back and the pull cord on its starboard side.  The Honeywell has its control panel and pull cord on its port side and exhaust in the back. So It Goes...

And it is going!  It has been running for a bit over an hour (knock on wood!).

Tomorrow we will try to charge our 48V battery bank...

By the way... Gas is going up at St Croix Marine on Monday by 19 cents.  Today's price (February 4th) was $3.65/gallon and the last time we bought gas on January 6th it was $3.35/gallon.

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Clean and charged

Yesterday we received our new battery charger. We hooked it up late yesterday afternoon and it works just fine!  We have completely charged up our 12V system in a few hours. This charger has more oomph so we won't have to run the generator as long which is cool.

This afternoon we went and did a load of laundry over at the very nice laundromat near the ballpark. Tie up your dinghy at St Croix Marine.

The machines are larger than what I remembered from when we were first there.  It's very clean, bright, and new. There is a coin changer to the right of the office counter. We used the $5.50 machine (all of the $3.50 machines were in use) and had room left over which is better than overloading.  We found a shortcut to it today from the parking lot near Ace hardware.

It's #8 on my map MAP FOR CRUISER'S of Christiansted St Croix USVI. It's probably best to download the map to your computer so you can enlarge it for details. (Here's another link for STX info)

It takes about 25-30 minutes to wash which is enough time for us to do a quick shop at the Schooner Bay supermarket just up the street.  The washers spin the clothes fairly dry which helps when humping the clothes back to the dinghy and they dry rather quickly on the lifelines.

I must make another observation... The Coke machine outside of St Croix Marine has to have the coldest cans on the island!  75 cents, too.

Oh yes, their price for gasoline went down today to $3.10/gallon. I think diesel was $3.19.

Two for Tuesday???

We hope to apply the second layer of biaxial cloth today.  We have applied one 12" strip and hope to do the other, weather willing.

We woke up to a solid one-tone gray sky.  No clouds... just solid gray.

We decided to go and get some water and gasoline.  Gasoline has gone up to $3.45/gallon at St.Croix Marine, from $3.20.  Diesel is $3.19/gallon and if you buy more than 500 gallons of diesel (cash) the price is $3.03.  There is a further discount if you buy more than 1000 gallons. Someone who just passed through Bermuda told us it was almost US$4.00 per LITER.

After returning to the boat it still looked like possible rain.

Quite often it will look like this and nothing ever happens... although usually more often than not, it will rain.

So, we went for it !

It took about an hour...

We will wait for another half hour (3:30pm) and go see if we can turn the mast over and complete this second layer of glass.

Finger's crossed!

Another epoxy tip:  When working with epoxy, try not to drip sweat into the epoxy.

Boxing Day in St Croix USVI - Happy Holidays

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

( Click to enlarge )

We just came back from getting some gasoline and a bit of food shopping.

Fuel prices at St. Croix Marine, Gallows Bay, Christiansted:

• Gasoline : $2.75/gallon 
• Diesel : $2.94/gallon

This afternoon we'll be doing more thinking, figuring, and planning our new rig for So It Goes.

Honesty, it's so refreshing!

This morning we went to fill up a few jerrycans of water and gasoline. We arrived at the Port Royale marina at 8 minutes before noon and I was happy that they let us get some water just before they closed for lunch. (76 litres = $2.35)

Then, we went to the Cadisco gas station to fill up two 5-gallon jerrycans of gasoline (essence). We got a bit over 20 litres for $16.75 ($0.82/litre). I paid the guy $17 and started to get back in the dinghy. He told me I had paid him too much. A $20 had stuck to the $10. How super nice... He didn't even think about it, just spurted it out as soon as he noticed. Gold stars!

Gas prices up on French side St Martin

We filled up a couple of jerry cans with gasoline (essence) at the French-side service station, Cadisco on Friday. The liter price has gone up from $0.79 to $0.82 (they use a one-dollar to one-euro exchange rate, rather then the current 1.4 rate). I roughly calculate this as $3.15 per gallon.

(Click image to enlarge)

Can't complain as it is over a dollar per liter on the Dutch side.