Bill's Most Excellent Adventures

05/01/2010 January 2010

2010-05-01T14:12:00.006-06:00

12/31/2009 Last day for 2009. My plans were to head over to Trellis Bay for New Years Eve. This is to be a special night there as first it is New Years Eve and also there is a full moon tonight. Trellis Bay holds a full moon party every month on, you guess it, the night of the full moon. This will not happen for another 18 years. You can find more info about the full moon parties on Trellis Bay at http://www.aragornsstudio.com/events.htm. The weather did not cooperate though. I had rains all day on the 30th and heavy winds from the east today. I decided to drop anchor in Christmas Cove for the night and celebrate New Years Eve on the boat. I made it to 11:15 and out the lights went.
01/01/2010 Happy New Years!!!!! I was just enjoying the day with a quiet sail to Francis Bay. I set out for another cross island hike today to Coral Harbor. There is a cruisers bar there known as Skinny Legs. The burgers are fantastic and the beer is real cold after a hike like that. It was even better than the one with Harold because it was shorter and there is cold beer.
01/02/2010 I have made it back into the BVIs again. My goal is to start checking out some lesser known anchorages and enjoying the peace and quiet. After clearing in I anchored off of Guana Cay again. I stayed here with Titus, Cliff and Julie one night. It has a beautiful beach. The island is a private island with a resort that can be rented out by the room or the whole resort, but they allow the public on the beach up to the high water line.
01/03/2010 Today I sailed over to Virgin Gorda Sound. I had spotted an area past the cut from Bitter End Yacht Club that I wanted to try out. There is a large Sound there known as Eustatia Sound. There is a fringing reef that protects the whole are. There are many shallow spots, but I figure I could work my way in there. This reminds me of the anchorage at Tobago Cays in the Grenadines. It is wide open and the reef is submerged, but it protects you from the waves of the open sea and allows the wind. I did snorkel it, but the reef is in really bad shape. There is nothing to see. At night time though, I did see bioluminescence jelly fish.
01/04/2010 I had to spend another evening at Saba Rock. This is by far my favorite bar in the Caribbean. You just can’t beat the $2.50 Pain Killers from 4-6PM and the wonderful company. What more can I say!?
01/05/2010 The winds are blowing real good and in a favorable direction today. I sailed to Great Harbor on Peter Island. This is a great anchorage, but I need to anchor close to the shore as the bay is quite deep. I was anchored in 30’ of water, which is about as deep as I want to anchor in with only 150’ of chain for my anchor rode.
The next morning I was watching a large personal yacht try to raise its anchor. It was having a hard time and I kept an eye on it. There was a crew of four on the boat, plus the guests. Eventually they were able to raise the anchor out of the water and it was hooked to another anchor, probably off an old sailing ship. I watched them try to release the anchor. I decided they would need to release the anchor the same way I had to release a cable I caught in Charlotte Amalie Harbor the year before. That is to loop a line from the deck, through the caught anchor and back to the deck. You can then lower your anchor to clear away from the “garbage”. When your anchor is clear or stowed, then you can release one end of the line to the deck and the anchor will fall. I still have nightmares about getting my anchor stuck, like when Titus, Cliff and Julie were on the boat. This anchor would have done the same thing to me since my windlass is not that powerful.
01/06/2010 I sailed to Sandy Cay today. I was trying to decide where to anchor. It was either here or Green Cay. The weather did not look good for Green Cay so I took the chance on Sandy Cay. Sandy Cay is a beautiful little island that is a donated National Park from the Rockefellers. When Carolyn and I brought the kids down here, this was our favorite spot. Tonight did not enhance the situation. I had swam to the beach and walked around. I believe, why I was there, that I picked up some no see-ums. If I have not talked about these little buggers in the past, let me tell you, there is no worse torture that these. I had to eventually crawl into the nets with a sheet to sleep, because the bugs got into my bunk for the night.
01/07/2010 After a lousy night of sleep, I bummed around the anchorage for a little. While I was sitting there a large personal mega-yacht came by. It is Le Grand Bleu. It is a 370 foot yacht and if you look closely you will see a large power fishing boat on one side of the deck and there is a 60’ sailboat on the other side. These are lowered by a crane. I then sailed back over to West End to clear out. On my way in I saw a film crew filming a large catamaran outside the entrance. I was hanging around West End when I heard all of the boat horns going off and watched as the catamaran had tied up to the dock right in front of me. The boat looked very familiar. I thought I had seen it in one of the sailing magazines a couple of years ago. It was designed by the owner that needed to use a wheelchair to get around. I had just witnessed history as it was Geoff Holt and he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. You can read more about him and his journey at http://geoffholt.com/.

As I was leaving the harbor, at anchor was the Sea Cloud. This is a four masted tall ship being used in service throughout the Caribbean.
I decided to try a new cove on St Johns after clearing out. That is Hawksnest Bay. The problem is that is has a total open entrance to the north and the seas were really rolling in. I was able to get on a mooring, but I was rolling so much, and I was afraid that if the mooring let go, I would go ashore. As the sun was setting, I let go of the mooring and headed over to the nice calm and safe Francis Bay.
01/12/2010 Today I started Captains School. This is a two week class that assists me in getting my USCG Captains License. It is packed with information that will take 12 evenings and 4 weekend days all day. Through the other courses I have taken through the Coast Guard Auxillary, most of this is review. The regulations are the toughest part as I don’t live those, but I breeze through navigation.
01/24/2010. Today I passed my exam for my Masters License. I need to review my ocean time, but should have enough to earn my 50 Ton Masters Near Shore license. This would allow me to captain any Coast Guard registered vessel to a gross tonnage of 50 tons with unlimited passengers. On Monday I passed my exam for a sailing addendum that allows me to captain a sailboat and on Tuesday I passed my exam for Towing. I can charge to tow another boat.
I had been thinking about doing this and not much else was going on. The instructors are very knowledgeable, especially for the local conditions. If you want to get your license and be in an area that is beautiful and warm, this is the way to do it. If any of you need a captain for your boat, I could be your man. This was a great way to wrap up January. I have been sitting and bouncing back and forth between St Thomas and the BVIs and I needed something new to do. It was well worth my time and energy.

02/08/2010 USVIs with the Harold at Christmas

2010-02-09T09:07:00.009-07:00

12/24/2009 Christmas Eve. A good friend of mine, Harold Fritts, is visiting for Christmas week and looking forward to some good relaxation. Mine and Harold’s relationship goes way back. When I was working at Motorola, Harold was a contractor for US West, the local phone company. The project I worked on allowed me to make my way into becoming a Sales Engineer. We then worked together at Cisco for many years and have stayed in contact after he left. I was able to spend time with him and his wife Teresa when I was in St martin last year.
I have been getting ready for Christmas on the boat. Last year I was in the Florida Keys the beginning of December and experience my first Christmas season in a tropical environment. It was a little strange for me to get use to Christmas decorations on green grass and palm trees. I have spent my whole life in areas that are typically cold, and if we are lucky enough, snowy. I was looking forward to Christmas on the boat and have been working to enjoy the Christmas season. It has been a little different. I do have about 250 Christmas songs on my iPod, so that was enjoyable. I strung a set of lights around the salon and it gave it a Christmas feel in the evening with the music.
I also got a Christmas tree for the boat. It was a little 18” tall tree that had a few lights on it. I bought a package of Christmas bulbs and I hung some sea shells that I had collected last year from Vieques on the tree. I must digress though to a story about the tree. This tree has a plastic stand. After the first week of having the tree standing behind the salon, the socket where the tree attached to the base started to crack and the tree wobbled and would using fall over if I was in any waves. I decided how to fix the problem. I would use plaster of paris to fill the base. This would lock in the socket and lower the center of gravity on the tree and keep it from falling over. Nothing ever seems to be easy though. I mixed up the plaster of paris and poured it into the base. I then stood the tree upside down to allow the plaster of paris to set. I then looked down at my hands and they were wet and white. The plaster of paris was leaking through the base where the socket was cracking from the base. As I said, it is not usually easy to fix things on the boat. I then had to take the string of lights off of the tree and wash the tree down before the plaster set. How I am going to deal with this crack. Super glue of course. If you can’t fix it with duct tape or super glue, it can’t be fixed. It worked. The glue sealed up the crack. I was able to pour in the second batch of plaster and it did not drain down the trunk of the tree. The tree also never fell over again through the rest of Christmas.
I also went Christmas shopping. I had been picking up some gifts along the way, but I still needed to do some shopping. It is not like running down to the mall of several malls in the area here. There are no malls. But I am in the middle of a tax free shopping zone and it is what most of the people on cruise ships do when they come into port here, just like about every other port. I cannot figure out why people feel the need to shop so much when they go on vacation. They can by this same stuff at home or on-line, usually for the same price or less. But I digress. I did feel like I was under the pinch to get my shopping done just like I was home because I needed to get it done in time to mail it home in time. It typical fashion I did it with no time to spare. So I had a lot of the same feelings about Christmas here as if I was back home. I have also got use to the idea of Christmas in a tropical environment. You can adapt if you want to.
12/25/2009 Merry Christmas!! We are having wonderful weather here, with light winds. Today we motored from Red Hook across the sound to St. John and made a stop at Trunk Bay for some beach walking and snorkeling. We are being real laid back with no time tables at all. I was surprised at the number of people on the beach today, so we are not the only ones enjoying a different style of Christmas.
Later that day we motored down to Francis Bay. Harold had stayed at the campground in Maho Bay. This is right next to Francis Bay. We were told that the cafeteria puts on a good dinner for Christmas so we decided to check into it.
That night we went for a delicious dinner that included roasted turkey, fresh made mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, baked ham, sweet yams, fresh vegetables, salad, rolls and butter. My plate was filled and my stomach was filled when the plate was empty, just like being at home. The food was very good and there were a lot of campers there this week. The dining hall was full.
Side note – another mile stone has just been hit. I have now typed over 100,000 words into this blog.
12/26/2009 Today we came up with the brilliant idea of “let’s go for a hike”. Most of St. John is a US National Park. There are many hiking trails through the forests of the island. On a map at the campground there is a trail drawn in that is not shown on the typical public maps from the park. We were told that this trail is not maintained. It would jump us to another trail I had wanted to do when I was here last Spring. It would allow us to hike across the island from the north side to the south side into Reef Bay.
We took off a little later in the morning and Harold told me with total confidence that we would find a bar at the far end and we would enjoy a cold beer when we arrived. Just in case I packed a couple liters of water with us along with our cameras into my pack.
The unmarked trail was a hike straight up the side of the mountain to a road that runs through the island. We guess it was between 2-3 miles and all up hill. The road ran along the ridge. Just down from where the path came out to the road was the maintained trail that took us down to Reef Bay. This path was all downhill. It was a wide path and had stairs cut in. Now I understand the difference between a maintained trail and a non-maintained trail. There were several interesting items to see along the way including this tree that we took pictures in front of and an old plantation. We also saw a Key Deer. These are small deer that I have also seen on Pine Key in the Florida Keys. At the end of the trail was a steam run cane mill. It was out of commission, but it shows that sugar was still being processed here at the turn of the century at least. We made it all the way to the bay and there was no bar for a cold beer. We decided we would have a cold beer at the campground when we made it back.
We started back up the trail. Since it was all downhill coming, it was all uphill going back. We were drinking the water I brought, but my pack still felt quite heavy. I wasn’t sure what was causing that. We were hoofing it pretty good and were feeling the burn when we made it back to the road. There was a family sitting there that we passed on our way down. They asked if we had made it all the way to the bay. We indicated that we did and they told us that we were moving pretty quick as they had just made it back up. We were impressed by that and then knew why we were so tired as we were moving pretty fast. We then worked our way downhill on the non-maintained path and looking forward to the cold beer at the end of the path. When we made it to the campground, the tiki hut that served the beer was closed. We were meant to drink our beer on the boat. We figured we did between 10-12 miles that day with two climbs over the pass. Later on I was looking through my pack to figure out why it was so heavy. I had found a marine store annual catalog that I forgot I put in there when shopping the last time.
12/27/2009 I thought I would be feeling real sore today after yesterdays hike, but I actually felt the best I have in a long time. The exercise really helped. We hung around the bay for the morning and took the dinghy over to Cinnamon Bay for awhile. There was some surf there and we swam in the water.
Later that day we went west to Cruz Bay. This is the “large” population center on St. John. There are many bars and restaurants here. I know of a jazz group that plays every Sunday here. Harold I went there to have a couple of beers and listen to the great music. During one of the sets, the group let sit in three younger players. These guys were fantastic. It is probably some of the best music I have heard in the islands.
12/28/2009 Finally some winds. We sailed today over to Leinster Bay. I have been wanting to go there to do some snorkeling and check it out as an anchorage. It is in the National Park so we did need to pick up a mooring. The history of this bay was that this is where the ships would come into the collect the unprocessed sugar for shipment back to Europe.
I swam around Waterlemon Cay. I had been told about this place and that it was a good snorkeling area. I was a little disappointed as there wasn’t much in the way of fish, structure or coral, but there was a nice group of turtles swimming around.
12/29/2009 This morning I went for another snorkel along the shore line of the bay. The shore line is a little interesting. There is a drop off along the ledge and coral clumps through the area. The interesting thing for me was that I had an octopus swimming towards me. I was glad I had the camera with me this time. I was taking pictures of it when it suddenly stopped and started to flair its tentacles. I wasn’t sure what was going since I was looking through the camera viewer. When I looked up there was a barracuda sitting there watching the octopus and me. The octopus settles to the floor of the bay and I had a hard time seeing it. The barracuda decided to follow me around. I figure the barracuda was interested in the octopus, but was afraid I would attack him if he attacked the octopus.
After that little excursion we took No Rush back into Charlotte Amalie. Harold was getting off of the boat for the night to make sure he got a good night rest before he began flying all the next day to get home. We had a great time together and it was a real relaxing trip for the both of us.

02/04/2010 BVIs with the Titus, Cliff and Julie

2010-02-04T11:09:00.006-07:00

12/03/2009 Cliff flew in today. This is his fourth visit on this adventure. Titus and Julie are flying tomorrow for a week and a half visit. While waiting tomorrow for them to fly in we catch up on our grocery shopping and get everything ready for some sailing. I hope we have better winds this week than last.
12/05/2009 Today we sailed over to Christmas Cove. This is a great way to start a sail trip down here. It is an easy sail and a great place to snorkel. I made my first night snorkel. Titus and I took our underwater flashlights and swam over to the rock island and looked for fish in the dark. I was kind of surprised at the lack of fish. I guess they must sleep also.
12/06/2009 From Christmas Cove we sailed over to Trunk Bay. There we snorkeled on the reef and hung out on the beach. After hanging out here we then motored to Francis Bay. I am sure this is starting to sound like a broken record as this is the same trip I keep making, but it is an enjoyable trip and beautiful places to see for everyone that comes down and visits.
12/07/2009 This morning we hiked over to the Annaberg Sugar Mill Ruins. This time there, there were two woman that answered questions for people visiting. They gave us a personal tour and provided a lot of insight into the history of the mill how the sugar was processed, or as in the case of St John, not fully processed. The final processing was done by the Danish in Europe as to control the product.
After the hike, we headed over to the BVIs. We went to West End to clear into customs and made a visit to Pusser’s as a welcome to the islands. That evening we stayed in Cane Garden Bay.
12/08/2009 Today we made an early start. We have a lot of sailing and snorkeling ahead of us. We sailed back around West End and headed for the Caves. After the Caves we stopped at The Indians. As always, we had a great time snorkeling these two sights. I am attaching a couple of videos that I shot while with the Allen’s last trip here.
After that we tacked our way up the Sir Francis Drake Channel we dropped the anchor at Marina Cay. When sailing in the BVIs, I typically leave a dock line attached at each bow. These are used when we are on mooring buoys for day use or over-nighting. Titus and I had just been talking about how the lines are short enough if they slip through the bow nets, they doo not get fouled in the engines. Famous last words. When we were trying to set the anchor the first time, I lost power in my port engine. I could get it started, but as soon as I put it in gear, the engine stalled. I learned that sound years ago when my daughter Sara and I were doing our trip down the Keys. We fouled the props with an anchor line as we were dragging and anchor off of Boot Key. The good news is I now have two engines and I was able to maneuver the boat into another area and get the anchor set.
12/09/2009 Today we headed off for one of Cliff’s favorite places. It was his single request when coming back down. It was to go back to The Baths. We sailed over early in the morning and we were able to get a mooring for the morning. I have been here several times and I see something new every time I come here. This time I took off with Cliff and went further north on the beach and we did some exploring in the rocks up there. There are some neat little hide-away places in the rocks there. It is quiet with a little water rolling in.
I came back to the boat early this morning. As we started swimming south towards the areas I am used to snorkeling and hiking, it started to rain. I swam back to the boat to close all of the hatches. Of course it wasn’t a little rain, but a nice squall. So much for trusting the weather.
We then sailed into North Sound of Virgin Gorda. We picked up a mooring at Saba Rock. I figured I would give them a try. For $25.00 you get the mooring for the night, up to 250 gallons of water and a bag of ice. What a perfect match for cruising with a group in the BVIs. All of the basics. I do try and time our trip to arrive here mid-week because both water and ice will be running low by now.
Cliff, Titus and Julie took off for Bitter End Yacht Club to walk around and they dropped me off at Saba Rock to get on-line and start happy hour. This may well be my favorite bar in the Caribbean now. After all of the benefits of getting a mooring here, the happy hour is $2.50 painkillers. You will not find a better deal in the BVIs. The barmaids are friendly and the bar is a really cool looking. It is all carved hard woods with dark stain. The three of them joined me in about an hour and we all had a great time hanging out at the bar.
12/10/2009 This morning we headed up the sound and anchored at Mosquito island. When I usually come into the sound, I take the cut between Virgin Gorda and Mosquito Island. It is about eight feet deep and on both sides of the cut there are good looking waves that break. It turns out that when Titus was starting out in his career he was sent to Mosquito Island to work on a power system there. Of the last two trips he has been with me we have come across islands that he had to visit to work on their power systems. The other was Stocking Island. This was across the bay from Georgetown, Exumas in The Bahamas. He and Julie went exploring to find out what is going on there. The island has since been bought from previous owners and the current owners are implementing a green resort.
We then sailed over to Guana Island. This is where Cliff and I have seen the large schools of silver fish. This time there was also a large school of Tarpon. Cliff estimated the school to be between 50-70 fish. That is a lot of Tarpon.
We then anchored just north of there for the night. It is a good anchorage that is protected and quiet.
12/11/2009 After lazing around this morning we took off for Sandy Cay. It was a nice light sail over. Titus and Julie took the dinghy in while Cliff and I swam in. There is a nice trail around the island with different flora and animals to see. Titus was in his element here. One thing I have learned about traveling with Titus and Cliff is that Titus is a land guy that loves to hike and Cliff is a fish. It is good to hang out with both of them to get the best of both worlds. Julie is more like me, she likes the water and the land also.
We then sailed over to Great Harbor on Jost van Dyke. I have been trying to get there on a Thursday or Friday night when Foxy’s is suppose to have live music. I hate to say it, but this is one of those days that just goes downhill. I always have a hard time trying to find good holding ground in this harbor. After dragging we finally got the hook to catch. It was tight in the harbor with all of the boats in there. We had dinner on the boat and then went ashore to have a couple of drinks and listen to the live music. I was also scoping out the area for New Years Eve. We walked the length of Main Street and I found a couple of different bars that I had not been to. The people seemed really nice. They were also very quiet with none or hardly any customers. We made our way back to Foxy’s. They had the biggest group of people. The band was playing and some dancing going on. I will have to say I was very disappointed with the music. In the BVIs, the reggae appears to me to be a cross between Bob Marley and rap. That was strike one with me. The next is you cannot get a drink for less than seven dollars there and most are eight. Strike two. The third strike is that the people running the bar really seemed to be bothered when you try to order a drink. To me, it just isn’t a friendly place. When I talk to locals and charter boats, most try to avoid Foxy’s anymore. I did find out that Foxy has sold off the business.
When we got back to the boat, the winds picked up. When I attached the dinghy to No Rush, we started to drift on the anchor. I am thankful it happened when we made it back to the boat. We reset the anchor and I also set the anchor alarm on the chart plotter. About 1:00am the alarm started to go off. We were drifting again. I got up and set the anchor one more time. This time I stayed on the deck for the night and we did not move again.
12/12/2009 We went back ashore in the morning to explore a little when it was light. I saw my first octopus. Right across from the dinghy dock on the shore there was a small octopus trying to catch a crab that was going ashore. The octopus looked like it was trying to go ashore also, but never left the water. We watched it for awhile and then we spooked the crab back intot he water. The crab now knew what it was like to be between a rock and a hard place. The crab decided to go for the hard space back in the water. As soon as the crab hit the water, the octopus reached out, grabbed it and pulled it into itself and we never saw the crab again.
We then found some coffee for Titus and Julie and looked around the t-shirt shops. We then cleared out of customs to head back to St Thomas.
When we went to lift the anchor, we found out why we did not move again. The anchor was stuck had in about fifty feet of water. There was no way for me to dive it and I was not going to let loose my anchor and 150’ of chain. Cliff and I went back ashore to talk with the local dive shop. Unfortunately they were closed. We then called a dive shop on Tortola and they sent over a diver to rescue our anchor. It took two dives as the anchor chain had wrapped amongst some large rocks. This cost us about $300. It was money well spent as the anchor and chain are worth more than $1,000, but not how you really want to spend money.
Now we were running late to get back to St Thomas. We need to clear in as Titus and Julie are leaving first thing in the morning. The winds were blowing hard. I had full main and jib out. We were seeing apparent winds of 30+ knots. This is the highest winds I have ever seen with full main. No Rush handled it well, but I did notice that we were sailing slower than expected for these winds. I figure it is because I was pinching to make sure I did not over power the boat. In the future I will reef (and I have and seen better speeds.)
We then made it into Charlotte Amalie at 4:00pm. I thought Customs and Immigration closed at 5:00pm. I was wrong, it was 4:30. We made it to the city office at 4:15, but the door was locked. We knocked and no one answered. I checked with the ferry desks and they indicated someone should be in there. While I was checking at the ferry desks, Cliff found a back way in. He found some people and they told him they were closed for the day. Cliff was not going to put up with that. It was 4:20. He demanded and finally talked with a supervisor that instructed the agents to help us. What a way to finish the trip. We did have a good dinner at The Green House.

01/19/2010 BVIs with the Allens

2010-01-20T11:05:00.018-07:00

11/23/2009 Richard, Leslie and Taylor flew in last night and stayed at a local hotel. This is a good thing to do when you have had to travel all day and a good night’s rest and hot shower in the morning is called for. We met up this morning and prepared for a week on the boat. We made the trip to Pueblo grocery store and stocked up. We had so much that we needed to push the shopping cart to the dock with all of the food. This is a first for me. It took several trips from the dinghy dock to the boat to load the groceries and bring everyone out the boat. After all was put away, we took off for an afternoon sail. We had some choppy water on the south side of St Thomas. Not always a good way to start out the trip, but we all did good.
We anchored in Christmas Cove for the night. I decided this is a good place to start each trip as it is a good anchorage and a place for everyone to get acclimated to the water and snorkeling. As I have written in the past, it is a great anchorage with a couple of good reefs with plenty of fish and the water depth is less than 15 feet throughout most of the cove.
11/24/2009 This morning Richard went to the top of the mast for me. The anchor light went out again after I just replaced it when I was in St Martin. It appears that it was not fitting properly within the plastic cover. Richard was able to fix it and we have a proper working anchor light.
Afterwards we then set off for Trunk Bay and Beach. Trunk bay is a popular beach on St John. We took the snorkel gear and swam a couple of the reefs. The brochures push an underwater snorkel trail here. I decided to try the trail. They have put stone markers on the bottom and they point out different reef structures and fish. This area is where most of the tourists snorkel and is very busy there. The park service is working to bring back living reef, but there is a way to go. After walking the beach they snorkeled the west end of the bay. I like this area much more and recommend it. I have seen a Hawks Bill Turtle here. It is the only time I have seen one of them.
Afterwards we motored down to Francis Bay. This is in my top five anchorages in the Caribbean. It is a quiet area due to the hills that protect you from just about any weather in this area.
11/25/2009 Happy 15th birthday to Taylor. This has been her second birthday on No Rush. We took off for West End on Tortola today. This is my first time checking in at West End. I usually go out to Jost Van Dyke. This is a lot easier. You can pick up any open mooring for the afternoon at no charge. We then went in and visited with Customs and Immigration.
Afterwards we walked around the boardwalk. There are many shops here for the needs of visitors including a full grocery store, many clothing shops, a place to pick up ice, drop off garbage, get fuel and of course, a Pusser’s Store, restaurant and bar. We stopped there for lunch and a couple of drinks. For dessert we had their famous coconut shell filled with ice cream.
We then loaded back into the boat and had a great sail over to Norman’s Island. The weather brought in some choppy seas so we by-passed the Indians for the time being and snorkeled the caves. I started to play with the video option on my underwater camera here. There are three caves you can swim into along with a good reef that runs along the wall between the caves.
Afterwards we took a mooring for the night in The Bight. Richard took Leslie and Taylor ashore and cruised the shoreline with the dinghy. Happy birthday Taylor!!
11/26/2009 Happy Thanksgiving!! Today we took off for a long sail with a stop along the way at the Indians. It paid off by waiting until today to swim the Indians. The wind chop was down quite a bit and made for a good swim. We swam along the wall and then to the back side. It is amazing how one area can be so different from one side to the other. On the ocean side there is a wall that drops straight to about thirty feet the whole length of the Indians. There is plenty of coral growth and small fish along the wall. When you swim around the corner, due to the currents there are usually a couple large schools of fish and then the water gets shallow onto a large reef that extends all the way to a close by island. There are many different kinds of fish to be seen here. There is also a tunnel that you can swim down about ten feet, through the tunnel and back up to the other side.
We then sailed up the length of Francis Drake Channel and into Trellis Bay. This bay is located at the end of the airport runway on Beef Island. It is a good place to pick up friends when they fly into the BVIs. There are several bars and restaurants and an artist there. The artist has made sculptures out of metal that are in the shape of a large ball. He has then cut out designs in the ball. These balls are used for full moon parties every month. They are filled with wood and when light make a contained bonfire. There are several along the beach. I hope to make it there for a full moon party before I leave.
For dinner tonight we made a pork tenderloin along with baked yams and a salad. Not nearly as festive as last year’s jambalaya and key lime pie.
11/27/2009 This morning we motored over to The Baths. We had the wind directly on our nose I decided to motor and make good way instead of long slow tacks all the way over there. We had a great time swimming in amongst the rocks. I have a set way now of swimming south along and through the rocks and then take the trail back up the beach through the rocks. There is a good path and some locals have put in steps and stairs to make it around the rocks much easier. I noticed the crowds are building with the holidays coming.
During the afternoon we sailed north into Gorda Sound. We had a chance to fly the spinnaker a little bit and did some fishing. Taylor caught a Bonita and landed it.
We then went and spent a couple of hours checking out the Bitter End Yacht Club. It is a full service resort with plenty of water sports. They also have a restaurant/bar, a pub, couple of clothing stores and a small market.
From there we sailed up to Leverick Bay. When you pay for a mooring there you also receive a tank of water and a bag of ice. These are two things you want to keep an eye on when sailing on a boat this size. We went ashore and decided to have dinner there. It was a wonderful barbeque buffet with salads, pastas, fish, steak, chicken, some of the best ribs I have ever had, prime rib and ham, along with desserts. For entertainment that night they have a troop of Jumbies come down and dance for the crowd. Jumbies are people dressed up in bright clothing walking on tall stilts. They are popular at carnival throughout the islands.
11/28/2009 Now it is that time of the week to start heading west again. After tanking up the water and grabbing a bag of ice we are sailing in light winds again. I am glad we had the good winds on Thursday as it was the only really good sailing we got in the whole trip. I have been warned about the Christmas winds that are suppose to arrive in late November, but alas, light winds. It is like most of my trip with not normal weather conditions. That has been a good thing.
We sailed over to Guana Cay to swim with millions of small bait fish and the Tarpons. We were not disappointed. Leslie and Richard spotted a small shark. I have yet to see a shark since getting back on the boat in September. While sitting in the bay I watched a couple of small dolphins doing back flips off of the wake from a power boat.
We then motored towards Cane Garden Bay. On our way we spotted a small pod of dolphin and passed through them twice. We could stand on the bow and watch them swimming under our bows. There really isn’t any sight on the ocean like that. The dolphins are so inquisitive, just like us.
We then made our way into Cane Garden bay and dropped the anchor for the night. We took the dinghy ashore and hung out on the beach. It is a beautiful beach with nice gentle waves washing ashore. Being we arrived late in the afternoon it was real quiet after the cruise ship tourists left. We walked the length of the beach and then waded in the water or hung out on the beach. Cane Garden is also the area for another full moon party. I am told it is one of the wildest places for a full moon anywhere.
11/29/2009 This morning we tried sailing out of the bay and head back to St Thomas. The winds were so light that I gave up and started the motors. It amazes me how little wind there has been. We did not need to clear out of customs and immigration on this trip because the agents pre-cleared us when we arrived. We motored past St John and into Charlotte Amalie by early afternoon. We needed to clear in with US Customs and Immigration. We needed to pay an overtime fee of $35.00 for Sunday support.
We then went and had lunch just in time as it started to rain. It rained heavy for a couple of hours and we enjoyed a good lunch at a restaurant in the marina. Afterwards we brought the luggage back to the dock and we said our good-byes for this trip. It was another wonderful time together.

01/04/2010 St. Martin to St. Thomas

2010-01-11T06:35:00.013-07:00

01/10/2010 It has been quite awhile for me updating the blog. I have not made it the habit it was for me when I was traveling down island. I believe because everything was so new for me. I am no revisiting old haunts and hanging out in areas for weeks on end. I sometimes find this uninteresting to write about for myself, but others enjoy reading of my daily life that is so different from the life I left a year and a half ago. As I catch up on my writings, there may be little detail, but more the highs and lows of this part of the trip. The one thing I will be able to offer is plenty of pictures including underwater pictures. A friend of mine, Harold Fritts, asked me about the wild life I have seen since taking this trip. I had to tell him that most of the wild life I have seen and enjoyed has been below the water line. So here we go in trying to catch you all up with what has been going on for the last couple of months.
11/02/2009 I have spent the last couple of days in St Martin readying the boat for the next crossing from St Martin to St Thomas. I was planning on sailing into the BVIs but decided against it as I have a couple of boat problems that I need work on. One of them being the pump-out for the holding tank. I don’t want to be dumping raw waste into the water, especially co close to the reef structures in the BVIs.
I took a trip into Philipsburg one day. Philipsburg is the capital of the Dutch side of the island and where the cruise ships come into. I had a good time walking around and doing some shopping. I was able to pick up a couple of Christmas gifts while there. I got a kick out of the competition for renting beach chairs on the boardwalk along the beach. And the answer has been finally answered, size does matter.
I weighed anchor just as the sun was setting and sailed for St Thomas. I crossed with a full moon and clear skies. It was a picture perfect downwind sail with no issues. I wasn’t making good time, but the seas were easy and the auto-pilot did just fine. I made it into Charlotte Amalie at 11:30 on the morning of 11/03.
11/04 It turned out to be a good move to sail into the USVIs for a couple of reasons. The first was that I had an attack from my kidney stones. I have the issue once in a while, but I can usually apply some pain control with a couple of ibuprofen and plenty of water. This time it just didn’t seem to want to stop and caused me some concerns. I went and visited a local doctor in the marina and he ran a few tests. He did confirm it appeared to be a blockage by kidney stones and of course the pain went away right after the doctor visit. He ran some tests and we discussed visiting a local hospital for some x-rays after a second visit with him.
The second was with the holding tank. I decided to try and have the holding tank emptied using the pump-out at the local marina. There are not many pump-outs after you leave the US. What I found out was that I had a blockage in pump-out line coming from my holding tank. This was going to require major surgery. I went to a local hardware store and bought a snake. I then needed to disconnect to output hose to run the snake in. The problem was the holding tank was under pressure. I needed to relief the pressure before disconnecting the hose. To do this I needed to remove the toilet form the head and then, with patience, back pressure the tank through the input hose into a bucket. You talk about a crappy job!!!!! Yughhh!!!! I was able to relieve the pressure and then disconnect the hose and run the snake through. Afterwards I took the boat offshore out of Charlotte Amalie and pump-out the head. New rules, no paper allowed in the holding tank. I have heard of other boats doing this and I am sure it is a rule that is applied after clearing a plumbing issue like this.
11/06/2009 I then decided to get away from Charlotte Amalie for a few days. I sailed over to St John and picked up a mooring ball in Caneel Bay. Caneel is a famous bay on St John and there is one of John Rockefeller’s estates on the water edge. It is now used as a resort.
11/07/2009 Today I sailed over to Trunk Bay and Beach. This is a popular beach and there are many visitors here. It appears many people from the cruise ships that tie up in Charlotte Amalie take ferries over to St John and visit this beach for the day. I enjoy walking the beach and people watch here. I then went snorkeling off of the west end of the beach. I saw my first Hawksbill Turtle here.
Later that day I sailed back to Francis Bay. This is in my top 3-5 anchorages in the Caribbean. It is a large quiet anchorage. There is usually good wind that comes through a cut in the hills and the same hills block any large waves from building.
11/08/2009 I went hiking today. The two primary activities on St John, besides doing nothing and relaxing, is hiking and snorkeling. It is mostly US National Park. I hiked over to the Annaberg Sugar Mill ruins and then over to Leinster Bay. In the sugar days, Leinster bay was used as the anchorage for loading the unrefined sugar syrup onto the ships for travel back to Europe. I later found out that the Danish did not manage their own mills here and the best way to protect their profits was to refine the sugar in Europe in a controlled environment.
I took my snorkeling mask with me and snorkeled part of the bay along the shoreline. There are some interesting fish and the water is real clear.
After the swim, on my way back to Francis Bay, I decided to take a detour and hiked up to the camp ground on Maho Bay. This is a camp ground run by the National park Service. There are what they call tent cabins built on the hill side with wooded decking sidewalks built between each of the cabins and to the cafeteria and steps down to the beach. It reminds me a lot of Boy Scout summer camp, with the difference of the tent cabins. The tent cabins are built of wooden decks and have two rooms. There is a sleeping area that has two spring cots with a pad, just like the old boy scout days. This room is completely enclosed with screening and the second room is a sitting area with an igloo ice box and propane camp stove. There is flaps that can be let down for privacy or to keep out the weather, or the flaps can be left up all night if you want to allow breeze to blow through.
Sometimes when I have too many things going, the cooking goes awry. This would be over cooked sausages at any level. I chalked this one off as a total loss.
11/13/2009 I spent the last few days back in Charlotte Amalie. I had problems with the holding tank again. This time the hand pump started to act up. It was not as messy a problem this time. I had to take the pump out and inspect it. The problem is in the output rubber valve. The rubber has dried out and would not allow a good suction when pumping the valve. I cannot get replacement parts in St Thomas. I have friends coming down in a couple of weeks, so I ordered them up from West Marine and Richard will deliver them to me when he and his family come down. In the mean time, as a back-up, I took the pump out that is used as the emergency bilge pump. It is the same pump and I was able to re-configure it for pumping out the head.
11/14/2009 Today I sailed over to Christmas Cove. The weather has been very unstable. As I was leaving Charlotte Amalie, I caught a picture of this tail coming from the clouds. It never did form a tornado, or waterspout. The next day it rained all day. You don’t see that down here too often. If the rain lasts longer than 15 minutes, it must be a major storm. The fresh water is good for cleaning off the boat though.
This cove is in my top three anchorages in the Caribbean. It is located on the west edge of Great St James Island on the southeast coast of St Thomas. It provides protection from all weather except west-southwest weather, which is very rare here. I plan on staying here for the week before The Allen’s arrive for Thanksgiving trip. My plan is to do nothing. A lot of people talk about doing nothing and it takes a lot of concentration to do nothing. There is a thin line between doing nothing and being lazy.
While I was here I did a lot of snorkeling. There are two small reefs here in the cove that attracts many fish. There would be sometimes up to three charter boats bringing people in to snorkel. It is a great place for beginners. The water is typically less than 12 feet and it is real clear. When I snorkeled the reef along the shore, there was a school of Spadefish. They swarm around me and follow me as I swim along the reef. Also on the reef is a Porcupine fish and in the bay are many Southern Stingrays, three Spotted Eagle Rays and a barracuda.
I also spent three days building a jigsaw puzzle. This is the second puzzle I have done that is of New York City and lost a piece. As I say, it takes a lot to do nothing for a week. I will say I enjoyed it. When thinking of the future, I can see how vacations will be finding a place to just hang out. No need for sightseeing or taking in attractions. It is very restful, even when I am on an extended vacation as it is.
11/20/2009 I sailed back into Charlotte Amalie today to get ready for my first guests of the season. Richard, Leslie and Taylor are arriving for their second annual Thanksgiving trip to spend it on No Rush.

11/11/2009 St. Barts to St. Martin

2009-11-12T09:19:00.011-07:00

10/24/2009 Today I checked into St Barts with Immigration and Customs. It is very relaxed here for checking. I was not even asked for my passport and I only had to fill out one paged. I was given a blank piece of paper with an official stamp on it that I paid my fees for anchoring in the harbor. This is the most expensive place I ever anchored. They charged by the square foot of the boat. It cost 11 Euros or close to US$20 a day to just anchor in the remote harbor. That did not include a mooring buoy.
After clearing in I found Tommy, Mariane and her father Roger. We went for a quick ride and they took me to their home and I met Mariane’s mother, Yolande. Roger and Yolande Berry are both from the island of St Barts and have a rich family life there. During their working and family raising years Roger and Yolande lived in Florida. Mariane has a brother and sister that still reside in the US.
Roger and Yolande have built a beautiful home on top of the hill that overlooks the Caribbean to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. It is a well laid out home that has a nice breeze blowing through it all the time and a wrap-around porch for dining and napping in the hammocks. Roger cooked up delicious yellow-fin tuna that he had caught earlier. I am thankful for them offering the hospitality that they have. It is great hanging with old friends and new friends.

10/25/2009 Today Tommy and Mariane picked me up at the harbor and along with Yolande went to Flamands to park the car and walk the path to Columbier Beach. This is the exact opposite I had done in May when Jim and Alecia had visited. We met a cousin of Mariane’s there and hiked the trail.
We swam in the early morning and sat around the beach. A little later Yolande’s sister arrived, along with her daughter and family. The kids had a boogie board that they took down the beach to a sand dune and we all tested out the board, using it like a snow sled, and rode it down the dune.
We then proceeded to have another great lunch of leftover fish from the day before and another siesta on the back deck.

10/26/2009 Today I took Roger, Yolande, Mariane and Tommy for a sail around the island. We took off from Gustavia and did a counter-clockwise trip around St Barts.
We stopped at Grand Saline Beach for a swim and lunch. There is technically no nude beaches on St Barts, but the officials eyes are turned away on this beach. Just as on all of the French Islands, topless is not an issue. Roger brought some ham and cheese sandwiches and the fantastic French bread you find on this island.
After our swim we took off again to finish our trip. The southeast corner of the island was taking a pounding from the weather blowing in from the southeast. The seas were very confused, along with steep and choppy. Unfortunately all of my passengers did not fair to well on this part of the trip. I don’t blame them as when I did get off of the boat to take them ashore after we arrived back in Gustavia, I felt it also. I usually don’t feel anything from sea movement. After we cleared the northeast point, we were in the protection of the shore and all calmed down. It was pleasant the rest of the way in.
I had a great day sharing my little bit of the world with new friends. Roger was at home on the boat and had the joy of a little boy in a candy store. Mariane is a fish at heart and has earned some of the ASA sailing credentials and it was fun to see her and her dad interact in different duties on the boat.

10/27/2009 Today I stayed around the boat for the better part of the day until I went into town looking for some wi-fi (or on a French Island, wee-fee). I found an internet shop and caught up on my email. I then walked over to Shell Beach. There was a photo shoot going on for swim suits. St Barts is a beautiful place for photo shoots and the local French magazines bring out the best of the island.

10/28/2009 Today we had lunch with Roger and Yolande again at the house. Today was goat. There are many wild goats on the island and it is alright to hunt the goats. Most of the time they are caught by trap, but once in awhile they will need to shoot the goat. The meal was fantastic and very flavorful.

10/29/2009 It is time to leave St Barts. I am taking Tommy and Mariane to St Martin on No Rush so they can fly back to life in Colorado. We had a fun downwind sail with the spinnaker the whole way to St Martin. After getting settled into the anchorage at Simpson’s Bay, we checked in with Customs and Immigration and headed off for dinner.

10/30/2009 While I had some muscle on the boat, I had Tommy hoist me to the top of the mast. This is my first time all the way to the top of the mast. In fact, it is my first time to the top of any mast since going up on a Catalina 25 many, many years ago. I needed to replace the anchor light bulb on top. You can say this was a little high stress. I did not take any pictures from the top as I did not want to let go of the mast and dig around my bag for the camera. I did stop at the top spreader and took some pictures from there.
Afterwards we cleaned up and took off for lunch. We went to the west end of the runway at the international airport and had hamburgers and watched the planes land. If you are there at the right time, you can watch people do the tumbleweed act and blow down the beach from the jet exhaust during take-off.
Then it was time for Tommy and Mariane to jet back to the US. I want to thank them so much for allowing me into their lives while visiting family and a special thanks to Roger and Yolande Berry for making my visit to St Barts a special treat.

10/31/2009 Bequai to St. Barts

2009-10-31T07:36:00.008-06:00

10/17/2009 Today I worked on getting the boat ready to move. That included fueling up at the local gas station with jerry cans. Fuel prices are up about 25% since I was here in June. It is good to be back in Bequai. I do really enjoy it here and I have fond memories of my last trip here.
This evening I went ashore as I saw that Tommy’s Cantina was open for business. When I was here in June, Pam thought she would have the restaurant closed until the beginning of November. They had their fish special going again tonight as always. The catch of the day was yellow-fin tuna or barracuda. I went for the barracuda. It was delicious. Pam was there working the bar so I sat on talked with her until about 9:00. There was a group of younger people sitting around a table having a good time. I started to talk with on the people. He is Bob. Bob is from Sweden. I never met anyone named Bob from Sweden. We started talking and I did my best at international diplomacy and introduced him to the Tequila Shooter. After that we became fast friends. A little bit later I was invited over to the table. They were on a short break from an institute they are attending in St. Vincents. There was Bob from Sweden, two from Mexico, one American, and four from Brazil. They are part of a small group that will train for six months at the institute on St. Vincents and then spend six months in Africa doing different types of mission work, depending on their background.
After we closed the restaurant we headed over to meet the rest of the group at another bar. That group had a couple of Korean woman, a woman from Liberia and more from Brazil. We started sharing about our adventures, which in the end is what I believe tied us together. Some suggested that I could take them out for sail on Sunday, and I obliged as I always do if someone wants to go for a sail.

10/18/2009 Today came around real early after hanging out with the group until the early hours of Sunday morning. A small group of them met me at the dock as I indicated at 10:00 this morning. Bob showed up with Sara, Monica, and Miran.
The winds were blowing real good today. I took them out for about a three hour sail out of the bay and they had a great time as the waves were crashing through the nets and they loved having the water splash around them. Sara was the only one that had been sailing before. So this was all pretty new for most of them.
After that we sailed back into the bay and anchored off of Lower Bay Beach. There are two reefs on this beach, one at each end. We cooked up some lunch that included kielbasi, fried potatoes and some beans.
Then it got real exciting. Miran had only been in the water once before, only a couple of days earlier. She asked for a life jacket and I provided an inflatable type used for snorkeling and diving. She was still very hesitant. We took the dinghy into the beach and got into the water. Everyone had snorkels and masks and we set off for the first reef. Sara took off as she has diving experience and Bob took off. I was helping Miran and Monica. Miran did not take to it, and Monica had never done any snorkeling before.
Monica had a great time swimming along and seeing the different smaller fish. I saw my first sea snake. (After looking through my reef book, it may have been a Tiger Tail Se Cucumber.) The fish we did see were of the smaller type, but there were plenty of different colors. When we made it back to the beach, Miran was having a ball feeling much more comfortable with the life jacket. She would not get out of the water. She was really enjoying herself. These are the kinds of experiences that live with you forever. I was able to share a little bit of my adventure with four other people that never experienced anything like it.
Later in the evening I made it back to Tommy’s for more barracuda and Pam introduced me to her husband Tom. We sat and chatted for quite some time and had a good time together. I still highly recommend that if you make it to Bequai, make sure you stop in Tommy’s for dinner and drinks.

10/19-20/2009 This morning I cleared out with Customs and Immigration. I then stopped to pick up a couple of provisions and sailed away. I had another great time in Bequai and The Grenadines and look forward to my next visit there in the future.
The winds were good, and checking with the weather service the winds would start to die the next few days. I was planning on stopping at a bay on the north end of St. Vincents, but decided against it for three reasons. One being that I was traveling faster tan I expected and I was there in the early afternoon, too early to stop. The second was that the shore was very steep and not good holding according to the cruising guide and the third was that the cruising guide talked about possible theft in the area. This seemed to be a common story that I heard from several people about St. Vincents.
I decided that I would sail through the night and try to make it to Guadeloupe. During the evening I sailed past St Lucia towards Martinique. I had a clear night as the moon was waning and the winds were good until about 2:00AM. Then the winds died and I was in the lee of Martinique. I fired up the motors and took off for what would be two more days of motoring.
I did not want to stop in Dominica. I still have bad memories of being boarded there and the attempted robbery. I was not going to be able to make any decent anchorages on Guadeloupe before sunset so I decided to shoot for the Les Saintes. They are a small group of islands just south of Guadeloupe. As the morning went on I knew I would not be able to make it to even Les Saintes before sunset. With reluctance I headed for Portsmouth on the north end of Dominica. I did not have problems there, but I had read in a cruisers newspaper about a couple that had been boarded there and robbed. They did catch the thieves and were in the process of arraigning them. This does not make me feel any more secure. I motored into the bay at 2:30PM. If I thought the bay was empty when I came through at the end of May, it was deserted now. There were three other boats in this huge bay. The locals must have had it real hard this off-season.

10/21/2009 I took off real early this morning around 3:30AM. I was motoring again as the wind did not pick up at all during the evening, except when one rain storm came through. It was an uneventful day as I motored past Guadeloupe towards Antigua. I set for Jolly Harbor on the northwest coast of Antigua. I spent a couple of days there when I came through. It is very protected, with fuel, water and groceries. It would be just after sunset when I arrived, but I had been in here before and knew that the channel was well marked.
When I was half way between Guadeloupe and Antigua, I was buzzed by another private airplane. This is the second time on three days after never having this happen in the past. I made it safely into Jolly Harbor on schedule and set the anchor. I would stay here for about 36 hours getting ready for my week in St Barts.

10/23/2009 I readied for an early morning sail for St Barts. When I motored into the bay on the 21st in the dark I noticed glows in the water. It was the fish swimming away from the boat and the bioluminescence glowing. The next evening when I went ashore for dinner I saw the same thing. The bioluminescence was the brightest I had seen since I was in Viequez. When I went to raise the anchor, it glowed as deep as I could see into the water. I would have to say this is the brightest I ever saw. I was kind of surprised when I talked with the locals that nobody knew anything about it. It might have been a rare occurrence. There was a whole business built around it at Viequez.
I got a little later start than anticipated when I left at 5:00AM. I had some winds, except it was dead down wind. It is probably the slowest point of sail on the boat and the hardest for the autopilot to keep up with. For the first time since the BVIs I sailed the spinnaker. I tried it for a while, but the course I would need to set was so far off that it just wasn’t worth it. I motored again to St Barts as I did not want to come into the harbor at night again. I mad einto the harbor just as the sun set. That was 334 nautical miles in four days. It gives me an idea of how fast (or slow) I can travel if I need to hide for cover from a hurricane.

10/16/2009 The Grenadines

2009-10-17T07:16:00.013-06:00

10/13/2009 After clearing out of Immigration and Customs at Hillsborough I had a wonderful sail up to Union Island. I had to put in a couple of tacks to make Clifton. Clifton is an entry point in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

It is really off-season down here. The customs office did not even have $3.50EC in change for me when I paid my fees. The good news was one of my favorite fruit stands was open and she had local pineapples. We talked for about thirty minutes. She was a happy lady. She had traveled to Canada for about two years and we were talking about the weather. I told her I was Colorado and that it had snowed there already this season. She was very against cold weather.
I usually don’t go swimming in working ports as the water is not the cleanest, but where I am anchored, there is a beautiful reef that protests the whole harbor. I went swimming on the reef and was amazed at the amount of fish. There weren’t many big fish, but plenty of small fish. It was like swimming in an aquarium. On the way back to the boat I spooked a spotted ray. It had about a four foot wing span. It was a pleasant surprise to see it there.
10/14/2009 Today I went for a swim again and took my camera with me. Here are some pictures of the reef. This time I spotted a small group of young squid on the reef. Later in the afternoon I toiok No Rush into the dock and topped off the water tank. I then sailed up to Tobago Cays. This may well be my favorite anchorage of all time. The anchorage is not too busy here. Again this is really off-season for the area. I talked with one of the other cruisers that has a boat in a charter program and they were told that one of the major charter programs on has 4 scheduled charters this month and only six next month. I sat and watched another great sunset.
10/15/2009 This morning I woke to an issue with the electrical system. I knew there was an issue coming up as the batteries were not getting topped up from the generator. This is an issue I have seen in the past. I just had to take all of the cables apart from the batteries and clean all of the connections. After that all is well again.
I went for a couple of snorkels and hikes today. First I went back to the turtle area to see if there were any turtles around. I was afraid they may not be in the area because of the time of season. No problem. They were there. I know I saw at least four, but I am sure there were more there.
I then took the dinghy over to one of the remote islands. I walked around a bit there. They must use this area for parties and gatherings as there was an area with tables on the other side of the island on the protected beach.
Later that afternoon I made it out to the reef and started to do some snorkeling. I tried a couple of different areas. There was plenty of current out there today. I don’t remember that from the last time I was here. It could be caused by all of the weather we have been having here just pushing the water. I leave you with these pictures. For Father’s Day I was given a digital underwater camera. I thank Carolyn and the kids for the gift.
10/16/2009 We are having plenty of stormy weather here. We had thunderstorms all evening and night last night. It did clear enough to go out for one more snorkel this morning. I decided not to sit here through all of the weather and I would move north. I did get some more pictures to go with the ones from yesterday. Unfortunately no pictures of any sharks. I did see a shark here when I was here in June.
I sailed off the anchor this morning. With the weather the winds shifted a little more to the south that made for good conditions heading north. I was watching as the squalls were rolling in. The first one was south of me and I knew it would not be a problem, but there was a good one coming in ahead of me. I was hoping it would pass before I arrived, but not this time. Just as the wind started to hit, I decided to reef the main. It is the first time I have reefed since being back on the boat. I put in the second reef and we kept sailing along with no problems. Conditions were great. I was sailing 7.5 to 8.5 knots and no problems.
A second squall blew in and as before I did not see any winds above 25 knots. With the reef in No Rush just galloped along in all her glory. I had seen a sailboat on the horizon. Of course No Rush had to go after her. We ended passing the other boat within the hour and put another 45 minutes between us by the time we turned the corner to head into the bay at Bequai.
I am going to spend the weekend here and the plan is to take off Monday morning after clearing out with Customs and Immigration first thing in the morning. From there we will head north to St Barts, moving quickly. I do expect to night stop along the way.

10/12/2009 Grenada

2009-10-13T17:45:00.006-06:00

10/04/2009 I took No Rush into the Grenada Yacht Club for the night. After she sat in Trinidad for three months her water tank was fouled. I put her in a slip for the night so that I could flush the tank several times and a slip is lot easier than hauling ten gallons of water at a time. I probably also spent less for a slip than all the fuel I would have used running back and forth.
10/05/2009 Today we moved over to Prickly Bay. I plan on bouncing around the south coast for the week. I want to see the Classic Cricket Match being held this Saturday. I been looking forward to seeing a match since last summer when my buddy Greg was talking about the game.
10/06/2009 There is plenty of social activities that are announced every morning on the cruisers net broad casted over the VHF radio every morning Monday through Saturday. This evening there is happy hour at D Big Fish. It is a fun bar that mixes great drinks. For entertainment tonight there was a three member band that played jazzy blues from one of the boats anchored in the bay. They were very good and it was fun to hang and listen to the music. Most of the rest of the time is cleaning or maintaining the boat. There is also time to read or watch movies.
10/07/2009 Today I took No Rush over to Clark Court Bay. I had spent an afternoon here the when I circumnavigated the island. There are four or five reefs with snorkeling available. When I was here I snorkeled the two inner reefs. The water was a little murky and wasn’t much better this time. Today I went out to the edge of the bay and went on three other reefs. The first was had a lot of wash from the waves and was murky, but I did see my first barracuda since being back on the boat. The second reef was on the opposite side of the bay and was clearer. This picture here is live white corals growing. It was like a field of them everywhere.
After I went back to the boat, there is what I thought was a sunken island. It was actually a reef also. It rose straight out of the depths of the bay to about three feet below the surface. This was not even marked on my cruising guide as a place to snorkel. It turned out to be the best snorkel in the bay. There were three large schools of fish and plenty of corals. Unfortunately I did not take my camera with me on this dive.
The other reason for coming over to Clarks Court was the happy hour scheduled there. It was hamburger night. That was ok, but it was the live music I was there for. They had a local playing the tin pan. He had a little computer that provided the background music and he played the tin pan. It was very good and what you expect of the Caribbean life.

10/08/2009 I motored over to Westerhaven Bay. I was looking for the owners of the same make of mine, Seawind 1000. I did not find there. They must have been off with customers for a day charter. I decided to head back t Prickly Bay. I was getting ready to cook a chicken dinner I had been planning for the last few days. But the best laid plans…. A couple of local fishermen came by with fresh caught lobster. I couldn’t turn that down. I had not had lobster since my second night in the Bahamas. I cooked him up on the grill along with a potato and corn. It was a meal fit for a king.
10/10/2009 Today is the day for the Cricket Match. I caught the bus to St George’s on Saturday morning. The streets are starting fill up for the weekend and I finally found out where the fruit market is located. It is just north of town, along the street by the main bus terminal and fish market. Still no pineapples to be found and I was told they are in season. I walked from the bus station to the national stadium. It is a three level stadium I believe built specifically for Cricket. I purchased my ticket, a whole $10.00EC or $4.00US. Not bad for a double header including the Old Timers game between The West Indies and The World. I will have to say I was expecting a bigger turn out for the match. It was probably only 10% of capacity.
The first game was the Old Timers and The West Indies Team won quite handily.
They are playing a version of Cricket known as 20/20. After watching two matches I believe I have the basics down.
There is a batter and a bowler, along with 9 other fielders. A batter is the player swinging at the ball and the bowler throws the ball, sort of like a pitcher in baseball. A big difference is that the bowler runs towards the batter to throw the ball.
The field is pretty much a circle and the ball can be hit anywhere including behind the batter. There is no foul ball in cricket. The batter is trying to protect his wicket. A wicket is three little sticks behind the batter. If the bowler can hit the wicket, then the batter is out. The batter can also be put out by a fielder catching a hit ball on the fly, our baseball term of a fly out. The third way is to be caught running between the wickets. If a fielder throws the ball to another fielder who can tang the wicket before the runner can make it safely to the wicket, then he is out.
An Over is a collection of six thrown balls. So the 20/20 is 20 Overs per team. That means there will be up to 120 thrown balls per side. The team that can score the most amount of points within the 120 throws or 20 Overs wins the match. The way to score is to hit the ball and run between the two wickets or there is a perimeter around the field. If the ball bounces or rolls to the perimeter and then goes over it, that is four points. If the ball clears the perimeter on a fly, then it is six points. One side plays offense for the whole 20 Overs then the opposing team plays it’s 20 Overs or scores more than the first team. That is Cricket in a nutshell. I am sure there is more to the game, but Cricket for Beginners. By the way, if you have a few beers, you can fall asleep watching cricket just like baseball.
The second match was between Grenada and Barbados. Barbados won quite handily using only 12 Overs to win the match. It was a more competitive match vs. the Old Timers. That was more like an All Star game in the US where it is high scoring and little defense.
I did have for lunch the national dish of Oil-down. It is a mixture of vegetables and meat with a heavy dose of saffron. That is where the yellow coloring comes from and it has stained the end of my fingers.
10/11/2009 Today is probably one of those days I should have stayed in bed or at least in-port. The good news is I am safe and there is no harm to No Rush. I started early this morning to sail to Carricaou on my way leaving Grenada and heading north. It had appeared the wind did shift a little to the north while I was on anchor.
I set my course on the chartplotter and took off. After I left harbor I was sailing along and had to do some work on the boat somewhere. All of the sudden I look up and I am within 50 feet of two rocks about a quarter of a mile off-shore. I was also in 12 feet of water. This is one of those nightmares that sailor dread, running aground on some rocks. I luckily missed the rocks and kept on sailing. You may say, “why did you not check your course of obstacles”. When I set my course, I walked through the whole course that was plotted and there are no obstacles. I stayed far enough offshore to avoid any shallows and other sorts. The problem lies in that I was sailing head to wind, which meant I was tacking and not staying to the projected course. In this type of navigating, I need to keep an eye on the surrounding and the chartplotter at all times.
The next issue for the day was that the wind did shift towards ENE to about 70 degrees. This meant that I was not going to be able to reach up the eastern shore of the island like the last time I sailed there. I had to tack across the southern part of the island then tack also up the eastern shore. This added many more miles of sailing. I ended up that day sailing and motoring a total of 64 miles when my projected course was on 38 miles.
The third issue was since I had all this extra sailing to do that I was not going to be able to make my destination by sunset. So I decided to stop at a small island on the north end of Grenada known as Sandy Island. I was there with 40 minutes of day light left. I tried to set the anchor and the bottom was so hard that I could not get the anchor to set. I tried several times and could not get it to set. The anchorage was not going to be comfortable either since the wind was out of the ENE.
The next issue started after that failed attempt. I decided to motor on to Carricaou. The problem with this is moving at night. I don’t have an issue with sailing at night time in open water, but it is dreadful to sail or motor at night near land. That is when most problems can happen. There could be other boats, rocks that can’t be seen, fishnets, fish traps, garbage, etc. I did make it to Carricaou, but I was going into an unfamiliar port that had many boats in it and many of them did not have any lights on. I stayed on the outer edge of the bay and was able to set my anchor after the second try.
The upside to the trip was that I was safe and sound and so was No Rush. I also made a pot of chili earlier in the afternoon and that sat well in my stomach on the three hour motoring through the evening.
10/12/2009 This morning I got up early and left Tyrell Bay and motored over to Sandy Island. This is a different Sandy Island from the day before. I spent the night here when I circumnavigated Grenada a week before. I just enjoyed being here. I now understand how a sailor can become locked into a location for a long period of time. Grenada has been that for me and it is a bit of a struggle to move on. I met a sailor in the bar one night and he was talking about his trip from the US to Grenada. It took him also three years to do the same thing I did in six months. He pulled into Luperon, DR and did leave for a year and a half.
Later that day I motored over to Hillsborough. This is the town that has a Customs office so I can clear out of Grenada on my way to The Grenadines. I can see Union Island from here and tomorrow’s journey should be an easy one to enter the Grenadines. I sat and watched my last sunset from Grenada and had a Carricaou Sunset. I know I have talked about that drink. It was a drink made up due to the need to finish off some mangos. When you buy mangos here, you usually get a bag of them. Then you need to figure out what to do with them. I have had mango pancakes, mango oatmeal and the Carricaou Sunsets. They are a mixture of rum (of course), tonic water or ginger ale, mashed up mango and a twist of lime. I good tasting drink that is good for you also with plenty of fresh fruit.

10/04/2009 Trinidad and Grenada

2009-10-05T12:13:00.015-06:00

After being back on the boat for two and a half weeks I am finally sitting down and trying to catch up on my journal and updating the blog. I am amazed at how this is a habit that I enjoyed while on my trip and it does take effort to get the habit started again.

09/09/2009 There are a lot of nines in the date today. I am on my way back to the boat. I have plenty of flying time to get back. I have a 5 hour flight in JFK. I then have a eight hour layover and then catch a 1:00am flight from JFK straight into Trinidad. I was hoping to be able to get some sleep on the way into Trinidad, but the plane seats were tighter than my flight north and no room to stretch out.

09/10/2009 I arrived on schedule and made it through customs and immigration with no problems. My taxi was waiting for me. We arrived just in time for rush hour and the highway was packed. It gave me some time to catch up on my sleep. Me and the taxi driver almost switched positions as he had a late night and an early morning to pick me up. It felt good to be back in the tropics.
I made it back to the marina where No Rush is sitting patiently waiting for me. It was good to see her still on her stands and she was not bothered by anyone. It was time for clean up and getting her ready to float again. The activities included getting a paint job for the bottom, picking up the sails and sail cover, cleaning out the water tank, changing oil in the engines, scrubbing the decks, cleaning out the galley, putting the nets back on up front, mounting all of the canvas, charging the batteries, putting the battens back in the main sail, attaching the sails back up, putting the dinghy back together, running the motors, etc, etc, etc. I had basically five days to get all of this done, all the while getting used to the heat and humidity again. But it all was worth it that first night. It felt so good to sleep back in my bunk again, even if I was still on the hard.

I also fianlly got to the sink project I have been wanting to do. The sink sat on top of the counter and collected water which drained into cabinets below. I countersank the sink in the counter and did a new caulking job.

09/15/2009 Into the water she goes today. She is looking real sharp with her new bottom job. I believe I learned what my problem was when I painted her. I only used two gallons and she took four gallons of paint to get a good cover. When they power washed her it blew all of the paint off that I put on, but it did clean up nice. I anchored in the bay right off of the marina. Chaguramas is a major seaside port with plenty of ship repair and building. I saw three floating dry docks that had boats in and out all of the time along with personal yachts being built or refurbished. They also build oil derricks there. The down side is that the water is very polluted and the harbor is well protected from the trade winds and makes it a hot place without winds, especially during the night.

09/17/2009 After two days, I decided that I had seen enough of Trinidad and decided to sail on to Grenada. I checked out of Customs and Immigration and then pulled the anchor and went around to Scotland Bay to ready myself for a night trip to Grenada. I readied the dinghy by taking the motor off, put away the oars and packed everything in the cockpit as I do for any passages. I made a good dinner and around 8:00pm pulled the anchor and set the sails.
There was some risk in this little adventure as I had not even set the sails yet. I made an assumption that all of the electronics were in good working conditions and the rigging was still holding all in place. As the famous philosopher Captain Ron said “If anything is going to happen, it is going to happen out there boss”.
With those words I took off for a twelve hour sail across 80 miles of open water. The sail could not have been better. I had a steady 15-18 knots of wind and 8 knots of boat speed. It was a moonless and cloudless night and the stars were just incredible. The Southern Cross was in full bloom as was the Milky Way. As the night wore on, around 4:00am in the morning seems to be the darkest and the sky filled with even more stars. There were so many that I could not make out the Milky Way. It was like the heavens blotted out the dark with the stars.

09/18/2009 I had a wonderful sunrise. I don’t believe I even have seen a sunrise on the water when you could make out the sun on the horizon. Usually there is a sea haze that keeps the sun hidden until it raises above the clouds. My plans were to sail into Prickly Bay and check in at the remote Customs and Immigration station, but as I was sailing there I picked up the local cruisers net and was informed that the station was closed due to the concern with the influenza and I needed to go to the capital, St George’s to clear in at the office at the Grenada Yacht Club. That added an extra couple of hours sailing, but it was worth it. As I started to come towards the western shore, the water is so clear that I could see down 40 feet. Also I sailed past beautiful white beaches. I felt like I was home again on the boat. I can’t really describe the feeling.
On my way I passed the Grenada International Airport. You may remember this as the runway that President Reagan wrestled from the Cubans in 1983 or for you Clint Eastwood fans, Heartbreak Ridge. I anchored off of the point from the main harbor and got the dinghy already to go ashore. That took most to the morning as I needed a good nap after the all night sail. I really enjoy those night crossings.
I went ashore and went on the lookout for an ATM machine. You always need cash to get in and usually out of a country. After a half hour hike into town and back I found the Customs agent and the paper work was a breeze to get through.
While I was on my hike into town, I must have went past a school as all of the kids from different schools were walking into town or waiting to catch a public bus. Everywhere I have been since leaving the US, the students all wear uniforms. Each school has its own colors and styles. It is so neat to see the students in the uniforms and they are all well taken care of. There seems to be a pride in them, or maybe they just don’t know any different, but it really is cool to see.

09/22/2009 After a weekend of walking around town and getting a layout of the harbor, I went for the public transportation again. I am not sure why I waited so long because it is one of my favorite things to do on the adventure. There are buses that one regularly from St George’s to Tru Blue Bay. The cost is only EC$2.50 or US$1.00 each way. I was in search of a replacement motor for my dinghy. I have held it together with bailing wire and electrical tape for the last year.
I decided to break down and spend the money for a new motor because foreign boats do not have to pay any duty here. I found a 9.8 hp to replace my 6 hp with. I believe I might have only been getting 3 hp from it the way it has been running and I always had to pray before I pulled the starter that it would start. Sometimes it would and others it didn’t. I was would not go to far from No Rush in case I needed to row back.

09/23/2009 They delivered my motor to me at the yacht club and I took it out to the boat to set it all up. I mounted it and followed the directions completely. The motor started on the second pull. I needed to let it run in idle for 10 minutes as part of the break in period. Two minutes into the break in, the motor stopped. What’s with that? My old motor ran better than that. I pulled and pulled and it would not start. I then proceeded to take off the cover. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do that until it was time to replace the spark plugs. I found that fuel was leaking from the fuel pump. Not a good sign. This was after the marina was suppose to do a thorough test and release of the motor before giving it to the customer. The upside was that I got to ride the buses again to go back to the marine store and discuss alternative plans with the manager. He offered to get me a new motor the next day.

09/24/2009 Nicolas showed up on time with the new motor. This time I decided to try the new motor while I was tied to the docks at the yacht club and run through the break in period. It started on the first pull and has run like a champ ever since. I had to do another hour of low speeds so I shuttled between the boat and yacht club hauling water at 10 gallons a time.
The local security guard asked me what my plans were with the old outboard. I had not thought it through as I expected to carry it with me as a back–up, but I don’t have much room and I would really be hard pressed to want to rely on it as a back-up. I ended up trading it to him for a bottle of Mount Gay Rum. He was happy and has since told me he has it running and I have a bottle of rum. Win-win deal for all.

09/26/2009 Today I pulled anchor at St George’s after landing there over a week ago. I sailed over to Mt Hartman Bay. It was a wonderful sail even beating against the wind. No Rush was in all her glory as I made it around the southwest point and headed east along the south shore. There was a chili dinghy raft up scheduled that day. I met Hal and Inga. They were hosting the chili party. There were about 10 dinghies tied together having a great time. It was real casual with people eating, drinking, chatting and swimming in no particular order.

09/27/2009 After a great evening anchored in Mt Hartman Bay, I pulled anchor and motored to Clark’s Court Bay. I was told there was very good snorkeling there. I tried a couple of the reefs and it was ok, but the water was churned up. I talked with another snorkeler and he said that the water was perfectly clear the last three days and the weather must have churned it all up. From there I motored over to St. David’s Harbour. I spent a night here on my way south to Trinidad. It is a nice quiet anchorage and I went ashore to the bar for a 2:1 happy hour and some really good onion rings.

09/28/2009 Today I sailed up the coast towards Carriacou. It is an island part of Grenada. It was another great sail. It took a couple of tacks, but it was just fantastic. I anchored Sandy Island. I made it in just before sunset, but in time for a sundowner. There was good wind there all night which kept it cool for sleeping.

09/29/2009 I went for a good snorkel first thing in the morning. There were some good fish, mostly small, but I did get to see a turtle swimming. I went towards it to get a picture and it shot away. That is the first time I have had a turtle scoot away. Usually they don’t mind if you swim along with them. I wasn’t able to get a picture, but here are some of the fish. My family got an underwater digital camera for me for Father’s Day and this is the first time I had been in clear enough water to get any pictures.

09/30/2009 Today I took a taxi from St George’s and got a tour of the island with a stop at Seven Falls to do some hiking in the rain forest. I hike towards the falls and came across a tour guide, Cliffon. I was only going to get to see the bottom two falls, but he took me to Honeymoon Falls also. I would not have been able to do it without him. He then dropped me off at the lower falls I swam around for awhile. He told me the other falls to see them, you had to hike to the very top falls and then jump down each of the falls as there was too much growth near the river. Being that I was wearing flip flops, he said there was no way to do that.
I also had another friend, Bruce. I petted this dog on the way in and he ended staying with me the whole way in and out. When I swam, he just hung out on the rocks waiting for me to leave. He earned an Oreo cookie for all his duties. On my way back from the falls it started to rain. Now this usually wouldn’t be a big deal, imagine rain in a rain forest. But this was the first time in my trips into any rain forest that it actually rained.
Afterwards the taxi driver took me through plantation country and saw, bananas, nutmeg, coffee, vanilla and cinnamon. Grenada exports a third of all the nutmeg in the world.

10/03/2009 This morning I went into town to do a little hiking around. I had not made it to the fort overlooking the harbor yet. This is Ft George, built in 1709. From up there I was able to get some great shots of the town. It was real quiet being a Sunday morning and totally relaxing walking through town not dodging any cars. Also pictured here are old style telephone booths and part of the local fishing fleet.

06/22/2009 Trinidad to Home

2009-06-22T10:21:00.005-06:00

06/09/2009 I decided to spend an extra day at Union Island. Jamie and Margot sailed in and I have had a good time hanging out with them. I had them over for dinner last evening. I didn’t think I would see them again as I was heading to Trinidad to haul out.
This morning I took off with for the southern coast of Grenada. I decided instead of making one long trip to Trinidad I would sail to Grenada, anchor in a quiet cove for the night and then make a day sail over to Trinidad. I sailed 41 miles today into St David’s Harbour. The wind was so good today that I made the trip in five and a half hours. If I knew it was going to be this good, I might have started earlier in the morning and made a straight shot for Trinidad.
I anchored in the quiet cove. There is a nice marina there and they provided free wi-fi into the harbor. I have not seen that in quite some time. I did not go ashore as I was not planning on checking into Customs here. It was a real quiet day sitting around the boat and preparing for the next day.
06/10/2009 I made for an early start today. I wanted to leave around 4:00AM, but slept in and left at 5:10AM. I did leave with a good sunrise and the weather was perfect. This would be my longest passage since crossing from Virgin Gorda to St Martin.
As I was putting down the miles I noticed that I could not see any land around. This is a first since crossing from Bahamas to Puerto Rico. There was the haze caused by the Sahara dust that blocked out Grenada when I was about 20 miles out and I was too far out to see Trinidad. When I crossed form the BVIs to St Martin, I was able to see Virgin Gorda until the sunset and then I was able to pick up the lights of St Martin.
The first sight I had was the gas wells that are located about 25 miles off the Trinidad coast. The platforms are an impressive sight. At night time I understand you can see them from many more miles away due to how much they are light up.
I was making real good time until I hit the Caribbean Current. As with the Gulf Stream, there is a strong current that runs along the north coast of South America coming from the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike the Gulf Stream, it is very unpredictable and they isn’t much written about it. I had about 3 knots of current against me as the wind dropped. I had a boat speed over the ground (SOG) of only 1.5 knots. I decided to run the motors and motor-sail for awhile until I could make it through the stream. That took about two hours.
Finally the winds picked up again and I made it through the current stream and making good time again. I was able to sight Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela. I ended sailing within 13 miles of Venezuela. Trinidad sits off the northeast coast of Venezuela.
As I was coming into Trinidad, it was getting late in the day and close to sunset. Wouldn’t you know it, but I had two cargo ships crossing my path. Are we on a collision path or not? That is the big question when coming close with other boats. I do have right of way since I am under sail, but I live by the tonnage rule. That is the bigger boat has rights and I will do everything I can to avoid those ships. They did clear ahead easily and no mishaps so close to the end of this part of the journey.
The next issue I had to deal with was coming ashore at night time. I really don’t like to do this. This is usually when most boats have problems and run aground, hit a rock or another boat. I pushed hard, but I was not going to make it before the sun set. I found a cove on my chart plotter and decided I would head for that for the rest of the night instead of pushing all the way into Chaguramas. I think the reason for this orange sunset, like the ornage sunrise, is the dust from the Sahara desert that is being blown across the acean from Africa.
I needed to go into a channel between a small island and the coast of Trinidad. As it turns out tonight, the moon is a late riser and it is pitch black. There a very few small lights along the coast and there are no channel markers. I am flying on instruments. It was so dark that I could not even see the cove. I had to totally trust the instruments to find the cove and it is a large cove. It is called Scotland Bay. There were a few boats in the cove with lights on and I found a good anchorage point and dropped the anchor for the night. I am now in Trinidad.
06/11/2009 I awoke this morning to a surprise. Scotland Bay is a beautiful anchorage. It reminds me of camping on Lake Grandby in the Rocky Mountain National Park or up on the Allegheny River in western Pennsylvania. It was nice and calm and steeps hills with trees right down to the water line. I was also surprised by how many boats were anchored in there with me.
I motored around the point into the bay at Chaguramas. This is the end of this part of the journey. I am now as far as south as I will be unless I decide to head into the Pacific. I am located at 10 degrees 40 minutes latitude. This puts me just a little over 600 miles north of the equator.
06/12/2009 Today No Rush was lifted out of the water and put on her racks for a rest period while I travel home. Over the next five days it is pretty much cleaning, repairing and making preparations for work on her while I travel back to Colorado for at least a portion of hurricane season. I hired Sam to clean the hulls and I had to run the sails and sail cover over to the canvas shop for repairs. There was maintenance and taking all of the canvas off for the summer and emptying water tanks and such things. There never seems to be enough time. I do want to thank Jamie and Margot. They allowed me to spend my last two nights on their boat. The heat and mosquitoes just would not allow me to sleep at all. We had great evenings together hanging out. I will miss them.
06/16/2009 My last little adventure. I had decided since I had an early morning flight that I would stay at a hotel near the airport. I found a low cost place and made a reservation. I would also use the bus services instead of renting a taxi.
After a shower at the marina, I grabbed my bags and walked out to the main road to catch a bus or what they call a maxi-taxi. Most buses in the Caribbean are mini-vans. I got on the bus and started heading into Port of Spain. This is the capital and main city of Trinidad. I was told that I would need to catch three buses to get to the airport. I started talking with the bus driver about how to make these connections. He told me all what I had to do. This is going to be a real adventure. When we made it to the main terminal in Port of Spain he made me an offer. He offered to take me all the way to the airport for half the normal cost. It would cost TT$120. That is about US$22. I would have had to walk two blocks to catch the next bus. Then I would have had to find a taxi for the last portion. He said that since I was a foreigner that it would be difficult. I took him up on the deal and we had a great time talking about the country and cricket.
We finally found the hotel. We had to drive through an old village that was pretty run down. The hotel has a block wall fence the whole way around with barb-wire across the top. Not your usual Holiday Inn. We had to call on the intercom for them to open the gate to allow us in. I checked in and there wasn’t another soul in sight. I had dinner at the restaurant there and was the only person. I think I may have been the only person staying at the hotel that night. I felt like I was in a movie staying at the Bate’s Motel. Don’t get me wrong, it was clean and the air condition felt great, but not what I am use to.
06/17/2009 Today I fly home. I caught a five hour Delta flight from Trinidad to JFK Airport in New York, a five hour lay over and then another five hour flight from JFK to Denver. All went well and I am home again for period of time.
There won’t be much new going on the blog unless I find some adventure while I am home. Keep an eye out for changes. Thank you for all of your support through this last year.

06/08/2009 The Grenadines

2009-06-08T08:22:00.002-06:00

06/04/2009 The Grenadines are a series of islands south of St. Vincent and north of Grenada. They are all one country including St. Vincents. So with that the collective is known as St. Vincents and the Grenadines. Today I sailed out of Bequia on my way to Mayreau. It is a small island towards the south end of the chain. It was recommended to skip the few other islands between and enjoy my time in the south.
Last night I went to start my generator to charge the batteries and use the laptop. The starter cord finally had it’s last pull and the last few strands shredded. Now I have no use of the generator. On my trip south today I decided that I had nothing to lose by taking the generator apart and trying to replace the starter cord. I had not wanted to do this since I did not have a manual for assistance and I have not taken a pull starter apart in about 30 years. After an hour and a half I had it taken apart, found some replacement line and reassembled the whole generator and had it working. It is a good thing I am a man, since we don’t really read instruction manuals anyway. (Just joking!!!!) (Sort of!!!!)
We had great winds and the auto-pilot did it’s job as I had my head down in my work, except to stick it up and look around to make sure we were not on a collision course or anything like that. I sailed into Salt Whistle Bay at about noon. It was a twenty-five mile trip I made in four hours. The bay is just beautiful. It has a white sand beach that is lined with palm trees. As with all of the anchorages, there are the boat boys. Since I was anchoring they did not bother me much. I did end up buying a fresh caught snapper from Joseph.
Not I have fresh fish, how do I cook it. It got me thinking about my grill situation. The grill on the back of the boat has not been working since Puerto Rico when the gas valve froze and I cannot use the grill. I have with me my Magma grill that I have been using on different boats since 1996. I had not mounted it on the boat as the only place I had was on one of the stern rails by the steps and it would be hard to keep lit in the direct wind like that. The idea I came up with was to remove the boat grill on mount my Magma grill in it’s place. It fits perfectly and now I have a real grill that will broil the meat and fish or whatever the way I like my grilling. It is also much easier to keep clean. Nothing like fresh fish grilled for dinner.
I did swim around and check out a small reef at the end of the bay and swam ashore and hiked around a little. There is a small resort here that has a neat little outdoor restaurant. Each of the tables is separate from all of the other tables. The table and wrap around bench are made out of stone and they are covered with a thatch roof. It is a very nice little intimate setting for friends to gather.
This was a banner day to complete a banner few days since arriving in Bequia. I was able to resolve my fuel issues and now repair my generator and hook my grill.
06/05/2009 I decided to stay in the bay for another day. I met a couple on another boat, Jamie and Mora, and have been hanging out with them. Also Bill and Michelle stopped by to say hello. I met them at Tommy’s Cantina in Bequia. They are on a charter boat going from St Lucia to Grenada.
I went for another snorkel today and came across a spotted eagle ray. This may be the first time I have seen one of these and definitely the closest. I swam with it for about 10 minutes. I do need an underwater digital camera to capture some of these sites. Also Bill and Michelle stopped by to say hello. I met them at Tommy’s Cantina in Bequia. They are on a charter boat going from St Lucia to Grenada.
06/06/2009 Today I took No Rush over to the Tobago Cays. It is a Marine Park that is protected. There are many turtles here along with a large reef structure. The trip only took about 45 minutes from anchor up to anchor down. As I was setting the anchor I had my first turtle sighting. This turtle appeared to live in this area as I saw it all the time around my boat the two days I was anchored there.
I took the dinghy over to a protected beach where it is roped off to make a turtle sanctuary. While swimming in the area I spotted about a dozen turtles just eating grass on the bottom. These turtles ranged in size from 2-3 foot or more. I also came across a school of squid. I tried to sppok the squid to see if they would use the ink to escape from. They did not, but it was interesting to see them change color and try to camouflage with the bottom. When I was around sand they would change a tan color like the sand and when around the grass they would change to a greenish-brown.
Later that day I went out the reef. It was late in the afternoon and probably the latest in the day I have ever snorkeled. The reef was alive with all kind of fish. I saw grouper, schools of blue tang, parrot fish, snapper, grunts, more turtles and a shark. It was a black tip reef shark. I have not seen any since the Florida Keys. The water is so clear here also. It is shallow also. Most of the water is only six foot deep. It was like swimming in an aquarium. This is an amazing place.
06/07/2009 This morning I went out for a couple more snorkels. I was by myself and came across the shark again. I get a little spooked when I am the only one in the water. On my way back to the boat I came across a large Southern Stingray. It was working on burying itself. There are also the largest live conch I have seen anywhere. These animals have been harvested so much that it is hard to find any good size ones in shallower water. We really need to be thankful for the people that work to bring these Marine Parks into being so that we can enjoy seeing live like this.
I talked about in my last entry about being closer to West Africa than Colorado. Today I ended up with Sahara Dust on my boat. We had a tropical wave blow through and it brought with it dust from the Sahara Desert. The typical winds in this part of the world blow from the east compared to the typical wind in the US blowing from the west.
Later in the afternoon I pulled anchor and sailed down to Union Island. I plan on clearing out of there through Customs. From there I make a hop to Grenada for then over to Trinidad. I hope the good sailing holds up these last few days.
The Grenadines has been a wonderful part of my trip and probably my favorite place since leaving the Virgin Islands. I would recommend that any of you that have experienced the BVIs to try something different and charter down here. I believe you can do one way charters in both directions between St Lucia and Grenada or you can do the round trip. It is a beautiful, wonderful place. It is English speaking and very cruiser friendly.

06/03/2009 Windwards (Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia and Bequia)

2009-06-03T07:36:00.012-06:00

05/26/2009 This morning I set off from Guadeloupe for Dominica. The plan is to sail onto St Lucia with anchor stops in Dominica and Martinique and then onto St Lucia. I had a wonderful sail out of Pointe a Pitre on my to Dominica. I sailed past The Saintes, a cluster of islands just south of Guadeloupe. The wind was with me the whole way. I ended up with a fifty degree lift in the wind that carried more right to the bay I planned on anchoring in. A lift is a sailing term usually used in racing. It is when the wind veers, or clocks towards the stern of the boat. That allows you to sail more towards your destination and not need to tack the boat at all.
I sailed into Prince Rupert Bay. The town there is Portsmouth and there was, as most time, a fort overlooking the bay. It turns out this is a much larger fort. It housed at its peak during the American Revolution and the French Wars, about six hundred men.
I was met by my first boat boy as I turned the corner into the bay. They are not really boys, but men. This is their lively hood. They offer many services such as helping you hook up to a mooring, water taxi, take you for a snorkel, schedule up excursions, laundry, etc. This is a new experience for me and something I have not been looking forward to. I told the man that I would not need a mooring that I would anchor and he said that he would check in with me later. I made my way to the anchorage and dropped the anchor without any problems.
As soon as I was finished dropping my anchor I was approached by a man on a wind surfing board. He was paddling it and offered to sell me fruit and vegetables. I was the approached a little but later with a man trying to sell country flags. Later that day the original boat boy came by and we talked about a river trip, but it would require more than just me to make it worth wide. I did have him take my laundry though. I decided to check into Dominica as there was very little cost at Customs and spend a few days here.
05/27/2009 First thing this morning I was approached by the first man on a wind surfer again. I bought some passion fruit from him. I never had this before and had to ask him how to eat it. It is really tasty. All you need to do is cut the fruit in half and then scoop out the meat from inside with a spoon and eat it. He also recommended putting some sugar on it. A new experience.
After breakfast I took the dinghy across the bay tp the ferry dock and checked in with Customs and Immigration. I was also able to check out if I left within three days so I did that also.
After working around the boat for the day, I took the dinghy into shore and walked through the village. It is not very large and I was definitely out of season as there weren’t many boaters anywhere. After my jaunt through town, I walked out to the national Park where the Fort is. It was quite impressive compared to anything I have seen so far. To me it is amazing how back then they would use the lay of the land, the bay and the typical weather to build a fort. The bay I was in was a few miles across, but they could defend the whole bay against a navy ship because the ship would always need at some point to tack towards the fort and the soldiers would open up the cannons on the ship at that point. The fort only saw one battle when the French came ashore further south and marched to the fort. The British repelled them and the French left the island. By the mid 1800s, sugar cane had fallen on hard times and the fort was abandoned as were most other forts in the Caribbean.
05/28/2009 Today I set off for Roseau, the capital of Dominica. I was approached by another boat boy on my way in. I did pick up a mooring and his help was welcomed. The only issue I had was that my cruising guide indicated that the cost would only be US$10 for three nights. He charged me US$10 a night. I paid it and also added a tip. I hung out on the boat for the rest of the day and planned on going into town the next day. I was also looking forward to hanging out that evening at the restaurant and bar at the hotel where I was moored at. The was no activity that night so I stayed on the boat.
05/29/2009 The excitement started at about 4:00am in the morning. My boat was boarded by a man. I was able to scare him off, but he was in my cabin looking for who knows what. I am a lite sleeper and thought I heard something moving on the boat, but did not move until I saw him in my cabin in the dark. He was like a shadow. He did grab my safety harness and one of my first aid bags, but dropped them on the way out. He was moving so fast he jumped in the water and swam away from his windsurf board. I decided to leave as soon as the sun came up. I had bad feelings about Roseau. I don't believe I will return there. I know it could have been worse. I did release the surf board as I was leaving the bay. I am happy that as far as I can tell nothing was stolen. I will start putting the hatch boards in before I go to bed.

Later that morning I had a rainbow which raised my spirits and as I sailed into Fort de France I saw a turtle. I am doing much better now. The boat has been sailing well on I am so happy with the positive wind shifts I have been getting. I did have to put in one tack today when I was sailing into the large bay towards Fort de France. Ah too bad.
This is suppose to be an anchor only stop for me also. I do go ashore to check things as it is a large city. I like the French islands very much. I believe since they are still members of the nation of France, they receive a lot of financial support from the French government. They also use the euro. It feels safer here than on the post English islands. The down side is that they really only speak French and it is hard to find someone that speaks English. There is a large shopping district here in town and I walked around. As before in Guadeloupe, I could not even read any of the menus.
05/30/2009 I still have not checked into Customs and I have that brought on by myself pressure. I had read that there is a marine store that supports Honda generators. I have had a problem with mine as the pull cord is disintegrating. I wanted to see if they had any parts or a manual I could look at. It turned out they did not provide any support and off I went.
I wanted to fuel up before left and more excitement for the day. I found the fuel dock with no problem, but again no one spoke any English and I with no French. I asked for gasoline and they handed me the black hose. I filled my starboard tank, my dinghy fuel tank and both fuel jugs. I left the dock and set off for a anchorage on the other side of the bay to stage for a leave the next morning. As I entered the bay I tried to start my engines and the starboard engine would not run. What is going on? I set the anchor and played with the motor. I decided I better go back to the fuel dock and talk with the attendant. It turned out they gave me gasoil, or what they call gasoline. It is diesel. I now have 13 gallons of diesel in my starboard fuel tank, 12 gallons between my two fuel jugs and three gallon in my dinghy fuel tank. While I was there, there was a man trying to clear into Customs and he was kind enough to do some translation for us. The marina next door provided a place for me to dump all of this diesel fuel. I was able to siphon the starboard tank and dump all of the fuel. I then filled my tanks with gasoline from the green hose. In the States, the black hose is for gas and the green hose is for diesel.
I still could not get my starboard engine to run, but decided I probably needed to replace the fuel filters and spark plugs. I left the marina and went back to the anchorage I was in the night before and worked on the starboard engine. I still could not get it to run after replacing two fuel filters and the spark plugs. The engine would just not fire. I then tried my outboard on the dinghy. I had the same problem. It would just not fire. I am not sure what kind of gas they use there, but it did not smell like any gas I have use. I could actually out some on my finger and hold it up to my nose and it would not even bother me. When it was splashed on the water, it did not even leave a rainbow as most oil products do. Luckily I had a full tank of good fuel for my port engine. I spent over $200 and have no useable fuel to show for it.
To top off a perfect day like this, as I was climbing back on the boat from trying the dinghy, I slipped on the deck and went for a swim. If anyone had been on the boat, I know they would have had a hard time trying not to laugh. I did try to laugh at it. I needed to cool down anyways. I wondered who would be the first to fall climbing from the dinghy to the boat. I guess the odds were with me.
05/31/2009 This morning I set off at 6:00am for St Lucia. I need to resolve this fuel problem and I hope that they use a good regular gas. I expect to pull into the first harbor on the north end of the island as it is an IGY marina. They are common here in the islands and are a first class marina.

Today I made my furthest easting I will do on this trip. I made it east of 61 degrees longitude. I am actually closer to the west coast of Africa than I am to my home in Colorado. The furthest west I traveled on this trip was Key West.
I was making such good time with the winds I had I decided to push on. I made it down to the Pitons and then I was going to have to deal with boat boys, a National Park and I would have to use a mooring as there is no shallow water. I am still very leery after my experience in Dominica and the cruising guide talks about needing to pay for security when you leave your boat. Not in the mood for this. I did sail past the Pitons and they are beautiful. There is suppose to be a lot of good snorkeling in the area and I might check it out on the way back.
I sailed onto the town of Laborie on the southern coast. I made it into the anchorage just as the sunset. It was a beautiful sunset. One of the best I had seen I a while. As I watched it drop off the horizon, I saw a real green flash. This is a spot that goes green right as the sun drops of the horizon. I had seen a shadow that people would call a flash, but this was green. I never saw anything like it before. I was the only sailboat anchored here tonight. That was ok as I have been looking forward to an empty cove to myself. I did sleep with the hatch boards in though.
06/01/2009 The first of June. Official start of hurricane season in the Atlantic. All the buzz is about how storms are starting where they are not suppose to be. It has been that kind of weather all year for me on this trip and it has worked out in my favor most of the time.
I took off early again this morning. My original plan was to sail into St. Vincents and clear in with customs. When I started to read about trying to anchor and make it to a Customs station, it is not all that easy for a cruiser. I would pretty much need to anchor in one bay and find a cab to take me into another town. I decided to push on to Bequia. Bequia is part of a chain of small islands known as the Grenadines and with St. Vincents makes up one country.
With the wind direction I had, I decided I could sail to the windward side of St. Vincents. I have sail the leeward side of all the islands as I came down from St. Martin as I have not had enough of a lift to make the windward side. When I sail down the leeward side I usually need to do some motoring as the islands have enough height in the mountain ranges and size that they block the trade winds from the ocean. Today I had the wind to sail to the windward and low and behold there wasn’t stormy weather when I made it there. I was watching the weather and it typically cleared as the day went on. Not today. I went through a couple of squalls that had wind speeds exceeding 35 knots apparent. I did reef the main sail before the first squall hit and No Rush handled the weather just fine as she always has. After the squall pass through, we had the heaviest rain I have hand since I don’t know when. There was very little wind to go with it. When you have lemons, make lemonade. This heavy rain gave me a chance to scrub down the decks with all the fresh water I could handle.
Being I only had one engine due to the fuel issue, I slowly motored along in a confused choppy sea until the wind started to build again as I passed the southern edge of St. Vincents. I then had a great sail the rest of the afternoon right into Admiralty Bay. Just as I was entering the bay, I had my first boat boy come and check with me. He wanted to know if I was interested in a mooring ball and I told him I just planned on anchoring. With that he left with no issue. I made it to a place to drop anchor and was set for the night. Life is good and I had a feeling this was a good place to be.
06/02/2009 After a good night sleep I siphoned some of the fuel from my port tank and put it in the generator and fuel tank for the dinghy. I was able to get the generator running with no problem. After I mounted the dinghy motor and connected the fuel tank, the motor started on the very first pull. You would not know how that made me feel.
I then took the dinghy into town. I needed to clear into Customs and Immigration. It was the first time I was challenged about where and when I last cleared out of a port and cleared into a new port. I had scheduled clearing out of Dominica for May 30th and did it on May 27th as they would allow a clear in and out if I was only staying three days. The documentation was dated for the 27th and the agent questioned why it took 6 days to make it here from Dominica. I explained about how I was allowed to clear early and that I anchored on my way down here. He did allow me through after that.
After being officially cleared in, I took my usual walk through town to see what was around and hit the bank to pick up some local cash. You need a lot of it around here as they use the EC (Eastern Caribbean) Dollar. It is tied to the US dollar, but the value of about .40 on the dollar. I am paying about EC$8 a gallon for gas. That is about $48 for every gas jug I fill up. It is sort of like monopoly money. There are plenty of restaurants and bars here as this is cruiser and charter country.
On the way back to the dinghy I made a stop in the local fresh market. The people there were really pushing different things. Made my head spin, but I ended up trying and buying new kinds of fruit including mangos and passion fruits. I tried a couple of others, but figured I had enough fruit after buying local grown pineapples, passion fruit, mangos, bananas and a water mellon. I also picked up cucumbers and green peppers.
I took all of the fresh fruit and vegetables back to the boat and grabbed a fuel jug. I wanted to test the gas from the Shell gas station before I started loading up all of my tanks again. I took the jug to the station and handed over a fifty for my first tank full. After making it back to No Rush, I out in a couple of gallons in the starboard tank and needed to suck the fuel through the fuel line from the tank to the engine through a filter. This seems to take forever, but I now have a system down. As I was working on this I looked behind me and the boat that anchored behind me was moving towards me. That didn’t make any sense. My anchor was slipping. I was able to fend off the boat without any damage and then reset the hook. I was happy that my port engine started on the first try which it usually doesn't. I wasn't angry or upset, but happy that at least I was on the boat.
After that little run around I played with the starboard engine and she finally fired up and is running great with this gas. After lunch, I made a run into town to fill up both fuel jugs and made it back to the boat to start filling the fuel tanks. While I was at the gas station, they sold soda as most gas stations do. The different thing was they were selling Coke and Pepsi, but it 16 oz. glass bottles like in the old days. For me there is no better Coke that straight from a glass bottle. I noticed here in the islands that they still use the glass bottles quite a bit. I am happy to see that as they are very recyclable and people tend to return them for the deposit and there is not plastic bottles floating in the bays.
For dinner this evening I planned going ashore. I checked out the local establishments and found Tommy’s Cantina. It is a Mexican restaurant that had some interesting dishes on the menu and the prices are reasonable. I usually want to try local foods, but I could use a tex-mex fix. It turned out I was able to get both. I had a fresh fish dish that might have been the most flavorful dish I have eaten on this trip since Pete's in Little harbor in the Abacos. It blew me away.
When I arrived around 7:00PM there was only one other table with customers. The hostess was going to seat me to next to them in the dining area. I asked if I could eat at the bar and she obliged. I figured it would be easier to have a conversation there as there were the hostess, bar maid and a customer at the bar. It turned out the customer was Pam and she is the owner along with her husband Tommy. With dinner I had a great conversation with an ex-pat from San Diego. We talked about business and she told me how rough it has been down here and I told that it has been the same way through out the trip. This capped off the best day I had seen probably since leaving St. Martin.

05/25/2009 Leeward Islands

2009-05-25T08:39:00.016-06:00

05/15/2009 I am leaving St Martin after two weeks. I had not thought I would stay there that long, but it is a nice place and it was good to hang out with friends from Colorado while I was there. I did meet another Seawind owner on my last day there. We may connect as I head south. He was deciding on whether to go north to the states or stay south for another hurricane season.
I have been undecided how to make this next leg. I have horror stories of the beat down south. I do need to keep working east until at Antigua or Guadeloupe. I have had different inputs from others but I have decided to go the original course I planned. That is to sail to St Barts and then on to Antigua.
I left at 6:45 in the morning from Simpson Bay. I had the intention to sail straight on to Antigua when I first left. There is a charge and I need to check into St Barts Customs even if I had no intention to go ashore. But after I started and calculated the time to arrive in Antigua, I decided that I would do this trip in two legs. It did in the end make for an enjoyable trip.
I anchor in Anse du Public (Public Bay) on the north end of the town of Gustavia at 11:00am. That was an easy trip. I had engine problems with my outboard for the dinghy last night when I came back from town. It would not start today so I had to row into the beach to make it ashore. I walked into town from the bay and visited the Port Authority and paid for my right to anchor in the bay and signed in with Customs. The charge was 6.5 euros.
Since I paid for the night I figured I may as well get a taste of this part of the island. I walked around town and hiked to the top of the hill overlooking the harbor and a bay behind the hill, Anse du Grand Galet. There are a couple of boats anchored in there with a nice beach. It looks like a great place to anchor if I ever make it back through here again. There is the remnants of Ft Karl and Ft Oscar on top of the hill. It amazes me how small the forts were built compared to the forts in the US overlooking the large harbors.
The town of Gustavia was fairly quiet while I was there. There was no cruise ship in the area, but there was a lot of car traffic buzzing through the small narrow streets. It is a clean town and island from what I saw. After a cold beer, I headed for the airport. This is something I needed to see since I read about it in Jimmy Buffet’s book. Where my boat is anchored in the bay was the flight path for the runway. I would listen to the engines on the plane as they came in and it sounded like the pilots would shut down the engines as they were approaching the final approach. Then the plane would fly through the cut in the hills and drop out of sight. The runway is built right up against the hill and the planes would literary glide down the back side of the hill and hit the runway. The runway is not long so the pilots cannot use much runway to land with. It was interesting having the planes fly right over your head on the approach.
05/16/2009 This morning I took off at 5:30AM. I have a 70 mile run to make it to Antigua and I would like to get there before sunset. I expect to be there by 6:00PM if all goes well. We have had 20+knots of wind it seems like forever, but there is suppose to be a slight decrease in speed and the wind is expected to shift a little bit to the north. I started off with a double reef in the main and sailed out of the lee of St Barts. The wind did not shift, but the sea state was down with 2-3 foot seas and the wind was about 15 knots. I shook out the reef and gained an additional knot of boat speed.
The trip was another non-event. I was able to hold the same tack all of the way to Antigua. I made it into St John’s Harbor at 7:00PM. I was just behind schedule, but I did arrive right after the sun set. I was quite surprised to not see any other sailboats in the harbor. It is a large harbor, but must be used for commercial traffic only. There are plenty of anchorages and I went into an anchorage just west of the commercial dock and had the whole place to myself. It is probably the most green island I have seen in quite some time. I look forward to exploring around the island for the next few days before I head south again.
05/17/2009 This morning I pulled the anchor early and headed south to Jolly Harbour. This was recommended as an easy place to clear in with Customs and they have plenty of shops, restaurants and a bus stop. When I went into the marina to get information, I was told that Customs was closed on Sunday, not true. I found the dinghy dock and walked around the marina area. Sunday became a lazy day for me. I caught up on some email and banking on-line while having a beer and pizza at one of the restaurants. I added this picture of the blue water here as I hav enot seen water like this since the Bahamas.
05/18/2009 Today I went into Customs, Immigration and the Port Authority. I did find out that they were open on Sunday. I luckily did not get scolded for taking so long to check in. After fueling up the dinghy, I took off for the bus to head into St. Johns. St. Johns is the capital of Antigua. This is one of the few islands that did not ping-pong amongst the European powers during the 18th and 19th century. It was held by the British since the first settlers arrived and started the sugar cane production. The town still has many of the old structures that date from the 1800s. There are the typical shopping areas around the cruise ship pier with open markets and high end retailers. I also walked up to see the Cathedral that overlooked the town. This Cathedral has survived a couple of earthquakes and several hurricanes. It has hard wear, but still standing.
Antigua is not a cheap place. It is not uncommon for a meal to cost EC$100.00. I would usually have a pizza or salad and even that would cost EC$40.00. The good news is that the EC$1 =US$.42, but it was still expensive. The national government also had a 15% tax on everything bought. A gallon of gas cost EC$11.00 at the marina.
05/19/2009 This morning I took No Rush into the marina to get fuel, water and ice. As I said before, this is not a cheap place to stop. This cost EC$180.00 and I only took on 14 gallons of gas.
After fueling up I motored down the coast and stopped at Crab Hill Bay for a swim and walk along the beach. I anchored off of the beach and swam in. I am surprised out how little tourism there is going on anywhere on the island. St John was busy when the cruise ship was there, but not much activity anywhere else on the island. The beach was the same. There are several bars and restaurants and they were either closed or very few patrons.
After walking the full length of the beach, I pulled anchor and motored around the point to English Harbour. This is now a National Park. It is a smaller harbor that is protected very well from hurricanes and in the early from the French and Spanish by way of Fort Berkeley. This was also Nelson’s Dockyard during the colonial times. Ships that crossed the Atlantic or cruised the Caribbean Islands could come in here and be hauled for work. Many of the structures are still standing from the early days. This is also the headquarters for the annual Antigua Race Week. It is the largest regatta in the Caribbean and becoming one of the largest in the world.
05/20/2009 Today I took the dinghy to shore to clear out of through Customs and then hike around the area. I am able to clear out of the island up to 24 hours in advance. This allows me to not have to wait until Customs opens the following morning to leave and get an early start on the next sail. I walk around and check out the museum they have there and some of the structures. I walk out to the fort. As most of the forts, it is a relatively small structure, but nature provides a good area for the British to protect this harbor. There is still the powder magazine standing. It was designed to be bomb proof and hold up to 30 kegs of gun powder for protection.
Afterwards I walked over to Falmouth Harbour. It is fairly empty at this time. A few weeks earlier it would have been hopping with all of the boats in town for the regatta.
05/21/2009 This morning I readied the boat for the crossing to Gaudeloupe. I take the motor off and remove all of the equipment from the dinghy. This has helped a lot with transporting the dinghy if I get into any large seas. I sailed out by 6:30AM and started across. Again I have favorable winds and make good time. When I get to the lee of the island, the winds pretty much came to a stop. I motored down the coast until I reached Basse Terre. This is a beautiful island to sail along. There are steep mountains with plenty of vegetation.
I anchored off of the coast along with a couple of other boats for the night. I am glad I was in a catamaran and not the monohull anchored next to me. There was a swell there that would cause the monohull to roll about 15-20 degrees. That could not be fun. I just had to deal with some halyards banging.
05/22/2009 Decision time again. Do I keep heading south and go straight to Dominica without any stopping in Guadeloupe or do I go around the south end of Basse Terre and sail north to Pointe a Pitre. I decided to hang out in Guadeloupe for a few days and sailed north to Pointe a Pitre. It was a good sail with only one tack for the whole trip and I made it into Pointe a Pitre by 1:00PM. I looked into staying at the marina but decided not to as they did not have any mooring balls and I would have to tie into the dock European style with tying off a line to the bow to a ball and backing in stearn first. I am sure at some point I will to do this, but I am not ready. I decide to go across the channel from the marina and drop anchor. It turns out to be a pretty good place. The wind is open from the channel, which provides a great breeze through the boat and there is a reef right in front of me that keeps the seas pretty flat. Not a bad place at all to anchor.
After setting the anchor, I ready the dinghy and go back into the marina to clear through Customs. This is different as Customs does not have an office there. All I need to do is fill out a single form, pay the marina 2 euros for a fax and they fax it to Customs. I wait 15 minutes and I receive a fax back and I am cleared in.
I check out the area around the marina. There are again plenty of shops and restaurants to spend time in. if I needed any work on the boat I am sure this would be a good place to have it done. I walk into town to see what is going on and I also want to find an ATM machine. I am low on euros. There is a large public square in town and plenty of shopping. I mean a lot of shopping is available here.
Tonight for dinner is McDonalds. There is one located right next to the bank. I had an interesting experience here. Dinner cost 7.5 euros. I handed the attendant a 50 euro bill. He asked me to have a seat and he would bring my change to me. The machine was busy with another order. I have never seen this done before in a McDonalds and I was a little apprehensive. I did go sit and with a minute he brought over my change. It is another time just trusting someone and there was no issue.
05/23/2009 While I was here I wanted to get out and see the islands. Guadeloupe main is actually two islands. To the east is La Grande Terre and to the west is La Basse Terre. I decided to rent a car for a couple of days and see what I see. I was able to rent a car right from a shop in the marina district I am staying in. The car was 33 euros a day and that appears to cover all expenses including rental, taxes and insurance, I think. The bad news is I am in a French country where there is very little English spoken and hardly any on the signs or menus, the car I rent is a stick shift and I have not driven a stick for 13 years. The good news is that at least they drive on the right hand side of the road as we do in the States and I was able to pick up the shifting real easy. “Just like riding a bike”, like they say.
Since I had a late start on Saturday, I decided to drive around La Grande Terre. There is a highway system here and all told there is suppose to be over 1500 miles of roads between the two islands. Most of all the highways are two lane roads and the speeds are around 50-70 kph. I drove along the south coast out to St Francois with a stop in St Anne. In St Anne there is a nice hopping beach with plenty of vendors out selling everything from homemade ice cream to all this shop with all blue and white clothing. In St Francois they had a large marina. I also drove around in circles for awhile trying to find my way out of town and the highway that headed north.
I found my way out and drove through Le Moule and then over to Morne a l’Eau. Located here was two things. I cross road that took me north to Anse Bertrand and this cemetery I have a picture of. As you can see most of the crypts are decorated in a black and white checkerboard. On my way to Anse Bertrand I drove through a lot of farm country. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sugar cane fields. I was not aware that there was any sugar cane still grown in the Caribbean. That was like gold in the old days and was the driving economy down here into the mid 1800s. There was sugar cane everywhere here like corn is grown in Nebraska and wheat in Kansas. From Anse Bertrand I made my way back down to Pointe a Pitre and the marina.
05/24/2009 I made an early start this morning with plans of driving around La Basse Terre. I took off and drove across the canal and towards the north end of the island. Again I have a problem traveling around here as I do not speak any French. I would like to take some tours, but everything is in French so there is not much I can glean. I did try to stop at the Le Musee de Rhum (Rum Museum) but they were closed.
I drove to Deshaies on the northwest coast and then down the coastal highway. From the water I saw this road and thought it interesting to drive as it appeared to follow the coast. From the water it did not appear to be any homes away from the coast. This was true, but the highway did not stay at water level. There were many hills to climb and it was pretty much like a roller coaster down the coast.
I was worried as I was low on fuel and it was Sunday morning. I needed to make a fuel stop and again I can only be thankful for sign language to be able to instruct the gas attendant on how much fuel I want in the car. I was worried as I was low on fuel and it was Sunday morning. After fueling up I drove eastward on Route de la Traversee. This is an east-west (sort of) road that cut across the mountain tops. I drove about half way as I wanted to finish driving back down the west coast. All of my driving up to this point had not been a problem with other cars on the road, but on this steep, curvy road, it seemed like everyone wanted to drive twice the speed limit.
After making my way back down to the coastal highway, I headed south again to the town of Basse Terre where I anchored the first night I was here. I stopped had some lunch and took a nap in the air conditioning of my car. Afterwards I kept on the highway south around the tip. I stopped at the light house I saw from my boat and there was the Fort de l’Olive which was built in 1636. I sat at the light house and watched people swimming, fishing and riding wind surfers.
After there I followed the road along the coast and started to head back to Pointe a Pitre. All of the sudden I saw a sign for the National Park and Chutes de Carbet (Carbet Waterfalls). I decided why not. The National Park is mostly rainforest and I would like to see the waterfalls that are written up as a sight to see. I got off of the highway and drove up the steep winding road for about 5 miles. The road at some points was so steep I would need to drop the transmission into first gear. Along the way I saw enormous banana plantations. As I was climbing higher into the mountains the temperature is dropping and the clouds are thicker.
I drove to the end of the road that was the entrance to the park and the walking trail to the many different falls. The coast was 1 euro to enter and it was well worth the cost. The main falls was about a one and a half hour hike. I figured I would go as far as I could and while on the way, enjoy walking through a rain forest. The trail started out very nice with paved stones laid out and good stairs. I had to hike down the hill to the river and cross a bridge. The I started up and the trail became a nice stone walk, but not paved. Then I climbed higher and it turned into mostly board walk and many stairs. Then I reached the peak of the trail after about 45 minutes of the most intense stair master work. Then the trail became trail. There was some carved rock and a few wooded steps, but most of it was narrow steep trail back down to the water again. I made it to a river and it was getting late. I thought about turning around and made the mistake of pulling out my map. I was able to determine where I was and it did not appear that the falls would be much further so I pushed on. I then had to climb back up the mountain and when I came to the section that took me back down towards another river I decided I would turn around. As I was heading back I came across a sign that indicated that the falls was only 15 minutes away. I looked at my watch and new that I was moving faster than the typical times for travel were so I pushed on. One of my concerns was that I really wasn’t prepared to be hiking in the forest. I had no raincoat, fresh water, I was dressed in cotton shorts and a t-shirt and best of all my hiking shoes are my flip-flops. I climbed down the rocks and make my way to the waterfalls. When I was almost all of the way to the falls I passed a family and the wife looked at my flip-flops and just shook her head.
I did make it to the falls and here is a picture. There is actually three cascading falls. As I was standing there viewing the bottom of the three, the mist appeared to clear or my vision was becoming acclimated. In the second photo you can see the rim above me and a glimpse of the second or middle cascade. Unfortunately I did not have time to climb to see the other two falls. After a few photos I high tailed it out of there trying to make it back to my car before it was too dark to see anything. I made good time, even passing the family ahead of me. I took my time as going down was less exercise, but required more caution getting down some of the rocks vs. stepping up.
When I made it back to the parking lot, I saw this man feeding a bird right from his hand. I also saw two Mongoose crossing my path. As it was a lark to drive up here, it was the highlight for me renting the car and driving around the island. Up there was to see the sugar cane and banana fields. You just don’t see those in Colorado.

05/14/2009 St Martin

2009-05-14T19:39:00.008-06:00

05/02/2009 I am anchored in the Bay of Marigot. Marigot is also the town located here. Today I pick up Jim and Alecia. They cruised with me for a week in the Florida Keys and they are back for round two. While waiting for them, I started getting a layout of the area and where different services are available. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I am having a little bit of anxiety. I finally realized it that this is my first time to a country that was not a US territory or member of the United Kingdom. I know no French and I will be using the Euro. This is also a first as all of my travels on this adventure have been to countries that use the US dollar. I did ask a local policeman if he could show me Customs. I found out that I was asking for the wrong thing. I needed to ask for the Clearance office. It is located at the ferry dock and was closed Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday.
I have found a couple of restaurants along the water front that I have eaten at for a meal and they also have wi-fi access. The food has been good and reasonable. Most all of the area is closed down. I am not sure if it is due to the local economy or because of the holiday on Friday. (When out and about on Monday I determined it was a mix of both.) The marine store is also closed, so I need to wait until Monday. The water pump failed again so I mended it one more time.
Jim and Alecia showed up at 4:00. They took the local bus from the airport to Marigot. The airport is located on the Dutch side of the island. To make it to town it required two different buses, but the total cost for both of them was less than $10.00. This island also will take US dollars. There is some concern about getting a fair exchange rate. The restaurants I ate at offered a check in both Euros and Dollars. There are a few stores and gas stations that are offering 1 euro = $1 if you use cash.
05/03/2009 With all of the stores and clearance closed we will stay around Marigot for another day. After a lazy morning on the boat, we headed into town to do some more exploring. We walked through town and found another bakery that we decided to try out for lunch. The bake goods and sandwiches were very good. Now that we were energized we took off for a hike to the top of the hill overlooking Marigot to the old fort located there. The views from atop the hill are incredible. You have a 360 degree view from up here and it gives me a good idea of how the town is laid out. We then head over to the local supermarket. It is closed still. No surprise there.
On the way back in town we saw a game going on at a local stadium. It turned out to be a local game of softball. There were three things going for this game. It was in a stadium that had sitting, sitting on the shade and a local was selling cold beers for $1.00. We sat and watched about 4 innings of the game. We then went out hiking towards town again and found a poster advertising Fish Days in the town of Cul de Sac. We caught a local bus to Cul de Sac to see what was going on. It was a local festival as you would see in the US with different booths set up with all kinds of different fish dishes and local crafts. We walked around and tried a few of the different fishes.
05/04/2009 Monday morning. Budget Marine is open and I am able to purchase a new water pump and replacement starboard running light. After I returned I installed the new water pump and we are back in action with water.
I can finally check into Customs. It was a fairly easy process. It is the first place I have found that it is all computer based. I did not have to write out all of the documentation. The small issue is that they use a French keyboard. Some of the keys are placed in different places. Not a real issue for a hunt and peck kind of guy that I am. The cost was 25 Euro for clearance and an anchor fee.
After that I made a quick stop at the local marina to find out about filling up the water tank, we went off for a spot of lunch. I did the unthinkable and ordered a hamburger and French fries. I had seen many people ordering them the last time I was there. A hamburger is a hamburger.
Hiking for provisions is now the order. We find the grocery store and start filling up for the week. This is definitely a French store. There are not many recognizable labels. We do our best and figure we won’t die from anything we bought. It was interesting that they charged you if you wanted to use a grocery cart vs. a basket, the security guard took mine and Jim’s back packs and there was visible security throughout the store.
Two more stops on the way back to the dinghy. One was the local bakery to try out another pastry and pick up a couple loaves of bread. The other was the Duty Free Store for some rhum and gin. I picked up some of the local rhums that I had in the past. They are very good flavored rum with fruit in the bottles.
We made our way back to the boat, put away the stores and lifted the anchor. We motored up to Grand Case Bay. We dropped the anchor for the evening and hung out. Alecia is in charge of the galley for this trip and she put together a light dinner of French breads, cheese and a bottle of good wine. Life doesn’t get much better or relaxed.
While we were watching a movie the wind kicked up. We were seeing gusts of 38 knots. This caused the anchor the slip and in the middle of the squall we had to go into anchor reset mode. There was a boat behind us that we almost passed while being blown backwards. The second time setting the anchor it set good and hard and we didn’t have any more problems for the next days.
05/05/2009 We decided to hang out in Grand Case today. It is a small resort town on the coast here. We eventually made it ashore. We are not moving too fast in the morning. The plan is walk town, find a place to try some of the local cuisine, and then hike the length of the beach. We walked town and there are many boutiques and restaurants, bakeries, a rental car agency and a few local grocery stores. It is a nice little town with narrow main street. There is hardly enough room to walk and not get hit by a passing car.
We ate at a lolo. It is a eatery that is small and open aired. They cooked on an open grill like I saw in Puerto Rico. The ribs and chicken are fantastic and the beers are cheap. From there we hiked the beach from one end to the other. There appears to be no codes for where or what to build. There are homes next to restaurants, next to apartments, next to hotels. I did find it interesting how the homes are built to the edge of the water and the overhanging porches.
05/06/2009 Today we went snorkeling on the north end of the bay. Jim and Alecia went in. I stayed with the boat. We had strong winds and I was on a mooring ball designed for a smaller boat. I was able to install the new starboard running light that I found out when I was entering Virgin Gorda the week before.
Afterwards we sailed to Friars Bay. There are a couple of restaurant/bars that are listed as a must not miss. They are nice places and the beach is fantastic. After a couple of beers, we took off for the Dutch side of the island to try out some different anchorages. We ended up in Simpson Bay, as all of the other bays were very rolly. We were able to duck in pretty close and provided us protection from the wind and waves rolling in from the east.
05/07/2009 We went ashore to see what the town offered us. It is very touristy with plenty of restaurants, delis, bakeries, etc. We had a mission to find wi-fi and a grocery store. We stopped at a local café for a coffee and wi-fi. We then hiked about a mile or so to find a good size grocery. The currency on the Dutch side is the Gilder or the US Dollar. The exchange rate is favorable and it is easy to use US Dollars here.
We stopped for lunch before we went back to the boat. We had a good fish sandwich at Lee’s. This was recommended to us by a couple we met the day before at Friars Bay. I recommend it also.
After lunch, we pulled the hook and sailed back to Marigot Bay. I needed to go there to clear out of customs and get more water. We had a good sail with reaching and sailing into the wind to make it there. No Rush is sailing real well.
05/08/2009 Today we took off for a beat to St Barts. We needed to check out of the French St Martin and pick up some more water and ice. After we were finished we sailed down around the island and started our tacks for St Barts.
While we were off the Dutch side of the island, Alecia awoke me from a nap to ask how we should deal with what looked like a tornado tail coming from the clouds. It was the beginning of a downspout that never completely formed. There was the tail in the clouds and we saw the water being lifted off of the ocean. I was just happy that it was downwind from us. We kept an eye on it and the squall that was blowing through. This was a first for me on the water.
We made our way to the west end of St Barts for the night. We ended up sailing 38 miles today. It was Alecia’s first off shore sail and Jim had not been on an offshore in quite some time. Tomorrow we will go ashore and do some hiking.
05/09/2009 Today we hiked on the western edge of St Barts. It is mostly a National Park with a couple of beautiful beaches and a small village. The weather is fairly dry here with plenty of cactus. The beaches are beautiful white sand and not very crowded at all. I almost felt like I was intruding when there was someone else within a hundred feet.
After we returned back to the boat, we hung out and enjoyed the weather. I spotted a turtle swimming next to the boat. Jim and Alecia grabbed their snorkel gear and went in to see the turtle. They also spotted another turtle lying on the boat under the boat eating the sea grass.
05/10/2009 Today we sailed over to a remote island off of St Barts. It is also part of the National Park. It was a good place to snorkel. Alecia gave me the new nickname of Barracuda Bill. I have a knack for finding and spotting the barracuda in the area. As we swam around the bay, we came into contact with a large school of small fish. It was very similar to the school Cliff and I saw in the BVIs. On the edge of this school was a 4 foot barracuda. Nothing like being in the middle of a food chain. After the snorkel we had a pleasant down-wind sail back to Sint Maarten.
We came ashore so I could get web access and I wanted to try and connect with Harold and Teresa. We ended staying too long. We started at Jimbo’s for a margarita. It lasted way too long, but we were able to some how find our way back to the boat.
05/11/2009 Today Jim and Alecia flew home after a wonderful visit here. This is their second time around and we had as good a time as we did in Florida.
05/12/2009 I was finally able to connect with friends of mine that are on vacation here in St Martin. The chore of the day was laundry and watching the sunset. Harold, Teresa and I hung out all afternoon and evening at their condo on Maho Bay. It is located next to the main airport here on the island. One of the activities that people participate in is to go to the beach at the end of the runway. When the planes take off the jet wash blows over the beach. People try to stand and get knocked over, tumble weed. When a 747 took off I watched a guy grab onto the fence and get lifted off of the ground.
05/13/2009 Today Harold and Teresa joined me on the boat. We sailed for a while today and then anchored in a Long Bay. It has a protective point to anchor behind and a long beautiful white sand beach. We sat with drinks and watched the sunset again. Life is so difficult down here, but I will volunteer again.

05/02/2009 Hanging out in the Virgins

2009-05-02T11:04:00.005-06:00

04/23/2009 After dropping Cliff, I expected to hang around the Virgins for the next week or so. I did not have specific plans. I met up with Hans and Ruth Deller. I had seen them on their boat in Francis Bay. They are from Conifer, CO. That is only about 15 miles from where I live in CO. After spending time in town I stopped by their boat to introduce myself. I found out that they had spent ten years in the Virgins as the owners of a charter boat. I asked them if they knew the couple that I had chartered with when I was with Motorola. They not only knew them, but saw them earlier in the day.
I thought Gus and Marcella had left the business or area. I had trying to get in touch with them over the years. They are now only five miles from where I am anchored. I now had a plan on how to spend some of my time.
04/25/2009 After pulling the anchor I headed for Christmas Bay. This is located on an island off of the southeast corner of St. Thomas. I motored into the bay and there sat Marolanga. Marolanga is a 43’ Catana sailing catamaran. It is the boat that started me on multihull sailing and another inspiration that has brought me to this part of the world.
With some trepidation I went over and introduced myself. It had been 14 years since I met them for a 4 day charter. They remembered me immediately. Not my name, but my face and the charter trip. They had done several Motorola charters since ours. Ours was the first. They remembered some of the activities including a song that we put together as part of a contest amongst the different boats. We had won the contest with words written to Come Monday by Jimmy Buffett. We hung out for a few hours and decided to go snorkeling in the morning together there in the anchorage.
04/26/2009 Today became a lazy relaxing Sunday morning. I was excited to go snorkeling with Gus and Marcella. They move a little bit later than I do so I broke into a project on the boat. The gas valve on my gas grill had frozen. It does amaze me the amount of wear and tear that boats take when on the salt water. I figured out how to take the grill apart and removed the valve. Now I had it apart, I also figured out that the valve will need replaced. That will be another project trying to find a replacement valve. Down here in the islands is not like being at home and having specialty shops that you find just about anything. I put the grill back together in time for a good swim.
As we were swimming the water was murky from the tide washing through. We first saw a medium size turtle swimming along. I glided along with it for awhile. I have not been in the water with a turtle since the first snorkel in The Keys back in November. I then spotted a sting ray working at burying itself in the sand. We also came across a porcupine fish. I had seen these before, but did not know their name. It is one of my favorite fish. I call it the teddy bear of the sea. There were two of them and they are the largest I have seen. From the front they have a squarish body with large black eyes. They are somewhat timid, but sad looking with the big black eyes. You just want to hug them.
After the snorkel, Gus invited me back over to review the cruising areas of St Martin and the other islands as I head south. We discussed where to look for the parts for the grill on St Thomas and I worked with Gus on some software for his computer and testing out my TV tuner for the laptop. Marcella invited me for a dinner of spaghetti and I made a salad. It was like old times hanging out with them. I am really happy to find Gus and Marcella and see that they are still happy doing charters after all of these years.
If you are interested in a fun crewed charter in the BVIs, please contact Gus and Marcella on Marolanga. You can use the url on the left hand of my blog page.
04/27/2009 I decided to make another trip back into Charlotte Amalie. I was on the hunt for parts for the grill and I also remembered that I needed to fill up one of my propane bottles. After anchoring, I took the dinghy over to Crown Bay to the marina there. There is a air condition (as there is no heating shops in the area) shop that Gus thought might have the parts or would know where to find them. In the area also is the propane dealer. The good news was that I was able to get the propane. The air condition shop did not have any parts and was not aware of anywhere to find them. I hiked down the road to the Ace hardware and the same answer. I decide to catch the bus to the Home Depot as a last chance. No luck there. It is one of those projects that I will need to work on when I return back to the States this summer.
04/28/2009 I put another plan together. I would sail to a bay on the south side of St John and do a couple days of hiking before I set off for St Martin. I went to pull the anchor and the trouble started. I caught a piece of garbage in the bay. It was an old chain. The good news was that I was able to get the anchor raised enough to see it, about four feet below the surface, but not high enough to release the chain from my anchor.
This is what cruising is about. How to resolve issues like this on your own. I first tried to put a loop on the end of a line and lower it to the anchor. My plan was that if I could catch the knee of the anchor, when I let the anchor down, the anchor would pivot and the chain would fall off and I would be free. The first problem was that the line would not sink on its own. I needed to add some weight. The only thing I could find was my largest crescent wrench. I did get the line to sink to the knee, but as I lowered the anchor, it did not pivot as hoped. My next thought was that I would swim to the anchor and try to free it from the chain. That is not an option as the wind was blowing pretty strong and I was in somewhat tight quarters with other boats. I could not let my boat drift into another boat and I did not like the idea of having my boat drift without me on it. Time-out. Let’s eat some breakfast and think this through again. The idea I came up with was to raise the anchor again to as high as I could. I would then swim to the front of the boat and take a loop of line around the chain and tie it off to the front two cleats of the boat. I would then be able to lower the anchor and the fouled chain would stay suspended by the line. The boat would not drift. The down side was that I needed to swim in the bay. It is not a clean bay in any sense of the word. No other options. I got the line ready up front and then went for a quick swim. I was able to dive down and loop the line around the chain and set it by the deck. I got back on the boat and tied the line off on the second cleat and let the anchor down. It came free from the chain as planned. After getting everything ready for leaving the anchorage, I let the line free from one of the cleats and it slid free of the chain. I am off again.
I then made my way out in the sea. The weather had piped up. I started out with 20-25 knots of wind gusting to 30 knots and five foot seas. This is probably the roughest weather I have sailed No Rush in. Then the squalls started to blow in. I was seeing sustained winds of 30 knots. I put a reef in at the second point and took off again. Now I was seeing winds gusting to 38 knots. This is now probably the heaviest weather I have ever sailed in period. I decided to tuck in on the north side of St John instead of the constant beating on the south side. I made it Francis Bay one more time. I grabbed a buoy there for the night. Tomorrow I would go for my hike from here to the south side instead of the other way around.
04/29/2009 Best laid plans of mice and men… When I woke up there was no water pressure. Another project. I had replaced the previous water pump when I was at Boqueron, only a month and a half ago. A connection had corroded at the back pressure switch. After troubleshooting, soldering and putting everything back together, it was noon.
That morning I had caught the weather and it appeared that the best time for me to make the passage to St Martin is going to be Thursday. I had planned on a night passage and I would need to get moving. I canceled the hike and set sail for Virgin Gorda. The wind was on my nose again and it took me eight hours to get to Virgin Gorda. I needed to stop there so I could ready my dinghy for the off-shore passage. On the way through the cut, I was almost hit by another boat. Another area of corrosion was my starboard running light. It is out. Another project. Here is a photo of what rain squalls look like. Luckily this one was behind me and blowing away.
Being that I made it in so late and it was real dark, I decided to spend the night and leave first thing in the morning.
04/30/2009 First light in the morning. I worked on getting the dinghy ready for the passage. This means taking the motor off of the transom and storing it and cleaning out the fuel tank, bag with the life jackets and spare fuel, the anchor and any other items in the dinghy. I put all of the items away and re-attached the dinghy to the davits and we were ready. I went to pull the anchor and it was stuck. I am having flash backs to Charlotte Amalie. I am on the edge of a mooring field. I tried slowly to move the boat forward with the engines and luckily the anchor came free. Relief.
I was able to sail across the bay and out the cut. I am leaving the Virgins and making what should be my last long passage for this part of the trip. It is 75 miles of open water to St Martin from Virgin Gorda. We have light winds coming from due east. This will make for a slow passage, but I am on the boat No Rush. I started out the day with a reef in, but I quickly shook it out and went with full sails.
The good news was there was a nice wind shift that allowed me to sail all of the way to St Martin with only one small tack. I was able to hold the port tack from one o’clock in the afternoon until I made it into St Martin the next morning.
I did have one first that wasn’t pleasant though. I became seasick for the first time. It was a truly gut wrenching experience. I cleaned out my stomach. It was strange as the seas weren’t big and the air was pretty light. I was down on my cabin digging though some of the food stores I had. I believe I got sick from looking down in the choppy seas below decks. A little bit of vertigo set in. I was happy that it did not wipe me out. The best place I was able to go to recover was down in my bunk. I had a good breeze blowing through the hatch and it was cool down there. I was able to rest it off and had no problems the rest of the trip. This photo is after the sun set. Red skies at night sailors delight….
05/01/2009 I made it into the bay on the French side of St Martin at 6:45AM. Exactly 24 hours after raising the anchor and leaving Virgin Gorda. It was no record setter, but I never had to use the motors either. I have this photo here. I usually don’t have sunrises, but I thought this was a great picture with sun behind the cloud as I was anchoring.
Today is Labour Day, A holiday that has shut down pretty much the whole island. I did a little hiking around and could not check into Customs as they were closed also.
My water pump has also gone out again. After working on it, the same wire that I repaired corroded through again. I repair it once more and set the wires so that he water will drip away from the connection. We will see how long it will last. I will need to wait until tomorrow to see if I can get a replacement.

04/23/2009 British Virgin Islands (Round 2)

2009-04-23T12:42:00.009-06:00

04/15/2009 John took off this morning. I received a call from Cliff. He was stuck in Philadelphia and would be a day late. No problem with that, I was ready for a day off. Cliff’s flight was delayed due to weather and he could not make his connection. That gave me some time to catch up on a few items around the boat.
04/16/2009 Cliff arrived around 3:30 today. We went off to the market, loaded up on our groceries. I decided I had enough of Red Hook for one week and we took off immediately for Jost Van Dyke. We are racing the sun across the channel to get in before sunset. We lost. We did make it into Great Harbor though.
After getting the anchor set, we took off for Foxy’s again. The atmosphere was the same, but Cliff was in love with the setting. It does sometimes take someone’s eyes to see the scene. The little town there on Jost is a few buildings along a main street that is sand. It sits right on the beach. This is such a different place for Cliff as he has just flown out of a cold dreary Michigan. We had a couple of drinks and worked our way down Main Street to Corsairs. I had to try their pizza.
When we arrived there, sitting in the dining area was Bruce and Dianna along with Margaret and Dave Wolf. Margaret and Dave are also members of CSYC. We sat and talked awhile and made plans to have a Past Commodore raft-up party Saturday night. I do recommend the pizza. The crust was fantastic.
04/17/2009 I am thankful for all of the friends I have. Here I am in the BVIs and I have Cliff on the boat, I was sitting with Bruce, Dianna, Dave and Margaret last night, just last week I had John on the boat and two weeks earlier I had my daughters on the boat. I am meeting another friend, Fred Rampey for drinks and dinner tonight in Road Town. Fred and I raced on his U20 in Colorado at several regattas. He is down in the islands working and had sent off an email indicating he would be in the area and was wondering where I was.
So with dinner plans in the making, and a lazy morning on the boat waiting for Customs and Immigration to open, we sailed out of Great Harbor and headed through the cut at West End. The plan was to sail over to the Indians and Caves. Cliff is one to always get a line in the water for some fishing. There hasn’t been an edible fish on the boat since he and Titus were on the boat in The Bahamas. We had a hit on the line and caught a Bonito. We had caught several of these when John was on the boat the week before. They are from the tuna family, but not an enjoyable edible fish I am told.
The wind conditions weren’t in sync with our plans. With the late start in the morning and the light winds, we decided to just sail over into Road Town. We were able to sail right into the anchorage. After working awhile to get the anchor to set in the grassy harbor, we went in search of Fred. We found him at his hotel that overlooked the water. We set off for The Pub. It is located on the water and a local favorite. Fred introduced us to the bartender that made a killer rum punch. It is good to connect with old friends. I had not seen Fred in a couple of years as he took off for Italy to work for a company and after he came back to the States, I headed off for my trip. Small world to be connecting like this.

04/18/2009 We had Fred on the boat for breakfast. Fred had a need for coffee in the morning and he had not found a place around the hotel to get any coffee before 8:00AM. I picked him up, gave him the 30 second tour of the boat and we cooked up some breakfast for the three of us. After dropping Fred back off to get ready for his next flight to somewhere in the Caribbean we took off for the snorkeling we did not get in yesterday.
We sailed over to the Indians for the beginning of a bunch of memorable swimming excursions this week. It is one of the great things about nature, you never know what you are going to encounter as it is always changing.
The water was a little churned up and made it murky, but the back side of the rocks was incredible with all of the fish swimming around. The amount of fish and different types that were grouped there was incredible. We saw schools of different fish that I have not seen in the past and had a good time swimming throughout the reef there.
After that we took off for the caves on Norman Island. Cliff got a big kick out of swimming into the caves and checking them out. I don’t believe he has swam into a cave before. They are not large caves, but they are deep enough that you need to let your eyes adjust to the lack of light. We then swam towards the north end of the reef. There I saw a sting ray and swam with it for about ten minutes watching it’s graceful flying motion.
We then made a stop at Willie T’s. For you that have never been here, it is a replica of a sailing ship that is converted into a bar. The stories we always heard about it was that this was a rowdy bar to go to. If a woman was to jump off of the upper deck topless, she would be given a Willie T’s t-shirt. Don’t think that is true anymore, as the first signs you see when entering the bar is “No jumping or Diving from the upper deck”.
We have dinner plans tonight. We are meeting to have the first annual CSYC Past-Commodore Raft-up Party in Great Harbor on Peter Island. We meet up with Bruce, Dianna, Dave and Margaret for a spaghetti dinner on No Rush. We had a great time just hanging out and swapping stories of our different adventures. Cliff had everyone in stitches from his funny stories of life. Next year Bruce is in charge of making this a bigger event (I just volunteered him).
04/19/2009 We slip the bonds of the raft-up this morning and sail off for more of Cliff and Bill’s Adventures. We sail east in Sir Francis Drake Channel towards Virgin Gorda. We have favorable wind and I am racing two other sailboats out here, even if they don’t know it. There is a 40 foot mono-hull, also known as a half-cat, and a 45 foot catamaran. I am pleasantly surprised on how well we sailed against them, even though we need to slow down to haul in another bonito. We are pointing higher and faster than both.
We made it to The Baths. Cliff is in for another joy of his during the trip. I send him off to check out one area as I will take a nap on the boat and then we will take off for the south end of the Baths together. He comes back so pumped up from the beauty of not only the fish and swimming in the boulders, but of the exquisite villas along the beach there. We then took off for the Baths and Devils Bay. This was a different experience for me as I had not hiked amongst the boulders before and found the little pools and hidden areas in the rocks. We made our way down to devils Bay. I found this great rock to just sit on and watch the wave action as it went in behind a large boulder on the beach and swirled down the other side. It was mesmerizing to me.
We then sailed off of the anchor and headed north towards Gorda Sound and Leverick Bay for the evening. We sailed out past The Dogs and hooked into a barracuda. I decided that it was Cliff’s turn to release the fish. It gave a good fight, but we landed it and Cliff did eventually release it from the hook, no easy feat. We then tacked a couple of times and sailed into the Sound and picked up a hook for the night. We went ashore to get some wi-fi and test out the local drinks. There is a Pusser Store there, but they did not have their own bar. The painkillers are still not as good as the Pusser bar on Marina Cay.
04/20/2009 After stopping at the dock to pay for the mooring, pick up much needed water and a bag of ice we sailed off for Great Dog. I have not snorkeled this island before. Even though the bay opened to the west, it had a pretty good north swell coming in and crashing on the rocks. Decision time, do we go in or not. We decided to give it a try. We were use to swimming in the swells rolling through the Baths, but this is different with no baths, but a steep cliff the whole way around the bay. We started to swim I n and found that we could get real close to the rocks even with the wave action. When you got close enough to the rocks or cliff, you would be blinded by all of the air bubbles in the water and then that was the time to turn around and head to another area. The highlight of this swim was watching a school of Sergeant Majors just washing back and forth in the swirl of the water between a couple of large rocks. Cliff described it best as a bunch or elementary kids on a ride at Disney.
After hauling the anchor we had a great sail down wind. I took a nap on the coach house deck and Cliff was up in the nets. We had a gentle 2-3 foot swell that the boat rode on. I needed to gybe the boat and head in for our next stop and Cliff wanted nothing to do with it. He just wanted to keep sailing forever.
We headed in to Guana Island. This island is located off of the north shore of Tortola. When I was down here with my family we anchored off of the same point one night. We did not swim it though. The memorable part of that night was the fluorescent jelly fish we saw. This time it was a little different. We snorkeled in towards shore and I came across a school of fry. They are about the size of a minnows. It started out a pretty good size school. As I swam more towards the school it was thicker and thicker with more fish. I made it to a point when I could not see a couple feet in front of me the fish were so thick and then all of the sudden, I had a large fish swimming straight at me. My first thought was shark, but then it saw me and turned away. It was three foot tarpon. Cliff had a similar experience. He was swimming along and through the fish he was startled when he thought he was head to head with a turtle. It turned out to be a rock with a couple of sea fans attached to it. Your mind and eyes can play some funny tricks on you when you are out of your normal element.
After that great time we took off to finish the great sail we interrupted for that snorkel experience. We had a good sail into Cane Garden Bay. This is a new one for me. I had heard bad reviews about this bay. It turned out to be wonderful. My favorite bays have an opening to the west and protection from the seas and trade winds. This bay is one of those. It rivals my other favorite bay of the Virgins, Francis Bay on St. John. It has good holding for the anchor and a gentle swell from the ocean. I can see how mono-hulls don’t like as the ones I saw rocked with the swell. We just sat nice and easy with no problems. The beach is a gorgeous stretch of sand and there are several bars that sounded like they had some live music going on.
The reason I like the west openings of a bay is so you can watch the sunset. We had a beauty this evening and capped off a great day on the water.
04/21/2009 Today was an interesting animal. We raised the anchor and sailed out of the bay. We headed off for Sandy Cay. This is another park of an island that was deeded by the Rockefellers. It has a very nice white sand beach wrapped about half way around the island. Cliff swam in and I took the dinghy in with the camera and shoes for some hiking the trail. We were in there early before the crowds started to show up. It wasn’t that crowded, but it is fun when you have a whole beach to yourself. I did follow the trail around. There are plenty of lizards and hermit crabs crawling in the wooded area.
After a quick swim, we headed back to the boat for lunch. From there we went to an area I had not heard about until talking with Bruce. On the east shore of Jost Van Dyke there is a bath area. It is a series of rocks that block most of the wave action and creates a pool. You can sit in the pool and when large waves crash towards you, they are broken up by the rocks and a lot of air bubbles are created that make the pool like a jacuzzi. We met some other sailors chartering a boat there from Michigan and Florida.
Then it started getting strange after that. I became very agitated. I was agitated at the bar tender at the bar by the anchorage because he did not have a drink I was looking for, I barked at Cliff, and with Customs and they didn’t do anything that I should have been upset with. I talked with Cliff and he said his energy level was low also. We believe we had become dehydrated. The weather pattern had shifted more out of the south and Cliff indicated that he thought today was the hottest day of the whole trip for him. There was also plenty of humidity. Things did clear up after the sun set and all is well now. After checking out of Customs, we sailed the boat over to St. John and spent the night in Francis Bay.
04/22/2009 We slipped off of the mooring in the bay and made for a two hour sail to Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. We need to check into US Customs and after lunch I sent Cliff back to the airport. It was a great trip and has been a busy month with all of the friends and family I have had visit. I thank all of them for coming down and spending their vacations, time and money with me.

04/14/2009 British Virgin Islands (BVIs)

2009-04-15T08:09:00.020-06:00

04/08/2009 This morning we are going to the British Virgin Islands. We pulled the anchor and motored directly into the wind out of Coral Bay until we could turn the corner of St. John and there on the view is the British Virgin Islands. The BVIs has become the mecca of sailing and cruising. The Moorings started their world-wide business here chartering boats. When we chartered here as a family in 1999, I would describe it as sailing on Pueblo Reservoir with clear water. The water is real clear here and all of the sailing is by sight. You barely need a chart here. There is a ring of islands around the Drake Channel that keeps the waters fairly protected and as I am learning on this trip, the trade winds make for consistent weather and wind direction.
We decided to sail into Jost van Dyke to check in with Customs and Immigration. After turning the corner of St. John we had to sail northwest that allowed us a downwind sail past West End and over to Jost. After we dropped the anchor in the Great Harbor, John said that there was a guy on the boat behind us waving his hands. I had not noticed as I was concerned about setting the anchor. When I looked over it was Christian from Camelot. I had not seen Christian since San Juan. He had his wife with him and we were able to have a beer before John and I set in for Customs. As I have been told, you will keep running into the same people along the cruising route.
After a painless check in with Customs we paid a visit to Foxy’s. Foxy’s is known world-wide amongst sailors. It is the bar everyone needs to stop at least once when in the islands. Foxy is a music man and created the ultimate beach bar for fun and craziness. We had our introductory pain-killer rum drink and lunch. It was pretty quiet when we were there, but I am sure that night it was hopping.
After lunch, we pulled the hook and motored over to Little Harbor. Christian was anchored there and we spent the evening having drinks on the bow of No Rush catching up on our experiences since we last saw each other.
04/09/2009 We made the decision to go all the way to the eastern end of the BVIs. This means that we need to beat into the wind all the way to Virgin Gorda. The destination is the Bitter End Yacht Club. We spent all morning and into the afternoon beating into the wind and waves. I wanted to make one stop along the way.
I need to get my snorkeling fix in and I had not been in the water in the last two days. We stopped at George Dog. This is a small island I stopped at when we sailed here before. There is a good reef there to snorkel on. I was amazed at how crowded it was when we arrived. I have not seen crowds anywhere like I was seeing here in the BVIs. It is probably due to Spring Break, which is high season down here, and also Easter Holiday Weekend. We saw some good fish, but the highlight was seeing the sting ray and nurse shark. This is the first shark I have seen since December.
After a good snorkel we set the sails again and beat our way into the north end of Virgin Gorda. We then made it to the BEYC and picked up a mooring ball for the evening. It was crowded here also. It appears that there were many boaters from Puerto Rico that came over for the holiday weekend.
04/10/2009 After a late start today, we had a great downwind sail out of the bay and around the north corner of Virgin Gorda. After I gybed the main sail, we set the spinnaker for a fast run in the trade winds. This is we did all of the pounding for the day before. We made our way to The Baths.
The Baths are a large pile of boulders about 2/3 of the way down Virgin Gorda. After we anchored and had a light lunch, I got my first snorkel in for the day. I have never snorkeled here before. It is one of the most talked about areas in the Virgins. There was some fish life there, but the high light is swimming in amongst the boulders. I would time my runs in between the with the wave action. There are many areas to explore and beautiful conditions.
After snorkeling and taking a nap, we set the sail again and headed for Marina Cay. I have stayed here the first two times when I visited the BVIs. It is a small island with a large reef around it. On the island are a marina, restaurant, and small resort. After we caught a mooring ball for the evening, I went for my second snorkel of the day. I need to work harder at getting a couple of snorkels in a day.
The reef is lot less lively than I remember, but the coral formations are really incredible. After dinner we went ashore to the bar for some of the famous Pusser Rum Painkillers. The Pusser Rum bar in Road Town was the originator of the drinks. I had some Painkillers at the Pussers in Annapolis and was disappointed as it did not appear that they put much rum in the drinks. That was not the story here in the islands. You are able to order Painkillers as #2, #3 or #4. That is two parts rum, three parts rum or four parts rum. When I make my own, I usually on make two parts, because three parts can put me over the edge real quick and I have never drank a #4. We ordered up #2s. I watched here mix the drink. It consisted of a glass of ice, then half the glass was filled with rum and the other with the Painkiller jungle juice. These are the real thing. Someone needs to talk to the bar tenders in Annapolis and get then straightened out. By the way, if you are interested in making your own Painkillers, the recipe is 1 part Cream of Coconut, 1 part Orange Juice, 4 parts Pineapple Juice and 2, 3 or 4 parts rum. This is served over the rocks and for the special touch, you can add a sprinkle of nutmeg on top.
04/11/2009 Today for me turns out to be a carbon copy of my first day ever sailing in the BVIs. Carolyn and I came down here on a full chartered catamaran courtesy of a sales contest from Motorola. I am not sure if that trip changed my life forever, but it did introduce me to multihull sailing as the boat we were on was a 43’ Catana.
We pulled anchor and took off sailing from Marina Cay to the Indians. Once we turned the east end of Beef Island, we had a downwind sail. We popped the spinnaker and had a great sail all morning. On my first trip down here on the Catana, that was my first time ever seeing an asymmetrical sail. Here I am now living the life. We sailed to the Indians and found a mooring buoy to hook up to.
The Indians is a set of rocks located off of Pelican Island and just north of Norman Island. This a beautiful place to snorkel that I had experienced from past experiences. On one side of the rocks, the water is about 30’ deep with a straight wall down to the depth, and on the other side it is a shallow reef with many crevices. I believe this was the most fantastic snorkel I have had since I started this adventure. It was because the water was so clear and the assortment of fish and corals. None of these was the best by their own, but it was just a perfect combination. This is one experience that exceeded my expectations.
After lunch we slipped off of the mooring and motored over to the Caves. This is another famous snorkel area in the BVIs located on the west edge of Norman Island. We were lucky to find a mooring there. There are a lot of mooring balls in the BVIs. I always thought this was more for the charter boats or to keep boaters from dropping anchors on coral reefs and damaging them. The issue I run into is the water is so deep. I only carry 150’ of chain for my anchor. In typical weather that allows me to anchor in about less than 40’, but if the weather kicks up, I would not want to be in any water deeper than 20-25’. The reason behind this is what is called anchor scope. A rule of thumb is to put out 7:1 ratio. That is for every 1’ of water you should put out 7’ of anchor rode. With chain, you don’t need as much, but when the weather kicks up, you should have more.
We swam the reefs and I went into a couple of the caves to see what is to be seen. There is not much fish life in the caves as there are plenty of people in and out. The interesting sights are the high ceilings with the fragmented rock and the pick coral attached to the rock. It is a thin layer over the rocks and lights up really nice in the limited light of the caves.
When we made it back to the boat, I had planned on taking us into The Bight. This is a anchorage within Norman Island. It was still early in the afternoon and John and I decided to keep sailing and we went back to Jost Van Dyke. This completed the same trip as we took back 1995. I did have a sad moment though. As we were sailing towards Jost my second favorite hat blew off and was donated to the sea gods. It was my old faded blue Windrider hat. I started wearing it when my son and I crossed to the Bahamas in 2005 after I lost my then favorite Mount Gay 2003 San Diego NOODs hat. I alos wore that hat when I won the Windrider Nationals. It is amazing how we get attached to things. I will now need to find a back up hat for my favorite Mount Gay 2006 San Diego NOODs.
After dinner, John and I went into Foxy’s to see what kind of party life was going on. I have never seen Foxy’s so dead at night. All of the people there were eating a buffet dinner and just sitting around. We had a drink there waiting to see if things would pick up, but not a chance. We walked down the “main” street and found another bar at the end of town called Corsairs. We went for another drink to see what was happening there. It was the same with a few customers having dinner. For Foxy’s and Corsair’s, at least they had some customers. Every other place along the street did not have a customer. We noticed around the bar there was a lot of Colorado memorabilia. I asked the owner about all of the stuff and he said he was from Colorado. It turns out he lives there also. But not just Colorado, he lives in the same county as me. Some of you may know him. His name is Vinnie. He is more famous in the area as being the owner of Rocky Mountain Harley Motorcycles located on Santa Fe and County Line. If you ever make it down this way, stop in and see Vinnie. The pizzas they make there look like some of the best I have seen. I will make a stop on my way back through next week.
04/12/2009 Happy Easter. Today we motored over to White Bay. This is a picturesque little bay with a really great beach. There are not many beaches in the BVIs compared to Puerto Rico or the Bahamas. We slid in behind the reef and dropped anchor. This beach has changed a lot since I was last here. The last time I was here the only business on the beach was the Soggy Dollar Saloon. It was named after the wet money people had in their pockets from swimming into the beach. Now the whole beach is covered in establishments. Also the last time I was there, there were four of us and we had the whole beach to ourselves. Within an hour we had power boats from Puerto Rico anchored all around us.
I did get a chance to swim to the beach and walk the beach from end to end. We decided to leave there as it was getting extremely crowded with boats in the anchorage and sail over to Tabogo Island. This island is about 2 miles due west of Jost Van Dyke. This was more to my liking. There was only one other sail boat on a small beach. We dropped the hook and snorkeled around. There are very neat rock formations around the island to swim and check out. The coral was good also.
After a relaxing afternoon we sailed across the channel to St. John and caught a mooring buoy at Caneel Bay. This is part of the National Park System. I have since found out that it is extremely hard to anchor anywhere in the park and we are expected to take moorings. The cost is $15 a night. This does help the coral and sea grasses, but not somewhere a cruiser can spend a lot of time due to the cost. We then took the dinghy into Cruz Bay to town. There we found a bar with some good live music and a Texas Bar with chicken fried steak for dinner.
04/13/2009 Today was a good lazy day for me. After breakfast we took the dinghy in and cleared through Customs and sought out a wi-fi hot spot. As we were catching up on email and such the rain started and stopped and started again. I am sure the locals are happy to see the rain as so much of the area is dry and brown.
After lunch we headed back to the boat and slipped from the mooring. We motored over to Francis Bay. This is another bay in the National Park. Located next to this bay is Maho Bay. This bay is famous for the camping available. The national park has built tents on wooden platforms that look out over the bay. This would be the ultimate in camping. We didn’t do a thing here the rest of the day. We just hung out, swam a little and just enjoyed the quiet. Pictured here is the best sunset I believe I have seen since Boqueron in Puerto Rico.
04/14/2009 Physical exercise day. Today we went ashore and did some hiking. St John was owned by the Dutch until 1917. As most of the Caribbean, the primary crop was sugar. We hiked to the ruins of a sugar plantation that is being cared for by the National Parks. There is a nice walking tour of the plantation, or what is left of it. You can see some of the construction here in the buildings. I had read about how they would use brain coral as a building element as to its ease of cutting.
We then walked out to Lanteen Bay. It is another beautiful bay and you can see a lot of the BVIs from here. We made a 5-6 mile walk today and headed back to the boat. I could tell I haven’t been putting in a lot of miles on shore after that walk.
After lunch we pulled the anchor a sailed in a good stiff breeze to Christmas Bay. This is located on Great St James Island. This island is located on the southeast corner of St. Thomas. While there I went for a good long swim into the shore. It felt good to stretch out like that.
After relaxing there for awhile, we motored over to Red Hook for the evening. This is the second largest marine facility in St. Thomas. There are several marinas, marine stores, restaurants and shopping. I will let John go from here to catch his plane and I will prepare for Cliff’s arrival. We had a good dinner at a Mexican restaurant for our last night together on the boat. It has been a good trip for John to see his old haunts and I have had fun seeing new places.

04/04/2009 US Virgin Islands

2009-04-10T06:46:00.007-06:00

03/31/2009 Today was a big shuffle at the San Juan airport. After a relaxing day on the boat and the girls packing and getting ready for their flight back home, we set off for the airport. We made a stop at Burger King on the way to the airport.
I have found that many McDonalds’s and Burger King’s have wi-fi in the restaurants now. And talking with many cruisers, it is amazing how much the independent cruiser is dependent on the ease of communications through the internet. Ten years ago, there was no internet. Prime communication was either by post card, letters and the occasional telephone call with dropping lots of money into a pay phone. I am now e-mailing, blogging, sending location updates via SPOT, doing my banking, etc. with the ease of finding a hot-spot to connect into.
I made it to the airport in plenty of time for the girls to check-in and then sit around for a little bit before they took off. An old time friend of mine that I made acquaintances with when I bought my trimaran, John Schnackenberg, flew in on schedule and I picked him up. He is planning on spending two weeks with me in the Virgin Islands. Twenty years ago he spent about five seasons down here running a charter boat. John had built a Farrier F-25 and had quite a bit of multihull experience when I met him. He was a tutor to me when I started to sail Tri-to-Fly as I was all new to the multihull experience.
He is now living in Sarasota, FL and when he is not running his painting business is still playing hard between sailing, hunting, skiing and traveling.
04/01/2009 April Fool’s Day. After finishing up some on-line work, getting fuel, provisioning we took off from the marina. We started out sailing towards Culebra. We had a good sail for about three hours and started to run out of time. It was time for the iron genoa, also known as the 9.9 HP Yamaha. We made it into the anchorage on the northwest end of Culebra that I took the girls to. We made it there at about 6:00 and as soon as the anchor was dropped and set, John went for a dive off the boat to baptize himself after being away from the Caribbean for twenty years.
04/02/2009 This morning we made it to shore and hiked over to Flamenco Beach. It was a good hike and the seas had settled down since I was there with the girls. There was a low gentle swell coming into the beach compared to the six foot breaking waves when we were there. After we walked the beach, it was back up the trail and over the hill back to the boat. We went for a snorkel on the reef heading south this time. As I jumped off of the boat I saw what I have been looking for a long time. I had my own barracuda shading under my boat. I haven’t been seeing any large fish. This one was. The barracuda like to hang out underneath boats to shade from the sun. It just sits there as I swam around. I was amazed at all of the fish and coral life. It was even more spectacular than last time.
After lunch we motored down to Dewey and caught a mooring ball for the night. We walked around town a little bit more than when I was there with the girls.
04/03/2009 Today we set sail again against the trade winds for St. Thomas. We had a great sail setting off on five mile tacks with good winds. We made it into Charlotte Amalie. This is the largest harbor in the area where all of the cruise ships arrive. As I was dropping the anchor, right next to me was Bravo 2 with good cruising friends Wendy and Graham from Canada. We spent the evening having drinks on the bow of their catamaran. They announced that they are getting ready to cross the Atlantic for a trip to Europe. The last time I talked with them they had pretty much squashed the plans for Europe. I am glad to see that I am not the only one that wavers on plans and then goes forward.
The only cruise ship for the day was heading out of the harbor as we were entering. It is a pretty town from the water. The main road for the island runs along the waterfront and there was loud music going until about midnight. The hill side is all light up with the homes and streets. John said it looked like Christmas to him. It was pretty neat from the water.
04/04/2009 Today we ventured ashore. I have heard all of the horror stories about Charlotte Amalie. As for myself, I do not see the issues. It may be that the local governments have been working really hard to clean up the communities and make it more tourism friendly. I needed to find Customs to determine whether I needed to check in. There is an office right on the docks where we were anchored. I have had conflicting information as to whether I needed to check in with Customs when entering from Puerto Rico. The definitive answer is no.
I have friends from the yacht club in Colorado that travel to St. Thomas every year, Bruce and Deanna Budy. They offered to meet us that the marina and give us a driving tour of the island. We had a great time seeing the beaches and views from the top of the hills. We stopped and had a good lunch in an Irish pub in Red Hook. The beaches are wonderful here and I see how people can make this a vacation destination. We had a good time traveling and seeing the island from a different perspective.
04/05/2009 Today we reciprocated with Bruce and Deanna and took them for a sail. We sailed over to Trunk Bay on the island of St. John. It is a beautiful crescent white sandy beach. It is part of the US National Park System. Just off of the beach there was a stand for some cheeseburgers in paradise. We walked the beach and sat and relaxed.
These two days gave me a chance to become closer friends with Bruce and Deanna. I have known them since I joined Colorado Sail and Yacht Club in 1997. When the club was struggling Bruce had made great efforts to keep things running and “volunteered” me to be Vice-Commodore the year he volunteered to be Commodore. The club was in such dire straits that I am not sure if Bruce was ever elected Commodore, but I know I never was. We are both real happy to see how the club has grown and prospered since those days.
04/06/2009 One more day in Charlotte Amalie. I wanted to tour the town a little bit. From the bay it looked like a neat place to visit with its architecture and history. We didn’t make it too far into town when I remembered that I wanted to go to a local chandlery.
We asked directions and given instructions to catch the local jitney. This is the local public transportation. Here in the USVIs they use one ton Ford pick-ups with a seating platform mounted on the chassis. These will typically hold 16-20 people. The cost is only $2.00 anywhere you want to go. We rode up the marina and found the chandlery I was looking for. The downside was that they did not have the cruising guide I needed, but the good news was that their other marine store located in Red Hook did.
We went back out on the road and stopped a jitney heading in the general direction of Red Hook. I asked the driver if he went to Red Hook and what the cost was. He indicated he did and the cost was $2.00. Off on another adventure. On this cruising trip, I think my favorite times have been using the local public transportation. I get a chance to meet locals, but finding a ride to where I am going is also an adventure. One of the favorite shows for my family is the Great Race. My kids always wanted to do this with me and using public transportation in foreign lands is a lot like what happens on the show.
John and I made it over to red Hook and found the chandlery. They did indeed have the guides I needed and also chart kits that I could not even find in the US. Another task completed.
04/07/2009 We headed towards the BVIs today. We are planning on making one or two stops to get there. As always down in this part of the world, the wind is blowing out of the east. With that in mind, as a cruiser, you either need to sail your boat by tacking back and forth to go forward or drop the motors. As sailors, we opted to the tacking and sailing all day. We would go on 5-7 mile long tacks away from the islands and then back in. This makes for real casual sailing, even though both of us are racers. With John on the boat we are trying to optimize the sail trim and keeping the boat moving as efficient as possible.
We sailed to Salt Pond on the east end of St. Johns. It is located just before Rams Head. We caught a mooring ball there and went for a swim. It felt good as I usually don’t swim in major harbors or harbors that have lots of cruisers and not much tidal current as the conditions are pretty bad with all the waste going into the water. When I made it back to the boat we decided to move on from there. There was a bad smell in the air, like and outhouse. We think there is a pond across the ridge from where we are and that it had a decay smell coming off it.
We sailed around Rams Head and into Coral Bay. We anchored in Coral Harbor for the night. This is a sleepy little town with a lot of construction guys and cruisers. We went into a town and found a local bar that had some live music. They also had on the TV the NCAA Women’s Final. It is the first time I ever watched women basketball. It was more interesting than the men’s final the night before.

03/27/2009 Spanish Virgin Islands

2009-04-01T05:20:00.008-06:00

03/24/2009 Today I pick up my daughters, Sara and Amanda, from San Juan airport. I am excited that they are able to come down here for a week to share this life with me. I can’t say it started out with a bang as we worked to provision the boat, but they seem to be enjoying the day.
03/25/2009 This morning was a day of work trying to clear up some banking issues and waiting for the parts for the auto-pilot. The banking issues might be resolved, but the parts will not until next week when I bring the girls in. The delivery did not make it turned out to be a very busy day and they did not make it as far as the marina. The parts should be at the marina when I return. We can only hope.
After working through all of those details, we set off for Palominos. It is an island about 5 miles out from the marina. It is mostly leased out to El Conquistador. After a pleasant motor over to the island, we caught a mooring ball provided by the Department of Natural Resources. We went snorkeling on the reef that the mooring surround. I was really surprised by how dead the reef is. We moved from north to south along the reef and the north end was nothing but a pile of dead coral. There is no live coral and only a couple of fish. As we moved south along the reef, it did come alive a little bit with some live coral and more fish, but a lot less than I would expect for a place that has the mooring balls and where there are plenty of charter boats bringing out customers for the snorkeling experience.
After that we went ashore to the beach to try out Sara’s skimboard. This is a thin board that as you run down the beach, you throw it on the thin water of an out-going wave and then jump on it to skim the water and sand. It takes a lot of timing, balance and energy. This board was invented out on the beaches of California where they have long flat beaches, compared to the short sloping beaches here in the Caribbean. It took a few tries, but Sara was able to get some good rides. Amanda and I took a lot more time and I believe we each only got in one half decent ride each.
As we were on the beach, a front was rolling in and started to bring rain. The people from the hotel started lining up on the pier waiting for the ferry to pick them up and return them to the hotel. We played in the rain as we were wet and had nothing better to do. We did make it back to the boat and had one of those all night rains. It was also a slightly rocky and windy night. I was disappointed that I had us in an anchorage that had some roll until I remembered that I had two months of this kind of weather. How easy we forget the different conditions.
03/26/2009 After the rocky night on the boat, I put up the main sail and took off of the mooring. Once I cleared the protection of the island, I saw how rough it really was from the front moving through. There were 5-7 foot seas on the channel. We were actually tucked into a pretty good anchorage considering the weather.
The wind was blowing 17-20 knots out of the NE. There is a chain of islands and rocks that form sort of a back-bone that runs from Cape San Juan out to Culebra. I tacked to the north all the way to the chain and then threw in another tack that carried us all the way to Culebra. This was about a 15 mile run and the best sail I have had since I made it to Puerto Rico. I have been on the south side of Puerto Rico and Vieques and that blocks the winter trade winds from the ENE. Now in the open water, and with the front, I had good winds from a good direction. No Rush jumped like a racing horse out of the blocks and sailed fantastically.
The plan was to go into the bay with the town of Dewey, but we made it in such good time, I decided to sail up the west coast towards the north end. There is a beach there that was protected from the weather and a good place to anchor for the afternoon to go ashore.
After we anchored, we were befriended by a family from Australia that has been cruising for a little over a year on a 46’ Leopard Catamaran. They boat the boat in St. Thomas and after refitting, they crossed the Atlantic to Western Europe and then back to the Caribbean. They are heading west to the US to cruise the eastern seaboard. After that they expect to sell the boat and head back to Australia so the boys can finish school.
We went ashore and found a path that took us to Flemenco Beach. It is considered the second most beautiful beach in the world. It truly is a beautiful beach. There was good surf coming in from the ocean due to the front and we had a great time playing in the surf. We also got in more time on the skimboard. Amanda picked up a raspberry on her knee from a spill on the beach. That was after she rolled her ankle walking over to the beach and getting some nice scratches on her other leg.
After a couple of hours playing there, we made our way back to the other beach. I took the girls back to the boat and grabbed my snorkel gear. The girls won’t interested, but I always need to see what is under the water. The reef here was the most lively reef I had seen since being in the Florida Keys. The fish population wasn’t the biggest I have seen, but there were many different kinds. What blew me away was the amount of sea floral. The live coral is so dense, I would almost consider it a forest. There are many different kinds and colors. It was well worth the swim to see it.
After that we slipped the mooring and sailed down to the town of Dewey. It is a small town with two ferry docks. There is a people-only ferry and a separate vehicle ferry. We took the dinghy in and walked around town for a little. It is a quiet little place and most of the shops were closed when we arrived. There was a large regatta sponsored by Heinecken there last week and I am sure the locals are all recovering from the onslaught of the racers for the weekend.
03/27/2009 After a calm night on a mooring ball provided by the town, we raised the main again and sailed over to the eastern end of Vieques. Two days of sailing. What a dream. The seas were choppy with 3-5 foot seas from the aftermath of the front. The skies have cleared and it is a beautiful day. As we came upon the eastern point of the island there were good seas crashing into shore line.
We sailed around the point and as we were making such good time, I decided we could stop in a bay, Bahia Salina del Sur, that used to be part of the military install here on Vieques. The Navy used this installation for practices and maneuvers, that included strafing live bomb drops. This had been going on since the late 40s until local protesting brought the end to the use of the facility in 2003.
As we were entering the bay, we were hailed on the radio from range control that recommended that we abandon the idea of entering the area as there are still live munitions that are being cleared and cleaned up. There was also a crew on shore using demolitions. We sailed back out of there and headed to Playa Plata Beach and Ensenada Honda Bay to hang out for the day and anchor for the night.
03/28/2009 Today we sailed for Sun Bay. The third day of good sailing and it was all down wind. This is a large bay that I stayed in on my last trip to Vieques. There is a large beach and good protection from the trade winds. We are also in walking distance to the village of Esperanza.
We ran into an Australian family that we met in Culebra. They are about 18 months into their trip. Peter and Sharon stopped by after we anchored and talked for awhile. They are traveling with their two school age boys, John and Harry, along with an American they met in Europe, Alex and their niece that just graduated from high school, Sarah. They bought the boat in St. Thomas, sailed to Ft. Lauderdale to outfit it and then sailed to Europe for a season. They are now back in the Caribbean and trying to decide what to do next. They have the boat up for sale and are heading for the US until the boat sales. It is time to get back home as the boys need to get back in school to finish their studies.

We then went ashore and walked the beach and into town. We stopped at a local waterhole, Bananas, for lunch and did a little shopping from the local artists.
After we made it back to the boat, I put on the snorkel gear and headed out looking for lobsters. I haven’t caught any yet, or even seen any. I was told they are in the area. As I was swimming along, I found a rocky shoal along the shore line. It is an interesting area with the rock formations and how erosion allowed the shelves to collapse. I found some interesting fish and spotted my first lobster since leaving the States. I went back to the boat to get my tickle stick, gloves and net. I found the lobsters again, but need some guidance and practice to catch a lobster.
We then went over to and visit with our new Australian friends for drinks and snacks. It is always interesting to talk with other cruisers about what they have done and learned. We are also able to share what our lives are like from different countries. They are not all that different, but different enough to be interesting. The girls were able to share about going to school and being rugby players, talk about world sports.
All of us then went ashore and walked a trail that took us to Mosquito Bay. This is the bay that has the high concentrations of bio-luminecences. Instead of taking the dinghy in from the sea side, we just swam right off of the beach. We had to wait for dark and all of the paying customers using either the electric engine driven pontoon boat or the mass of sea kayak users. It was just as good as the last time.
03/29/2009 After a good breakfast we set the sails again and headed to Green Beach on the northwest corner of the island. A fourth day of good sailing. The girls have probably got in a higher percentage of sailing than anyone else I have had on the boat. My good luck charms. Sara went ashore to do some shelling and Amanda and I took the snorkel gear to do some exploring. I was amazed at the underwater structure right off of the shore. We swam for a good hour and saw many live corals and fish. I saw a fish here that I had saw in Sun bay. I am not sure of what it is, but it has a square face with big black eyes. It reminds me of a teddy bear. It has a sad face and the fish is quite shy. It is something I have never seen before and get a kick out of finding it.
After lunch we sailed across the channel and back to Isla Pineros for the evening anchor. As in the past, it has been a quiet anchorage that we did not have to share with anyone.
03/30/2009 This morning we got up early and motored over Puerta del Rey Marina. After cleaning up the boat, we checked in, picked up the parts I ordered for the auto-pilot and signed for our rental car.
First order of business was working to straighten a banking issue I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. Thank goodness for wireless in McDonalds. I was finally able to resolve to the issue and all in well in the world again.
After that we headed for El Yungue National Forest. It is the only rainforest in the US. The first thing that grabbed my eye as we entered the forest was the tall stands of bamboo. We spent time driving into the park and stopped at the visitor center. At the visitors center there is a 20 minute movie about the rain forest, the plant life and animals. The forest, as all forests, are essential to our living on this planet and the Forest Service has worked real hard to make this a great place to visit. The first thing that grabbed my eye as we entered the forest was the tall stands of bamboo. We went up the Yokahu Tower. It reminds me of the Will Rogers tower located up on the hill above the Colorado Springs zoo. There are many trails that can be hiked into the forest and up to the peak. Hiking will need to be saved for the next trip to the park.
After the park we headed off for San Juan. The plan was to go to the Bacardi Rum Distillery. We decided we didn’t have time. We made a stop at West Marine. I have a pair of flip-flops I have been wearing and when I was on the beach at Culebra, a wave caught them while I was walking along the beach and ripped the toe strap out of both shoes at the same time. West Marine replaced them free of charge without any questions. A good reason why I do a lot of my shopping there.
After that we decided to make a trip into Old San Juan. We were on a shopping excursion and some sight seeing. This is an old Spanish town with two forts, many squares and parks, narrow streets and interesting architecture. I could spend days here looking around at the forts, parks and such. We stopped in a couple of shops that sell only Puerto Rican or Caribbean made merchandise. Sara was on the hunt for spices that we had bought on our last trip to the BVIs and found them in one shop. The next shop had art work from Puerto Ricans only. They bought gifts for family and friends back home. They got a kick out of the owner. He asked if they were on the cruise ship and when they said they were sailing on my boat, he just talked to us for the longest time. He is also a sailor that kept his boat in the same marina that we are staying in. He ignored everything going on around except for our conversation.
After that we had a good dinner at The Green Parrot, a Latin food restaurant. We had fried Plantain Nachos, sautéed potatoes and some of the most tender ribs we have ever had. It was a perfect end to a great trip with the girls. I am so happy they were and able and decided to make the trip down here.

03/20/2009 Vieques

2009-03-25T05:50:00.008-06:00

03/19/2009 Last evening I made it to the west end of Vieques. This is known as Green Beach. The anchoring was good for the evening as I sat in the lee of the island. I had gentle winds and a flat sea for good sleeping and star watching. I am not sure if I talked about it in the past week, but I saw the Southern Cross in the sky here. I have seen it once before when me and my family traveled to New Zealand. I am able to see in the sky at the same time the Southern Cross and the Northern Star.

I got the dinghy off of the davits and went for a beach hunt. I walked the beaches to the point, did some snorkeling and then walked the beach south. There are many shells and treasures on this beach. I shared this beach with very few other people. It is probably because it is mid-week.

Later in the day I pulled the anchor and headed for Esperanza. I motored for less than two hours to make my way there. There are few places to anchor and mooring balls located there. I was able to grab a public mooring ball that had no charge associated with it.

That evening I went ashore and walked through the town. The town, or village, is probably only ½ mile long. There are many vendors there selling different items such as clothing, home-made jewelry, paintings, food and tours. The hair on the back of my neck stuck up a little bit. It finally dawned on me that I was in a touristy area. My last two weeks in Puerto Rico have been on areas that usually only locals of PR would go to and now I am in an area that is frequented by Americans and Europeans. It has a different feel to it.

3/20/2009 Today I needed to make it to Isabel (or locally known as the town). I hitch-hiked my way there. It is probably about 5 miles to the town located on the north shore. I was able to get a ride with no problems at all. I went there to get some grocery shopping in as it has been hard to get fresh produce. It was no different there. I walked around the town and out to the light house with a stop in one of the bars for a beer. There are some shops with art work, local made clothing, a coffee shop with wi-fi (another reason for the trip), etc. It is the city hall for the island. There is an older feel to the architecture here. After a few hours and my errands completed, I hitched back to Esperanza without any problems. The locals again are as friendly as I have met anywhere.

Later that afternoon I took No Rush over to the entrance to Mosquito Bay. This is suppose to be the most brilliant area in the world for bio-luminescence. This is created by a plankton that lights up when it is agitated. The bay has a high density due to the shallow entrance that does not allow the plankton to wash out during the tide changes. After dark, I took the dinghy into the bay to see this. It was amazing. As I was motoring into the bay, I noticed the prop wash was super bright and then also the wave splash from the dinghy. Then I looked and could see fish dart through the water as I went by. When I was in the bay, I went over the side and swam. This caused the water to light up around me. It is hard to describe what it looked like here on this page.

After making my way back to No Rush, I decided to move the boat to Sun Bay that night. I was on a day mooring with a south-east swell and winds. It was not going to be a comfortable night and I was not sure of how good the mooring is. With the help of the chart plotter, I made my way into the large bay that is protected from the southeast winds.

03/22/2009 After spending the whole previous day anchored in Sun Bay with beach walking and back into Esperanza, I made for an early morning motor back to Isla Pineros. I am spending the night there as I have a slip reserved for the next couple of days to get ready for my daughters to arrive. I could definitely tell there was weather coming in. The seas were as flat as possible and no wind. That afternoon it rained most of the day. The deck was naturally cleaned. I have not seen that much rain since September when I was still on the Chesapeake.
03/23/2009 After getting the boat put away in the marina I jumped in a rental car and did a little touring. I saw Laquillo Beach and the 60 bars. This is an interesting collection of shacks with many different bars, restaurants and souvenir shops.

I made my way to San Juan and finally found Christian. It turns out he left a few days after I did and was not able to use the front to travel on. He island hopped down to Turks and Caicos and had a fuel problem. He was able to jury rig a by-pass fuel line and then finished the trip with a straight shot motor-sail into the San Juan harbor. The good news for him was that he picked up a crew member, Ann, to assist with him for this leg. Having the second set of hands and the ability to have watches made it easier for him.

I then made a quick tour through Old San Juan. I hope to make it back there with the girls if we have the time during their time here. There are two Spanish Forts, along with the narrow streets and many old building and structures to explore.

03/18/2009 Puerto Rico (South shore)

2009-03-20T09:03:00.004-06:00

03/06/2009 Here I am sitting in Boqueron. I have a few items I need to take care of and I hope that Christian made it out of port and is heading for PR. First things first today is that I need to check in with Customs and Immigration. I made a call to the office and they asked me to call back later as they were in the middle of clearing in the ferry from Dominican Republic. Later that day I made the call and they were very anxious for me to be in the office before 4:30, since I arrived yesterday. I needed to get to Mayaguez. Mayaguez is located about 20 miles north of where I am now. In my cruising guide, it is recommended to call Raul on his cell and he will taxi you to immigration. I called, he answered and was available. He turned out to be my first contact in Puerto Rico and he was a great welcome wagon.

We scheduled to meet up in about an hour to make the trip. After I cleaned up and readied all of my documentation needed, I headed into shore and tied up the boat. I stopped at the first bar for a beer as I was little early. My first beer in PR costs $1.25. Heaven. After spending typically $4-6 a can in the Bahamas I can see I am going to enjoy Puerto Rico.

Raul is waiting for me as we scheduled and off we went. Raul is a native Puerto Rican that spent most of his life living in New York. He worked in transportation for Columbia University and other jobs. He decided to come back to Puerto Rico about ten years ago and could not find work. He bought a taxi and has been doing that since he arrived. He made a good friend in the writer of my cruising guide and now is listed in there and is the prime taxi driver for cruisers coming into PR. He was very helpful in making sure Immigration was ready for me and he gave me pointers to avoid while talking with the agents.

The process only took about 15 minutes and we were back on the road. Now I am legal in Puerto Rico. After the trip back to Boqueron I decided to walk around town and find out what was available to me for products and services. Boqueron is a sleepy little village on the back side of Puerto Rico. There was a small (real small) grocery store, pharmacy, bakery, couple of gas stations, marine store, etc. This is a little getaway town though during the weekends. It is known as the Key West of Puerto Rico. The only people that visit it though are islanders. After a weekend here, it may be the Key West of Puerto Rico, but you have to compare the size of the US to put it in perspective. I love it here.

There is a beautiful public beach here lined with palm trees and some restaurants and bars. Along the street though are little businesses set up that sell local made jewelry, t-shirts, fresh oysters and clams and my favorite, a bbq grill that they cook shiska-a-bobs of chicken, fish and beef. The main street is lined with these all the way up and down. During the weekend the partying went on all day and late into the night. I was amazed even on Sunday. I figured things would roll up around seven or eight o’clock. The music was going on until 11:00.

There were a couple of bars in town. Galloways is the cruisers hang out. I didn’t spend much time the there. I enjoyed going to El Swar. It was a bar at the dinghy dock. I enjoyed sitting and watching the people there play pool, sing karioki and just have fun. The beers are cold and the place is really much more lively than sitting at Galloways. I met Frank there. He is the bar tender and spoke great English. I talked with him and his brother every time I stopped by there. As it appears to be everyone I run into, they spent time in the US working and then came back to PR to live a different life and also usually come back to family.

03/10/2009 I have waited for four days for Christian to make it to Boqueron and there is no sight of him. I hope he is alright in whatever plans he went with. I am using Bruce Van Sant’s Passages South as my cruising guide for Puerto Rico and will follow most of his recommendations.

I take off for La Parguera. It is another little sleepy town on the south coast. I round Cabo Rojo (Red Cape) on get a picture of this beautiful light house. It appears most of the light houses are built from this mold down here. As I enter the area I stop for a swim on a reef I notice that there are mooring balls. It is a small beautiful reef with good live corals and small fish.

I later make my way to where I anchor and hook up with Graham and Wendy again. This will be the norm for the week, as they move much earlier than I do when going onto the next anchorage.

The next morning I get up and throw the gas and water cans in the dinghy and head over to the local marina to try and fuel up and get some water. When I arrive there, there are only three men that are working on a boat. The mechanic speaks good English and I ask about fuel. He tells me the bad news that the station in town is closed and the marina does not have any fuel. He does though, without any prompting, offer me a ride down the highway to the next gas station to purchase fuel. The generosity just blows me away. His name is Joe and he was in the US Coast Guard for eight years. As we are driving he tells me all about his love for boats. Any boats. Power, sail, skiffs. Whatever it is as long as it floats.

03/11/2009 After Joe brought me back to the docks, I headed off to Gilligan’s Island. This is located off of a resort. The new thing I am learning is about the trade winds. It has appeared to me all along the south shore that I have to power and not sail as the wind is usually blowing from the east. There do not appear to be the weather windows I could rely on in the Bahamas to change the weather and the wind direction.

After dropping the anchor, I took the dinghy to Gilligan’s Island. The island is a mangrove island and it appears that people from the resort are ferried to the island to hang out. There are picnic pavilions a couple of small sandy beaches and trails for walking. Everyone is having a good time here.

That evening I took the dinghy to the resort and met Carlos there. He is the bar tender at the bar n the beach. He is a young guy that has good stories about the country. I asked for his specialty. It is the Puerto Rican Ice Tea. It is great. There are four flavors of Rum, Sour Mix and a slash of Coke. The Puerto Rican version of the Long Island Ice Tea. They went down smooth.
03/12/2009 This morning I took off for Salinas. It is a major cruiser’s hang-out. There is access to fuel, groceries, rental cars, etc. It sits back in a mangrove protected harbor. There are several small restaurants, bars and little stores around the marina.

I met up with Graham and Wendy again. Friday night I made a pot of spaghetti. They brought over a salad and a chocolate bar for desert. We had a great time sitting around eating spaghetti and drinking plenty of wine. It was a real fun night catching up with them and what their plans are and mine. They have been on the boat for five years now and they are trying to determine what their next adventure is going to be. Oh the tough life.

03/15/2009 Today I have taken off for Puerto Patillas. Another sleepy little town with a public beach. The park is full of people all having a good time. There are boaters here also. There are several people on jet skis zipping around. I am definitely in a different place right now. Jet skiers always seemed to be my nemesis. It was fun to watch them just having fun, even when they came zipping by my boat. It was like a mark to go around, as there was only one other sailboat anchored here. There were also three men on sunfish like sailboats. They would race across the bay and back. The fastest of them would come right behind my boat off of the transom. I knew he was a racer as he had no problem dipping my transom as I would do if I were racing. He would yell, “Buenos Dias, mi amigo”! I felt welcomed and belong.

As with Boqueron, the partying and music went on late into the night Sunday. I am so happy to watch people having such a good time. It was not uncommon to have people say hello to me as I was walking around the village. While in the grocery store I met a man that was doing his best to share with me about the bottle of rum I was buying. This rum was recommended to me by Carlos from the resort I had the PR Ice Teas. He was kind and patient, but really wanting to talk with me. It is times like this that I put in the extra energy to learn another language.

I stayed here two days. There has been weather rolling in with rain. The rain isn’t heavy by any standards, but it the most amount of rain I have had since September in the Chesapeake. This gives me a chance to wash the boat down. The island seems to be making the weather. Puerto Rico is fairly hilly. The winds comes from the east, hit the hills and rain. The eastern side of the island is much more lush and green than the west side that was more dry and arid.

03/17/2009 After a couple of days in Puerta Patillas I took off for Roosevelt Roads. This is a mostly closed US Navy base. It was supposed to be the largest US Navy base in the world by square miles. I motored into the harbor and could not raise a harbor master. The base appears to be mostly abandoned, with very little activity.

At the marina there is a small PX that also acts as the marine control. They charged $20 to even anchor there and provided no real services since I am not, or ever was, in the military. I moved on to Isla Pineros.

What a great move that was. I had the whole channel to myself with a lovely little beach on the lee side of the island. It was a quiet little place with no one else around.

03/18/2009 I made my way to Puerta del Ray. This is the largest marina in the Caribbean. I was in desperate need of fuel after motoring against the wind along the coast for the last week. I was also there to check out availability for a slip, rental cars and marine needs for the next part of the trip.

I have my daughters flying in on Tuesday and this place will work out great as a staging place. It is about 40 miles from San Juan with plenty of marine, grocery and department stores in the area that I can use for supplying for the next three months when traveling to Grenada.
After fueling up, I was able to sail for the first time in a couple of weeks and headed for the west end of Vieques. This is the largest of the Spanish Virgin Islands and one of the areas I have wanted to make it to since planning this trip many years ago. I made it to Green Beach on the northwest end of the island just as the sun was setting.

03/01/2009 George Town to Puerto Rico

2009-03-07T11:28:00.012-07:00

03/01/2009 This morning I left George Town for the big trip. I am planning an open water crossing to the west end of Puerto Rico. I figure it should take between 4-5 days, but as many as 7 days. I worked with John from the boat Buddy on some weather tracking, plus the information
I have been picking up from Chris Parker. Chris is a weather tracker for cruising sailors and provides a net service on the Marine SSB radio. He broadcasts 6 days a week in the morning across the whole North Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. He not only provides weather including wind speed, direction, sea state, frontal activity and tropical storm warnings, he also provides recommendations to vessels, for a fee, on when and how to move with the weather.
I met John about a week ago. He is on a beautiful 44 foot trimaran that he designed and built. He has made four runs each direction between the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. We reviewed weather forecast maps from NOAA and determined that it is a good time to leave with and on-coming cold front. The winds will shift from the normal Trades direction of east to south, southwest and then northwest as the front passes. This should give me winds that I will be able to carry most of the way into Puerto Rico without the need for tacks.

As I left this morning, I have felt the most prepared. That doesn’t mean I don’t have the jitters. I have been worrying about this day for a couple of weeks now. It did feel good though to pull the anchor and get on my way. I may have been a little anxious as I left maybe a little early in that I should have waited until the wind was coming out of due south. It was coming out of about 160 degrees and that will make for some tight reaching until the front starts to close on me.

The front is suppose to hit George Town about 4:00 or 5:00 AM Monday morning. With me moving now, the good news is it will probably be daylight for me when the front passes me. This is a large front and there are suppose to be some squalls involved with the front. The last weather report I had received indicated that the squally weather should be further north. You know how the weather goes. We will only have to wait and see and be as prepared as possible to slow the boat down.

After pulling the anchor, I was required to motor down the harbor to the east cut as the wind was on my nose. After I made the turn into the cut, the sails filled and off I went. I had a great reach north east to Cape Saint Maria on the north end of Long Island. From there I have had a tight reach and passed Rum Cay on the north side of the island. That may very well be the last land mass I see in the Bahamas for this trip is all goes as planned.

I have had a great time in the Bahamas. When I first arrived I felt like I had been rushing around and really tense. I thought that I might stay the whole winter and spring in the Bahamas and then take the boat back to the States. I had talked with several people about how they would spend three months alone in the Abacos. I thought that was what I wanted, but that is not in my nature at this time. I started to run into people that do the more longer range cruising and that seemed to get me more back on-track. I was excited to move on, but did enjoy myself at the different places I have stopped.

George Town is the winter home for many cruisers and it culminates with a cruiser regatta. The regatta includes dog parades, boat parades, poker and bridge tournaments, volleyball tournaments and even a boat race. There are many people there that will set anchor for three months. There is no way I could do that at this point in my life. I was itching to leave after being there only three days. After a week, I couldn’t wait.

I had a great sunset as I passed Rum Cay.

03/02/2009 0130AM I wake up from a nap with a ship in my sights, a rain squall showing up on my radar and my generator stops. I thought I had my radar to alert me if anything showed up in a security zone. I was wrong. I have a large cargo boat ahead of me and I cannot figure out which way to go to clear the boat safely. I try what I think is cutting across his bow, but I keep seeing in red port bow light. Red means danger in boating also. I start going in circles and I scare the cargo boat away from the crazy sailor. While in the middle of this I have a rain squall approaching from my stern and I have full main up. I lowered the main low enough to set the second reef point. This comes in very handy later in the night. Now I have two issues resolved. The third was the generator. I run the generator at night when I am running the radar. It draws quite a bit of power and this keeps the batteries charged. It turns out the generator was only out of gas. And after all that, as I was being pitched around the cockpit, I put my hand down on the table to catch myself and bent the wire frames on my reading glasses. I have extras and later was able to repair them.

0400AM The front rolls through with a slight fury. I had just cracked off the sails to run as the wind had started to clock from the south. This came just in time as the wind hit apparent wind speeds of 33 knots and the boat was flying along in the pitch black, except for rain and lightning, at 11.5 knots. She handled very well and the front passed over in about an hour.

I figured out all of the settings on the radar. I have it set up to turn on every 5 minutes and take 10 turns. If anything, including a mark, ship or rain, shows up, an alarm will go off until I acknowledge it. This will allow me to sleep easier during my 20 minute cat naps.

0600AM The sun is coming up. I felt I had a great first night for this passage so far. I was able to handle the boat in the weather and overcame each obstacle that came up. It is wonderful though after a long dark night, 12 hours, of seeing the dawn. I was able to make out the seas and watched as the light broke over the clouds ahead of me. There is a lot of comfort in the light. I am north of Samana Cay by about 17 miles. I will be leaving Bahamian Waters and traveling the Atlantic Ocean until I get to Puerto Rico.

0930AM Wind is pretty light. I take the reef out of the main sail and then go to work on the spinnaker. I worked on the spinnaker for about a half an hour. It has a good wrap in it as usual. It is the one thing I don’t like about the spinnaker sock. I have a wrap almost every time I pull it out of the bag. I also notice that I am very irritable this morning. It probably has to do with the lack of sleep.

1300PM Thankfully I wasn’t able to get the spinnaker up earlier. The winds clocked around through the west and now out of the NNW. This was expected and with the winds out of the NNW, the speeds have built, along with the seas. This reminds me of the trip from the Abacos with my parents, except the seas aren’t as big. I decide to put the reef back in the main sail as the auto-pilot is having a tough time keeping up with the waves and power. After that things settle down, but I am still at times surfing in the 14s. I feel more comfortable with the boat than any time in the past with these speeds.

I did realize something today as I was looking around the sea. The sea is a very large area, but all I can see is about 5-7 miles in any direction due to the curvature of the Earth. It really doesn’t look that big from this point of view and not so intimidating. It is sort of like sitting on a knoll on the prairie.

1800PM Time to settle on for the night again. I am trying to get into some sort of routine. I don’t want this trip to be some kind of survival trip. I work on cooking up dinner. I pan fry some pork tenderloin in a cracker crust with parsley, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. As I am cooking, it is the first time on this passage I don’t feel not so well. I need the fresh air. I am sure it was just the fumes from cooking and that I have the seas off my port quarter. That is the worst point of sail as the boat rocks from corner to corner to corner to corner.

Dinner did taste very well and I have found some creature comforts. One is that I noticed my feet are always wet. I was hoping to get them to heal from cuts and scrapes. They are like prunes right now. I slipped on the Crocks and that keeps them off of the wet deck. The other is a good place for me to lie down and for sleeping. I am stretching across the settee form port to starboard.

This does not have the rocking motion to it sleeping forward to aft. I am now able to sleep.
I can sleep on the boat because I have such an alert crew. I have more instrumentation that has alarms than I would like sometimes. I have the radar that tells me if anything above the water is in my proximity (within 4 miles), my auto-pilot to announce a wind shift of more than 15 degrees, my depth alarm for when I go into water that is no more than 100 feet and my watch that awakes me every 20 minutes to verify the rest of the crew is on alert.
As the night before, the radar was working double time due to rain. I rain patches around me and that alarm went off for about an hour until the rain cleared and the auto-pilot was busy all night with wind shifts. I knew though that I was getting sleep. It was not just shut-eye. We are making good time though.

03/03/2009 0200AM I pass a ship about 7 miles off my starboard beam. It is only the third vessel I have seen since I left George Town. Not too busy out here. The skies have also cleared for a time. There is no moon and the stars fill the sky.

0600AM Morning time again. There will be no sunrise as the clouds are so thick. If you have been following the weather since I left on this passage, you should have seen how far spread the clouds are on this front. This is the cost of easy passage making on the fronts, rarely do you get warm sunny skies.

We (No Rush and I) have now made 300 miles distance in less than 48 hours. We are about half way to our destination. It will be great if we can make this passage in four days.
We are out of Bahamian waters now and after almost two months I take down the Bahamian courtesy flag.

1000AM Air has gone flat. It is like drift racing on Chatfield, except for the three foot swell. I am working on a jigsaw puzzle to kill time and try to keep the boat moving.

1220PM I don’t feel like I am giving up, but the auto-pilot will work itself to death at trying to keep up with the rotating light winds. I have dropped the port motor in the water for low RPM cruising looking for some wind. I expect that if this front has blown itself out, I should start to see the NE Trades kick in and hopefully I am far enough north and east to carry them into Puerto Rico.

1430PM I was awaken from a good nap with a breeze on my face. The wind has found us again. I put out the jib shut down the motor. The breeze started to fill in from the north. I decided to try the spinnaker again. This time I was able to clean up the lines and get all of the wraps out of the sail. I had one of the most wonderful sails you dream about on the open waters. It is like showing up at Steamboat and find champagne powder up to your knees at the lift and flowing over your waist as you cut through the trees. I had 10-13 knots of wind with a gentle swell of 3-5 feet. I just coasted along at 7-8 knots enjoying the afternoon after the swirly light winds this morning.
1800PM Another great sunset at sea. I took the spinnaker down for the night. I am still sailing at 7.5 knots with the main and jib. I will probably reef the main as the night goes on. The winds are building a little with the cooler north winds. I am now making time again.
1900PM I put in the double reef. I probably should put in the third reef also, but this worked well last night. I saw the largest ring around the moon this evening. I am not sure, but this maybe what they call a moon bow.

2000PM I should have put in the third reef. The winds and seas have been building all afternoon and they continue this evening. I am seeing wind speeds in the low 20s and boat speeds of 12 knots bursting to 14 sometimes. It is spooky during the day to have these speeds, even that much more at night. I am making real good time.

03/04/2009 0600AM It is good to see the daylight after last night. The boat is handling well, but the noise from the water rushing by is incredible. Now that it is light out, I turn the boat into the wind and put in the third reef. I am still seeing 11-12 knots of boat speed, but the boat feels much more in control.

1445PM I am now making my final turn towards Puerto Rico from the route I programmed into my chart plotter. It is like across the country and know that you only have one more state to travel through. I still have 170 miles to reach Boqueron. That will be my stopping place to check into customs and wait for Christian for a few days. At this rate I expect to arrive there tomorrow evening at sunset. I hope the winds keep up as I don’t want to enter a strange port at night.

2200PM The steering is having trouble keeping up with the waves and wind. I keep trying different sail configurations thinking the boat is out of balance. It is frustrating.

03/05/2009 0400AM I can’t stand listening to the auto-pilot alarm me one more time. I haven’t had much sleep and I am very tired and frustrated right now. I put the boat into a maneuver known as to heave-to or hove-to. The plan is that I tack the boat through the wind, but I don’t release the jib to the other side of the boat. This will cause the sail to backwind and the boat comes to a stop and sits fairly idle in the wind and waves. All has gone quiet. I am now able to take a one hour nap.

0500AM I feel a lot better after the hour nap. I reset the sails and head back towards Puerto Rico again. Now that I am more awake I notice that the auto-pilot is not working correctly. I think the belt or a gear may be failing. I am going to need to hand steer the boat the last 80 miles. I am not looking forward to that, but I know I can do it.

1030AM LAND-HO!!!!! I see land for the first time since Sunday evening. Off my port bow I see Punta Borinquen on the main land and Isla Desecheo (Desolation Island). I am now entering the Mona Passage. I do not have much documentation on it, but everything I have read is that it can be a nasty place to be boating if conditions are bad. What are those conditions? And am I in those? Who knows, not me. I do know I have 20-25 knot winds and seas building to 12 feet.
1300PM I have now made it into Puerto Rico waters. I am excited, but not anchored yet. I have been trying to keep the boat slow as I need to be able to trim the sails and steer at the same time. I am sure I could have been surfing all I could handle, if I was up to it. Big waves all around me. They are not breaking, but they are there. I decide that I need a break and thinking about taking all the sails down and motoring the last 15 miles. I hove-to again. While there I make some lunch and decide it is time for another nap.

1430PM After my nap and lunch I drop the sails and fire up the motors. My original plan was to tuck in behind Punta Higuero> I figured the seas would be lower with the protection and so would the winds. The problem was that the closer I made it towards shore the higher the winds grew. Not only did I have the sea breeze, but the winds coming down off the mountains. I saw 33 knot winds. That was why I decided it was time to motor.

After motoring about 20 minutes, I set the jib again and I was able to make the same or better speeds under jib alone. I pulled the motors and sailed down the coast until I reached Boqueron Bay. This will be my final stopping point for a few days.

1715PM Anchors away. I am now anchored off of the port town of Boqueron. It is a pleasant town from the water. There is a beach lined with palm trees and everything is quiet. There is a light breeze and just a ripple on the water.

After I am anchored I seeing a couple waving to me. It is Graham and Wendy on Bravo 2. They are the first couple I met when I started cruising by myself and I had not seen them since Annapolis in October.

02/27/2009 George Town (Round Two)

2009-03-07T11:07:00.003-07:00

02/20/2009 I left Staniel Cay this morning after the weather net. I was expecting some light winds, but not no wind at all. I took a leisure 57 mile motor trip down Exuma Sound. This is one of those days I am really happy I have a good auto-pilot on the boat. About an hour out of George Town I noticed that the waves had started to build and I had some wind. I was able to pop the spinnaker and sail into the west end cut into Exuma Harbor. I was expecting to do a little show off by carrying the spinnaker down past the anchored fleets, but one too jibes and I wrapped the spinnaker into a figure eight and then around the forestay. Luckily the wind was light enough and I had enough room within the cut to get the spinnaker down without incident.
I was able to sail the boat into the area I anchored and dropped the anchor under sail. I needed a little hot-dogging. I have been working on the systems on the boat and they are coming second nature.

The reason for getting down here was to meet up with Christian from Camelot. I met him in Little farmers Cay a couple of weeks ago. We discussed traveling together onto Puerto Rico together as solo sailors. I was happy to see him anchored in the same area as me and we took off for town for the night.

We were all in a celebration mood. I made it to George Town and found Christian. Christian along with a new friend of his were out fishing today and caught a 60 pound Wahoo. It was the talk of the area as there hasn’t been much fishing going on. It was a fun crowd at the local watering hole Peace and Plenty.

02/21/2009 After a good night of celebrating I headed over to Volleyball beach. While there I found that there is a regulation volleyball game also, besides the cruiser volleyball. I am hooked. I was able to get in three hours of 4 v 4 and had a blast.

02/22/2009 Today I made it into a local church in George Town for service. It was at St Andrew’s Parish, an Angelican/Episcopol. I wasn’t sure of what to expect, but it was the longest service I believe I have been since I was a child when a missionary attended my local church. The minister had over an hour and a half long sermon. The full service lasted for two and a half hours. The sermon was one of the best I ever heard as she put so much into it. She broke the Word apart and deep and she is a good speaker. It turns out that that is not normal as most people were saying they were good for three weeks now.

We had light nice winds and good weather down here today so I took the boat out for a sail and made it out the east end of the harbor. I expect that will be the way I leave and wanted to get a look at the cut for future reference.

02/23/2009 This evening I went out to the fish fry area to Porgies. Tonight the local entertainment is what they call Rake and Scrape. It is a collection of musicians playing whatever instrument they can put together. There is an electric guitarist and bassist, a guy beating on a drum, another playing a saw and another playing a bass wash tub. The sound is pretty good and everyone is having a great time.

Also I was watching a few men shouting and carrying on around a TV. It was a few local Bahamian sailors watching older videos of their sailboat racing. I felt like was at home with other racing. The BS was as deep as any other club I could be sitting in and the talk about how they would take one another out and how the boat would make mistakes and they would take advantage of it. This last picture is of Christain and Sue. Christian is the guy I expect to sail out of Exumas together with and Sue is a local that has been int he islands for over 40 years. She was everywhere.

02/25/2009 I am still getting the boat ready for the next passage. I also look forward to 2:30. That is when the regulation beach volleyball starts. The crowds have been building each day and we are able to get two courts playing. It is a good work-out. I am also learning new techniques of volleyball as the rules I played with mostly were indoor 6 v 6. I have been taking more showers in the last week because of the work-outs.

02/27/2009 Not much going on here except non-stop winds out of the east. A weather system has set in and keeping the winds in this direction. I am looking for anything that has west in it to move on. I was not expecting to have to wait this long.

I have been using this time to ready the boat and me. I met John and the boat Buddy. It is a 44 foot trimaran with beautiful lines. I was able to spend an afternoon picking his brain about traveling to Puerto Rico. He has been sailing down here for many years and has quite a bit of information. My plans now are to sail to the west end of Puerto Rico and then around the southern coast. With that passage if things get rough the first couple of days, I can duck into Turks and Caicos or even Dominican Republic. It gives me many options and then I get to see a beautiful coast of Puerto Rico.

At this time it appears we will be leaving either Sunday or Monday. All dependent on the weather.

02/15/2009 Nassau to Staniel Cay

2009-02-20T04:16:00.012-07:00

02/14/2009 I spent the last couple of days provisioning the boat with fresh foods, water and fuel. I had also ordered up a replacement part for one of my outboard motors. I was happy to see that the part made it to Nassau and I was able to fix the motor.

I then left the marina and headed for an anchorage in the harbor and waiting for the weather to change. The weather has definitely changed from the last two weeks. I went from constant 20-25 knot winds to flat. The next front is suppose to come through Sunday afternoon.

As I was leaving the marina this sailboat came by me. This is a Bahamas racing boat. For you that have visited with me and were in Nassau, this was one of the boats in the parking lot down the street from the marina. It appears they use a crew of 4 to sail this and have boards that slide out from the top of the hulls that the men sit on to hike out. These boats need plenty of hiking due to the large main sails on them. I was able to take the dinghy and watch a start. It is different than anything I have ever seen. The boats started with their sails down and the boats anchored at the start line. There is no countdown. At the sound of the gun, the foredeck hand raised the anchor and then the main sail went up. It reminded me of a horse race. The boats are beautiful, as any sailboat under sail, as they raced for the windward mark. I was stopped by the harbor patrol while in my dinghy. They wanted to know what I was doing. I told them that I was watching the race. They told me not to go any closer or they would confiscate my dinghy for a day. I suspect that they take their racing serious around here and did not want any outside interference.

As I was reading, I heard an explosion. On the north side of the harbor, there was a fireworks display that I was able to catch this picture.

02/15/2009 I decided that one night in Nassau Harbor was enough. There is an island about five miles east of Nassau call Rose Island. I was planning on anchoring there the evening my parents and I ended up stuck anchoring on the banks on our way into Nassau. There is very little wind today and it would be a good place for me to stage to head back to the Exumas.

After anchored there, Phil in the boat next to me asked if I wanted to go fishing. He was going spear fishing. I indicated that I did not have the gear or had never done it, but I would tag along as an observer. We took the dinghy out of the cove and found a couple of reefs to swim around and look for fish. On our second dive I pointed out a grouper that Phil went after and he had dinner for the night. Phil is traveling with his wife Rosalee and their two young boys of 3 and 5 from Montreal. After he cleaned the fish, he left me with a couple of steaks. When I made it over to the beach to meet his wife and boys later, she said that all he talked about was getting that fish. It turns out to be his best catch since he has been in the Bahamas.

02/16/2009 It turns out I wasn’t the only boat staging for the Exumas out of Rose Island. A train of five monohulls left in front of me. We had good west winds to make it to the islands. It is a 40 mile sail and I headed to Shroud Cay. The racer in me kicked in. There were five boats ahead of me and two smaller boats catching me from behind. With 13 knots of wind, I raised the spinnaker and took off. It took me about 4 hours to catch the lead boat in the train and I was alos pulling away from the smaller boats that were catching me earlier. We have a front coming in and the wind died as the clouds started to build in the afternoon. The monohulls all dropped their sails and motored. It did not look like a comfortable ride as I was watching their masts swing back and forth. I was able to carry my sails all the way into the anchorage and arrived just as they did.

With time to myself, I played with a gift I received from my parents a couple of years ago, a sextant. With the little booklet that came with the sextant, I did my best at getting a noon sighting using the sun. It took 20 sightings with three minute intervals my first time out. In the future it should take less as I now have a better idea of true noon for the area I am in. After playing with the calculations, I was off by only twenty miles to the southeast. That is probably not too good if you are in a tight area, which this form of navigation probably would not work anyway, but in a passage, that is a pretty good ball park. I will keep working at it and see how accurate I can get.

02/17/2009 What a great day it has turned into after the lumpy night I had. I went to Shroud Cay to stop and see a cay I haven’t been to and also hoping to meet a group of cruisers that I had passed on the way down. The wind was expected to clock around towards the NNE and I was hoping for some protection from the rocks where I tied up to on a mooring. I did get some protection from the wind, but the wave chop was heavy. I don’t think I had been in that bouncy in an anchorage since my parents and I stayed on the banks the night before getting into Nassau.

Oh well, let’s make the best of it. I put the dinghy in the water and did a little hike on-shore to find any paths. The vegetation on these islands is incredibly thick. There is a path with a sign that points to a water well. I did find the well and the cruising indicates that the water is very good for drinking. As I was exploring around I came across this cactus. I find this strange being in the middle of an ocean, but the vegetation does make it look to be an arid area.

After I made it back to the boat, I had about 15 knots of wind out of the NE. I put in a reef in the main sail, released the boat from the mooring and took off. Once I cleared the protection of the rocks, the wind picked up and I put in a second reef in the main sail. Being a lake racer most of my sailing career, I have not reefed much. With cruising I have learned that the boat does like reefing and it really shows up in the steering. When the boat is over-powered by the main sail, it likes to turn up into the wind, which in turn puts more pressure on the auto-pilot. With the doubled reef main and jib I was still sailing along at 8 knots and surfing to 10 knots on the small waves.

I decided to head down to Staniel Cay to sit out the next few days of weather as it is. There are a couple of nice anchorages that are well protected and a cut that I can use once I make the jump back to George Town. After only four hours of easy sailing and 31 miles, I made it into Big Major Spot. It is an island just west of Staniel Cay that provides protection from the north and east. This is good as the winds will shift the east and southeast for the next couple of days. I am waiting for the next cold front that will bring north winds to take me down to George Town.

I worked on my noon sighting again using my sextant. I was able to get the longitude correctly today, but I was still off on my latitude by 16 miles. After playing with the formula I believe I am starting to see where my error is coming into. I will keep working with it while I am sitting on anchor and do my best to dial in the sextant and my abilities.

It is so calm here after last night. As I sat here and watched the sunset with my gin and tonic it was a surreal sunset. I do not believe I have seen a more beautiful sunset on my trip. The mixture of the clouds and the red in the sun was incredible. Please enjoy the photo. I wish you who are reading the blog could be here to enjoy these moments.

02/19/2009 What a small world it is, especially this sailing community. I decided go for a snorkel off of the back of the boat today. I was swimming on a real small reef when I saw another man doing some spear fishing. No luck for him here as all of the fish were less than 6” in length. I started to talk with him and he told me his boat name and where he was from. He was from Maryland and the name of the town sounded familiar. As I probed a little bit, I remembered meeting him when I was in Annapolis. We both were taking our Ham license exams at the same Ham club. His name is Robert and his wife’s name is Trish. They are sailing on Bristol Rose. You can find out about their adventure at BristolRose.blogspot.com. It amazes me here I am on this little reef no larger than a hundred square feet and run into another sailor I met 6 months ago and 1500 miles later. I do expect to cross paths with them many times as we both have our sites set on Grenada or Trinidad before hurricane season.

I also had some fruit that was spoiling. No need to throw it away today. I was able to feed the pigs that roam the local beach. There are about 6 pigs living on this beach. I went in the other day to see them and they rushed out in the water towards my dinghy. I would assume they are use to being fed from boaters. They really are calm and I saw people walking the beach around the pigs and they did not bother anyone, unless they are being fed.

The other reason I stayed here was I felt the need to enjoy Happy Hour at Club Thunderball. When you are in the central Exumas, you here a call everyday on the VHF radio for Happy Hour. I went to the club for $3.00 beers and a burger. On Tuesday nights they have all you can eat pasta and pizza, including a movie for $15.00. I met another solo sailor there named Jay from Lunatic Fringe. We had fun for the couple of hours sharing our travels. He has come in from Maine. Both Jay and Bob both left the East Coast a lot later than I did. They had extensive use of their on board heating systems.

Here is one more picture of the sunsets I have to deal with here. Well I should be off to George Town today. The weather is looking good for a sail back down there.

02/09/2009 Georgetown to Nassau

2009-02-13T17:04:00.019-07:00

02/05/2009 today Mark Drummond and Roy Burley flew in to meet me in Georgetown. The plan is to sail to Nassau and they will catch a flight out from there. After a few days by myself getting a lay of the land, I worked on the boat cleaning and repairing. Keeping up with the rust is an endless task. After four months of listening to the auto-pilot squeaks, I remembered to work on it. It turned out to be a really easy task of taking the steering wheel off and washing down the drive belt and all of the wheels associated with the drive. On our run towards Nassau, it was such a joy not listening to squeak, squeak on every little adjustment made that I noticed it. After they arrived, we did our provisioning and put out our plans for making to Nassau in time. The biggest issue as always is the weather. We have had non-stop winds again, day and night.

02/06/2009 Today we took the boat across the bay and anchored off of Volleyball Beach. We went to check out the volleyball seen. Volleyball doesn’t start until 2:30 around here so we had lunch at the Chat and Chill, the local tiki hut. This was partly to help recover from a night of first day joining on the boat. We met Kenny, the owner of Chat and Chill and spoke with him for a few hours. He has an interesting background and plenty of stories to keep you there. We did get in one game of volleyball before weather started blowing in and we expected some rain. We went back to the boat and headed back across the bay.

The plan that night was to go to the local fish fry. This is a area with about 10 shacks that are the local restaurants. We expected to see around 1000 people there, but do to the cold weather, and I mean cold for around here, there were not many people at all. The temperature has been in the low sixties or even high fifties when throwing in the wind chill. People are just staying home. I had my first Bahamas fried fish. I wish I had a picture for you, but what they do is gut the fish and fry the whole fish including the skin and head. The fish was very good, even though it takes a little to learn how to get the meat from it, versus how we eat our fried fish where it is only meat and batter.

02/07/2009 The weather is not looking too good to leave the area. We have 20-25 knots of wind and they are calling for 9 foot seas. I decided to stay another day and play some more volleyball. We moved the boat back across the bay one more time. The good thing about being anchored off of Volleyball Beach is that we are in the lee of the island and there hardly any waves. We went ashore and took off hiking on the island. We made our way across the island and found the path to the Sound side with its enormous white sand beach. With all of the wind there were great breaking waves on the beach and as far as you could see white caps on the open water. This sealed the deal for the day, we are going to wait another day. We hiked the beach for awhile. The sand was clean, white and soft. We headed back towards the volleyball area and had lunch again at Chat and Chills. The hamburgers are addicting.

We did get in a good afternoon of volleyball. They have what I would call relaxed cruiser rules. These rules included: a) no one under the age of 15 is allowed to play on the adult courts, the receiving team must hit the ball at least twice before returning the serve, the games are played to 15 and you must win by 2 and the strangest one I ever saw was that the team is allowed to hit the ball as many times as needed to get the ball across the net. It is very relaxed and no one looses their temper. Just plain good fun. To get to play, when a game is done everyone clears the court and allows the people sitting on the bench to get on the court. If there are any empty positions, then someone can return to play another game. There are up to nine players on each side. We played one game that our team was down 14-4 and we ended up winning 20-18. It was one of the best games anyone said they saw played this year.

02/08/2009 Today I needed to make a decision about heading out. The wind was still blowing in the low 20s, but the weather report indicated the seas are down to 6 feet. I took the dinghy to the trail that we hiked the day before to check out the Sound. There wind was still strong and the waves were crashing, but the white caps seemed to be down a bit. With looking at the weather for the next few days, there did not seem to be much improvement. I decided, since I have experienced crew, I needed to find out how No Rush would take to this type of weather. We headed off with a double reef in the main and sailed up the harbor into the Sound. As always we had waves breaking around us as the cuts are usually very narrow. I was following my track that I made on the way in. That is a good function of the chart plotter. The seas were pretty steep as we left the cut, but then dropped down a bit once we were in deeper water. Today we had the wind and waves abeam.

The sailing was great and No Rush handled it just fine. I was having a problem with the auto-pilot though. It was the first time I had seen where the auto-pilot could not keep up with the boat wanting to go to weather. Every once in a while I would have to take over manual control to bring the boat back on-course. The way I resolved this issue was to let the traveler down all of the way and that took a lot of pressure off of the main sail. After that there was no problem. We discussed putting in the third reef. It was not due the heavy winds, which they weren’t. We only had about 20-22 knots, but I believe it was also because of the wave action. At this time, we could not put in the third reef, due to how the reefing lines are run. I will need to rethink the reefing system again anytime I go off-shore.

The excitement of the day was coming up when I needed to enter back through a cut onto the banks. We sailed up to Little Farmers Cay and I had a track to follow from our trip south. The good news is that we had an incoming tide with incoming winds, but had to deal with the currents and how narrow the cut is. I had Mark watching the chart-plotter and calling off how I was lined up on the old track and Roy calling off depths. We shot through the cut doing 10 knots over ground due to the wind and current while I was on motors only. We made it safely through again.

Later that afternoon we headed to shore to see if we could get any dinner at the shack I had dinner with Titus and Cliff, but it was closed. The island had a festival this weekend and I expect everyone was tired and called it a day. We walked up the hill to the yacht club and asked about dinner, but we were told the kitchen was closed. The owner did offer us a beer though. So we stayed and started chatting with him when one of his cousins showed up and then a crew from a German boat and then the cousin’s girl friend. We had a full bar again. I got talking with the German crew and Mark and Roy were in another conversation. The owner of the German boat is now living in North Carolina and had friends from Germany fly in for the “nice” weather. Christian has the same intentions of mine about running to Puerto Rico and to Trinidad. We will try to hook up in George Town on my way back. Well after a few hours of bartending, Terry, the owner, cooked up a pot of sheep tongue soup along with a piece of the local bread. It was a tasty meal from a local culture.

02/09/2009 After a good night sleep with a full stomach of sheep’s tongue soup we set off early in the morning. I have to digress for a minute. When we were in the bar last night, as we were getting ready to leave, Oti from the German boat was talking with Christian. He was asking for a translation. At one point I heard Christian say “war with stomach”. I was not sure what they were talking about until the bar tender pulled out a bottle of Cuervo Gold tequilla. Terry slid down the bottle towards me and Christian, Oti and I had one more celebratory shot for the evening. There is nothing like a good translation sometimes.

As I have indicated earlier, the wind has been blowing non-stop. Our final destination planned for today is Pipe Cay, with a stop at Staniel Cay. We were averaging 8 knots of boat speed this morning as we made it into Staniel Cay at 11:15. We put the dinghy in and headed for the local town. We were in need of ice and Coke. After a quick drink at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, we walked the quaint little village to stretch our legs. We collected the $5.00 bag of ice and $8.00 eight pack of Coke and headed back to the boat for lunch. We needed to use the hot dog buns we bought last Friday.

The bakers down here don’t use many preservatives and the local breads need to be eaten as soon as possible. After lunch we went in search of the Thunderball Cave that was used for filming of James Bond movie Thunderball. Roy had been here before and was familiar with the location. He had not worked his nerve to go swimming in 69 degree water so Mark and I took off. This cave is really a tunnel because you swim through in. In the middle of the cave is a large dome with a chimney. There is plenty of light and air. We saw many schools of little fish and plenty of live coral around the little island where the cave is located. After that good snorkel we set the main sail, pulled the anchor and made our way towards Pipe Cay for the evening. We have had reaching winds the whole time except for when we turned east to Staniel Cay and had to put in a few tacks. I like it when the weather cooperates and we can go with the flow.

02/10/2009 After a fun evening of dinner, drinks and a movie, not necessarily in that order, we went for a snorkel in the morning. The last time I was here the water was clear as “gin” as described. This time it was different with all of the weather we have been having. The water was turned up and there was sentiment everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, the water was still enjoyable, but not as clear as before. The point here is that with changing conditions, when visiting someplace multiple times, there will always be something that changes. Sometimes for the good, sometimes not.

With the winds we have today, I am still sailing with a double reef in the main and full jib. I am very happy with the wind direction as we have not had to tack at all, except our trip into Staniel Cay. We sailed to Norman Cay today. I was planning on anchoring in the bay of Norman, but with the wind direction, strength and amount of waves, it worked out best to anchor on the west side of the cay. After setting the anchor, we took the dinghy in to check out the local establishment McDuff’s. While having a beer there, we had a chance to talk with the owner of the establishment. Right now it is very hard to make a living in the islands. The tourism from the US drives a lot of the business in the out islands and that has dropped off with the economy. I cannot imagine what it is like trying to make a living in these islands with the cost of products here.

02/11/2009 This morning after breakfast, Mark and I took the dinghy around to the east side of the island to snorkel on the DC-3. This was again a different experience as the tide was higher and it was easier to swim closer to the plane. After that swim, we set sails again and sails off to Allan’s Cay. I was able to shake out the reefs in the main and we set the spinnaker.

Off we went in a flurry and covered the 10 miles in a little over an hour. Allan’s Cay may be my favorite place I have snorkeled in the Bahamas. We went for a swim along the shore line where there are reefs, then across the channel to the beach with the iguanas. We did some hiking on the island and just hung out. Afterwards we swam back to the boat. Today the winds are down, the skies are clear and life is really good. I enjoyed just swimming around the area and looking for sand dollars. The water was so clear and calm, it was just relaxing, really relaxing.

02/12/2009 Today we head for Nassau. The weather man has been calling for 12 knot winds in the morning, diminishing to 5 knots in the afternoon. He was off a little, we left in five knots and it diminished to nothing. We had to motor the last 25 miles into Nassau. It was disappointing (ah too bad for us) after all of the wind and sailing we did, but the water was beautiful. The seas were so flat, that I was able to take this picture of a starfish with my camera from the deck of my boat in 20 feet of water.

We made it into Nassau around 1:30 in the afternoon and set about getting ready for the guys to take off for back home. There was the normal deck scrubbing in between a few beers. The temperature has shot up along with the humidity. This is a normal occurrence with a changing weather pattern. We will now have a few days of flat or calm weather with dropping pressure until the next cold front comes through.

It has been another great trip with friends on the boat. This trip we set the record for the most amount of alcohol drank in one trip. It will take some real pros to beat this one. I have had someone on the boat almost non-stop since Thanksgiving. I will miss the company.

01/29/2009 Pipe Cay to Georgetown

2009-02-04T18:26:00.010-07:00

01/28/2009 We need to start moving towards Georgetown with a little better speed. There is a cold front coming in late Friday and I want to be set up near Georgetown with only a day to get there in case we are stuck in an anchorage for a day while the front blows through.

Our destination today is Little Farmers Cay, but we are going to make a stop at Staniards Cay to check out the cave used in the James Bond movie Thunderball. We made the detour and headed for Club Thunderball. We were not sure where to find the cave and it is recommended to swim it at low tide with a slack current. We checked in with the club and we were given directions to the cave. We headed over to a real little cay to swim it and try for the cave. We were there though at high tide and a fast out-going current. As with the Exuma Park, I let Titus and Cliff go in and I stayed in the dinghy to allow them to swim and find the cave. They never found the cave, but saw a barracuda, turtle and a large array of long coral.

On the way to Little Farmers Cay, Cliff decided he wanted to take a wet ride in the nets. He is the first person to take a "bath". He was having so much fun almost getting thrown out of the nets when the waves crashed through, he caused me to laugh so hard I could not even breathe.

After that I swim we had to take off for Little Farmers Cay. We had the wind on our nose again and it would take a long time for sailing as we had to tack back and forth against the wind. It was a pleasant sail and with the wide open waters to tack in, it gave me some time to catch up on scrubbing the boat. Trying to keep up on the rust is a full time job in the salt water. We wanted to anchor on the north end, inside part of the cay. I had one chart that showed a possible path across the shoals to make it there. The normal passage is to go to the southern end of the cay and work your way north to the anchorage. We slowly worked our way via eyeball navigation, with one slight grounding in two and a half feet of water. We were able to back off of the sand and work our way through. We set the anchor and went for a quick swim. The tide was coming in and had about a 2 knot current. I could practically swim in place and not move due to the current.

After that we went ashore to see what the settlement had to offer. As we were walking along the quay, we met the crew from another catamaran that was anchored just in front of us. The boat is also registered in Colorado. The owner is from Bailey and she bought the boat in Panama and is circumnavigating the Caribbean. Her crew are also from Denver. They have a boat in Australia and crossed the Pacific. It sounded great and they recommend the trip. I need to make a plan. The crew recommend that we stop at the small building at the end of quay and stick our head in the screen door to find out what they have left for food for dinner. We did so. We met Tasha. She is the owner of the grocery store and restaurant. Her brother Ali owns and runs the liquor store/bar. For dinner tonight we had cold beer and fresh fried conch, fries and a salad. The people were so friendly and came over and chatted with us. We were invited to join in a marriage that is happening this weekend and next weekend they a three day festival. It is sort of like a homecoming for the settlement. Family and friends that are from the cay, but live in different areas now all come back and celebrate. The population of the cay is about 100 people now and they expect to have over three hundred next weekend. I hope I get a chance to stop back.

01/29/2009 During these next legs of the trip we will need to go into the Exuma Sound to make our way to Georgetown. We left this morning with the wind on our nose. I decided that there would be no sailing today and we would need to motor to Lee Stocking Island. The seas were 2-3 feet high and we made the 15 mile trip in three hours.

The exciting part of the trip today was making our way back onto the Banks at Adler Cut. I have my electronic charts that are the most up to date charts you are suppose to be able to get. I also have my paper charts that sometimes are over one hundred years old. My paper charts showed that there is a deep water channel in the cut and the electronic charts did not show anything at all. If it weren’t for the paper charts, I would have been blind. For me it was still a crap shoot on want I would encounter coming back on the banks. I had put out a broadcast request on the VHF radio for any information concerning the cut. The only information I was given was to contact the Caribbean Marine Research Center on Lee Stocking Island. When I was within a couple of miles of the cut, I contacted the center. They told me that they could not provide any navigation assistance and that I should refer to my charts. Nothing like a little CYA. We went for it based on the paper charts and found nothing shallower than 15 feet. I plan on hanging out here for a day. We may leave on Friday if the wind clocks to the west earlier than expected.

There is a cold front coming through the area Friday night and I want to be in a protected area for the west and north winds as the front passes through. Lee Stocking Island can provide that for us. The one incredible thing I saw here is the stars at night. There are two other sailboats with their anchor light on and that is the only light in the area. We had an early moon last night and then all was dark. It is amazing when there are so many stars that I cannot pick out the Big Dipper to find the North Star. The Milky Way is like a cloud it is so bright.

01/30/2009 After listening to Chris Parker for the weather forecast, I decided that we needed to leave today and head to Georgetown. Chris Parker provides a weather tracking service via the Marine SSB Radio for the Western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. I listen to him every morning at 6:30. There is a large cold front passing through around 2:00AM Saturday morning that will bring north winds at about 20-25 knots and gusting to 30. If we leave on Saturday, we will have following winds and seas, which are good for sailing, but the wind will be real high and maybe dangerous entering into the harbor at George Town. We started off motoring and then on and off we could sail.

The highlight of the trip was when we caught a Mahi. It is a beautifully colored fish. We will have fresh fish for dinner tonight. The fish was 35” and 8 lbs. We will have two dinners from it. Titus took the honors of bringing it to the boat and Cliff and I landed it. We took our time as we are using light tackle for the ocean with 25lb. test line. After we had it landed, we filleted it up with some good steaks.

We made it to George Town at 1:30 that afternoon with a whole parade of boats also making a run for the safety of the anchorage. George Town is like the mecca of east coast cruisers. At the height of the season, there will be between 200 and 400 boats here. There is a cruisers’ net that announces activities in the area such as volleyball (on volleyball beach), church services, assistance with engines, training for Ham Licenses and many other activities.

01/31/2009 Today we are on the boat due to heavy winds. It was a good day of cleaning the boat and playing plenty of cards, dice and dominoes. We did finally venture to shore to get information for wi-fi access. Oh the priorities.

02/02/2009 Happy birthday Dad. Today we moved the boat across the harbor to Stocking Island. Titus had told us of an island he visited for work over twenty years ago. It turns out that it is Stocking Island. This is where most of the cruisers that spend the winter here anchor and hang out. After anchoring and having breakfast, we went ashore for a beach church service on Volleyball Beach. It is a church service run by cruisers. They had a choir and a preacher that are all cruisers.

After service we jumped in the dinghy and headed into a couple of coves trying to find where Titus stayed on his last visit here. We could not find the exact location and we could not get ashore as it was all privately owned. After that we went back to Volleyball Beach to hang out. It appears that this beach is a gathering place for all vacationers in the area. There were plenty water taxis bringing in people to hang out here. It has a lot of sand, volleyball pits and The Chat-and-Chill Bar and Grill. We had a cheese-burger in paradise while sitting there.

After that we headed back to the boat for the afternoon and readied ourselves for the big game. While we were waiting for the game, Titus and I started to play with my mast climber. It is an ATN Top Climber. This is a device that hooks onto a halyard and with one-way jammers allows you lift yourself up the line safely. The seas had some chop in them and the wind was blowing about 15 knots. I tried it once to make sure it was all working and then Titus headed up the line. As you see in the picture he made it to the second spreader on the mast.

Superbowl Sunday. It is fun to see my Steelers in the big game again. We went to St Francis to watch the game. They had plenty of drinks and one dish. The dish was onion rings, fried macaroni cheese and chicken wings. They also had four TVs set up and pleasant weather to sit on the deck and watch the game. I do not think my stress level has been any higher on this trip than while watching the fourth quarter of the game. Well the Steelers have a ring for the other thumb now.

02/02/2009 We pulled the anchor early in the morning and headed back across the bay. The good news is that we have a more easterly wind that will allow me to take Titus and Cliff to the dinghy dock to catch a cab and keep them relatively dry. We made several runs today before they needed to leave to fill the fuel tanks and water tank. I carry two 5 gallon fuel jugs and two 5 gallon water jugs. We burnt through about 15 gallons of fuel on the trip and 70 gallons of water. When you are hauling fuel and water, you learn how to conserve. It is not like driving up to your local gas station or turning on a faucet in your home and expect to have water flowing.

02/04/2009 Today and yesterday have been maintenance days. It has been a lot of scrubbing and fixing small things here and there on the boat.

Today I planned on joining in a couple of the community activities. I met Bob from Signet at the Steeler game. He is a Ham operator and puts on a clinic Wednesdays at lunch on Hamburger beach and then afterwards I was going to join in some volleyball on Volleyball Beach. Well after doing some cleaning and repair work, I cleaned up, loaded my dry bag with needed items and jumped in the dinghy. I have been having some problems with the dinghy the last few days so I did a test ride. Good thing. The engine was acting up again. I did not make it to any of the activities, and that may have been a good thing. I spent the afternoon working on the motor. I believe I finally found the problem that has been plaguing me. One of the connections on the fuel line from the tank to the motor was loose and I was taking air into the fuel and the engine was being starved. While I was working on the problem, the wind kicked up as we had a front come through last night. The beaches are about two miles away and I would have been in for a real wet ride trying to make it back to my boat. I enjoyed a good nap instead.

If the winds keep up with this direction and speed, we will probably get another chance to play some volleyball on Friday. I will not leave until the wind clocks to the east. That is suppose to happen Friday or maybe Saturday. The weather has been crazy down here this winter. I was told the other day that the cold fronts coming out of the US usually do not affect this area. They may only see 3-4 fronts that cause the wind to clock. We are seeing this at least once a week. I heard on the radio that Lakeland, FL might see a low temp of 18 degrees tonight. We might see the low temps tomorrow or Friday. They won’t be that low, but cold is cold.

01/26/2009 Nassau to Pipe Cay

2009-02-02T21:23:00.011-07:00

01/23/2009 Titus and Cliff make it safely into Nassau today. They actually made to the boat by at least an hour earlier than I expected. I figured they would be stuck in customs for awhile. No problems there and a 30 minute taxi ride to the boat. I had our favorite Pain Killers waiting for them. For you that are not aware of the Caribbean Rum drink made popular in the British Virgin Islands, it is a mix of 1 part Cream of Coconut, 1 part orange juice, 4 parts pineapple juice and 2 parts of your favorite rum. This drink has been our tradition on all of the trips we have done together. Later that day we made a trip to the grocery and liquor store to provision for the 10 days they will be with me. We had steak tonight for dinner. The reason I bring it up is that grocery prices as most stuff in the Bahamas is more expensive. Steak is cheaper and more tender than anything I have bought in the US for a long time. It is US beef. It is my great find on this trip.

1/24/2009 I checked out of the marina, cleared our passage with Nassau Harbor Control and off we went to explore the Exumas for the next week or so. We have a few light goals on this trip. We want to eat fresh fish every night for dinner and get two snorkel trips in a day. We had a light wind as we left the harbor that was about 35 degrees off of the bow of the boat. It was a tight reach and we were making about 5 knots. We left the harbor with another Seawind. It is called Imagine and it is the larger boat.

They raised their main sail after we had our sails set. I kept watching as the pulled away from us faster and faster. As the day went on, the winds began to build and clock more out of the north with allowed us to crack off the sails a little and go straight for our destination of Allans Cay. We started to build into the 6 knots, 7 knots and starting 8 knots as we approached the cay. I had predicted that we would anchor at 3:30. I was wrong, we anchored at 3:40. The guys are amazed at the beauty of the water. I will include some pictures on the blog, but I guess you need to be here to really believe it. As for our goals, we did catch one fish today. It was some form of a jack that we filleted for dinner tonight and Cliff did go for a snorkel after we dropped the anchor.

Titus and I jumped in the dinghy to go over and meet the couple on the Seawind that we left Nassau with. When we made it down to their boat, they had already taken off in the dinghy for some exploring. We headed off for a little beach where a lot of cruisers are hanging out. It turns out that this is one of the high lights of this cay. There are iguanas all over the little island and they come down the beach for hand outs. While we there, we met Jim and Liz. They are the owners of the Seawind. It turns out they were motor-sailing in the light airs and that is how they pulled away so fast.

1/25/2009 Good morning. What to do? Do we eat breakfast or go for a snorkel. Cliff cooked up some pancakes for us. Fantastic job. We cleaned up and into the flippers we went. This cay is actually and few cays with channels between them. The bottom is real interesting as the sand stacks up like a sand dune due to the currents running through here. As we started to swim along the wall we saw some great live coral and plenty of fish. I did take pictures with a film camera and I hope to show these after they are developed. After a game of cards and some lunch, we pulled the anchor and sailed away from Allans Cay heading for Normans Cay.

There is a little bit of history at Normans Cay. Probably its most famous for being a major compound for a drug lord in the 70s when the Columbians were shipping cocaine into the US. We had great winds from the northeast so we were able to set the spinnaker and make 8 knots the whole way down. As we were closing in on our destination, the water began to get very shallow. There was nothing on the charts that indicated this. We dropped the spinnaker as fast as possible and eye-balled our way through the maze. We had come within less than a foot of water under the keel.

After making it safely to the anchorage, we set off in the dinghy. There is supposed to be a sunken plane somewhere around this island. We made it into a back lagoon and started looking around. We could not find anything so we went ashore to do a little bit of hiking. We found the drug lord’s compound. It is all falling apart. We also walked down a road looking for the old runway. We found a dump. I guess they have trash in the Bahamas also. After no luck on the shore we were heading back to the boat when we stop and asked another cruiser is he knew where the plane was. He pointed to something sticking out of the water on the other side of the lagoon. There she is.

As we were motoring over to the plane, we spotted sting rays swimming below us. Cliff would put on his mask and stick his head over the front of the dinghy like if a poor man’s glass bottom boat. He thought it was the coolest thing he ever saw. We made it over to the plane and dropped the dinghy anchor. Into the water we went. There was a strong current against us as we swam towards what was left of the plane. It was an old DC-3. A lot of the main body was still there with the wings still intact with both engines and most of the prop blades. The tail section had fallen off as was lying next to the plane. There were many small fish around the plane. It has amazed me that I haven’t seen any large fish like barracuda or sharks when I have been in the water.

After we swam around the plane for awhile, we made it back into the dinghy and were heading back to the boat. We then saw the sting rays again. Titus then did the mask and snorkel trick this time. After a few more sightings they told me to try it. I put on my mask and just went right into the water. The sting ray is a beautiful graceful ocean flyer. As I watched the ray swim away, it never had to flap its wings once. It just glided along like an eagle on a thermal. Well today we got in our two snorkels, but no fish. I was afraid we would catch something with the spinnaker up. I would not have been able to slow the boat down.

01/26/2009 Today we headed off to Warderick Wells. It is the headquarters for the Exuma Land and Sea Park. This park is a Bahamas National Park. The waters sailing along are just incredible. The different shades of blue always put me in a state of awe. We needed to check in early in the morning with Exuma Park to arrange a mooring for the night. They have a real good system in setting up moorings for the cruisers. You can put in your reservation up to two days in advance. First thing in the morning they check in with any boaters that expect to leave that day and then ask for requests for the day. They then take about a fifteen minute break and then come back on the air and provide assignments for the day. They were able to accommodate us. After we had our reservation with the park, we set off and had a great sail. I have never before experienced the winds I have in the last month. It has been almost non-stop, day and night. We did not need the spinnaker and we were still hitting 8 knots with a reaching wind. When we came to the channel to head east into the park, we had to tack the boat all of the way up. It is good to have crew that is willing, can and want to work on the boat. We were able to sail the whole way to the anchorage, into the wind.

After getting the boat set up on the mooring, we headed to the park office to find out what there is to do in the park. We had to dinghy about three quarters of a mile to the office. The park consists of many islands, but it appeared that most of the activity is based here. This is a picture of the north mooring field, located directly off of the park office. We were located in the south mooring field. There are over four miles of hiking trails and several areas for snorkeling. Today we headed off to check out the Boo-Boo trail. This trail took us on a loop around the northern and central part of the cay. This trail took us through a low basin and up the hill to a couple blow holes. We were there at low tide, so there was no water in the basin and the blow holes only had air blowing through them as the ocean side must have been too high for water based on the low tide.

We then headed south and came across the highest point of the cay. Located there is a place that the park allows cruisers to leave a low impact reminder that they have been there. It is mostly driftwood with etchings or carvings listing the boat and sometimes crew. Pictured here is one of them. If you check out the rest of my blog, you will notice the Slapdash insignia. From there we hiked down to the ocean side beach and across the cay back to the office and dinghy. This was a day to shake off the sea legs for a change.

01/27/2009 This morning we set off to check out some snorkeling areas. The first was a rock near our mooring. It has some shear walls and a few coral heads located around it. There were conch, star fish and many different types of little fish. I still have not seen any large fish. That is probably due to the shallow water. We then headed towards the office again. The map showed a snorkel area in the channel at the office. The tide was going out with a heavy current. I stayed in the dinghy and let Cliff and Titus drift in the current and I flowed them in the dinghy. They saw a turtle and a couple of rays. We then made it back to the boat and raised the sails.

Today we are heading off to Pipe Cay. It claimed of fame in the cruisers guide is that it has the clearest water in the world. We had another great three hour sail making our way to the cay. We worked our way through the shallows and found a place to drop the anchor. We shared this whole area with one other boat. I am sure they weren’t too happy when we disturbed their perfect anchorage. We jumped in the dinghy with our snorkel gear and headed off to find some areas to do some swimming. We found an area that had some great structure and plenty of fish. I would agree with the description of the clearest water I have ever seen. It was like looking into a very clean aquarium. It is just incredible. We then moved around to different areas looking for small reefs to dive on. We found large hermit crabs taking over conch shells as their home. We also saw many fish and three squid. This is a beautiful setting and I believe I could stay here for a week.