Heat Wave - bobbing around in the Caribbean

Farewell Heat Wave

2010-07-16T17:36:00.004-03:00

7 years, 3 months and 3 weeks, after moving onto Heat Wave, back in Florida, before Charlotte was born, we said good bye to Heat Wave in a boat yard in Curacao. Our original plan was to have the boat for 5-8 years. We’ve had some great times on the boat and it’s now time to move on to other things. The boat will be continuing on with its new owner to Australia. We are now back enjoying the summer in Bermuda.

Below are some photos of some good memories over the last few years:

Curacao July 1st-8th

2010-07-11T14:37:00.005-03:00

We had a great downwind spinnaker sail from Bonaire to Curacao, arriving late in the afternoon. This was the first time we had arrived at an island with no cruising guide and it felt very strange!! We had downloaded some information from the internet regarding clearing in, anchoring proceedures and had emailed with some friends already there.

Curacao, part of the Netherland Antilles, is 171 square miles and has a population of 142,000 - the largest of the ABC islands. In addition to Dutch, there is a big Spanish influence (due to proximity of south America in particular Venezuela). The "local" language is Papiamento. We found the ABC islands to be very different to the Eastern Caribbean Islands - more organized, better infrastructure, better roads.

Most of the cruisers anchor in Spanish Waters, a very large lagoon type area. Its about 20 minutes from the capital Willemstad, where we had to go to clear in. We anchored up in “the kids bay” by Pacific Bliss (with Zinnia and Cosmo) and 3 other kids boats – Blue Sky, Bonaire and Jonathon A. It was nice for Charlotte to get a chance to play with some other kids for a while, although unfortunately not for long enough as we were soon due to be hauled.

We arrived Thursday afternoon. Friday night we went to a bonfire with some other kids on a nearby island.

Saturday Steve and Cathy rented a car and we all toured the island, first stop the capital Willemstad. Once again the boat "A" was following us:

The island is about 30 miles long and 5 miles wide. The north east coast was quite rugged. We visited the “Natural Bridge" and the "Blow Hole" – a bit similar to the east coast of Antigua.

Sunday was July 4^th (when the Brits allowed the Americans to try it alone!!) and some cruisers arranged a pot luck party on the beach.

Steve and Cathy headed up to Willemstad to check into a hotel while while we were getting the boat sorted. Charlotte stayed with Blue Sky for a sleepover with Pheby that night.

Monday morning we set off from the anchorage, first dropping Charlotte off on Pacific Bliss, who were going to look after her til the next afternoon while we got the boat hauled and sorted.

A 6 mile motor up to Willemstad and into the harbour. We had to request an opening on the footbridge and then on to the industrial bay to Curacao Marine.

Steve and Cathy came over to help us with a few bits and we anchored out that night. Early Tuesday morning took the boat into the dock – we were scheduled to be the first boat hauled at 9am. We were finally hauled at 11.30am …..

In actual fact we were lucky we were hauled at all, as that afternoon Holland played in the semi-final of the world cup and the whole yard shut down!! Tuesday was a late night working on the boat.

We checked into a hotel near the boat yard for Tuesday and Wednesday night, as staying on the boat while it is out of the water is not so comfortable. (no breeze, can't use the toilets, have to climb up and down ladders, etc ….)

Wednesday, Liz, on Pacific Bliss, very kindly look after Charlotte again, at the hotel, while Jimmy and I slogged on – preparing a boat for long term storage is a lot of work, not to mention all the packing of all of our possessions! By Wednesday evening the boat was all sorted for long term storage - we left the boat yard exhausted, with little time for emotional farewells to a boat we’ve been on for over 7 years!

We headed to the hotel, looking forward to a nice long shower and aircon. The water was scheduled to be off in the day and back on at 6pm – it finally came back on at 10.30pm!!

Early alarm call the next morning, and we headed to the airport with our full baggage allowance, packed to every last allowable pound. We had to change the rental car on the last day in order to accommodate all our luggage!!

Bonaire - 27th June - 1st July

2010-07-02T10:04:00.009-03:00

Bonaire is part of Netherlands Antilles, with its sister islands Curacao and Aruba a little to the west (often known as the ABC islands). It is located north of the Venezuelan mainland. It is a charming quiet and extremely clean island with a population of around 11,000. The main town is attractive, with pastel coloured buildings and red tiled roofs. One of the main attractions is that it has some of the Caribbean’s clearest water and best diving.

Bonaire’s two main industries are salt and tourism, especially diving and eco-tourism. The attractions for tourists are snorkeling, scuba diving, windsurfing and bird watching. It was interesting now seeing the Dutch and Spanish influence.

There is a no-anchoring policy on the whole island. To protect its fringing coral reefs there are about 40 moorings set up by the National Marine Park along the waterfront of the capital Kralendijk. There is reef right along the coast – so the front of the boat is in say 20 feet and the back in 60 feet! – there is great snorkeling right off the boat, where we saw massive parrotfish and angelfish the size of a dinner plate!

Jimmy, Steve and I went scuba diving. We took the dive boat out to Klein Bonaire, although a lot of the diving can be done direct from the shore. The whole coast is a line of dive sites! Although we never could figure where one ended and the next began!

One day we rented a car and explored the island. It was amazing how different the other side of the island was, with many cactus trees - you could have thought you were in Arizona. Charlotte loved the donkey sanctuary, especially when the donkeys put their head through the car window. At one stage there were 3 donkey heads in the same car window, looking at Charlotte:

We also saw pink flamingos,

the slave huts

and the massive saltpans.

We caught up with some other cruiser friends in Bonaire – Steve, Kim, Mike and Tim on North Star, who are now staying in Bonaire for 4 months, and Jackie and Adrian on Oceans Dreams. We celebrated our wedding anniversary at a Pizza Place with a romantic dinner for 9!

Bonaire was a very pleasant dry island. Since leaving wet Grenada, we have still not had a drop of rain! The decks are dusty!! We could have stayed a lot longer but all too soon we had to leave to head to Curacao. Time is running out on us – the boat is being hauled this coming Tuesday 6^th July, so on Thursday 1^st July we dropped the mooring, turned the boat, raised the spinnaker and set sail the 35 miles to Curacao. Again a great downwind spinnaker sail. Our last long sail before we say good bye to Heat Wave…..

Heat Wave under spinnaker sail courtesy of North Star who followed us out on their dingy to take pictures:

On the cruise to Curacao, Charlotte painted her nails red, white and blue in preparation for the July 4^th party this Sunday! A few cruisers we know are already in Curacao and so we already have the social calendar arranged! Charlotte is looking forward to play dates with Zinnia on Pacific Bliss again.

Islas de Aves 25-27th June 2010

2010-06-28T19:26:00.011-03:00

Islas de Aves are two separate little island archipelagos, (Aves de Barlavento and Aves de Sotavento) separated by about 10 miles of deep water. They got their name from the large number of birds that make them their home. The birds live in the dense mangrove forests on the larger islands.

On the way there we got the spinnaker out again - loving this downwind sailing!

Once again we had put the fishing lines out. Just as we were approaching Islas de Aves, we had a load of birds (boobies) circling above us

– maybe we had finally caught a fish!!! I felt the line – yes it was taught, we had caught something!! Steve took over as the fisherman, reeling in the fish as we took in the sails. I ran to get a bucket to put the fish in. It was looking long and thin as Steve pulled it in. What was it? A tuna? mahi mahi? No, it was a ………… bird……. A booby to be exact.

Needless to say neither fish or poultry were on the menu that night!!

Our first stop was the first of the 2 islands, Aves de Barlavento. After we anchored up we took a dingy ride to the island – the landing was in a little clearing in the mangroves.

We saw a bird nesting near by

and lots of hermit crabs. On one side of the island there are mangroves and then on the other, is reefs and stones. We saw an area where all the visiting boats inscribe their boat name on a stone.

Many species of birds live on the island but boobies predominate – we saw red footed boobies. While in the dingy, birds would circle us almost landing on our heads. A quote from the guidebook: “do not anchor too close to the shore as you will probably get splattered by defecating birds and bitten by bugs” – we were fine where we anchored. Surprisingly there were 3 other sailing boats in the bay.

The following day, we sailed about 2 hours over to Aves de Sotavento. We decided not to put the fishing lines out again! Some friends had told us we would not see any officials in Aves. We anchored in a beautiful horseshoe white sandy beach bay.

We heard some repeated calling on the radio – I recognized the word “catamaran”. We had anchored off the coastguard station bay!!

A few minutes later we were visited by 4 Aves de Sotavento coastguard who must be bored out of their minds with this station!! They came on board, took all our boat and passport particulars, checked our safety equipment, took a look around the boat, enjoyed the cola and peanuts we offered them and then left, with the only stipulation that we could not stay in that beautiful bay!!

We motored around the corner, through the reefs, to Mangrove Bay. Out in the dingy we saw some turtles and rays.

The following morning and an early start. We motored 3 miles over to another of the islands, Curricai, in the archipelago, with a beautiful long white sandy beach.

A dinghy ride ashore for an hour or two and then we set sail for Bonaire, 40 miles away. Very soon we were having another beautiful down wind spinnaker run. We made excellent time with speeds up to 11 knots!

Los Roques 23rd-25th June 2010

2010-06-28T19:24:00.007-03:00

Los Roques is a National Park and is one of the offshore Venezuelan islands – about 70 miles north of the capital Caracas on the mainland. It is an unbelievable cruising area made up of about 14 by 25 miles of protected, reef-studded water, dotted with pretty little islands. It appeared very similar to the Bahamas.

We arrived at the south eastern entrance of Los Roques - Boca De Sebastopol. As a precaution we lowered all our sails before entering into the passage, due to reefs all around, even though the guide book said it was possible to sail. It was a spectacular 10 miles motor up to Grand Roque, with reefs on both sides. The light was fantastic and it was very easy to navigate between the very visible reefs.

Venezuela has strange customs and immigrations rules, in that, even if you check in at Los Roques, you need to go to the mainland to check out – we had no intention of going anywhere near the mainland of Venezuela! And this would be a reason for avoiding Los Roques. However, we had found out from friends ahead of us that the coast guard will give you a 2 day “in transit” pass without requiring you to check in formally. However, you are not allowed to cruise around the islands and need to keep your vessel in the bay at El Grand Roque.

With its 380 foot hills El Grand Roque stands out like a beacon across the other flat islands.

This is the only island with a village on it and it also has the main (small) airport (at the end of the street). There are no cars and the streets are sand (which they sweep).

It’s a quaint fishing village with a few bars / restaurants and fishing boats along the beach.

The colours of the sea and sand are spectacular.

Los Roques is reputed to have the best bone fishing in the world. Most of the houses were built as holiday homes for Venezuelans and they are simple but pleasant. There are many Posadas / inns for visitors and many fishermen now rent out their homes. There were only a couple of other foreign vessels in the bay – mainly Venezuelan charter boats.

Checking in was an interesting procedure.

First we went to the coast guard. The officials were all dressed up in army uniform. I spoke more Spanish than they spoke English, which meant communication was pretty limited! When he was asking how many days we were staying, I was answering “5” as the number of people on board – they then said “no possible” ….. Then when he was asking how much fuel we carried in both tanks combined - and I was telling him the combined HP of our engines! – he thought 80 liters of fuel wasn’t right…. He wrote down all our details on one line in a ledger book. We had heard that we needed to clear in with 4 different officials – Coastguard, National Guard, Parks and Immigration - however, when the coastguard said “finito” we took that as a cue to run and forget about anyone else…

We had been told to come with US$. The bank rate was 4.5 Bolivars to 1US$ however the “official” black market rate (in the shops and bars) was about 7 to 1US$. This made beers about US$1.5. After so long in the Eastern Caribbean it was interesting to now be in a Spanish environment and culture.

The main “supermarket” gets supplies from the mainland about once a week. On the first day we asked where the supermarket was and was told there was nothing in it!! – the next day it was full of supplies as we saw small fishing boats land and offload supplies. Food shortage is wide spread though out Venezuela.

Charlotte found a park and played with the local kids.

Cathy and I tried to teach the naught little boy to count in English, rather than him ripping up the bench… The boys climbed up a great big tiny hill to see the old lighthouse.

We saw the healthiest and most wide spread mangroves that we have seen in the world.

In one of our economizing measures to finish off everything on the boat we managed to finished off the bottle of tequila and margarita mix – which was a good night but not necessarily a good following morning!

We had a very enjoyable stop in Los Roques. We left about 7.30am Friday morning, weaving our way west through the Los Roques Island for about 15 miles. Once we were clear of the islands, we popped the spinnaker again and had a great downwind spinnaker run to our next stop, Islas de Aves – about 45 miles away. We are really getting to like these down wind spinnaker runs!!

Sail Grenada to Los Roques 21st-23rd June

2010-06-28T19:22:00.007-03:00

We left Grenada at 2pm, with 5 of us on board. Los Roques was 280 miles away, which would be just under 48 hours if we averaged 6 knots. We estimated we should average more than that due to current and downwind, so didn’t want to leave too early as we needed to arrive in daylight.

The trade winds are predominantly from the east. We were finally going to be heading downwind (west) after the last few years of up and down the Eastern Caribbean islands. It was exciting as this was a new area and new islands for us.

We had to motor a lot of the first day and night as the winds had died down – at least our batteries were getting a good charge! By 4pm we started the watch system – Steve and Jimmy 4-8pm, Cathy and I 8-12pm, Steve and Jimmy back up for the “graveyard shift” 12-4am and Cathy and I back on for the nice sunrise watch 4-8am. During the day we switched to single person 2 hour watches.

We were sailing about 90 miles north of the Venezuelan coastline. We were a little nervous with all the reports of piracy off the Venezuelan coastline (although much closer to mainland than we were sailing). We had a constant watch on the radar to keep track of any boats within 24 miles, to ensure that they didn’t head for us!

In one instance there was a boat asking for fuel on the VHF radio – the first boat ahead of us passed him and we decided to head off in the other direction – afraid it might have been a set up – especially as we could see him “drifting” at the same 9 knots we were doing! However, 6 hours later we still heard him talking to someone on the VHF radio saying he was drifting to La Blanquilla, continually reporting his position.

At night, to be less visible to pirates, we decided to go “dark” (ie no running lights and no interior lights) although this was probably not necessary. There was very little other traffic, a full moon and we kept a sharp watch on the radar.

The offshore islands of Venezuela are very dry, low-lying islands. After the torrential rain of Grenada, we were now finally drying out the boat and didn’t see another drop of rain.

By 9am on Tuesday we were able to turn off the engines and get the spinnaker up! The first time we had flown it for about 3 years!! Spinnakers are great for downwind sailing.

We had a champagne mimosa toast on the trampoline to celebrate getting the spinnaker flying.

We saw dolphins on the first day and pods of whales on the second day – it looked like 3 or 4 different pods within about half a mile of each other. We put the fishing lines out but sticking with our record, we caught nothing!

It was a pleasant downwind sail. The seas were very calm – we even got to hang out on the trampoline with the autopilot doing all the work! The spinnaker provided a good pink sunshade!

Getting close to Los Roques we suddenly found that our course was plotted through a restricted area – sack the navigator! We arrived at the southeastern end of Los Roques at 10am perfect timing (reinstate the navigator!). This gave us a great light and time to work our way through the reefs.

Grenada - Part 2 - 4th-21st June 2010

2010-06-28T19:16:00.007-03:00

Life in Grenada continued as though we were living there. A lot of cruisers spend a few weeks, even months in Grenada once hurricane season starts (June) and so we tend to build up more friendships during this time, and meet up again with cruisers we have met along the way. Also there seems to be a lot more social events organised. Charlotte’s friendship with Fynn, (off the boat Meteor) grew stronger with many play dates and sleep overs and there were a few tears when they had to say good bye to each other.

We also enjoyed time with her parents Pat and Nick.

Charlotte went to the local Beacon Junior School for 3 weeks. Every morning the 6.30 alarm call to get up, breakfast and make pack lunch to be on the dock by 7.30 for a lift to school with Fynn and Red. And after school there was home work also!! See her in School uniform:

She was asked to represent the school in a swimming meet and won 3 rosettes.

Jimmy and I took advantage of our newfound freedom and I enjoyed the break from home schooling.

One day we went out fishing with some friends to try and learn how to fish! – they lived on monohulls so very excited about the size of the platform at the back of a catamaran to fish off. We did finally catch a fish – not with our line though!!

Friday night at the Tiki bar became a regular event – there were about 20 kids playing there. A steel band provided entertainment for the 5-7pm happy hour

and then followed up with a live dance band. Wednesday Burger nights at Clarkes Court Bay Marina also became a regular on the social calendar. They would send a bus to come and pick a load of us up from Prickly Bay for the event. Charlotte also did a stint behind the bar!!

One evening we did a trip up to the north of the island to see the turtles laying their eggs. Fascinating. I was unable to get any photos this time but see our blog entry from the same trip a year ago at:

http://heatwave-sailing.blogspot.com/2009/06/turtle-trip-grenada-june-3rd-2009.html

We did a trip back up to Carriacou one weekend – with Charlotte at school we were now on a schedule so had to take advantage of the weekends!

On Saturday 19^th June Steve and Cathy arrived from Bermuda to do the sail with us from Grenada to Curacao. It seemed like the wet season arrived just as they did, with their first 2 days in torrential rain!! On Monday morning we did the last bits and pieces – last minute shopping, filling up our water tanks, moving the life raft to its “Offshore” accessible” position, safety talk from Jimmy, up the mast with the new radar detector...

On Monday 21^st June, over 5 weeks after arriving, we finally left Grenada to sail to Curacao. The plan was to stop at Los Roques, Islas de Aves and Bonaire en-route. The trade winds are predominantly from the east. We were now heading west and finally downwind!!

Grenada - Part 1 - May 14th - June 4th

2010-06-04T15:46:00.007-03:00

We spent our first few days in Grenada anchored off St Georges, close to Grand Anse beach (the nicest beach in Grenada - long white and sandy).

Hilary, my sister came to visit for a week, so we went into a marina for a couple of days. We enjoyed all the luxuries of a marina (swimming pool, no dingy i.e. no wet bottom ashore, plentiful water etc) but were please to head back out to anchor due to the heat/lack of breeze and mosquitoes in the marina. It had certainly warmed up a lot in the last couple of weeks, and so a nice breeze is essential at nighttime.

Hilary and Charlotte did the Island tour (that we’ve done a couple of times before) – they swam in waterfalls,

were shown all the different spices growing on the island,

had monkeys climbing over them,

visited the ancient rum factory, (where they still use all the old traditional methods from over 200 years ago),

and generally had a good time seeing all over Grenada.

We met up with Pacific Bliss, who we had originally met in Antigua back in December and last seen in St Martin in March. Charlotte got to play a lot with Zinnia and have sleep-overs at each others boats.

We then headed over to Prickly Bay, where a lot of cruisers anchor. Charlotte arranged a kids play date on the beach. We met a cruising couple from London (Pat and Nick), with 2 children (a girl, Finn, of 8 and a boy, Red, of 11) – Charlotte and Zinnia were soon busy playing with them. They had arrived in Grenada a month ago, having sailed across the Atlantic, and were staying for a while – Finn and Red had just started at a school on the island…. That got us thinking!!

Saturday morning Charlotte and I went to help with the Mount Airey Reading project – which involved spending the morning at a community centre in a small village in the hills and helping local children out with reading and maths.

Saturday afternoon, a motor over to Clarke’s Court Bay Marina’s pot luck, then on Sunday to Hog Island for Charlotte’s 7^th Birthday party (see prior blog entry). Monday a trip over to La Phare Blue marina to enjoy their pool and restaurant – it was Hilary’s last night.

Tuesday, 25^th May, was Charlotte’s birthday. Fortunately, due to Hilary’s visit, there were plenty of presents (from family in London) to open!

We sailed back to Prickly Bay, as it was close to the airport. Hilary seemed to have a fun relaxing time, enjoying a few of the restaurants, Jimmy’s cuisine and the sundowner G&Ts! After tea and birthday cake she headed off to the airport to fly back to London.

Finn and Red came over after to help Charlotte finish off the cake!

Other activities in Grenada so far included:

- Geocaching – I still had a travel bug that I had picked up back in Antigua in February that I needed to deposit in another geocache! So found one in the grounds of a hotel on Grand Anse beach;

- Ski-bobbing with Red and Finn and water skiing;

- Snorkeling the Underwater Statues

- Burger night and other social events at the different marinas.

Jerry and Tracy on Challenger arrived and so it was nice to catch up again – last time we had seen them was St Lucia.

The big boat "A", owned by Russian billionaire turned up in Grenada.

We are sure they are following our route... having seen them in St Barts, St Martin, Antigua, St Lucia, and now Grenada. Last year it was the mega sailing yacht Maltese Falcon that was following us..

One of the “highlights” for both us and Charlotte (although for completely different reasons!) was Charlotte going to school for 2 weeks at a local school in Grenada. It was the same school that Finn and Red has just started at, although they were in a different class.

Although very excited to go (mainly for meeting other kids), when we got to the school, Charlotte was a bit nervous. It was a good experience for her to be able to just join in a class of 20 children, not knowing anyone and join in the lessons and playtime. When I went to pick her up at the end of the day she said it was “grrrrreat” and that all the kids were so friendly. Hopefully the enthusiasm for going to school will continue for the whole 2 or 3 weeks, until we leave Grenada!! Meanwhile I am having a nice break from the every morning homeschooling!

Grenada and the Hash - May 15th 2010

2010-06-04T10:57:00.005-03:00

Grenada is a spectacularly beautiful island, has lush green mountains, crystal waterfalls, golden beaches and the fragrant spice trees that give the island its name “Spice Island”. It’s about 16 miles long and 8 miles wide. It feels like we are coming back to our second home, with all the cruisers that we know that have swallowed their hook here, and a few people that we know that live on the island.

We arrived in Grenada just in time to participate in the 650^th Anniversary run of the Hash House Harriers. For those that don’t know, the Hash House Harriers is worldwide organisation – somebody (the “Hare”) sets a trail (a walkers and a runners), usually with shredded paper. Along the trail are “Check Points”, which will have a few trails running from them - all but one are false dead end trails. The faster people usually check out the false trails and have sorted out the way, yelling “On-On”, by the time the slower ones catch up. The trail is usually set up in the wooded hills and in areas that you would never see normally go (you would be sure to get lost!) so it’s a great way to see the island. It started off originally in Malaysia and is particularly prominent in ex pat countries. And then there is always a party or “jump up” at the end.

We have been on hashes in Antigua and Jimmy has done hashes in Trinidad and Grenada. This was Charlotte’s first hash. About 300 people turned up for the Anniversary run, which took place up in the hills in the north part of the island. Jimmy had a nap on the way to rest up for the big event!

There was a great mixture of locals, ex pats working in Grenada, students from the US medial school and some cruisers.

They split the big run into 4 groups: - Iron Man (including climbing up part of a mountain using a rope!), Runners, Walkers and “Mamby Pamby”.

We were going to just do the Mamby-Pamby one, as Charlotte was with us, but somehow ended up doing the walkers trail. Up and down the mountain sides, through the rivers and jungles.

Munching our way through numerous fallen mangos and coco beans in their pods, all along the trail. The organisers even set up a checkpoint with water and beers half way through the trail.

Charlotte made friends with some other kids and at one point, when the kids were leading our little group, Jimmy pointed out, that we hadn’t actually seen the seen the trail for some time!! We had to reverse out of the bush to find our last marker.

We were almost the last ones back just before dark, after 2.5 hours of walking – muddy, tired and happy.

The party was in full swing, with a band playing, food on the BBQ, and fish frying. It was a great day and night. There was a presentation for first time Hashers and Charlotte was awarded a certificate, which she was all excited about.

Charlotte's 7th Birthday Party

2010-05-29T17:24:00.009-03:00

Charlotte had her 7^th Birthday party on 23^rd May (a couple of days before her actual birthday). For the first time in her life, she had her party in the same country as a prior birthday! – Previous to that she had had 6 birthdays in 6 different countries!

We had the party on Hog Island

- a little island that a lot of cruisers anchor off, because it is the best hurricane hole in Grenada (but they never leave!) A Rasta, who lives there, throws a BBQ and party every Sunday and it’s very colourful with locals and cruisers alike.

On the island we invited some other children over for games and cake.

It was wonderful. Charlotte had a good time and the children were all very enthusiastic. Zinnia and Cosmo came to the party (who we had first met in Antigua back in December), with their mum Liz from Pacific Bliss. Also my sister Hilary was visiting from London so that was nice to have her there (not often Charlotte has other family members at her birthday). Mike, on Final Chapter also came over to help.

The 8 children all enjoyed party games:

Pass the parcel:

Pin the Tail on the Donkey:

Musical Statues:

Treasure Hunt:

and finishing off with Charlotte's favourite – the piñata - which was stuffed full with sweets and biscuits:

The sticks kept breaking before the piñata so the kids had to run back in the woods to find other sticks – which kept getting bigger and bigger! It was a danger zone as Charlotte wanted to hit the piñata to shreds and the other kids kept running in the get all the sweets that were flying out. It was a miracle nobody got hit (they were blindfolded)

Then the cake and all seemed to have had a good time.

To finish of the great day, Charlotte then went for a sleepover on Zinnia’s boat while we collapsed, after all the activity of a 7 year olds party.

Carriacou and Sandy Island 12-14th May

2010-05-28T09:49:00.004-03:00

Our first point of entry to Grenada was at Carriacou. Grenada is made up of 3 islands: Grenada (being by far the largest), Carriacou and Petit Martinique, the latter 2 being at the southern end of the Grenadine islands (and no where near Martinique!)

We spent our first night anchored off the little sandbar, Sandy Island,

with a 2 mile dingy ride across to the capital, Hillsborough on the mainland to check into customs and immigration. Carriacou is a small island about 7 miles long and 2 miles wide. The cruising guide quotes: "This is an island with over a hundred rum shops and only one gasoline station". It is a relaxed, easygoing place.

Our second night, we went around to Tyrrel Bay, where most of the boats seem to hang out. It’s a very quiet and laid back one road “town”. The yacht club collects for the CCEF (Carriacou Children’s Education Fund) and, as per last year, Charlotte went through some of her books and toys to give away to the local children.

We visited Denise from London (family from Carriacou) on her boat Halleluiah which she has converted into a bar / restaurant, and had dinner. Charlotte loved helping her out, being the waitress.

Our stop in Carriacou was short as we wanted to be in Grenada by Saturday to be able to participate in the Hash House Harriers 650^th anniversary run. On Friday, once school was over (after an early start), we set sail to St Georges, on the south west coast of Grenada. We had a lovely sail – the 34 mile passage took us about 4 hours. By 3pm we were anchoring outside St Georges and fairly soon after, in the dingy to Grand Anse beach.

The Grenadines - May 1st - 12th 2010

2010-05-26T16:42:00.018-03:00

The Grenadines are part of “St Vincent and the Grenadines” and consist of many small islands south of the big island of St Vincent. On the way south from St Lucia we bypassed St Vincent, mainly due to security issues, that boats have had there. The Grenadine Islands are spread over an area about 40 miles long and 10 miles wide.

Bequia

We stopped in Bequia for about 6 days. Bequia has long been a favourite stop for yachts people (and us). Isolated enough to remain relatively unspoiled, yet lively enough to be stimulating and entertaining, it provides a blend of the old and new that many find perfect. It is an island of sailors and boats. Linked to the outside world mainly by the sea (it has a small airport for close inter-island flights) the old traditions still go on. Boats are built on the beach in the shade of the palm trees, built by eye, using only simple hand tools. The island used to be an active whaling station, and although the tradition is now dying out, Bequians still make an occasional foray during the whaling season between February and April. At this time of year, humpback whales leave their northern feeding grounds to head south to mate and bear young.

The island is about 4 square miles. We had a generally relaxing time in Bequia, after the hectic life of St Lucia!! Life consisted of schooling in the mornings (Jimmy would head ashore to do “jobs” including morning coffee ….) – and then kayaking and snorkeling later in the afternoon.

We also met up with friends on a boat that we had last seen in Trinidad. Unfortunately they had just been robbed the night before, and also had someone board their boat at 4am in Dominica! We would generally think of Bequia being a safe place but security on a boat is always an issue in the islands, and it's necessary to take precautions.

Canouan

On Friday we had a lovely sail south to Canouan – a little over 16 miles - about 3 hours with perfect wind direction. We overtook a few boats on the way there, and soon had them out of sight - almost! - Always a good feeling!! The island is about 4 square miles.

Canouan has a lovely big, relatively shallow bay, great for anchoring. However, there were very few boats in the bay. Moorings Yacht Charters used to have their base in Canouan – being a great central starting place for people wanting to cruise the Grenadines. However once American Eagle stopped flying there, it makes Canouan an extremely difficult place to get to and now the base just acts as a service centre to boats rented out of St Lucia. Ashore at the base is like a ghost town. And the hotel next door looks nice but is expensive and empty. Apparently the 5 star Raffles resort up on the hill has also closed much of its hotel due to the economic downturn. This must have a big knock on effect to the small town, where there is little other opportunity for work.

After a walk around the town, we realized why we had not stopped there for some time. We stayed just one night.

Mayreau

Saturday 8^th May – Jimmy’s birthday! A short motor down to Mayreau, a one-road island. We anchored in Salt Whistle Bay – a beautiful little bay with a sweeping half moon beach and palm trees. Birthday lunch at the small hotel on the beach, with stone table coves and thatched roof.

Charlotte made friends with some other children from Sweden in the bay – they went kayaking and ski bobbing.

The following night we anchored off Windward bay in the south of Mayreau. It was our first time in this bay - we had the whole bay to ourselves and the amazing thing was all the star-fish – there must have been about 100 around the boat!

Tobago Cays

On Monday we motored the short distance over to Tobago Cays – probably the biggest attraction of the Grenadines - a group of small deserted islands protected from the sea, only by Horseshoe Reef. The water and the reef colours are a kaleidoscope of gold, brown, blue, turquoise and green. In recent years they have made it a marine park and have roped off an area for non-anchoring, and made it a turtle reserve (by protecting the sea grass that they eat). Each year we see more turtles. We had a great time snorkeling and saw about 15 turtles – both big and small – sometimes up to 6 at once. It was very special.

Click on the link below to see some videos of turtles:

On the deserted island, by the reserve, we also saw white iguanas roaming around:

This was the island that Charlotte had had her 4th birthday party on back in 2007.

A couple of nights stop in Tobago Cays and then on Wednesday 12^th May we motored the 5 miles to Union Island to clear out of the Grenadines (the only island in the southern Grenadines with customs and immigration facilities (a hike to the airport)). A short stop as Union Island is not a favourite of ours – just enough time for lunch on the conch shell island

and then another short motor down to the island of Carriacou (owned by Grenada). We anchored off Sandy Island (a favourite) for the night

with a trip over to Hillsborough on the mainland to clear into Grenada at the immigration (in the police station) and customs (in the port). As usual I wore my Windies Polo shirt – I must admit I bought it for the nice palm tree logo, having no idea is was the West Indies Cricket logo! – However it seems to put the government officials in a better mood when they think I support their team!!

St Lucia (April 3rd – May 1st)

2010-05-01T21:26:00.013-03:00

St Lucia – about 25 miles long, 12 miles wide, 238 Sq miles, population 140,000, spectacular mountains in the south, white beaches in the north. It is another of our favourite stops. We came for 2 weeks and stayed for a month!

We arrived 2.30am Saturday, Easter Weekend and anchored in Rodney Bay, off Reduit beach. This is where a lot of the hotels are located, and in the morning we could see how busy it was with everyone on vacation.

Claire (my niece) flew in on Sunday from London. She’s a 26 year old primary school teacher and came armed with 14 days of school work for Charlotte (while I had my 2 week “break”! – well time to get on with some other jobs). Charlotte was so excited to have her cousin as her teacher – Claire brought out some school uniforms (summer, winter, gym..) from Eversley, the school she teaches at (and also the school my 3 sisters and I went to) – Charlotte was up at 6am dressed in school uniform waiting for school to start! (Unfortunately the novelty wore off).

We spent a week in the bay, including a couple of nights in the marina. Rodney Bay is a place we enjoy and also know a few locals. Charlotte became a fixture on the morning Cruisers Net with her announcements, and yet again was offered a “job” by the net controller (as in St Martin). Unfortunately there was not enough boat kids around to look at arranging a beach play date but she found plenty of kids on holiday at the hotels with Claire. We even won the Saturday competition – $EC50 lunch voucher at our favourite roti restaurant.

Then we started to head down the coast, to eventually end up at the airport in the south of the island for Claire’s departure. A couple of nights stops going down the coast, where there was great snorkeling

and Charlotte "caught" some fish:

and then 4 nights at one of our favourite anchorage “between the Pitons” – probably one of the top 10 most spectacular anchorages in the world - being on a mooring between 2 dramatic mountains.

While there we did a couple of “Class Field Trips”, first to Diamond Botanical Gardens, where we saw some spectacular flowers that Claire said cost a fortune in a florist in UK. And then to Tierelle waterfalls, that we swam in – very much appreciated in the heat of the day!

Charlotte proudly wore her new school sports uniform for this trip!

On other days, gym consisted of: swimming, kayaking, hiking, rope swinging off the back of the boat, water skiing…

Jimmy and I took advantage of a “resident babysitter” with a couple of nights out on our own – we had dinner at another favourite spot – Dasheenes, at Ladera resort, which is up in the hills between the Pitons with a spectacular view down into the anchorage.

Well, almost ready to head to the south of the island for Claire’s flight, when we heard the news of the volcanic ash from Iceland that shutdown airports in Europe for a week! After finally getting through to Virgin Atlantic, the earliest flight was a week later. Claire was told Virgin would cover a 3* hotel and food!! so being stranded in St Lucia wasn’t that hard to take. (Her mother and father were stranded in Austria skiing.) So back up to Rodney Bay to a “convenient” hotel for Claire, where Charlotte and I could easily come and visit and enjoy the pool.

Jimmy decided to take the opportunity to fly back to NY for a few days to see his sister Doris and Brother-in law Fred so we put the boat into the marina. The girls were left by themselves!! – once Tracy (on Challenger) arrived, the 4 of us had a girls night out!!

Claire met many other "stranded Brits" while at the hotel and amused us with the daily sagas. We were all sad to see Claire go, but she had to get back to see her own class, having missed the first week of term – Charlotte would have loved to have gone back with her. Not sure that Claire felt the same! And she did say that teaching one-on-one is actually tougher than teaching a class of 30, even if it’s only for 2 or 3 hours a day, as it’s a lot more intensive.

Despite our original plans of heading south after Claire was due to leave originally, we stayed a further week after Claire’s delayed departure – other cruising friends were arriving… Joe and Shawn on Libertas - heading north so again probably the last time our paths will cross on Heat Wave. A few late nights, with dinner/drinks on each others boats, seeing the early hours of the morning – all being used to the normal cruisers bedtime of about 9pm, we are still “arguing” about who is the bad influence on who.. . We introduced the southerners (Joe and Shawn) to Jerry (another Southerner) and Tracy (Brit) on Challanger and the southern drawls were flowing – even Charlotte, the waitress was asking “Y’all wanna Pina Colada?”

There was a lot going on in St Lucia about the time we left – the Jazz festival just starting (we have been regulars at this over the years) and the 20/20 world cricket. For some strange reason, they seem to hold 2 major events at the same time, resulting in a shortage of hotel rooms and plane seats (not to mention the stranded passengers from volcanic ash…) Claire didn’t seem to mind the Australian Cricket team staying in her hotel – her comment was “yummy”

By May 1^st it was time to get going – it would have been easy to stay longer…

Bequia was 70 miles away – about 10-12 hour trip - we wanted to get there in daylight so, with the alarm to wake us up, we left at 3.15am to ensure extra time for any problems. As usual this season, the winds were light. We went the windward side of St Vincent in a hope of being able to sail rather than motor but still ended up putting on one motor some of the way as the winds were lighter than predicted.

We have not seen many dolphins this year but on this trip, we had one that scared the heck out of us, by jumping 15 feet out of the water, almost landing on the boat and splashing next to us – it was pretty spectacular and all over in a second.

We arrived Bequia about 2.30pm – an 11 hour trip.

Les Saintes – 31st March – 2nd April

2010-04-08T12:34:00.005-03:00

At last, we were now heading almost south, as opposed to the ESE that we had been doing from BVI to St Martin to Antigua. With predominately east trade winds the previous trips had all been motor sail jobs.

We left Antigua 3am with perfect conditions and soon had both engines off (what a novelty!). I took the first watch 4-7am. Great wind angle and wind speeds – I had the boat at over 8 knots for a lot of the watch. By 5.30am the sun was starting to come up in the east on my left and a full moon was setting in the west on my right. This is what it’s about!! The full moon was like a big light above us, so we did not have to use the radar very much. The passage between Antigua and Guadeloupe is about 40 miles.

We were planning on catching up with Tracy and Jerry on Challenger on our way down – they had been doing some diving in the Jacque Cousteau reserve at Pigeon Island, just off the west coast of Guadeloupe. We made radio contact and arranged to meet in Les Saintes. Once down the coast of Guadeloupe, not surprisingly, the engines went on again (and we were able to BBQ lunch!). Below is Charlotte pretending she is harnessed up on night watch.

Like many of the mountainous islands further south, the mountains block the wind on the leeward side. Once at the bottom of Guadeloupe, we had an 8 miles close haul over to the Saintes. We made great time and were swimming off the back of the boat by 3pm.

Les Saintes is always a favourite stop of ours, and as it may be the last time in a while, we decided to stay once more day, and then do a straight run for the remaining 125 miles to St Lucia. Les Saintes are some small French islands, part, and south of Guadeloupe. Busy in the daytime with day trippers from the mainland, and like a quiet French village by night – when all the local kids come out and play on their scooters in the square. We rented a scooter (3 to a bike wouldn’t be allowed in a lot of places!!) and toured round the small island.

Tracy very kindly babysat that night and so Jimmy and I got to go out for a meal to one of our favourite restaurants in the Caribbean “Les Petit Saintes”. It was our first time out alone since New Year! Finding a babysitter, when cruising in the Caribbean, is not easy.

By 8am the next morning, Good Friday, 2nd April, we were on our way again, out of Les Saintes, passing Dominica and Martinique. There was so little wind that we didn’t even put up the main to begin with. However as the wind filled in, we put up the main but still had to motor a lot, especially behind the mountainous islands. We arrived into St Lucia at 2.30am Saturday morning. Rodney Bay is a large open anchorage, easy to arrive and anchor in the dark, as it is relatively shallow far out. We anchored far out, went to bed and then moved closer to shore the next morning.

Antigua 29th-31st March

2010-04-07T17:09:00.006-03:00

We arrived Antigua after a 15 hour trip from St Martin. It was the first time in a while that Jimmy and I had done a full overnight sail (as opposed to getting a few hours sleep first) and we were shattered all day Monday! We headed to the pool at Jolly Harbour and let Charlotte (who had slept all night!) swim and play with the other kids in the pool while we dozed.

We spent Tuesday in Antigua, getting fueled and water and catching up with Mick and Sue, some good cruising friends. Unfortunately not for long enough – and they were now heading north for the rest of the season and we were heading south.

Wednesday 31st March, alarm clock on at 2.30am to ensure a 3am departure… We wanted to make it as far at Les Saintes by dark. Les Saintes can sometimes be a tricky anchorage - deep water except close in and sometimes difficulties getting the anchor to catch, so we needed to be there to get anchored before dark. Leaving at 3am would leave a conservative 15 hours to cover the 75 miles, assuming an average of 6 knots.

St Martin 26-28th March

2010-04-07T17:01:00.004-03:00

Again, a hectic few days in St Martin.

Friday, we rented a car – a trip over to Philipsburg – more electronics including little computer for Charlotte (and for me to take ashore without the worry of water damage to an expensive computer in the dingy). In the afternoon, there was a kids’ beach party on Simpson Bay beach – they had continued the weekly beach play dates that Charlotte had started. That evening, making good use of the rental car, we went over to Grand Case for dinner – Grand Case is on the French side of St Martin and is known for its street full of great French restaurants.

Up and out early the next morning – a trip to Cost-U Less – the big warehouse type shopping where we stock up on a lot of our food for the next few months. Once the car was returned, more social activities for Charlotte with Harmony’s 11th birthday party on the beach. We think that Jimmy Buffet was playing that night in St Barths after the “St Barths Bucket” (the sailing races for boats over 100 feet!! – quite a sight) –but it was Charlotte’s turn for a social life!!

Sunday morning, the cruisers weekly “Champagne Breakfast” get together. Then after that we headed back to the Islander Hotel (where Paul and Leonor had stayed) to meet up with Jimmy’s brother and sister-in-law Dennis and Patty, who were down in their timeshare for a week.

We spent the day with them, then headed back to the boat at dark, put Charlotte to bed, picked up the anchor at 9.30pm and continued our trip down to St Lucia (about another 200 miles), where we were meeting Claire the following weekend.

As we passed St Barths that night, we could see so many red anchor lights in the anchorage – a boat that has a very high mast (over about 100 feet) has to have a red rather than white anchor light (for low flying airplanes) – St Barths was full of very large boats that weekend for the St Barths Bucket race.

British Virgin Islands 18th-25th March

2010-04-07T16:36:00.006-03:00

British Virgin Islands – land of the charter boats. The BVIs is probably one of the best locations to charter a boat for a week, in the world. Beautiful scenery, easy sailing, lots of small islands surrounding Tortola and Virgin Gorda, the two main islands, close anchorages, constant winds. As a result, probably about 95% of the boats sailing in the BVIs are people down on a week’s charter. This is a vast contrast to the islands further south where the ratio is probably the other way round, and mainly cruising live-aboards.

Our first stop was The Baths in Virgin Gorda – always a lovely spot and Charlotte got to explore the big boulders again. Then to Road Town and a chance to meet up with Bernadette, Peter and 3 year old Sutton – friends who used to live in Bermuda. And to meet up with the “Gang” arriving for their great charter vacation – 5 couples, 3 crew on a 65 foot catamaran.

We spent a few days following “The Gang” (as Charlotte referred to them) around various anchorages (although not quite as busy as their schedule). Norman Island (with the obligatory trip to the Willi T’s pirate ship bar for Jimmy and the Gang), Jost, Virgin Gorda – Bitter End and Leverick Bay. Jimmy had a chance to have a good catch up with Danny and Regina

and Charlotte loved all the attention. The Gang had a great time on their catamaran - the crew spoilt them with lavish meals and great service. Tim and Joan were the "Leaders of the Gang" and their other friends, who we met for the first time, were a great bunch from NY.

By Thursday it was time to start heading south again – the trip back to St Martin, and then Antigua, is just south of east, which means wind on the nose. Thursday was a good day to ensure lighter winds and hence an easier trip! We motored out of Virgin Gorda Sound at 6am, arriving just before sunset into Marigot bay 12 hours later, leaving the rest of The Gang to carry on their partying til Saturday!

St Maartin 14th-17th March

2010-04-07T15:55:00.003-03:00

We had a hectic few days in St Martin.
On Monday Charlotte and I went “fruit shopping” at the electronic store – an Apple and a Blackberry!! Not to mention some other bits and pieces - this is my idea of shopping!! – forget the clothes and shoes. St Martin is the cheapest place in the Eastern Caribbean for electronics, and as my older/spare/Charlotte’s computer had recently “lost” its hard drive, it made me speed up my decision to change over to a Mac.

We met up with Paul and Leonor, who were down from NY at their time share.

On Tuesday Charlotte met up with Harmony again on Orient Beach – Jimmy and I enjoyed and “adult lunch” while they played on the beach and in the sea. On Wednesday we got to catch up with some other cruising friends at the weekly cruisers get together.

We headed back to the boat for a few hours sleep at 8pm – alarm clock on for midnight and then on Thursday 18th March, 12.30am we headed out of the anchorage in Marigot, on our way to Virgin Gorda BVI. Light winds, and downwind meant a motor sail. By 1am I was back in bed and Jimmy took watch til 5am when I took over, and he slept. 12 hours later, after an easy, non eventful sail, we were tying up to a mooring at The Baths – Virgin Gorda, in time for lunch. We had hoped to use the spinnaker, but it wasn’t to be. The winds were too light.

Antigua 1st-14th March 2010

2010-04-07T14:43:00.007-03:00

By 6.30pm, Monday 1st March, 11 hours after leaving Statia, we were anchoring “back” in Jolly Harbor. We seem to spend so much time in Antigua, it’s like “coming home”! This time, (for a change!), we anchored off Jolly Beach for a couple of days before moving around to the anchorage. Boat jobs, Charlotte meeting friends at the pool, fueling and filling up with water, laundry – all the regular activities of life on board (Charlotte doing her dolls' laundry!):

At the weekend we headed to Bird Island in the north. It’s very pretty with lots of deserted islands. Charlotte and I went snorkeling - there are literally loads of conchs all around the anchorage. We could have dived down and easily collected enough to make a nice meal – but unfortunately this involves a lot of work, getting the conchs out of their shells and pounding them (and they are very tough) before cooking – BBQ burgers was easier!! While snorkeling we also saw many sea cucumbers, other interesting “breathing plant life” and a stingray – a little unnerving as we were in very shallow water and almost eye to eye!

Lewis, Sonja and Josh came over on Sunday, and Charlotte and I got to have a go on his very fast jet ski!!

I was keen to circumnavigate Antigua (and it being our last time here for a while….) – many times we’ve gone up one coast and then round and up the other, but never all the way round – usually because of sea and wind conditions as there are a lot of reefs in the north and its essential to have good light to navigate the reefs. Well, we had perfect calm conditions so after the weekend we continued round to Green Island on the east coast.

On the way there we stopped at “Stingray City” – a fenced off area on the reef where they take tourists to see the stingrays. Charlotte and I swam over from our anchored boat, and snorkeled. The area was no longer fenced in but there were still some stingrays there.

Green Island is in Nonsuch bay, a lovely big anchorage on the east coast, set behind the reef, with deserted islands around. We spent a couple of days there – Charlotte got to show off her water skiing talents to the anchorage and met a new friend on another boat that she invited to join her ”ski-bobbing”.

From Green Island we continued round to English and Falmouth Harbour in the south – home of the mega yachts. Charlotte got to play with Jack and Josh, 2 cruising kids that we met in Grenada about 4 years ago, and have been bumping into each year.

Some friends of Jimmy’s were renting a 65 foot crewed catamaran in BVI. Originally we were not going to see them as we were on our way south, but in Antigua we made the decision to turn around and go back up to see them. It had been some while since Jimmy had been able to spend a decent amount of time with Danny.

On Sunday, the winds looked best, to do the trip back up to St Martin – a 6am start and we were in St Martin by dusk.

St Eustatius (Statia) Feb 26-28th

2010-03-01T21:48:00.008-04:00

How exciting!! – the first time to a new island since I don’t know when….. busy reading the guidebook. Statia is a small island (about 3 miles by 4, population about 3,000) with a large history. It’s part of the Netherlands Antilles.

Back in the mid to late 1700s Statia was the trade capital of the Indies. From one to two hundred sailing ships lie at anchor, with hundreds of small boats going from ship to shore to the many shops and warehouses with goods available from all over the world – thousands of tons of commodities were traded daily. The major powers were fighting each other and wrapped their colonies in a mass of red tape and taxes, stifling trade. The Dutch, who owned Statia, remained neutral and opened Statia as a free port. Countries who could not deal with one another could deal with Statia, so Statia papers were attached to many things produced elsewhere. For example, in 1770 Statia produced about 600,000 pounds of sugar but exported 20 million pounds. It was officially approved smuggling and the inhabitants (Dutch Jewish and English merchants) got very rich.

Nowadays, the many sailing ships have been replaced by oil tankers (it has a huge storage facility) and we had to avoid all the oil floating pipes as we came past the north end of the island.

There were about 5 cruising boats in the bay (very different to St Martin), plus some dive boats and tugs and tenders from the tankers. The guide book talks about the swell here (that we did experience) but that was nothing compared to the wake from the tug boats and tenders that sped back and forth from the tankers.

It is a small nice quiet friendly island, where people still say hello and good morning. With no natural protected port it is not on the cruise ship schedule, but attracts tourists willing to make that extra flight, looking for a more out of the way island and good diving. There is also a US Medical school here (they seem to be on most islands!).

Much of the “Lower Town” was destroyed in hurricanes (still remnants of the warehouse walls that have dropped into the sea) and a “New Town” exists at the top of the cliff – which involves a steep walk up the cobbled “Old Salves Road” giving us some insight as to what life must have been like for some (especially when Charlotte wanted to be carried!)

While in Statia, we did a great 3 hour walk up to the top of the “Quill” – an extinct volcano. It was a great trail – Charlotte said the flat parts were hard but the steep parts were easy!!

Charlotte led the way on the steep part and was the first up to the very top (see beacon and solar panel), to the panoramic view, but unfortunately the clouds closed in around us so we could not see below

We also did an island taxi tour (didn’t take very long!) (see the top of the Quill that we climbed, behind the bus)

and on the last day, went to the beach to try and find the "Blue Beads" - the "currency" used for trading years ago - unfortunately we didn't find any.

We had a resident ramora swimming under the boat for a lot of our stay.

While is Statia, we were boarded by the Netherland Antilles Coastguard. A fairly routine inspection of boat checking in papers, passports and safety equipment but still a bit daunting! – I wanted to ask them to take off their big black DM boots when they came on the boat, but dare not.

We stayed 3 days in Statia, and then, at 7.30am we headed out to Antigua. The winds were very light, which was good as our course was just south of east, exactly where the winds were coming from (as per usual!!). We arrived Antigua about 6pm

Back in St Martin - February 23-26th

2010-02-27T19:22:00.008-04:00

Back in St Martin for a few days – we caught up with other cruisers again at the weekly get together. Unfortunately we had just missed some friends (with 2 girls) who had left the day before to head to Columbia (a big new hot spot on the itinerary of cruisers heading west to the Pacific). Charlotte had her last opti lesson,

Harmony came over for a last sleepover and Charlotte arranged one more kids beach party with over 20 children (and assigned someone else to carry on the new weekly tradition!)

Charlotte announced our departure on the morning VHF Cruisers Net and said goodbye to all her new friends. Having already said goodbye to Ella on Tuesday and Harmony on Thursday, this seemed to be the last straw as a tear came to her eye as we sailed out. A reminder of other friends, who had left ahead of us, who we hoped to see again, soon improved her spirits.

Many times we have wanted to visit the island of Statia (St. Eustatius), but have not made it for various reasons (timescale, weather not right for the unprotected anchorage there...). As it’s our last season in the Eastern Caribbean with Heat Wave, we finally made the effort to go to Statia. It’s a due south 30 miles trip – although the winds were coming from the south, the winds were very light so it was a perfect time to motor over. It was exciting - the first time we had gone to a new island for many years! We were busy reading the cruising guide book on the way there, and examining the charts.

We spotted a large school of fish jumping out of the water, feeding – we got out the fishing lines – of course we didn’t catch anything but we did get to see a big whale shark (about 20 foot long). First time we’ve seen a fish this large down here. Not great shots but hopefully you can spot the whale shark's mouth open out of the water in the picture above, and the whale shark swimming 30 feet away from the boat in the picture below. We were circling with the boat, trying to get the sun behind us for a better picture but the whale shark wasn't cooperating! - and we were also hoping he wouldn't go for our fishing lines that were still trawling behind the boat!!

St Barths (St. Bathelemy) February 15th-22nd 2010

2010-02-24T16:54:00.007-04:00

St Barths, gem of the Caribbean. Quoted from the guide book: “With its sharply contoured rocky hills, a picturesque port and gorgeous beaches, it has become a world famous chic destination; the favoured hot spot for good looking, well-to-do “in” crowd, seasoned with a sprinkling of acting, singing and sports stars: the Riviera of the Caribbean.” Jimmy says we were sitting on the table next to Sharon Stone one lunch. The other year, we were at dinner on the table next to Richard Gere.

It has fantastic restaurants, is very peaceful and still very French (including great pate, cheeses, breads, croissants…), even with all the foreign tourists. It’s probably the most peaceful, and crimeless island in the Eastern Caribbean. We’ve noticed more construction and more traffic on the roads over the last 15-20 years but still a wonderful place.

We met up with good friends Sharon and Claude, from Bermuda, who rented a villa for a week (not sure which of the above categories they fall into!!). Charlotte was very excited to see Ella and Conor again.

Although St Barths is only 12 miles from St Martin, it’s amazing that the 1$ beers change to 5 Euro beers and the bars on the windows change into permanently open villas. Prices are definitely higher in St Barths than St Martin but I’m sure a lot of that is to ensure the “desired clientele”. We did actually find a great restaurant that also accepted 1$=1Euro - very unusual in St Barths.

We were anchored out in the bay next to some of the largest mega yachts in the world – one very strange looking one owned by a Russian billionaire.

Sharon and Claude joined us on the boat for a couple of days after their stay in St Barths – we all sailed back to St Martin and anchored just a quarter of a mile from the airport lobby, to ensure no problems trying to find a taxi at 5am – we used the Heat Wave water Taxi (a.k.a dingy)

St Martin - January 22nd-February 15th

2010-02-24T16:49:00.017-04:00

The island of Sint Maarten-Saint Martin is the smallest land mass in the world to be shared by two different nations. Only 37 square miles are owned by France and the Netherlands Antilles. For more information on St Martin see the blog entry from our visit here last year.
http://heatwave-sailing.blogspot.com/2009/03/about-st-martin.html

It still amazes me how a supermarket can quote prices in 3 currencies, especially when 2 of them, US$ and Euro, fluctuate on a daily basis! The mental arithmetic keeps you on your toes here - in shops either dividing by 1.8 (Naf to US$) or multiplying by about 1.4 (Euro to US$) (a variation from dividing by the EC$2.67 and TT$6 for islands further south). Credit card transactions are done in US$ on the Dutch side and Euro on the French side, so, when they offer fuel, or drinks/food in a beach bar on the French side at a rate of 1US$=1Euro, its important to carry lots of US$ cash!

Many cruisers come to St Martin for 2 weeks and stay for 2 months! The social scene (catching up with old friends and making new friends), coupled with availability of parts, services etc makes St Martin a stopping place for many. A "Cruisers Net" on the VHF radio each morning informs everyone of weather, arrivals and departures, items people are looking to buy or sell, and social events. A weekly cruisers happy hour get together at a local dock bar attracts close to 100 cruisers (or is it the 1$ beers that attract them??).

While in St Martin, Charlotte started a weekly kids beach party, often attracting over 20 children. It was just like a continuation of the Elbow Beach parties that we used to arrange in Bermuda! Many complimented her on her VHF radio skills, when she announced it on the morning Cruisers Net.

Charlotte also caught up with her friend Harmony (from South Africa, who lives in St Martin) again for many play dates and sleepovers - this is now the 4th year they have got together. She also caught up again with Zinnia, who we had last seen in Antigua, and met many other new friends, including Emily and Olivia who she has sailing lessons with. Cruising kids are always happy to play with any kids, age often not an issue, and Damien, age 11 (half French half English) called up to come over with all his games one afternoon.

Charlotte also had Optimist sailing lessons twice a week, and did very well. It was nice that she was allowed to join in the regular beginners lessons, as so often, it is difficult to get involved in any local activities when you are only somewhere for a short time. It was great sitting at the yacht club, watching the mega yachts go out the 4.30 bridge opening, and then see Charlotte and her class following behind in the opties!

Regular life on board continues:
- home schooling in the morning (along with all the relevant bribing!);
- going shopping in a dingy (hoping the eggs weren't scrambled before we got back...);
- waiting for over 4 weeks for a package to still not arrive from UK;
- fixing boat problems;
- understanding power issues on the boat (eg can't make ice and flush the electric toilet at the same time ...);
to name just a few.

The highlight for Charlotte was getting her ears pierced - I thought 12 was a better age, but Jimmy thought 6 was fine - Daddy's little girl won him over...

Antigua - back to the warmth at last! - Jan 14th-21st

2010-01-29T04:40:00.004-04:00

What is it about arms?? We arrived back to Antigua, and this time it was Eddy who has broken his arm (Jimmy had hurt his arm when we returned to the boat in Trinidad, and Charlotte broke her arm when we returned to the boat last year).

We were soon settled back on the boat, pleased to be back in the warm weather - we will never complain that its too hot again! We were now flying an Australian flag, having sold the boat to an Australian just before Christmas. Being a less common flag than the US flag, we are now often approached by Aussies, keen to bump into someone from their homeland! A New Yorker, Londoner and Floridian, from Bermuda is not quite what they are expecting!!

A few days in Jolly Harbour, getting sorted, and then on 21st January we headed to St Martin. One of the few, more downwind sails, heading NW. The 10-15 knot NE forecast started off very light (looked like it would be a motor job) and ended up at 25knots from the SE - the forecasts are often quite reliable in the unreliability of them!! We left at 8.30am (never quite managed the planned 5am start!). When darkness fell we were just passing St Barths, and arrived into Simpson Bay, St Martin at about 8.30pm - made good time with a 12 hour sail.

Visiting Mickey Mouse in Ski Jackets!!

2010-01-14T17:40:00.013-04:00

We arrived in Orlando 7th January to the coldest temperatures in 80 years!! Same temperature as it had been in Austria!! But we still enjoyed 2 days in Disney World - a great place no matter what the weather. It didn't stop the crowds from turning up and we closed the place both nights - but we were thankful we had our ski jackets with us!! Charlotte got to visit all her favourite princesses etc

Included in our week in Florida, Charlotte got to meet more cousins while visiting Jimmy's sister Rita and her family in Daytona. And a couple of days visiting Jimmy's brother Billy and wife Susan in Palm Beach. We headed to Miami, stopping at the hospital that Charlotte was born at, to fly back to Antigua just as the weather started to warm up again!

What a relief to get off the plane in Antigua today and feel that nice blast of hot air to warm our bones - we will never complain about the heat again!! We will be back on Heat Wave by the weekend.

Snow in UK

2010-01-14T17:36:00.007-04:00

Back in London from 3-7th January to stay with my sister Hilary and her family. Charlotte got her wish to make a snowman. Record snow in several years, Gatwick airport closed for 20 hours and we were lucky to make our flight out - Alan had to push our car out of the drive at 5am as the wheels were sliding!! It was cold... By now we realised that we are tropical people and do not like cold weather! We were looking forward to getting to Florida for some warm sunny weather!!........

New Year Skiing in Austria

2010-01-14T17:28:00.005-04:00

We headed over to St Anton, Austria for 4 days of skiing over New Year, with my sister Denise and some of her friends. Charlotte's first time skiing - obviously Jimmy had no intention of skiing but wanted to enjoy the scenery. It was beautiful in the snowy alps and crystal clear nights with a full moon. Charlotte took to skiing very well, so do doubt this will not be our last ski trip!

Christmas in UK

2010-01-14T17:26:00.006-04:00

Despite BA's threat to strike, on 23rd December we flew to UK to have Christmas with all of my sisters, at Sheila and Bob's house in Poole. Charlotte's first Christmas in UK and the first time all of my sisters had been together for Christmas in about 18 years (a few less children back then!). Charlotte was very excited about the prospect of seeing snow for the first time.

Antigua

2009-12-07T23:19:00.008-04:00

We settled into to life in Jolly Harbour, continuing on with boat jobs and ensuring everything fixed and working. Barry and Tommy flew back to their families.

On Thursday 3rd December Jimmy flew up to NY - pre op tests on Friday and surgery on Monday. He called today (monday) just before leaving the hospital - sounded in relatively good spirits considering, but said his arm is all numb and feels like a lead weight. Hopefully he has a good supply of pain killers for the night.

Meanwhile Charlotte and I have been getting into a routine on the boat and catching up with the home schooling. A few boats have recently arrived on the Blue Water Rally across the Atlantic - Charlotte has made friends with 2 girls on one of the boats and we have been going to the pool with them later on in the afternoons. Santa made a visit to Jolly Harbour on Saturday afternoon, arriving in a helicopter! After a long wait, Charlotte got to have her picture taken with him.

Jolly Harbour is always a good place to meet other children and Charlotte made good friends with Zinia (7) from UK who was staying in one of the villas with her mum and brother, waiting for her dad to arrive across the Atlantic on their catamaran.

St Lucia to Antigua 26-28th November 2009

2009-11-27T22:12:00.005-04:00

A slow start to the day for the boys after the birthday celebrations the night before. Unfortunately not the great Thanksgiving Feast that their families would have given them if they were still home (and I'm sure that thought crossed their mind..). We recognize that Jimmy is very lucky to have friends that will give up their Thanksgiving to help us out. We did offer turkey sandwiches (from a pack...) No takers.. Jimmy cooked a great chicken stew..

By about 1pm we were leaving the marina, chicken rotis take away for lunch, and on our way to Martinique. Nice wind direction this time (just wish we had more of it ...) Dark fell as we started the passage between Martinique and Dominica - we went up the windward side of Dominica for the first time. This allowed us to sail, rather than motor. By 7.30am, 19 hours later we were anchoring in the lovely anchorage of Les Saintes.

First stop - the bakery for croissants and fresh french bread.
Then some boat jobs, and then renting scooters to explore one of our favourite islands. 5 of us on 3 scooters - Jimmy had to come on the back of my scooter as he couldn't drive with his arm, which did mean he had to jump off and walk up a couple of steep hills.

An early start the next morning (after the obligatory visit to the bakery to stock up with croissants and hot french bread) - we sailed the 90 miles from Les Saintes, up the coast of Guadeloupe and across the passage to Antigua, arriving at our "home" for the next few weeks, late Saturday evening after covering just under 400 miles from Trinidad. Thanks to Barry and Tommy for helping us with this trip and for putting up with us!!

Grenada to St Lucia November 23rd - 25th

2009-11-25T22:36:00.016-04:00

We left Grenada Monday morning, after a few jobs and a quick stop at Prickly Bay to check out of customs and immigration. Then another stop part way up the coast of Grenada to snorkel the underwater statues. We motored up the leeward coast. Wind was about 15-20 knots from the east which meant we had to motor sail across to Carriacou. We carried on through part of the Southern Grenadine islands and stopped just before dark at the small island of Mayreau. We had covered only 45 miles of the approximately 300 miles from Grenada to Antigua.

A fairly early start on Tuesday to do the 90 miles from Mayreau to St Lucia. Soon we were settled into the 4 watch routine (with others reading / sleeping / watching movies). We were able to sail a lot more of this trip. We went through the Grenadine Islands, up the leeward coast of St Vincent, across the 30 mile passage to St Lucia, up the coast of St Lucia and arrived in Rodney Bay shortly before midnight, with all eyes on deck checking for any unlit anchored boats in the bay. Winds averaged about 20 knots - we had 2 reefs in the main and the boat handled it well.

Very soon Tommy was put to work - part of the stitching on the jib was coming loose where the jib sheets attach. Armed with a sail sewing kit, he was sent up on deck, while we were sailing.

A little latter, Jimmy noticed the jib furling line had got caught under the furler. Another job for Tommy ... my words to him "you will get wet" - this was an underestimation as the bow ploughed into the seas.

Wednesday morning we went into the marina and had a day off (well off sailing - Jimmy was cracking the whip as fuel was transferred and the boat was scrubbed clean (taking advantage of the flowing water)). It was Tommy's birthday so Charlotte baked a birthday cake in the morning. By about 4pm, jobs were finished and we were able to enjoy the marina pool. That night the boys hit the town to celebrate the birthday boy.

Thursday - no biggy for the Brits on board, but a big celebration for the 3 American boys - Thanksgiving. with no turkey on board we headed off for another long day of sailing

Grenada - November 17th-23rd November

2009-11-25T22:02:00.007-04:00

Our initial time in Grenada was spent sorting out the boat for the survey - all went well although the wind decided to blow over 25 knots for the sea trial, when we had to sail with full main and jib. The out of water survey was delayed til Saturday after a Caribbean misunderstanding "oh you mean this Thursday" when I called up to reconfirm the day before...

Tommy arrived Friday evening to join the crew with his usual abundance of energy. We enjoyed some social events in Grenada that weekend - a pot luck BBQ and karaoke at a marina on Saturday night (where ALL of the Heat wave crew participated) and the regular Sunday afternoon beach BBQ on Hog island. Charlotte got to have a play date with Jade (who she knew from last year on Wild Vanilla) and they also spent the Sunday afternoon on Hog Island playing for hours with bits and pieces found on the beach - who needs fancy toys??

We got to meet up with a lot of cruising friends for a quick hello and good bye before heading north early Monday morning.

Trinidad October 24th - November 17th 2009

2009-11-25T20:50:00.009-04:00

Jimmy went down earlier to labour in a hot sweaty boat yard, to get the boat ready to put back in the water. Once Charlotte and I arrived, we launched the boat, went into a marina and Jimmy had a quick flight up to NY to sort out his necessary surgery to his arm after falling off the ladder in the boat yard and injuring his rotary cuff.

During our week in Trinidad, Charlotte got a chance to meet up with Ryan ("Trini boyfriend" who had spent some time in Bermuda over the summer) for a play date.

After an overnight flight, Barry was quickly put to work when he arrived in Trinidad, helping us with the final jobs before leaving Trinidad.

We left at first light, for our 80 mile trip to Grenada, with dolphins playing at the bow of the boat. The timing was perfect with the tides out of the "Mouth of the Dragon" and we managed to have a couple of knots of current with us for the first half of the trip. Conditions were great, 15 knots of wind from the south east. We had anticipated not getting in til after dark, but made it in about 10 hours, arriving in Grenada at about 4.30pm, in time for cocktails on the trampoline, BBQ dinner and all asleep by 9pm!

Start of sailing season 2009/10 Trinidad - Deja Vu

2009-11-21T16:48:00.011-04:00

Deja Vu .... we started last sailing season with Charlotte's arm in a cast after she fell off a wall. This season, on November4th, Jimmy fell off the ladder in the boat yard in Trinidad and hurt his arm...

After a couple of trips to the doctors in Trinidad, a whirlwind trip to see the surgeon and MRI in New York, (just after Charlotte and I arrived in Trinidad) he is now scheduled for surgery for his rotary cuff on December 7th. So we are now on a fast track up to Antigua, where he will fly out of to have the operation, leaving Charlotte and I on the boat. Hopefully he won't damage it any more on the way. Tommy and Barry (2 more retired FDNY) are flying down to do the trip with us, with Jimmy barking orders.

The Day we had 6 meals and 2 hotel rooms

2009-06-09T22:20:00.003-03:00

After eventually persuading American Airlines that, under their new award system, a trip from the Caribbean to Bermuda should be one award and not 2, we finally got our flight home ticketed for Saturday 6th June - one of the very few days that we were able to make it back from Grenada to Bermuda in a day. No overnighters so I didn't hesitate loading up the bags..... I should have guessed we were doomed...

Alarm went off 5am, breakfast 6am and we arrived at the airport at 7am to be told the flight wasn't leaving til 7.30pm! (thanks for notifying us..) We were given a hotel room and food vouchers (Jimmy enjoyed Charlotte's share!) for breakfast (2nd of the day), lunch and dinner. Plane finally took off at 8.30pm and we were given dinner No.2 on the plane.
Checked in to hotel in Miami about 1.30am (2nd hotel room of the day) and offered dinner (No. 3!!).

The following day more delayes on our flight to Bermuda and we were finally back sunday night about 10.30pm.
Charlotte was tired but made it back school the next day - I then celebrated my first "day off' in 4 months by unpacking....

Jimmy is about to sail the boat to Trinidad from Grenada with my brother-in-law Alan where it will be taken out of the water and left on the hard for hurricane season

Turtle Trip - Grenada June 3rd 2009

2009-06-04T14:10:00.007-03:00

June is prime time to see turtles laying their eggs on the beach - they return thousands of miles to lay their eggs. At 6pm we drove with a number of other cruisers to the north of the island to see turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. Our guide gave us a short brief on what to expect and some do’s and don’ts – in particular no white torches (only red) and no camera flashes as these would disturb the turtles.

We arrived at the beach around 8pm and began waiting... We saw no action until 9:30pm when someone spotted some baby turtles hatching and we received word that a turtle had landed at the other end of the beach around 700 meters away.

We first made our way over to where the baby turtles were surfacing. The average nest has around 100 eggs, and the female will lay eggs about 6-10 time a season. Survival rate to maturity is very low. We saw around six to eight early arrivals scrambling around roughly making their way to the sea. A few who had red light torches were able to guide the baby turtles to the sea by shining their light ahead of them as they had an instinct to follow the light.

Next we trudged to the other end of the beach to see the turtle reported to have landed there. Along the way we were nervous of treading on other baby turtles that may be hatching and making their way to the sea. Once there, we found some researchers helping a 1000lb turtle dig her nest. She was having difficulties as her right flipped appeared injured and was not removing sand effectively. The turtle would only begin laying her eggs when she can feel no more sand beneath her. This was not going to happen without help.

It was exhausting just watching her and eventually a reflex must have triggered and she abandoned this attempt to try elsewhere.

The researchers knew when we were able to come close to watch. During the early digging we were asked to stand well away. As the hole developed we were allowed to come close.

Fortunately, another turtle came ashore as we were heading back to the taxi. This turtle was fit and able to dig her hole without assistance. Soon we were able to come close and watch. Methodically she would excavate each side of the hole with her hind flippers creating quite a deep, squarish hole for her eggs.

When her senses told it was time she went into her egg laying trance. In this mode she was practically senseless to what was going on around. We were able to touch her carapace (soft shell) and her fore flippers without disturbing her. She was also unphazed by the researcher holding her rear flippers apart so they could count the eggs and we could see them.

Two types of eggs are laid. Normal yolk filled eggs are laid which will produced babies. Around these, smaller yolkless eggs are laid as filler so that the yolked eggs don’t get too much sand between them.

Midnight approached so we had to head back to the taxi careful again to avoid any possible hatchlings. We saw a third turtle ashore to nest and lay her eggs along the way. It was nearly 2pm before we finally returned home.

I thank Steve Southwood, who was on our trip, for allowing me (hopefully!) to plagerise his blog which he so promptly posted (no 6 year old and home schooling there!!) and to use all his photos (he had a special night setting - with no flash, none of my photos came out).

Grenada

2009-05-26T23:32:00.020-03:00

We have now arrived in Grenada - the "end of the line" for Charlotte and me. Jimmy will continue south to Trinidad with my brother-in-law Alan, where the boat will be hauled for hurricane season.

Grenada is a lovely island, about 120 sq miles, lush, green and hilly with a population of about 100,000. It’s a very peaceful island, a few hotels, a relatively small amount of tourists. It’s a boat haven for hurricane season. Coming back to Grenada is like coming back to somewhere that we have lived – we are now very familiar with the island, and know a lot of people, both on land and other fellow cruisers. Due to the many cruisers, Grenada has a great cruisers network, with a lot of organized events and social gatherings (all advertised on the morning VHF radio cruisers net broadcast).

So pretty soon we have our social calendar organized.

We headed out to snorkel the sunken statues - amazing seeing different statues (including a man riding a bike and a man sitting at a computer desk!

One day we did an island day tour - swimming in waterfalls, having monkeys eat bananas on my head (and Charlotte petting the older tamer monkey "Lover Boy" - see pic below), visiting the rum factory (where nothing much has changed since the 1700s - they prefer to keep it that way rather than make a lot of people unemployed...), visiting the nutmeg factory that once employed many people - Grenada used to be the number 2 producer of nutmeg in the world - until hurricane Ivan in 2004, when they lost 90% of their nutmeg trees. And seeing the many spices growing along the roadside - Grenada is known as the "Spice Island".

One Saturday morning Charlotte and I went "to the country" to help out with a program set up to listen to children read and help them with maths. The standard was not very high but at least the children were coming along of their own accord to try and learn more (or was it for the social event?) About 25 children came from the villages around to a small wooden building. There were about 6 volunteers. Charlotte was even put to work with a 4 year old, reading to her and pointing out the words!

Saturday afternoon the airport was closed for a renaming party!! - not sure what message the people on the delayed incoming flights were given!

There are a lot more children in Grenada, and so Charlotte is now back to having play dates on other boats and on the beach. Boat children seem to mix well with children of all different ages - I think they are just happy to have other children around and can't be choosy.

Charlotte's 6th Birthday 25th May 2009

2009-05-25T13:50:00.015-03:00

6 birthdays in 6 different countries: 1st birthday in London, 2nd in NY, 3rd in Martinique, 4th in Grenadines, 5th in Bermuda and now 6th in Grenada!

Hilary's recent visit from London and Jimmy's quick NY trip meant that there were plenty of presents to open. The pink camera was a hit - but the battery usage means we are searching for rechargeable batteries now!!

Charlotte had a birthday party on the beach with some friends that we had met and a nice cake we made that morning (no bakery with a Hanna Montana Cake!!). In the evening the 3 of us had a nice (early) dinner out - one of the high lights for Charlotte was cherries in the ice cream!!

Carriacou - 22nd-24th May 2009

2009-05-24T00:30:00.008-03:00

A great short sail (about 2 hours) from Tobago Cays to Carriacou, an island north of, and part of Grenada. We stayed the night in an idyllic spot very aptly named “Sandy Island” (photo) just off Carriacou, before moving round to Tyrrel Bay the next day. Shopping in the capital of Hillsborough is “interesting” – bakery is in someone’s back yard, eggs sold in a plastic bag (don’t stand a chance in the dingy!), 5 different stops to buys 2 small bags of groceries. Remember we can only buy as much as we can carry back to the dingy….

Jimmy had seen an article in the cruising papers that the Carriacou Yacht club was collecting for the local school fund. We did a big sort out and gave away a lot of Charlotte’s books and toys to them. We were very proud of her also that she let her scooter go without any fuss – we were sure some of the kids on this small island would benefit a lot more from some of these things. Along the way and at the end of each year we do a clear out of Charlotte’s stuff and try to give it to people that need it (often restaurant, hotel or marina workers will take it back to their villages) In general a lot of the Caribbean is very poor and the children don’t have a lot.

Sunday 24th May we had a nice sail from Carriacou down to Grenada - about 4 hours, 30 miles with perfect conditions - apparent wind angle 90 degrees 15 knots which gave us some great speeds. We even managed to sail (rather than motor) most of the way down the leaward coast of Grenada. We anchored just outside the capital of St George's, and then headed off to Grand Anse beach to look for children for Charlotte's birthday party the next day....

Life on Board

2009-05-24T00:23:00.002-03:00

Life on board continues with the daily routines, the biggest now being homeschooling for about 2-3 hours each morning. Over the years we have sorted out our respective “jobs” on board and now Charlotte is also starting to have her role - turning the engines on and off, turning the lights breakers on and off in the evening and morning, helping Jimmy with anchoring (using the remote to get anchor up and down), laying the table to name a few.

I’m sure a lot of you think we have been sitting here drinking Pina coladas under a palm tree …. (not quite…) I figured that the less exciting parts wouldn’t make for good reading but some people say we should let you know “the bits we don’t write about” – blocked toilets, sleepless nights in bad weather, dragging anchors in the middle of the night, wet dingy rides, …. Living aboard continues to have its fantastic sides and also, in comparison, it’s more difficult sides.

Fantastic sides – sunsets, great anchorages, beautiful places, ability to move around, meeting great people, magic sails (when the wind is in your favouor). The prevailing winds are from the east (trade winds). With the island chain running north to south, it makes the Eastern Caribbean a sailing paradise.

More difficult sides: time to do everyday chores – shopping, with no car takes on a different meaning! (only buy what you can carry!!) Our dingy is our car – dingy to shore! Next, to actually find out where to go for shopping (laundry, boat parts, mechanics, clearing in, restaurants bars etc). When things go wrong on a boat and it’s not as easy as calling out the local fix it man, you definitely need to be self sufficient. Managing your power and water needs – unlike a house, when turning on the water faucet or electric switches, we also have to be responsible for how we get it in the first place – filling up water tanks and keeping batteries well charged (running the generator, ensuring the solar panels are not shaded by the boom …). We also have a water maker and collect rain water. Whilst it’s nice to live with nature, it’s not always as convenient!! (and makes us appreciate little things a lot more when we move back into the apartment). And of course there is the ever present home schooling that takes up about 2-3 hours each morning.

Tobago Cays 21st-22nd May 2009

2009-05-24T00:19:00.008-03:00

The Tobago Cays is a group of small deserted islands protected from the sea by Horseshoe Reef. Boat boys come round from neighboring inhabited islands, selling fresh bread in the morning, plus ice, lobsters and T shirts. When anchored in the Cays, you are not in the lea of any island (only reef), so if the winds are blowing, it’s very windy there!

This is where Charlotte had her 4th birthday party, two years ago, on the beach, on an island 50 yards long – on the way there she asked me if the children who had been at her party would be there again.

A lot of effort has been made recently to make Tobago Cays a Marina Park. Part of the anchorage, where the sea grass grows, is sectioned off as no anchoring, to attract the turtles back. Charlotte and I went snorkeling and saw 2 big sting rays and a few turtles including a mother and baby (see pictures), (not to mention all the normal smaller fish).
One stingray kept following us and Charlotte got a bit nervous, especially as we were only in about 4 feet of water and the stingray kept swimming right below us.

We are Sailing…. 21st May 2009

2009-05-24T00:04:00.010-03:00

We picked up anchor and headed out of Bequia just after Mick and Sue on Breathless. Both heading in the same direction, we had a rare photo shoot where we took pictures of each other’s boats under sail.

It took us about 4 hours to get to Tobago Cays. All of the sailing through the Grenadines is relatively protected short sails (although not to the extent of the BVIs).

Bequia (17th-21st May 2009)

2009-05-23T23:25:00.008-03:00

Bequia is another of our favourite islands. It is part of St Vincent and the Grenadines (a group of islands stretching over about 30 miles), about 2 miles by 4 miles, 7 square miles with a population of about 6,000, very peaceful, small, laid back, safe, hassle free, nice beaches with some nice restaurants. Not surprisingly a lot of cruisers spend time there and at this time of year, a lot of boats are passing through, heading south before hurricane season starts.

Again the nuances of shopping in a small town – the bakery doubles up as a shoe shop!? Also the local baker comes around in a dingy each morning with fresh bread, rolls and great banana bread. Small yellow barges (“daffodil marine”) come round to deliver fuel, water, ice etc and collect / deliver laundry. You can buy lobsters, fish, pineapple etc from the boat boys (who seem a lot more organized, friendlier and less forceful than some other islands).

While there Charlotte got another new pet (see prior log) – a baby Portuguese Man of War is not the regular child’s pet, but I guess Charlotte is not leading a regular child’s life…. We also went snorkeling (on a different day to catching the jelly fish) a short swim from the boat.

One day the fisherman decided that the fish were all in a spot close by to Sue and Mick’s boat Breathless and proceeded to throw all their nets out, just by their anchored boat. Needles to say, the winds turned, as did their boat and by the time they came back from ashore, nets were all caught up under the boat… The fisherman made peace with a bucket of tuna (they gave one to us and I made sushi that night). There were literally hundreds of small tuna which they loaded into a fishing boat and whisked off to sell in St Vincent (literally a “boat load”). Here I am eating some of the freshest tuna ever!

We had a nice 4 days in Bequia, and then it was time to start heading south…

Charlotte's new pet

2009-05-19T15:05:00.004-03:00

On a boat Charlotte does not have the regular pets like a dog or a cat. Her new pet today is a baby Portuguese man of War jelly fish. Previous pets on board have included a lizard (found under the bed) and crabs. One crab died after Charlotte tried to experiment to see if it liked fresh water instead of sea water - a good science lesson!

We are currently in Bequia. Life on board continues the usual pattern of mornings taken up with home schooling, repairs, jobs and maintenance. Later on in the afternoon, its playtime - including cruising round the bay on our new 2 man Kayak.

St Lucia: 22nd April – 17th May 2009

2009-05-17T22:02:00.008-03:00

We stayed in St Lucia for 3.5 weeks – the longest we had stopped anywhere. St Lucia is the largest of the English speaking Windward Islands, is mountainous and lush, with many beautiful white sand beaches. Tropical rain forest covers the steep slopes of the centre. It is 27 miles long, 14 miles wide, with a total area of 240 sq miles and a population of 160,000. This was where Jimmy celebrated his 60th birthday last year, when about 25 family/friends flew in.

We arrived into Rodney Bay, (north St Lucia) from Martinique, in time to clear into customs and immigration, get our favourite chicken rotis in the Caribbean, and have a swim in the marina pool. We soon bumped into people we knew. By May, most boats have either headed north already, to USA/Europe, or like us, heading south to Trinidad or Grenada before the start of hurricane season 1st June. May is always a month for meeting up with a lot of cruisers again. Islands like Antigua are very quiet by this time of year.

Soon our social calendar was getting busy: Thursday sunset cocktails on Mick and Sue’s boat Breathless, Friday, all off to Happy Hour at the Landings Hotel, Saturday everyone over to us for lunch and Sunday lunch at the Yacht club! Although we had met Mick and Sue over the years, this trip to St Lucia we got to spend quite a bit of time with them which we enjoyed.

On Tuesday Hilary flew in from London for a week. We rented a car and did a tour of the island on the way to and from the airport, (in the south of the island). We stopped at Ladera, a beautiful spot between the Pitons. Along part of the west coast is one of the most mountainous roads you could imagine.

Jimmy flew up to NY for 3 days, so we took the boat into the marina to make things easier.
On Friday, Hilary, Charlotte and I did a day trip on Endless Summer – the same boat that we had rented for Jimmy’s birthday week - a great trip sailing right down the coast and stopping for a 3 hour land trip –waterfalls, drive through sulphur volcano and the coco-plantation for lunch. On the way back a stop for swimming and snorkeling and also a walk through the picturesque Marigot. Hilary also got a chance to see Charlotte waterskiing behind the dingy – especially funny when she tried to show off to kids on another boat by going no handed (the skis are also attached to the rope) – she waved and then promptly fell flat on her face!

On Jimmy’s birthday, Mick and Sue kindly offered to have Charlotte over for a sleepover, so we had a nice, rare, dinner out for 2! Finding babysitters in the Caribbean is not easy.

We are usually in St Lucia when the Jazz festival is on. This year we made it to the Saturday and Sunday shows, that started at 2pm until about 10pm – a good day of entertainment in a lovely park type setting on Pigeon Island. Artists that we saw included James Ingram, Michael McDonald, Jeffrey Osbourne, Shaka Khan, Patty La Belle, (many I knew their songs rather than names ……..) and for us the highlight was Chicago – it was great seeing a group of aging men having a good time and exhibiting a lot of talent with their versatility in all the different instruments each could play, and switching who sung lead. I would not have thought of Chicago as “jazz” but with their 6 piece brass band, I changed my views. They surpassed our expectations and put on a great show. Even Charlotte enjoyed it!! The only shame was that they did not play my favourite hit “If you leave me now”.

We missed Friday night’s performance, where Amy Winehouse lived up to her reputation by falling over on stage, forgetting lines, appearing stoned, told the audience she was so bored, then to F*** off and finally left the stage before her act had finished! She later blamed it onto the rain but that hadn’t stopped all the other performers. She had been hanging out in St Lucia for a couple of months and gained the nickname “Amy Wino” with plenty of stories of all her antics flying around in the almost daily “Wino Report” – how she exposed herself in front of tourists, puked in the breakfast buffet, at least 2 trips to the hospital, including burning all her leg with pasta, walked around in the same dirty shorts for days on end etc etc… Such a shame to see so much talent wasted.

It’s also entertaining watching all the Martinique’s sailing down to the Jazz Festival on rental boats - the norm is for about 20 of them to rent a catamaran similar size to ours and then party all weekend – usually one person on the boat might knows a little about sailing…. Whilst entertaining to watch, it’s a nightmare for someone with their boat in bareboat charter to watch! This year Jimmy saw them tie a catamaran up to the small dingy dock!

Hilary commented on how a lot of people seemed to know us – I guess that’s one of the advantages of spending some time in the same place. The marina staff haven’t changed in years, so the dock guys always welcome us back. Even Shane at the fuel dock asked after my niece Claire (the long legged “blond”) from 4 years ago! I guess we tend to stand out a bit more than the regular cruising couples – not many 60 year olds with a 5 year old child!! Tom the fisherman, who we swopped a bottle of Bermuda rum for a tuna a few years ago, caught a massive marlin the day we arrived, hanging over both sides of his boat – we weren’t planning on swopping anything for that! Maggie, who worked at the marina, came over again and helped us give the boat a good clean and also braided our hair. The guy that owns/works at the roti restaurant welcomes us back, the Endless Summer crew remember us…..

After 3 weeks in Rodney Bay, we finally pulled up the anchor and headed down the coast where there are some lovely snorkeling bays. Charlotte and I saw lots including some sea snakes. We spent our last 2 nights on a mooring between the Pitons – one of our favourite anchorages and probably one of the top 10 most beautiful anchorages in the world.

Sunday 17th May, at 6am, we left St Lucia to do the 50 miles sail to Bequia. We had a good sail across the 30 mile passage between St Lucia and St Vincent – winds 15 knots on the beam. Only one squall, when we are reminded how quickly conditions can change – I was on watch, relaxing listening to my ipod, perfect sail – saw some darker skies off to the side and within about 5 minutes it looked more like a scene from The Perfect Storm, as the winds shot up to 35 knots, and we were soaked. Once we got to the lea side of St Vincent, as expected the winds dropped to almost nothing, due to the influence of the mountains. Sails down, motor on, down the coast. The last 8 mile stretch across the Bequia Channel, the wind was on the nose so we just continued to motor, no sailing.

St Vincent is not a good or popular stop due to crime – we read of many incidences of boats being boarded at gun point there. We arrived Bequia at 1.30pm. Mick and Sue had left the day before and they were there to welcome us onto the anchorage (a popular stop with over 50 boats).

Fast Track to St Lucia – Saturday 18th April - Wednesday 22nd April

2009-04-23T02:04:00.008-03:00

We left Antigua about 10am Saturday 18th April. Winds forecast 10-15 knots out of the east, seas only 3-5 feet, which was perfect for a nice trip south. The plan was to head south to Guadeloupe (about 40 miles passage between the islands) and then stop the night at Pigeon Island. It was about a 50 miles trip and we should make it there before dark. Then some snorkeling the following morning on the Jacque Cousteau reserve before heading off again. The plan was to be in St Lucia in about a week.

We left Jolly Harbour, heading south down the west coast of Antigua, only to find that the winds were coming from the south (weather forecasts are not an exact science…), on the nose, which would not be such a pleasant trip. However, once we got to the bottom of Antigua, the wind moved to the east, as predicted. It often happens that the land can impact the wind direction. Soon both engines were off, fishing line out, and we were enjoying a perfect sail (made up for the last not so great ones from St Thomas, to St Martin and then to Antigua). By the time we reached Guadeloupe, the wind was from the NE giving us a great wind angle for sailing. The wind angle and seas make such a difference for a nice trip. The conditions were so good we decided to take advantage of this and carry on, through the night. The only downside was that this would mean bypassing one of our favourite stops, Les Saintes.

The wind dropped a lot along the west coast of Guadeloupe, due to the very high mountains, so we motor-sailed most of the way down the coast in calm seas. We rolled in the jib as the wind moved to the south, (influenced by the mountains). It started to get dark, as we were nearing the bottom of Guadeloupe. I took the fishing line in – yet again we had caught nothing! Jimmy prepared everything for the night sail (grab bag, harness etc) and then took over the watch at about 6.30pm, while I went and watched High School Musical with Charlotte, and then got her to sleep.

Once we were past the bottom of the coast of Guadeloupe, the winds picked up again. We rolled the jib out, motors off and a great sail again for the passage of about 20 miles between Guadeloupe and Dominica. At 9.30pm, I took over watch from Jimmy. We were just passing one of Les Saintes Islands, a favourite stop of ours – a group of quiet little French islands just south and part of Guadeloupe. Jimmy went and got some rest while I took over the watch, sailing on to the top of Dominica and then down the coast of Dominica. Again, the winds dropped going down the coast as we were in the lea of some of the highest mountains in the Caribbean, so engines back on and jib rolled in.

The radar was well used as there seemed to be quite a bit of boat traffic down the coast of Dominica and it’s often difficult to gauge distances in the dark. There were about 4 cruise ships (which you can see even before you spot them on the radar!) Interestingly I saw 2 lights from boats that looked similar. However, one was a cruise ship about 15 miles away and the other a sailing boat about 4 miles away! I avoided another “blip” on the radar, presumable a boat but even passing at about half a mile, I could not see anything. It’s amazing how many boats travel at night with no lights (usually to save battery power....(very dumb))

With a mixture of drinking tea and listening to the iPod (and watching the lights and the radar!) I managed to last a 5 hour watch, which let Jimmy get some sleep. By 2.30am we were just at the south end of Dominica. I woke Jimmy as the winds began to increase again, and move back to the east, so that we could roll the jib back out (we had the main sail up the whole time). Then I left him to do the 25 miles passage from Dominica to Martinique. I came back on watch again at 7.30am, after Jimmy’s 5 hour stint. We were now just starting our way down the Martinique coast and Jimmy had taken the jib in and put the engines on. I hopefully put the fishing line out again...

Unfortunately there had been a problem with the port engine – the oil pressure gauge had dropped right down and when Jimmy went to check, the whole engine was covered in oil! So we were now down to one engine (one advantage of a catamaran versus a mono-hull is that you still have an engine if one goes wrong). I took over watch while Jimmy tried to sort out what the problem was. We made the decision to stop at the south of Martinique in Le Marin / St Anne’s, where there are lots of boat parts and mechanics. Charlotte woke up but was happy to watch another High School Musical for a while. Jimmy fixed the problem, cleaned up the mess in the engine room and we were back to 2 engines for our final hour of motoring into the wind, past Diamond Rock, to the anchorage.

By midday, Sunday, we were anchoring up in St Anne’s bay (and had yet again reeled in an empty fishing line!) . We had sailed 180 miles in 26 hours – all in all it was a perfect trip south. We had averaged about 7 knots. As a friend of ours always tells any visitors, “sailing is the slowest mode of transport invented (except walking, just)” – although often, with the wind in your face it can fell like a lot faster, with the apparent winds being over 20 knots.

Jimmy managed to sort out all the engine problems, without the need of any assistance or any additional parts. Both tired, we decided to head to the beach, in the hope that we could get some sleep under a tree while Charlotte played happily in the sand with all her beach toys. It didn’t quite work out this way but we had a relaxing afternoon. We seemed to be the only English speaking people on the beach – everyone else French. We came back to the boat, had an early dinner and then Charlotte and Jimmy took a quick dingy ride into St Anne’s to get an ice cream – however, none of the shops would take US dollars and Jimmy had no Euro on him. This is a definite change from a few years ago – the Euro shop keepers no longer want the US peso. By the time they got back to the boat I was already in bed and we were all in bed by 7pm!

We stayed in St Anne’s / Marin a couple of days, and on Wednesday, left to do the last 20 miles to St Lucia (a short hop!). Because St Anne’s is in the SE corner of Martinique, the reward of the 1 hour motor east into the wind just before arriving at St Anne’s, was a better wind angle down to St Lucia (especially as the winds were now out of the NE). The winds and seas had increased quite a bit, but with the winds now coming off our port quarter, we had a great, fast sail, reefed main and full jib, and made it to St Lucia in about 3 hours. We put the fishing lines out again for the trip but needless to say, caught nothing.

The plan is to stay in St Lucia for about 2 weeks.

Antigua April 2009

2009-04-16T22:48:00.021-03:00

We arrived back to Antigua at about 5pm on Good Friday 10th April 2009, just in time for the Fore Deck Friday Happy Hour and the Easter Celebrations. Easter is a big weekend for all the locals to go out on their boats and/or go camping – it was just like the Cup Match holiday in Bermuda.

We spent the Easter weekend rafted up with Lewis and Eddy. Lewis had recently bought a big, powerful, loud, fast cigarette boat (Slingshot). About 1000HP and can go up to 80 mph!! He had recently driven it back from St Martin in 3 hours (beats our 14 hours!) He took us out for a ride on it – Jolly Harbour to Falmouth harbour in less than half an hour with roughish seas!! (versus our 3 hours!) – spot the ripples in Lewis’s cheeks from the wind/speed.

Easter morning Charlotte and Eddy did an Easter Egg hunt on the beach – Jimmy headed to the shop to get the real Easter bunny chocolate (no traditional chocolate smarty Easter eggs here – the closest is an Easter bunny or Cadburys cream egg.) We then headed up to Bird Island, on the NE coast, for a couple of days – Heat Wave 2.5 hours, Slingshot less than half hour…. Some of Eddy’s friends were spending the weekend there on boats. Many of the locals were also camping on Bird Island – complete with generators and the rumor is 42 inch TV!! All the tents reminded us of the Bermuda holidays.

We spent a couple of nights there – Charlotte and Eddy enjoyed all the swimming, fishing and ski-bobbing. Also went diving for conchs – amazing – we found about 5 around the boat in 5 minutes. One of the other boats collected about 25 conchs, and cooked them up into a very tasty conch curry – delicious but a lot of work getting them out of the shells, cleaning, pounding and preparing. Conch are very rubbery and tough and require a lot of pounding to tenderize them. Ours were thrown back in the water –Jimmy said he’d prefer to buy it than do all that work!!

Come Tuesday morning, the previously packed bay was now empty as everyone headed back to work. We headed back to Jolly Harbour after our 3 day vacation!!

Last Easter Charlotte had met and played a lot with Barnaby, also 5, who was on holiday from England. They had been emailing the last few months as he was coming out again over Easter. Unfortunately, it turned out they were leaving on Wednesday but we managed to catch up with Barnaby and his parents, Lucy and Jason, Tuesday night for dinner and then on Wednesday they came over to the boat – Charlotte took Barnaby out on her ski Bob – his words after were “That was Total Wicked!”

We then had a couple of days catching up on jobs (including schooling!). We went to check up on the geocache that we had hidden back in February, under the decking at the Fore Deck Bar, only to find that it was not there anymore! Scrambling on hands and knees under the bushes and decking, it was definitely gone. One person had logged a find of the cache in mid March, but that was it. On our last day we replace the geocache - hopefully this one will last a bit longer.

On our last night in Antigua, the Fore Deck Bar, at Jolly Harbour Marina, had a good band playing, with a packed crowd, but, as we were sailing the next day, we were sensible and were back on the boat and in bed before 10pm. By 10am the next morning we had left the anchorage and were heading south to Guadeloupe.

St Martin - 2nd-9th April 2009

2009-04-08T02:07:00.007-03:00

We arrived in Simpson Bay in the early hours of Thursday 2nd April. One of the places we feel comfortable going into at night time - it's a big open bay that is relatively shallow til quite far out, so you can anchor quite far out before having to deal with all the boats anchored closer to shore. We also have our bearings for coming in at night time: the 4 white lights, next to the green lights off Kevin's dads house.....

Next morning we woke to find ourselves 2 boats away from Joe and Shawn on Libertas! - hadn't see them since leaving Barbuda.

Thursday was taken up with checking in at customs and immigration, jobs etc. Harmony came over to play with Charlotte later that afternoon.

Friday a nice leisurely lunch with Joe and Shawn before heading out for the weekend - over to Orient Bay - about a 2 hour motor-sail. Orient is probably one of the nicest beaches on the island, over on the French side, but hence has become very busy and a hot spot for the cruise ship passengers. We anchored off the beach and felt like we were on vacation!! On Sunday we even went to the beach for the day and rented chairs!! Despite what you may think, we hardly spend any time just sitting on a beach. Charlotte and I got our hair braided, we had lunch at one of our favourite restaurants Kon Tiki (that has been there for years) and then enjoyed a couple of rum punches relaxing on the beach.

Back to Simpson Bay Monday afternoon, after our weekend away!! Joe and Shawn were having a party on their boat that night and Charlotte had a sleepover at Harmony's.

We left St Martin at about 3.30am on Good Friday and arrived Antigua 13 hours later. We managed to get the jib out towards the end but most of the trip was a motor job as the wind was almost on the nose.

US Virgin Islands - March 26th - April 1st 2009

2009-04-07T23:50:00.012-03:00

We had a lovely 4 hour sail from Virgin Gorda, down the Francis Drake channel, between Tortola and the small islands to the south, past St John's and into Charlotte Amelia, the main town of St Thomas. As we drove into the anchorage, we had a pleasant surprise to see Serephim - we had thought they were still in BVI's but it turned out they decided to take advantage of a nice weather window and get moving (they are heading up to USA). Charlotte was happy especially as we fixed up a play date for her the next day with Jack and James on their boat.

One of the main reasons for visiting St Thomas was because Jimmy's friend Wade was coming into Charlotte Amalia for the day on a cruise ship. He came over to the boat with his brother and sister-in-law for lunch - we got out the smoked salmon but don't think we were any competition for the food on the ship!! Thanks Wade for the slide show and video below:

St Thomas is much more built up and commercialised than the BVIs. Its owed by USA and with that came all the benefits, that we enjoyed - big stores, cheaper prices, more availability and choice, fast food, cheap fuel, .... You would never guess how excited we were to go and stock up at K Mart!! also 3 trips to Wendys and dinner one night "All you can eat Shrimp" at Hooters!!

St Thomas was the "Turn around" point, we had come as far north as were were going this year. On Wednesday April 1st we left St Thomas about 8am to sail back to St Martin, starting our journey back south. We had to motor all the way as the wind was on the nose, and arrived St Martin 16 hours later at midnight.

BVIs: Thursday 19th - 26th March 2009

2009-04-07T22:44:00.019-03:00

We stayed in the British Virgin Islands for a week, after our sail up from St Martin. We had a nice couple of days up in Virgin Gorda Sound, where Charlotte got to enjoy playing with her friends on Serephim and Sea Walk and taking them on her ski-bob.

The largest sailing yacht in the world, the Maltese Falcon, treated us to a great sunset departure, under full sail through the Sound. It seemed like everyone in the anchorage had their cameras out!

Charlotte then said good bye to her friends on Serephim and Sea Walk, as they decided to take advantage of the south winds and sail up to Anagada. We then "bumped into" Bob and Betsy Bailey from Bermuda again in Virgin Gorda.

On Monday we headed to Road Town on Tortola to meet up with Shelagh who was visiting for a couple of days from Bermuda before delivering a boat back to Bermuda. We did a quick whirl wind tour showing her the sights - snorkeling at the Indians, over-nighting at the Bight on Norman Island - this is where the infamous "Body Shots" take place at the Willie Ts Pirate Boat. Having taken up the closest mooring to the Pirate Barge, Shelagh and I were all set for a night out, with Jimmy babysitting, but by the time we finished dinner, we both sheepishly admitted that we were tired and happier just enjoying a glass of wine on the boat, a chat and an early night!! Up nice and early the next morning - 2 hour motor up to the Baths and we arrived just in time to get one of the last moorings at 9am!! (we even had to race someone to it!)

By lunchtime we were in Spanish Town and Shelagh was dropping her bags off at Big Bear - the boat she was sailing back to Bermuda.

That night Shelagh had kindly offered to cook us dinner on Big Bear. We were in the anchorage just outside the marina - unfortunately, the weather blew up and strong winds started coming from the west (almost unheard off). As we were anchored not far off the coast, we ended up with engines on for a few hours to stop us turning round and onto the rocks. Finally, in order to get some sleep Jimmy hunted out the stern anchor (last used about 3 years ago!) and we set this to keep up from going up on the rocks. Unfortunately we were not able to leave the boat so had to cancel dinner. Throughout the night boats around us were pulling up and resetting anchors.

The next day we checked out of the BVIs and sailed to the US Virgin Island, namely St Thomas.

The Baths – Virgin Gorda

2009-03-21T13:51:00.009-03:00

The day after arriving BVI, we went exploring The Baths with s/v Sea Walk and s/v Serephin. Charlotte was in her element leading the trail for the other 4 kids (ages 2,3,4 and 5). Despite have been to the Baths many times before, we are always amazed by the beauty of the rock formations. The Baths consists of huge granite boulders not seen anywhere else in the Caribbean. There are many pools, grottoes and caves, with a trail running through them – in many places the water rushes in and out like a natural hot tub. A beautiful natural child’s playground – and the adult love it too.

That afternoon we headed up to Virgin Gorda Sound with the other 2 boats. Perfect wind conditions for a nice comfortable sail. After arriving Charlotte made pina coladas for everyone (virgin of course). We saw the Maltese Falcon (largest sailing boat in the world) again sailing into the same anchorage - they must be on the same circuit as us!!

British Virgin Islands

2009-03-21T13:49:00.002-03:00

The BVIs consist of the main island of Tortola, surrounded by many smaller islands. It is a British Colony, with its own government, and is a growing international offshore business centre (similar to Bermuda and Cayman Islands).

If anyone was looking to charter/bareboat a boat for a week, we would always recommend the BVIs. It’s probably one of the best cruising grounds worldwide, with steady easterly trade winds, great physical and geographical make up, numerous sheltered harbors, great diving and snorkeling. The sailing is not too challenging, with the outer islands providing some protection from the seas, and plenty of different islands to visit within a very short range. Day sailing can consist of a short one hour sail to another nearby island or a few hours sail to the other end of the island chain. Each time we get back to the BVIs it strikes us again how beautiful the islands are.

Sailing St Martin to British Virgin Islands –Thursday 19th March 2009

2009-03-21T13:44:00.008-03:00

2.30 am the alarm went off and by 3.15am we were on our way, sailing out of the anchorage at Simpson Bay. Light winds so we put up the main sail before picking up the anchor. The bay was well lit, which made it fairly easy working our way though all the boats at anchor / moorings in the dark –Jimmy up front with a powerful light if needed (which it wasn’t), me on the wheel and us conversing though our headsets.

About 10-15 knots of true wind from directly behind (5-10 knots apparent) so we motor-sailed all the way, keeping up a good speed of about 8 knots. Unfortunately conditions weren’t quite right to fly the (A-symmetrical) spinnaker but we did get everything charged, made lots of ice and had a very easy trip! Two other boats that we had recently got friendly with (s/v Sea talk and s/v Serefin, each with 2 kids aboard), also did the trip that night, leaving at midnight – we thought we might catch them up but with no real sailing involved, not the case (more a question of how many revs on the engine!) however, we did have VHF radio contact with them on the way. The seas were relatively calm at only about 3 feet.

By 4am we were well on our way and started to take watches – I went on watch 4-6am so Jimmy could get some sleep and then he took over from 6am and I got a couple of hours sleep.
Night time motoring is mainly just a case of keeping an eye out for other boats. The cruise ships light up the horizon and are usually playing around, zig zagging back and forth, trying to kill time, when they have about 12 hours to do a trip from one island to the next, that would take them 3 hours or less. By looking at the navigation lights of the other boats you can work out which way they are going (and using the radar to see how far away they are, as it’s very difficult to judge distances at night). With the ipod playing in the cockpit, it’s quite a relaxing time (until Charlotte woke up at 5.30 am, coming up in time to see the sun rise). We passed about 8 boats going in the opposite direction during the trip.

The majority of the motor sail was in the daytime. We put the fishing lines out but as per usual, no luck again (although we did remember to take the cork off the hook this time!) Interestingly a lot of people (that do often catch fish) have mentioned about there being fewer fish around to catch this year. And we have definitely seen far fewer dolphins (none so far) than prior years (although Jimmy and Charlotte did see a whale about 50 feet from the boat on a prior trip.). Effects of global changes? – Definitely been cooler this year (I’ve been using a blanket at night, with the hatch close – normally it’s no sheet and hatch open).

Just over 80 miles later, we arrived 1.30pm into Virgin Gorda, about 10 hour trip and picked up a mooring at the spectacular Baths. Once again we were reminded how beautiful and spectacular the British Virgin Islands are. We took the dingy and cleared in at Customs and Immigration in Spanish Town, popped in to see our friends who had also sailed up, and were back at the boat by 5pm enjoying a sunset drink with the beautiful back drop of the Baths. By 8pm we were all asleep! It’s very dark here and so a fantastic star show.

Leaving St Martin

2009-03-18T15:39:00.016-03:00

After two and a half weeks, we are leaving St Martin about 3am tomorrow morning (Thursday 19th March) to sail to the British Virgin Islands. It’s about 100 miles and this will give us the optimal daylight sailing time, whilst still ensuring that we will arrive before dark on Thursday. We are heading west so with any luck we will be able to fly the pink spinnaker tomorrow on one of our rare down-wind sails.

We are now doing the last bits and pieces before leaving:

Jimmy is doing the regular engine checks before doing a passage;
Relevant emails sent to the “emergency contacts” in case we have to abandon the boat (we have an EPIRB on board that, if set off, will notify the coastguard of our position to come and find us!);
I’m doing the last bits on the internet (not sure how long before I get a decent connection again) – including trying to update this blog;
Last bits of USA mail given to Paul and Leonor to take back to USA (to avoid the 6 weeks it took Jasmine’s birthday card to reach UK from here last year!);
Last bits of shopping (prices and availability here significantly better than many islands in BVI);
Charlotte is having a last play with Harmony, and we will soon head to the beach with some of the other kids she's made friends with.

Below are some pictures of our time in St Martin:

We had a good time in St Martin, although never made it over to the French side. Highlights included:

Getting Charlotte’s cast taken off;
a visit from Tommy, Lisa and Haley – always a lot of fun;
From 2009-03 St martin
Catching up with Paul and Leonor from NY, on their annual 3 week trip to their timeshare (we seem to always be here at the same time and almost feel part of their “timeshare” regular group!);
From 2009-03 St martin
Annual Heineken Sailing Regatta;
Charlotte catching up with her friend Harmony and making new friends with kids on other boats (some also going to BVI tonight so will meet up again) – a favourite meeting place was the jungle gym at McDonalds (One of the few islands with McDonalds) – very good WiFi meant the parents could catch up on internet / banking etc while the children played. Below Charlotte with Katie, Haley and Harmony:

About St Martin

2009-03-18T15:27:00.001-03:00

St Martin is an interesting, unique island as it is shared by two nationalities, using 4 languages, 3 currencies, 2 electric systems (110 and 220V), 2 governments etc. It is barely 7 miles in each direction, 37 square miles, with a population of about 75,000. There is a charming story, completely unsupported, that the French and the Dutch were so civilized that, rather than fight over the island, they had a French man armed with a bottle of wine walk in one direction and a Dutchman equipped with a flask of gin take the other. Where they met became the boundary and the French ended up with a bit more because the gin was stronger than the wine!

The “Treaty of Concordia” signed in March 1648 allows the free movement of people and goods across the borders. However, if you are on a boat you are officially meant to check out of one “country” and then into the other “country” if you decide to sail around to an anchorage on the other side of the island. In prior years not too much notice has been taken of this, but in the last couple of years they have become stricter on this, in particular the Dutch, who have started charging much high check-in and anchorage fees.

The fluxuating US$ / Euro exchange rate continues to cause mismatching in pricing within the island. The French side operates in Euro, the Dutch side on US Dollars (or the Dutch Naf which are linked at a constant rate). So how does a supermarket etc, that has stores on both sides, set their prices with the ever changing exchange rate!!?

St Martin is one of the most touristy islands, in particular with regards to the American market. (Due to lack of direct flights, there are few visitors from the UK, who tend to frequent islands serviced by BA and Virgin such as Antigua, St Lucia and Grenada). There are casinos, many condos and hotels, nice sandy beaches and is a duty free (well now 3%) shopping centre. St Martin is a favourite place for boaters to hang out for a while due to availability and pricing of boat parts, provisions and services. Some seem to never leave though …..

Slide shows - Pictures taken in Antigua, Barbuda and St Martin

2009-03-13T12:45:00.009-03:00

Still trying to get to grips with this Blog stuff ....
Now I think I've managed to sort out slide shows of our photos.
Also been updating some of the prior logs so even if you've looked already, you may find some changes that i made today (Sunday 15th March).
We are still in St Martin and looking to head up to the British Virgin Islands towards the end of this week (about 100 miles) - mid week looks like a good weather window, although as it is a (rare) down wind sail, wind speed is not such an issue, as we will be going with the wind. With any luck we will be able to fly out (pink) spinnaker.

I have now moved all the slide shows to the relevant blog update.

Off at Last!!

2009-03-09T23:15:00.007-03:00

The long awaited day finally came when the cast came off! 6weeks after the fatal fall!! Here is Charlotte, outside the clinic in St Martin, with her friend Haley who was visiting from New Jersey.
We had an X-Ray taken 2 days later, on the French side of St Martin and all looks OK

Arrived St Martin

2009-03-04T08:19:00.008-04:00

Now anchored in Simpson Bay, St Martin, watching as all the boats arrive for the Heineken Regatta which starts tomorrow (Thursday). Had an easy passage from Barbuda to St Martin on Monday. Not too much wind so we motor-sailed - left 5.30am and were anchored in Philipsburg by 3.30pm - 10 hour trip.

Charlotte has already hooked up with Harmony again, her South African friend who lives in St Martin. This is the third season they have known each other and, despite the age difference, they play very well and enjoy each others company.

The winds on Friday are going to be 10 knots or less and on Saturday and Sunday its going to increase up to 25 knots so looks for an interesting weekend of racing, with very varied conditions.

Sitting down here its hard to believe about the economic downturn with all these mega yachts (200 feet plus) all around us.

On Thursday Tommy, Lisa and 6 year old Haley arrived for a 5 day visit. Charlotte enjoyed Haley's company and we are finally getting over Tommy and Lisa's company!! (all good!)

Home schooling

The Heineken Regatta was crazy as ever, lots of winds and swells - they kept changing the courses - 6 boats were dis masted, there was a couple of T bones, dozens of blown out sails. We had one boat drag down on top of us one night - no damage just a 3am wake-up call - Jimmy went ballistic with the guy.

Sailing Antigua to Barbuda

2009-02-27T17:54:00.034-04:00

Friday 27th February, - we have just arrived in Barbuda after a great sail from Antigua.A prefect sail – best we’ve had in a long time - great wind direction and speed. The sail from Jolly Harbour to Barbuda was about 35 mile north. Winds moved slightly to the south of east, giving us a perfect 90 degree apparent wind angle. Wind speeds about 13-18 knots and seas only about 3 feet made for a perfect sail. We had all the sails up, and didn’t have to tack once and sailed right into 11 mile beach.We left at 9.30 am, just after Bob and Betsey who were heading to Montserrat, and arrived Barbuda at 2pm – went into the deserted bay and anchored up next to Joe and Shawn on s/v Libertas (who had sailed up to previous day). Very soon Charlotte had maintained her regular sailing position:

Monitoring the weather is part of daily life on a boat. Waiting a day or 2 for the right weather, can be the difference between a fantastic sail and an uncomfortable sail.

We stayed in Barbuda for the weekend, exploring the deserted beach and hanging our with Joe and Shawn. Barbuda is a small island, with very few inhabitants, and miles of white sand beaches - one of the few islands in the Caribbean that rivals Bermuda with their beaches.

We then headed off to the festivities of the Heineken sailing regatta in St Martin, and meeting up with some friends

We had a nice down wind sail to St Martin, bypassing one of our favourite islands - St Barths. Charlotte found a new bed on the spinnaker sail bag (which unfortunatly we were not able to use to due wind direction and speed - however, as we motorsailed we did get to charge the batteries, make lots of hotwater and watch DVDs all the way there!)

Still in Jolly Harbour – let’s explore by land not sea – February 19th-27th 2009

2009-02-27T17:29:00.030-04:00

As the winds persisted to blow, we stayed put on our mooring in Jolly Harbour and rented a car to explore by land (rather than sea). Although we have been to Antigua many times before, it’s still nice to drive around and explore (and get jobs done with the ease of a rental car rather than a bus or taxi).

First we headed across the island to Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour (built in 1745 as Britain’s main navel station in the Lesser Antilles) and met up with sailing friends from Bermuda, Bob and Betsy Bailey. They like us, and many others, were staying put in the anchorage, waiting for the winds to subside, rather than go out sailing and get battered. Next we found another geocache up at Fort Berkley, which overlooks the bay, and finally, headed up to Shirley Heights for the weekly Sunday BBQ - about 400 tourists/cruisers/locals go up to see the sunset and great views, whilst listening to a big steel band. As the night goes on, the steel band changes to a reggae band, the crowd becomes younger, and dancing continues till about 2am (so we’ve heard!). While watching the sunset, the massive sailing boat Maltese Falcon, sailed past, giving a nice photo op.

From Heat Wave - bobbing around in the Caribbean

On Monday, we used the car for some shopping (Charlotte got her first pair of high heeled shoes, but soon realized that they are not always the best shoes to wear!) and some sightseeing:
Devil's bridge.

Another 2 geocaches at Half Moon Bay:

As the winds started to subside, a dinner out with friends before going our own ways: Lewis and his son Eddie (who live in Antigua), and Joe and Shawn (sailing friends off S/V Libertas, a Leopard 47)

While eating dinner Charlotte lost her second tooth! She wrote another nice letter to the tooth fairy, who found her way to the boat in Antigua! Unfortunately she didn’t have any more pink fairy dust but did manage to find some nice little pink shoes for Charlotte’s Polly Pocket dolls! Charlotte woke us at 6.30am so excited to let us know that Tinkerbell had visited again!!

Subsiding winds and the boats started to venture out - Bob and Betsy made it over to Jolly Harbour from English Harbour, we finally left the mooring (after 18 days – a record I think!) and anchored out in the bay. Interestingly, people have been commenting how the water has been markedly colder and the winds stronger for longer this and last year. A blanket at night instead of an open hatch (everything is relative I guess!). Sunset cocktails on the beach for the first time this year.

Having done 3 of the 16 geocaches in Antigua and noting none nearby, we decided to set up a new Geocahce in Jolly Harbour “Relax on Deck at Jolly Harbour” – with the cache being hidden below the decking of the Fore Deck bar. We had to convince the “vetting committee” of http://www.geocache.com/ that, despite living 1,000 miles away, we would be able to maintain the cache (a job for the new geocachers “Blue Pirates” (a.k.a. Eddie and Lewis)), and they finally approved it.

Charlotte continues to do great with her arm in plaster – less than 2 weeks to go before the cast comes off (a cause for celebrations and a swim!!), although we often have to wrap it in a towel, to protect the wood on the boat from getting scratched by the pink fiberglass covering (especially when doing home-school). We have settled into home school, which tends to take up about 2 hours (plus breaks) each morning. One on one and working directly at that child’s level does mean that the actual teaching side can get covered in a far shorter time than the regular school day. Some days are better than others and a continual challenge is how to maintain Charlotte’s interest and attention for that length of time.

On Thursday, our last day in Antigua, we took Eddie, the avid fisherman, out trawling – we went out to the banks (where the water drops off sharply from about 70 feet to 700 feet) – supposedly a good place to catch fish … but we went hungry that night!! We have not been that successful with fishing over the years.

The Stanford crisis seems to have quietened down a bit. The Antiguan government have seised all of his assets in Antigua – The official story is to ensure that the employees get treated correctly. However, the skeptics view is that they seised them before the USA did, to protect them (and when it’s all over they will sell them back to him!!) Oh the corruption of the Caribbean!

Arrived Antigua

2009-02-19T23:16:00.014-04:00

February 10^th 2009 we were finally on our way – I kept Charlotte at home with me the day before traveling to ensure no further mishaps! For anyone not familiar with travel to the Caribbean from Bermuda, whilst it might appear to be relatively close (1,000 miles – probably 2.5 hours direct flight), unfortunately that’s not the way the planes fly!! 8.30am flight to New York and then, 7 hours later, we fly back over Bermuda en-route to San Juan! At 10pm we finally land in Antigua, tired but pleased to finally be on the boat. Jimmy and Tim were there to meet us at the dock (bar).

Jimmy had grown a beard to show Charlotte – we both made sure he shaved that off the next day!!

The boat was moored in Jolly Harbor – a nice civilised spot in Antigua, – a bit like a little gated community with bars, restaurants, shops, supermarket, swimming pool , beach. There are lots of villas there, many owned by Brits. This week is school half term in England so good to find a few children around the pool. Unfortunately the broken arm does mean Charlotte is unable to join in with the other kids swimming and playing on the beach. We constantly try to ensure that she doesn’t get it wet around the pool as I don’t savor the thought of going to an Antiguan hospital to get the cast redone. The doctor in Bermuda had put a pink fiberglass wrap around the plaster cast to protect it a bit more from the water.

At the weekend we went over to Lewis and Eddie's (who live in Antigua) for a BBQ and a “sleep over”.

Lewis and Eddie BBQing:

The following day we introduced them to “Geocaching” – the worldwide treasure hunt – we found a couple of caches near where they live:

Engine problems meant we have not moved from Jolly Harbor yet (and now weather problems have delayed our planned circumnavigation of the island at the weekend as the weather forecast is not good – 30 knot winds). The fuel injector that I brought down (sent from New Jersey to New York, then to Bermuda then carried to Antigua) was the wrong size - fortunately Lewis was able to rebuild/combine the new injector nozzle with the old housing (not an item we would be able to find on the island).

Joe and Shawn on s/v Libertas arrived in Antigua on Monday. This was the first time we had seen them since Jimmy’s birthday bash last May in St Lucia. Needless to say, in order to catch up, Jimmy and Joe had to go out for a very long lunch (till midnight). Both were “a bit” slow the next day.

We did a bus trip over to Falmouth harbor one day – main purpose to try and get a new part from the rigging shop – no such luck – need to bring in another unbroken one for them to make one …

There have been a couple of murders on the island recently. One a few months ago at a nice resort near here – someone broke into a room and shot a honeymoon couple. The thief was caught. Apparently Scotland yard were involved but withdrew as they still have the death penalty here in Antigua and it looks like they are up for hanging. Another murder more recently involved a yacht captain being shot 3 times. The original story sounded awful but local insights say it was drugs related, happened in a “drug area” and the guy was chasing the villan who had a gun (as jimmy said –growing up in Brooklyn, rule 101 – “do not chase someone with a gun” ). Also locals have not been too helpful to Scotland yard, brought in again, as they want to downplay it to drugs related as they do not want to further hurt the current struggling tourist industry.

The last few days the big news has been Allen Stanford, the rich Texas billionaire tycoon who "supposedly" has fraudulent activities. He’s been known in Antigua for a few years where he basically gave the island a lot (and the government officials no doubt) and in return set up probably the biggest washing machine in the world... and has residency here. In his offshore banks, he guaranteed investors over 8% return on their money – all sounds good until you try and get your money back - the FBI are now looking for him in relation to an $8billion fraud - he's in hiding (Jimmy offered him $20,000 a day to hide on the boat but he declined). Plus he has banks in Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador - all world class banking countries (not)!!? Antigua is known for having the worst banking regulations (or best depending on what side you are on!). For a small country it probably has as many banks as Switzerland!

As far as Antigua is concerned, most of Stanford’s activities are offshore so don’t affect the domestic side. However the Bank of Antigua is owned by Stanford, so there have been 300 yard lines outside the bank for people wanting to withdraw all their money by the suitcase load. Not helped by a statement from the Antigua and Barbuda Banking Authority that said that there is nothing to be worried about, but if people start to take out all their money it will cause instability (and then a problem) – so guess what? – this made even more people withdraw!! This was not helped when the email that sent out the press releases to all the bank customers (with all the email addresses professionally put in the “to” box for everyone else to see!!!) was then followed up with another email saying they were withdrawing the first email!! We will wait and see if all this might bankrupt the country.

While all this has been going on, the next island down, Guadeloupe (which we were hoping to visit) has been on a general strike for the last month - banks are closed, they ran out of fuel for cars/boats, all the shops are empty as people bought everything up - so the shops are closed and boarded up (there have been looting and arson attacks). A couple of days ago a union leader was shot and the airport is closed as staff are unable to negotiate roads blocked by burning barricades.

So much for the idyllic Caribbean! But we did get out of Bermuda just in time to avoid strong gales which knocked down trees and disrupted services.

We will look to stay in Antigua until the end of February and then head up to St Martin in time for the annual Heineken regatta.

Send us your news - we love to hear from you all, as we sit here bobbing on the waves.

Our local cell number in Antigua is 1-268-785-3893. Also the USA number 1-718-312-8511 should get forwarded to us whereever we are.

Start of sailing season 2009

2009-02-05T21:06:00.006-04:00

After a few delays on work that the boat yard was supposed to do over the summer, Jimmy finally got back to Heat Wave in Grenada on January 6th. A couple of weeks of getting jobs done and chasing up on boat yard workers, the boat was finally put back in the water a couple of weeks later. A few days later, Charlotte and I were due to fly from Bermuda, down to meet Jimmy. However, plans changed when Charlotte fell off a wall and broke her arm the afternoon before we were due to leave - instead of the planned big clean before closing up for 4 months, the evening was spent in Emergency.

Charlotte is fine, very used to getting around with a cast from her wrist to her upper arm (just as well as its on for 6 weeks!), with all the class mates signatures all over it (who were a bit surprised to see her back at school after all having said good bye!). However, the doctor wanted us to wait for a 2 week checkup / X-ray before leaving. We already have a doctor lined up in St Martin to take the cast off.

Change of plan - Jimmy (not wanting to stay a further 2 weeks in Grenada, and anxious to get sailing) sailed the boat with a friend from Grenada, to Antigua (with only a brief overnight stop in Bequia). He just arrived tonight and Charlotte and I will fly into Antigua on Tuesday (assuming all goes well with the Monday doctor's appointment)