January 31, 2007 - Young Island Cut, St. Vincent

If Barbuda was the hardest we’ve every worked to clear into a country, St. Vincent took the longest. We should have used the customs service provided by one of the taxi companies. Instead, we spent the afternoon waiting in line at the police station in Kingston to clear in with Immigration. So few yachts do this that it took a while for them to even find the right forms.

After getting hassled by taxi drivers (here’s a clue guys - if you cat call, invade my personal space and aggressively flirt with me when my husband isn’t around, then turn all polite and deferential when he is, the chances of either of us getting in your cab are next to nil) we along with 18 others, piled into a van built to take 10 passengers. Careening around turns and down hills as reggae music blared and air fresheners swung maddly from side to side, it was scarier (in a good way) than any amusement park ride, because the chances of death are infinitely greater.


The current rips through Young Island Cut, so rather than setting out a stern anchor, we took a mooring for two nights. This is getting to be an expensive habit with us. We may be cheap, but sometimes our laziness trumps our cheapness. Unfortunately, the bow pushed up against the mooring ball and overrode the mooring line several times in the night. So we left a bit of bottom paint on the mooring line and ball, which was then transferred to our bow above the waterline. We’ll have to clean it up when we get into nice clean harbor.

January 26, 2007 - January 30, 2007 - Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

We spent a few days in Rodney Bay getting the boat cleaned up for Suzy’s upcoming visit and working on some boat projects.
We were able to pick up our replacement grill grates at Island Water World (remember the Anguilla debacle?) and a bunch of other bits and pieces that we needed - including the shiny stuff in the picture above, which is meant to become an additional layer of insulation for our freezer.

In between boat projects, we enjoyed some rum punches and rotis at Jambe De Bois. They also have a very good book swap. The owner is involved with local kitty rescue group, so we donated some of Lenore's food stores to her.

A solid northern swell came in while we were anchored in front of Pigeon Island. We started rolling from the shore reverb, so we upped anchor and moved into deeper water. Sten went over to the windward beach near us to see if the surf was doing anything interesting, but it was too sloppy to bother with.

After a few days it was time to head south to pick up Suzy. We had a long day sail, with conditions that ranged from squalls to breezeless blinding heat, down the coasts of both St. Lucia and St. Vincent to travel from Rodney Bay down to Young Island Cut. But the scenery was stunning.

January 25, 2007 - Fort de France, Martinique

We had been planning to stay in Roseau for a few days, to use it as our base for exploring the Southern end of the island, but the lack of rental car had put a damper on our plans, and the noise from shore that kept us up most of the night was just a bit more than we were willing to put up with. So we headed down to Fort de France, Martinique.

I was skeeved out enough by the last anchorage we were in in Dominica (Roseau) to go to a "personal protection" store in Martinique and pick up some pepper spray. Actually, the sales lady didn't speak English, and my French is so bad that I very well may have purchased tear gas. Either way, I feel a bit safer sleeping with it next to my bed. We ended up striking out on finding a French press to replace the one that broke in Barbuda, but we were able to stock up on some more yogurt and fresh eggs, so after just one night we moved on down the chain towards St. Lucia.

January 24, 2007 - Roseau, Dominica

Last night while still in Pourtsmouth, Sten woke me up with calls of "Get up on deck!" As I grabbed something to throw on, I tried to figure out if (a) he was calling me to come see a meteor shower, (b) something was wrong with the boat, or (c) we were being boarded. I hit the decklights as I came up on deck figuring that if it was the latter, I'd throw some light on the situation. It turned out that a catamaran had dragged down on us and Sten was holding them off our bow with a fender. After that we decided we’d had enough of Portsmouth and headed down the coast.

We pulled into Mero, as a lunch anchorage, and went to see if we could dink up the Layou river. There was a sand bar blocking the entrance, so we pulled the dinghy over the narrowest bit of beach to the river mouth. We motored up the river a bit, but a quickly became too shallow, so we ended up paddling a ways. By “we” I mean Sten paddled and I rode on the bow looking for all the world like Cleopatra. The current was against us, so we only made it a little ways before turning the dinghy around and heading back to the river mouth. As we were approaching, some fishermen were running the sand bar. We paid attention to their path, and watched the sets to pick a good time to go for it. No worries. The dinghy dock at Mero is out of commission, so we moved on down to Roseau.

Roseau is a very steep anchorage, so we decided to pay for a mooring for the night. We tied up and went into town to try to arrange a rental car for the next day. We were followed for a ways by a very persistent beggar and several guys loitering in doorways offered to sell us pot. Roseau is the most run down town that we have been in so far and it started to feel quite creepy as the streets emptied out as twilight fell. After striking out on the rental car we came back to Mata’irea to find ourselves swinging into a boat that had been put on the mooring next to ours while we were gone. Luckily, the boat boy that manages these moorings monitors his radio, and we quickly moved to another mooring.

January 23, 2007 - Portsmouth, Dominica

Iles des Saintes would be our last French island for a while, so we took advantage of the excellent markets and bakeries and loaded up with bread, yogurt, smoked fish, pates and dried sausages before heading down to Dominica yesterday afternoon. Two boat boys came out to meet us before we could even see the harbor, but they quickly headed off after we told them that we planned to work with Lawrence, who had been recommended by Brewse and Tricia, cruisers we met back in the boat yard in Rhode Island.

We anchored behind Dagny, whom we knew from Bermuda and St. Maarten. Rea’s mother and son live in Dominica, so they had been on the island since December. We had a very fun evening aboard Dagny catching up with them.

Today, we went on two tours with Lawrence. First was a tour up the nearby Indian River, with a 7am pickup. It was pretty special, with large overhanging trees and lots of bird life. Portions of Pirates of Caribbean 2 we filmed on the river, so we’re interested in seeing that movie at some point. You could hear parrots calling in the distance but we did not see one. We were the only boat on the river until we got back to the entrance. The boats are rowed so it is very peaceful and no pollution.

After that we headed up into the mountains to do a nature trail and then a waterfall. The walk was through an old growth tropical rain forest with huge trees (the canopy looked to be 200' feet high) including giant mahogany trees. Pretty neat. Even better was the drive up to the trailhead which passed plantations of all different crops including banana, pineapple, orange, nectarine, yams, breadfruit, avocado, mango, lime, sugarcane, papaya, grapefruit and coffee. Lawrence would stop the car every few miles and get out and pick some fruit. He said that there is so much fruit on the trees that the owners do not mind if you take a few. In addition there were many wild trees including the cocoa tree which was bearing fruit. Basically you pick the fruit, break it in half to reveal a seed mass and then suck on the seeds which are coated with a jelly with a complex, slightly sweet, almost passion fruit flavor. Inside the seeds is the raw somewhat bitter cocoa from which chocolate is made. Very cool. It would be very hard to go hungry on this island.

The waterfall was spectacular, buried in the jungle and we were again the only ones there. The water plunges 150 feet into a small rock pool. It was like something you see in a picture book or a Disney movie with all kinds of vines hanging down and huge trees clinging to the cliff around the falls. The falls generates its own wind and it was actually quite violent. Sten went swimming and found that he could not be closer than a few yards from the main flow of water. In other areas he could get between the falls and the rock wall behind the falls which was also something. Unfortunatly, our camera is on the fritz so we have no pictures of this amazing day.

We came back to the boat and enjoyed a round of BBC's for our sundowner. This is the first place we've been where we've seen everyone put their dinghy on deck at night. Did this trend start because the island is so impoverished, or because there were all these "boat boys" paddling around on windsurf boards trying to sell yachties fruit, ice, pot, and trash removal services, or because there really are more thefts here than in other anchorages?

The thing is, with our boats we have so much more in terms of material possessions than 99.9% of the people on a lot of the smaller, less developed islands. We look rich to them. To us, we don't seem wealthy, not compared to many of the people we know back home or guests on any of the super yachts that are anchored near us, but to the people on these islands, we are rich. What's more, our dinghy motors could be either a quick sale for cash for them or even a lease on a new line of work (fishing or hauling tourists around). So we understand the attraction and the temptation. And so we haul our dinghy up on deck each night too.

January 20, 2007 Iles des Saintes, Guadeloupe

Happy Birthday Alena and Suzy!

We didn’t have really high hopes that we’d find a bar here showing the Pats game, but we gave it a shot anyway.

I’ve apparently been spending too much time talking to nobody but Sten. I spent a good hour in a bar the other night attempting to discuss the French political structure as it related the governance of France’s overseas territories with a very patient Frenchman. It was, how do you say, painful? At least it was for his girlfriend and Sten as they listened to our conversation.

We had dinner one night at a local spot and enjoyed fried little balls of okra and some tasty blood sausage - now there are three words that you don’t see together that often.

As we wandered all over the island, we eventually found ourselves at a fort overlooking the harbor. It was crawling with giant iguanas. On our way back into town we passed a big blue iguana sunning itself on top of a wall, about a foot from anyone walking by on the side of the road. They look kind of like dragons, and it was a bit startling to find ourselves so close to one.

Lenore has taken to lounging on our map of the Eastern Caribbean. She seems to be asking “Where next?” I think if we could explain it to her, she would be relieved to know that she will be flying home from the Grenadines with Suzy.

January 19, 2007 - Antigua to Guadeloupe

Jolly Good. After a few days of hanging out in English Harbor, enjoying museums, a laundry, bookstores, roti stands and pizzerias, it was time to make tracks. We had a stunning sail down to Guadeloupe from Antigua: perfect tradewind sailing, 15 - 20 knots across the beam, easy line of sight navigation with Antigua behind us, a smoldering Montserrat to starboard, and Guadeloupe dead ahead. It was easily the best day of sailing that we've had on Mata'irea. And I was finally smart enough to remember to take a Stugeron before we left, so that I could enjoy the whole thing.

We’re anchored in Deshaies. We met a couple from Vancouver who had come to Guadeloupe to practice their French. They are the first non-cruiser tourists that we’ve talked to in weeks. And they were kind enough to lead us over to the grocery, where we stocked up on cheese, yogurt and baguettes. When the folks from Vancouver asked us how long we planned to do this, we experienced, for the first time since leaving Boston, that old familiar look of stunned confusion as they wrapped their minds around the idea of living on a boat for several years.

We spent our only full day in this harbor visiting a botanical garden with tropical plants from all over the world. As we looked at the species labels we thought about all the places that we are going to visit over the next few years. Even beyond the borders of the garden, the island is full of flowing plants and hummingbirds feasting on flowering trees. The lush landscape is so different than the rather arid islands that we’ve visited so far.

At sundown on each of the two nights that we spent in this harbor, a man on a swiss-flagged catamaran heralded the sunset by playing taps on one of those long (approximately 10 feet) horns that you see in the Riccola commercials. It was a hauntingly beautiful sound. The anchorage did not acknowledge the performance on either night. Maybe everyone was just letting the sound wash over them.

January 14, 2007 - English Harbor, Antigua

Bloody hell. After clearing the coral heads around Coco Point, we had what should have been a simple close reach passage from Barbuda to Man O’ War Point on the windward side of Antigua. Lenore and I were both seasick for the duration. I spent much of what should have been a beautiful day sail hunkered down in my bunk. You would think that by now I would have learned to put on my seasickness bands or take a Stugeron. I only came up on deck as we reached the windward side of Antigua to help Sten take off the mainsail cover.

As we rounded Man O’ War and headed downwind along the south coast of Antigua, a squall opened up on us. Drenched, steering and concentrating on keeping us from jibing while Sten manned the mainsheet, ready to dump the main if the windward helm got to be to much, I managed to forget all about being seasick.

After a quick tour of English Harbor, and two failed anchoring attempts, we were anchored, the dinghy was launched, and we were showered and changed. With a road beer for each of us, we hiked up to the top of Shirley Heights for the Sunday night barbeque. After some tasty ribs and pecan pie, we joined the jump up as the steel drum band ceded the stage to a reggae band. Good times. As an added bonus, we didn’t break either of our uninsured necks on the way back down the trail at the end of the night.

January 13, 2007 - Leeward side of Coco Point, Barbuda

This morning, Sten was in the cockpit finishing his coffee when a large eagle ray came way out of the water not three feet from the boat. He thinks that it was feeding on the minnows that seem to take shelter next to the hull.

The swell had been building since yesterday and it got quite uncomfortable in the night with both pitch and roll and squalls. We were considering moving someplace more sheltered, but were motivated to move when our French press went flying off the counter and shattered into the sink. We quickly got everything put away and the boat ready to go.

Sailing down the leeward side of the island, inside the reef takes you over a very shallow shelf. With the building swell we were concerned about getting hit broadside by a breaking wave, but figured that the reef was far enough away that we could alternatively present our bow or stern to the waves if we needed to. It was a little hairy, but we’re heavy enough that we did okay. As we rounded the point, a charter boat passed us heading towards our old anchorage. 20 minutes later, most likely changing their minds after seeing the swell rolling into the shallows, they were behind us, following us to our next anchorage.

We anchored in front of a deserted hotel, that hasn’t been open for over a year. We’ve seen more abandoned resorts down here. The quickest way to lose money in the Caribbean appears to be trying to run a hotel.

January 11, 2007 - Codrington, Barbuda

We have never worked so hard to clear into a country. Low Bay is on the leeward side of the spit of land that provides the western boarder to the lagoon in the middle of Barbuda. The only town on the island, Codrington is clear across the lagoon. We had two options - hire a water taxi to take us across, or haul our dink across the spit and motor across. Being somewhat thrifty, we chose the latter.

So we motored down to what appeared to be the narrowest stretch of sand. We hauled the dink up beyond the surf line and climbed the rest of the way up the embankment to survey the task ahead of us. As we turned around we realized that the dinghy was now drifting out to sea. Sten quickly stripped off his clothes and dove in after it. I was paralyzed with laughter as I watched my usually modest husband swim out towards our dinghy, white butt bobbing along for all (the fish, me and a few birds circling overhead) to see. The great white hunter with his prize:

Once we’d dragged the dinghy across to the lagoon we were wondering what had possessed us to buy such a large one and complement it with such a heavy engine. Moments later, as we motored into the sharp wind chop in the lagoon we were glad we’d gone for such a solid set-up. We just need to get those dinghy wheels installed.

We hauled up our dinghy next to the local fishing boats (one of these things does not belong . . . .) and wandered into Codrington to clear into both Barbuda and Antigua.

After clearing in with Immigration, we were sent down to Mr. John’s house to clear in with Customs. As chickens scratched in his front yard we gathered on his front porch to fill out our paperwork and pay our fees. Afterwards we wandered around looking for lunch. Although it was only 11am, we were both hungry and thirsty from the dinghy pull. One of the officers from Immigration offered to walk us over to a local restaurant. We sat down to a simple but tasty meal of baked chicken and fried fish, in some much appreciated AC.


After lunch, and hauling the dinghy over the spit again, we both needed a swim. We went snorkeling on a spot of coral breaking a mile or so to leeward of where we were anchored. At first visibility was was not so great with somewhat limited visibility and a good sized surface chop. Fish life was strong but the coral was mostly dead from a hurricane. Sten saw a good sized reef shark (I’m glad I didn’t see it) and we both saw two large spotted eagle rays, which was a first for us, and very cool.

January 10, 2007 - Low Bay, Barbuda

Sten caught several fish (Spanish mackerel, we think) on our 14 hour passage from St. Maarten to Barbuda, so we’re looking forward to lots of good eating in the days ahead.

We picked our way through the coral reefs surrounding Low Bay to find ourselves anchored about half a mile from the nearest boat, along an 11 mile stretch of undeveloped beach (other than one small hotel that is still under construction). Perfectly stunning. And the perfect antidote to too many weeks in St. Maarten/St. Martin.

This is my kind of anchorage.

January 3, 2007 - January 9, 2007, Simpson Bay, St. Maarten

We came back to Simpson Bay (again, anchoring outside the lagoon) to see if our missing packages from home have caught up with us. We were lucky enough to get one, but the other appears to be lost in transit.

On Wednesday, Sten was doing a bit of boat work and realized that we had a crack in the chain plate for our port backstay. See if you can spot it in the picture below.


Sten took it to the riggers, and they promised to have two new ones made by Friday. We're both frustrated by having to be here longer than necessary.

We’re so sick of St. Maarten and St. Martin. Don't get me wrong, they certainly serve their purpose. The provisioning is fabulous. And if you need to do boat work and do some damage to your wallet at chandleries, we can’t think of a better spot. But, we can’t imagine how people spend years anchored in this cesspool.

One night at Shrimpy’s we heard a guy boast that the only time he’d left the lagoon in two years was to spend one night in the harbor on the French side. A few weeks ago at a flea market, we met a woman who had spent the past seven years in the lagoon. We were excited when we thought she might be able to tell us something about Anguilla or St. Bart’s. But she explained that they hadn’t visited any of the other islands in that time. We were stunned. Are these people “cruising”? Are we? We’re certainly all living aboard, but other than that, we seem to be engaged in two very different activities.

This enforced idle has given us another opportunity to knock a few more items on our punch list. Check out Sten’s beautiful first splice:

This is why friends don’t let friends buy combination locks for their dinghy chain:


So we replaced it with a key lock.

On Friday, the riggers didn’t have the new plates done. So we’re stuck here for a few more days. We’re both really frustrated, and getting a bit testy about having to spend any more time here. There is so much of the Leewards that we want to see before we meet up with family and friends in the Grenadines in February. So, we decided to do what we do best: go to the beach.

On Saturday morning we climbed onto one of the local buses and headed towards the beach, not really knowing exactly where to get off. As we drove past a park-like area that could have had a beach just beyond it, the driver assured us that he was taking us to the beach. He dropped us off and we followed a security guard who pointed us towards the beach access path. As we reached the beach we discovered that we’d been taken to the nude beach. After the week in St. Barts we were somewhat adjusted to seeing naked people, so we decided to make a go of it.

As we wandered past the chairs full of lounging people with no tan lines, we found a nook in the cliffside where we could hang out without being confronted by so much nudity. What can I say, we’re prudes.

Late Tuesday afternoon, our new plates were finally done by the riggers. The delay turned out to be fortuitous. The wind, which usually blows at least 15knots from the east or north east, had died down so we could make our way due east to Barbuda. We had thought that we were going to have to skip Barbuda, and miss the opportunity to see its legendary beaches. Instead, we had been planning to head south instead and do Saba, Nevis, and Statia. With this break in the prevailing weather patterns we decided to take the opportunity to do an overnight passage (our first since the Bermuda to St. Maarten run), motoring to Barbuda.

While Sten went to pick up the plates I cleared us out of customs and did some last minute provisioning for our upcoming week. After putting the dinghy on deck, getting everything stowed for passage, and having dinner, we left for Barbuda at 10pm.

December 26, 2006 - January 2, 2007- Anse du Colombier, St. Bart’s

We’re anchored in beautiful bay, just about a mile from the main harbor of Gustavia. On our first afternoon here we hiked over to some beaches on the windward side. They really are stunning, and we could understand why St. Bart’s is such a renowned holiday destination. It is apparently the place to be for the Christmas holidays. The entire Caribbean charter fleet appears to be here this week. And we’re here to check them out.

There are hundreds of boats anchored around Gustavia, including some of the largest mega yachts in the world. Each day a dozen or so visit our beautiful anchorage, then scurry back to anchor off the main harbor again for the evening. I don’t quite understand why they don’t stay here. The only one that does stay night after night is Limitless, on the engine system of which one of Sten’s coworkers at CAT in Indiana spent months working.



Luckily for us, these boats occasionally provide us with some very good entertainment. I like to call this little routine “the anchor dance.”



The M/V Barchetta seems to have wrapped one of their anchor chains around the other while setting both of its anchors. So one of the crew climbed onto the anchor trying to unwrap the chain. As he lost his footing and fell into the water we gasped, certain that he had impaled himself. But he appeared to be fine as he repositioned himself on the bulbous bow and worked away on the tangle. After they managed to untangle the mess, the deck crew spent the rest of the morning doing anchor drills - punishment perhaps?

Another great source of entertainment is the bareboat charter boats that come bombing into the anchorage, courtesy flags all out of place. Everyone on the moored or anchored boats tense up to watch these guys maneuver. We had a guy anchored near us with a big old glory flying from his starboard stay, and a pirate flag off the backstay. So, he’s telling the world that he thinks he is in a US territory and that he hails from the land of the pirates?

A quick lesson: the flag of the country you are entering hangs from the starboard stay, below the first spreader. If you haven’t cleared in yet, the yellow Q flag goes below it. Any yacht club or cruising club burgees, or flags showing the nationality of the crew hang from the port stay. The flag of your country of registry flies from the stern. And there is never any excuse for flying the flag of your home team, particularly if that team is the Eagles, because that's just sad, or the Yankees, and if I have to explain that to you, then you clearly aren’t from New England.

Hawksbill turtles hatch on the shores around here and a good number seem to have stuck around. Whenever we’re in the cockpit we see them surfacing for air. After a few days of snorkeling I happened across one that was feeding on the bottom. I spent about 30 minutes hovering 30 feet above him, watching him feed. Twice he surfaced to take a few breaths before diving back to the bottom. There were three remoras hovering around him as he fed, surfaced and dove - like his own little entourage.

We ventured into Gustavia a few times to wander through the shops and have a few meals off the boat. The cheeseburgers at Le Select really are excellent - I understand how they could have inspired Buffet to write Cheeseburger in Paradise. We had one rather good meal at Eddie’s, one of the more reasonably priced places in town. We were amused when the folks at the table behind us were so pleased with their $200 bill for a family of four, two of which were under the age of four. Christmas week in St. Barts can throw off your perspective in so many ways.

There is a race around the island each year on the 31st. As Jake on Avalanche put it, if you have a rating you should do it just to get your ass kicked by the fastest yachts in the world. We don’t have a rating, so Sten went out in the dink to watch Ranger and Endeavor fly by him.

On New Year’s Eve we anchored among the fleet off of Gustavia so that we could watch the fireworks. We went into town thinking that we would have dinner at the little Vietnamese shop, but even they had gotten into the price gouging and were offering a 70 Euro fixed price dinner. So, back to Le Select we went, where we had tasty burgers and a terrific time people watching. Entire families, including little kids, were out enjoying the night. After a bit of dancing, we went back to the boat in time to watch the fireworks.

At the stoke of midnight the fleet, lead by Lone Ranger, began sounding their fog horns. It was a haunting, mournful wail, which seemed all the more sorrowful after the festivities of the evening.
During the evening the wind died, and all of the boats began hanging off of their anchor chains in the most haphazard way. So before we could swing into anyone, we upped anchor and headed back to our little bay. As we passed Rising Sun, currently the biggest yacht in the world (there is a basketball court on the aft deck), she began doing a laser light show off of her top deck. Crazy.

In the morning, we were enjoying our coffee in the cockpit when we noticed the rather seaworn looking yacht next to us getting ready to sail off its mooring. Assuming that the couple on deck had a few miles under their belts, I turned to Sten and said “I have to give them props for that. Nobody sails off their mooring anymore.” No sooner had I said that than we realized that the couple on board had no idea what they were doing. The main was sheeted in completely and they were bearing down on us. Sten shouted at them to ease their main and I scrambled to the stern rail to untie a fender in time to fend them off, but I couldn’t get it loose before they crashed into us. Luckily, our pushpit was stronger than their pulpit, which lifted right out of their deck. We only sustained minimal damage to our caprail.

What we couldn’t believe was that they seemed to have every intention of continuing to sail out of the harbor. Sten hopped into the dink to chase them down and get their information. Of course, it turns out that they had borrowed the boat from a friend and had no idea if it was insured or not. When Sten asked him why he sailed off the mooring in a crowded harbor if he didn't know what he was doing, the guy who was driving offered up the excuse that his engine had died. Couldn’t they have asked for help? We certainly learned a valuable lesson about not judging the skills of the crew by the appearance of the boat. But still, I wouldn’t go so far as to assume that the guy in the charter boat flying the pirate flag knows what he’s doing.

December 25, 2006, Ile Fourche

We spent Christmas day reading and swimming. Sten hiked to the peak to check out the windward side. His descriptions of the view and the birds soaring below him made me wish that I had torn my head out of my book long enough to go with him. As he described the number of boats anchored around Gustavia Harbor I had trouble fathoming it, and I wondered where we would find room to anchor.

In the afternoon I snorkeled along the submerged walls of the crater. The beauty here is stark. The reward for your explorations isn’t pretty colorful corals and fish, rather it is a vision of the powerful and unforgiving seismic forces that created this little island.


For dinner we grilled up fish steaks and served them with a mango and black bean salad. There was meant to be avocado in the salad, but we didn’t have any that were ripe.

We both love to cook. The catch 22 of our situation is that we have all the time in the world to read cookbooks (we have more than a dozen with us) and a reasonably functional galley (despite the challenges of the easy bake oven), but we are usually either no where near a grocery when we realize that we don’t have all the ingredients necessary to make the recipe that seems most tempting to us, or if we do have a grocery near by, it doesn’t have the ingredient that we’re looking for (be it something as exotic as lemongrass or mundane as half ‘n half or red onions) in stock. So we’re forced to be creative.

We spent the evening watching the moon rise and talking - a fantastic wide ranging dialogue about the heavens and man’s relationship with them through the ages.

December 24, 2006 - Ile Fourche, off of St. Barthelemy

After a very tight upwind sail into steep seas we rounded the corner of Ile Fourche into a bay protected by the half sunken walls of a volcanic crater. As we approached Le Petite Ilet, off the northwest corner of the island, Sten began to haul in both of our fishing lines, which hadn’t seen a bite since the monster of the deep bit off his new lure on the passage down from Bermuda. As he hauled in the handline, something struck the line. Fish on!

Approaching the little harbor full of boats, we still had both sails up, and now a fish to land. I turned the boat into the wind (directly towards the anchorage), backed off the throttle, and below to grab some booze to pour over the fish’s gills to subdue it. Grabbing the first thing I laid hands on in the liquor cabinet (Bacardi - at least it wasn’t the last of our dwindling supply of Chinaca), I ran back up on deck. Sten had the fish on the aft deck.

We gave it its last rites with the Bacardi, and got our sails down and anchor set without incident. Before we cleaned it, we tried to figure out what we had landed. Our best guess was kingfish, but if anyone has a better guess, let us know. [Update: According to Bill, it is a cero mackerel]






We had sashimi and a bottle of Westport Rivers sparkling wine for Christmas Eve dinner, but the flavor of the fish was a bit strong for eating raw. After dinner, we exchanged gifts. We both gave each other a box of chocolates - Sten gave me truffles from Jeff de Bruges in Marigot and I gave him mint chocolates from Marks & Spencer in Bermuda. Sten also gave me a French phrase book, which should come in handy as we visit several French islands over the next month.

December 23, 2006, St. Martin

The boats coming into Marigot to pick up charter guests or restock their galleys are simply amazing. Maltese Falcon, Tom Perkins’s Perini with the aero rig, which was just launched this summer, is the most stunning of the bunch. With its three masts light up at night it has a sinister glow about it.

It seems as though every few days I’m writing about some malady, most of which are self inflicted. Last night I woke up with searing pain in my right ankle. I thought I had twisted it on the walk back from the refrigeration shop, but there was no sign of swelling or bruising, and this didn't feel like a sprain. After a few more stabs of pain I got up to take some Advil. It hurt no more or less standing on it than lying in bed. Completely befuddled, I went back to bed. But soon there were tears running down my cheeks as jolts of pain coursed through my right calf. Sten flicked on the light and looked at my ankle. Agreeing that it probably wasn’t a sprain, he went to grab the medical reference book out of our first aid kit. We’d previously read in Lin Pardey’s Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew that dehydration could cause cramps, but could they hurt so much? The fist aid book confirmed that the cause was probably dehydration, so I slugged back a Nalgene bottle full of Gatorade. The pain lessened a bit, and I was able to go back to sleep.

In the morning, the pain was back, so I grabbed Pardey’s book to see what she had to say about treatment options. It seems that dehydration depletes the body’s stores of salt. She recommended a few teaspoons of salt mixed with fruit juice. It was vile, but I got it down. This is a miracle cure - within 30 minutes, the cramps were gone. A few hours later, Sten began to cramp up too. He took the cure as well, with similarly quick results.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the shops in Marigot. I picked up a new bikini and Sten went in search of a Christmas gift for me.

December 22, 2006, St. Martin

We ran around doing errands today. Picked up the replacement oarlock for our dingy from Budget Marine and placed an order for the replacement grill grates from Island Water World, which we‘ll pick up next month in St. Lucia. We’re well aware that we aren’t going to see anything like these chandleries once we get past St. Lucia, so we’re stocking up on spares. From a local refrigeration shop we picked up a 30lb bottle of R134A to top up our refrigeration system. We’re both really fond of cold drinks, so we thought it good insurance against our refrigeration system going down in the middle of the South Pacific.

December 21, 2006, St. Martin

We came back to St. Martin from Anguilla today. Neither of us was interested in heading back into the lagoon with its fetid water. For a change of scene, we cleared in on the French side and anchored in Marigot Bay. We had our first brush with the legendary rudeness of French civil servants today. As I struggled with my seventh grade French to clear us in (how I wish I'd paid more attention in that class!), the gendarme manning the customs office refused to speak a word of English. One can not possibly live on an island this small, the businesses on the Dutch half of which operate in English, and not have a command of the English words relevant to their job. And then he wouldn’t lend me a pen to complete the forms. I hope the whole transaction made him feel very superior.

After soothing my ruffled feathers with an ice cream bar, we headed off to Cost U Less, the warehouse store in Phillipsburg, to stock up on more junk food and canned goods. At some point during the past few weeks we must have gotten over our hesitations about passage making. We’re loading the boat as though we’re planning to cross the Pacific. So far we have lockers full of such essential supplies as Oreos, Pringles and Gatorade.

December 20, 2006, Anguilla

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Anguilla’s regulations require that all boats purchase a cruising permit (to the tune of $100 a day) if they wish to anchor or moor anywhere other than Road Bay. And supposedly, these restrictions apply to dinghies and yacht tenders as well as the mother ships. As much as I want to be charmed by this island, that is putting a damper on it.

Sten and I have very different responses to rules and regulations. He obeys them. I’ve never met one the boundaries of which I didn’t want to test. So we looked at the cruising rules of this island in very different ways - he as a limitation, me as a challenge. We know that there is beautiful stuff here, we just have to find a way to get to it that we both can live with. I know that if I wait long enough, Sten will get sick enough of toeing the line to take a risk. This morning, our third in Road Bay, his patience expired and we set off in the dinghy to see how strictly these rules were enforced.

We dinked over to Little Bay to do some snorkeling and have a picnic lunch of pb&j - my specialty (and certainly safer than quiche). Pale cliffs filled with nesting migratory birds, Bermuda birds, tropic birds, and pelicans embrace a picture perfect turquoise bay. We picked up a mooring and I was in the water before Sten had put on his fins. Just below the surface were schools of thousands of silversides (small bait fish) that seem to move as if they were one organism, shimmering like so many diamonds as the school smoothly pulses below the surface. Occasionally, a predator would swim below them, forcing them to the surface, where they hang, suspended briefly just above the water, before plunging back below. Silver rain.

As I headed toward the submerged base of the cliff, I passed over a puffer fish with the cutest startled expression on its wide-eyed countenance. As I checked out the smaller tropical fish feeding among the coral, I was startled by what appeared to be divers crashing into the water around me. The first clue that they weren’t divers was that their fins were awfully small. The next was when they dipped their beaks below the surface to swallow great mouthfuls of bait fish. Once I realized that I was being dive bombed by pelicans, I couldn’t stop laughing.

Meanwhile, Sten had been exploring a cave, filled with bats, which he declared was pretty cool. As we returned to the dinghy for lunch, several local daytrip boats pulled into our perfect bay. They all ignored the sign that declared that there was “Absolutely No Anchoring Permitted” and promptly dropped their anchors. One took care to anchor in the sand, the others went ahead and anchored in the sea grass. Perhaps the Anguilla Fisheries Department should shift their focus from trying to prevent (or at least profit from) cruisers from visiting, and pay more attention to how the local boats treat the natural resources.

We headed back to Road Bay, but weren’t quite ready to climb aboard, so we grabbed the computer and headed to Roy’s to catch up on the rest of the world. While we were surfing the net we noticed that one of the couples near us (with the greatest age disparity between them) was receiving a delivery from the captain of their yacht. He maneuvered their tender into the light shore break to drop off a laptop and a bottle of wine. I turned to Sten to ask where our captain was with our bottle of wine, only to be befuddled about which of us was the captain. I sign our clearance paperwork as the captain. We tend to reach agreement upon all decisions (sail changes, anchoring, heading changes, etc) before acting on them. However, when we get in a jam, Sten takes the command position and I follow his instructions and heed his requests. There are just times when it makes sense for one person to be calling the shots. Still, I couldn’t convince him that with great power comes great responsibility, so we returned to the boat to have our wine.

With our tanks wicked low, and the transom riding high, Sten fired up the water maker to see if his installation worked. With a small hick-up (had to briefly stop production to remove the wrapper from the filter), it was a success. At 5:23pm Sten shouted “Woo Hoo - We’re making water!” It is fantastic to see his joy and pride in having worked through the challenges of the installation.

December 19, 2006 - 63.06W, 18.12N - Anguilla

On Sunday, December 17th, we cleared out of St. Maarten and sailed north to Anguilla. It was such a short sail that we didn’t bother to remove the mainsail cover, so we reached up to the island under jib alone. With the wind around 15 kts, we were making about 6 knots over the ground, but if it dropped below 12, our boat speed hovered around 4 kts. Rounding the western corner of the island, we found ourselves close reaching under steep cliffs. We tacked back and forth for an hour or so, enjoying watching birds diving for fish, but if we kept sailing, customs was going to close before we could make it to the anchorage. So, we turned on the engine, and pulled in just in time to clear in.

We anchored as close to the beach as possible so that we would have a short dingy ride to customs. After clearing in, we wondered down the strip of beachfront bars to figure out which one would be our source of internet access. Roy’s is the place. Here is a link to the webcam that shows the anchorage.

http://www.mycaribbean.com/panos/webcam_bg.html

What the cam doesn’t show is the commercial pier just in front of Roy‘s. Joan, the bartender, warned us that the barge docked at the pier would be unloading for much of the night so that it could be gone before the containership that was due to arrive the next morning pulled into the harbor. We returned to the boat for dinner and sat in the cockpit watching truckloads of dirt being removed from the barge. The racket kept up until 10pm, when the barge left, coming quite close to us. We were both on deck as it departed, to make sure that we didn’t need to pull in some anchor chain.

The following morning we awoke to repetitive series of horn blasts. The containership was loudly announcing its arrival. It took a few sets of blasts before we realized that they wanted us, and the rest of the boats anchored near the pier to move. Groggily, we upped anchor and moved as far from the pier as possible.

This rude awakening was the start of one of those days where nothing seems to go right. During the course of the day we lost several items off of the swim platform - my mask and snorkel, a cleaning cloth and a suction cup that we use to hold ourselves against the hull as we clean it. So far, we’ve found everything but the suction cup.

Sten was cooking up a storm down below - coleslaw, babyback ribs, corn bread and chocolate cake - working around the fact that we had run out of regular sugar, regular flour and unsalted butter. I came down to clean myself up from the hull cleaning, only to shoot myself in the eye with liquid soap.

When perched on the seat in our tub, the shampoo, conditioner and soap dispenser is at eye level. I yelled and stomped my foot in pain, but I couldn’t get out the words to tell Sten, who had come running, what had happened or how he could help. I was blindly digging in my eye, trying to remove the contact that had trapped the soap against it, and groping for the handheld shower nozzle, trying to flush my eye out. But the force of the stream was too much, so I asked for a cup. He dashed off, but was quickly back, bearing one of our plastic wine glasses from the galley, sloshing water all the way.

After tearing out my contact, and 15 minutes of flushing, I reemerged into the salon, looking for something to fill the wine glass other than water. Now blind in one eye, I offered to help him with the coleslaw. Knowing we were out of regular sugar, I reached into the deep storage to pull out some raw sugar. Too late did I realize that I had just added wheat bulgar to the dressing for the slaw. Sten brilliantly suggested that we strain the bulgar out of the dressing, which rectified the situation.

After a day cooking in the heat, Sten went to take a refreshing shower, only to have the shower drain in the aft head stop working again. We’ve had problems with it a few times now. The issue seems to be the on the discharge side of the pump.

After Sten put the ribs on the grill, he came back below to help clean up a bit from the cooking. We were both below when we heard a noise. Sten quickly realized what had happened. The grill, which is mounted on our stern rail, had rotated, dumping some of the ribs, and two of the four grill grates into the water.

Just another day in paradise.

After last night’s debacles, neither of us was really in the mood for the chocolate cake that Sten had worked so hard on. So today we had it for breakfast. It was like a scene out of a Bill Cosby comedy sketch. Flour, eggs, milk - yup, it’s a breakfast food.


If this trip has taught me anything so far it would be that I'm a total klutz. The fun continued today as I fried a strip of skin off of my arm while attempting to remove the quiche that I’d made for lunch from our oven. Our friend Sonya refers to her oven as the “easy bake oven”. The reference is brilliant. These boat ovens look like a real oven, but they are tiny, have hotspots, and you can only cook on the top rack or risk burning the bottom of whatever is in the pan.

December 13, 2006

We've spent the past week in St. Maarten working through the work list I posted above. So far the more time consuming projects have been servicing the windlass, the watermaker installation, washing all 22 of our cushion covers by hand in the bathtub and replacing the forward and aft hatch seals. We're hoping to finish up the watermaker installation tomorrow, so that we can head up to Anguilla this weekend.

We're finally up and running on skype, and really enjoying being able to talk to our families. And I missed the folks on Grey's Anatomy so much that we finally joined the rest of our generation on ITunes - but it takes ages to download anything on the flimsy wireless connection that I have here - like 7 hours an episode.

We also found down-below shoes - shoes that don't ever leave the boat (we wear different shoes ashore and ditch them as soon as we get back aboard) so that we don't track dirt around down below. I swore I would never by a pair of crocs as they are possibly the ugliest shoes known to man. But they are comfortable. The croc flip flops are not quite as ugly, but still super comfy. The rest of the cruisers here seem to agree. Island Water World recently got in a shipment, but by the time we stumbled across the display, choices were somewhat limited. Sten went with the black and yellow as a nod to his CAT heritage, and I chose the blue and white because they were the only ones in my size.
















Along with flip flops, I live in Sahalie's Sport Camis (loads of support) and linen skirts. Sten is loving his Railriders Hemingway Shorts (in part because he has gotten so skinny that his old Patagucci Stand Up Shorts are all way too big for him now) and light woven Humidor shirts from Quicksilver. All our winter gear from the trip down is clean and stowed away. We don't expect to need them again until the leg from Tonga to New Zealand this time next year.

Last Saturday we went to the market in Marigot, were I was thrilled to discover nigella seeds, which were called for by a breadstick recipe that I'd been wanting to make, but I'd never heard of them, much less seen them. They are a peppery little seed and they gave the breadsticks an interesting flavor. I told my mom about the recipe and she comes out with - "oh, yeah, that's the seed that gives Armenian cheese its distinctive flavor." How does she know this stuff?















Now that I have a bag of them (seeds, not breadsticks - Sten demolished half of those over lunch), I'm going to have to find some other uses for them.

December 5, 2006

Yesterday we spent the day catching up on our email and bills and visiting two huge marine chandleries (neither of us had ever seen anything quite like them) and visiting the local sail maker. Then we sat down over a bottle of wine, some cheese and crackers, and our new overview chart of the Caribbean, and plotted out the next few months. The original plan was to go through the Panama Canal in the spring, but we’re hesitating for a few reasons. The house hasn’t sold yet, and we won’t be comfortable with our financial situation until it does. But the overwhelming issue is that we’ve discovered that neither of us really likes being on passage, and once we’re spit out the other side of the Canal, we’re going to be in for some very long passages. We are keeping in mind that the past two passages have been in some pretty tough conditions, so we’ll see how we fare on the leg from the Grenadines to the ABC’s, then the next leg on over to the San Blas Islands in March before we decide whether to pull the rip cord on the whole scheme and head back to New England for hurricane season. In the meantime, we’re going to enjoy the next three months of cruising the Caribbean. High on our list of places to visit on this side of the Canal are Dominica and the Grenadines.

Today we went off in search of a free internet connection only to spend two frustrating hours where gmail and skype wouldn’t work. It is unbelievably frustrating not to be able to communicate. I know that there is a Zen lesson in patience here for me. But in the meantime it is costing us a dollar a minute in sat phone time just to deal with things like banking and bills. A very expensive Zen lesson it seems.

From our frustrating internet experience, the day continued to oscillate between frustration and fun. We returned to the boat to find that the water tank was dry, and our water pump had been working in vain for at least two hours. After letting the pump cool down and dumping our jerry cans in the tank, we spent an hour getting the pump to prime again - Sten in the engine room cleaning filters and sucking on the hose while I turned on and off valves and breakers. We got it working again, and Sten enjoyed showering in Newport’s finest.

While the pump cooled down, Sten hauled me up the mast so that I could take down the old topping lift and attach reflective mast head tape (so that we can pick out our stick in a crowded harbor). Earlier in the week, he’d taken me up to the first spreader, so that I could retrieve our new topping lift, which had broken free during the last passage. And I had thought that was good fun, swinging around in the bosun’s chair in a gentle breeze. But going to the top of the mast, now that is wicked good fun.

This is where John, our webmaster, is going to be incredibly jealous:

















How cool is that? For scale, that is Sten standing on the starboard deck. We’re still airing out from passage, so those bundles on the foredeck are the contents of our sail locker.

The shackle holding the old topping lift was pretty well seized up, and no amount of pressure with the wrench would get it to budge. So I tried sticking the tip of the needle nose pliers in the hole in the shackle pin to get some leverage. Bad plan. The tip of the pliers promptly broke off, in the pin. So Sten had the brilliant idea of sending a marlin spike up to me on a flag halyard. That did the trick.

I’ve got to give a shout out here to Brett Little, Darren Baird, Bjorn Andersen, Jay Kugler DeYoung, Ann Brachman and Jerry Tichner for a most excellent going away present. The Icom Submersible Plus handheld that you guys gave us is fantastic. We use it all the time when one of us is off the boat and the other is aboard. I had it up at the top of the mast with me, while Sten monitored the Command Mic (the cockpit extension of our main radio) to communicate without the entire marina hearing. Thanks guys!

After we got the water working, while Sten cleaned up, I got us ready to meet up with Fred and Linda from Nike. They had just done 19 islands in 21 days on their Amel Super Maramu, and we were anxious to hear about their travels. As we rushed to meet up with them at the appointed time, I tossed our jerry cans into the dingy, only to have one go well beyond its mark. So there I am, chasing a jerry can across the lagoon as it floats away, all the swagger from my success at the top of the mast completely wiped away.

We met up with Fred and Linda, and headed over to the Sunset Beach Bar at the end of the airport runway. The sunset was a bit disappointing, but luckily we had human stupidity to entertain us. People stand at the strip of beach at the end of the runway when the 747’s take off in order to get blasted with sand and whatever else the engines kick up. One potential Darwin Award recipient was standing there holding his child up to the sand blast so that she could enjoy the full effect of ear drum and potential cornea damage. Amazing. After many drinks, some decent burgers, a few dollars lost on the crab races, and a smattering of sand flea bites, we decided to call it a day. Besides, at 8:30, it was way past our bedtime.

St. Maarten - December 3, 2006

Yesterday we arrived in St. Maarten around noon, just in time to enter the Simpson Bay Lagoon. We thought that we would shower before we headed over to customs to clear in. We anchored, on the second try, and I went down below to strip down the bed, shower and shave it all off (we both get pretty gnarly on passage).

Just as I was rinsing out the conditioner, Sten shouts down that we are dragging. So I throw on some clothing, rush up to help him reset the anchor, for the third time. At this point we’re both feeling pretty embarrassed, but at least the anchor is set. And we’re parked next to Dagny, a boat we spent some quality laundry and beach time with in Bermuda. While I was showering, Sten had been inflating the dingy. After we set the anchor for the third time, he muscled the motor from the aft rail, and we mounted it on the transom of the dink. Then we used the spinnaker halyard to lower it into the water. As we were doing so, one of the crew from Dagny was gesturing at us, but I was too focused to pay attention to him. I should have.

As soon as the dink was in the water, Sten realized that we were dragging down onto a motor yacht. So he quickly tied off the dink on our stern and turned on the engine while I reattached the spinnaker halyard and went forward to operate the windlass. We decided that we were having no luck with the holdingin that part of the harbor, so we headed west, and dropped anchor just below a hill with the fantastic name of Witch's Tit. Setting the anchor for the forth time, we dug it in really hard - enough to make the stern pull out of the water. So much for the old adage - the forth time seemed to be the charm.

Our final spot had the advantage of putting us close to Marigot, on the French side of the harbor. It was too late to clear in, but a technicality wasn’t about to keep me from ice cream and fresh bread. After a dulce de leche milkshake, we spent some time looking at the various chalkboard specials in Port Royale. We had a nice dinner, accompanied by a bottle of Sancerre, while sitting out on a patio in the evening breeze. At the end of the meal, the house brought out a bottle rum, which they steep in vanilla bean and banana. Quite tasty. After they ran our debit card in euros, at the amount of the US conversion (so in essence, we would have been paying 30% more for our meal), Sten helped himself to a few more drops while they corrected their error.

As soon as we dropped anchor yesterday, Lenore climbed up on the salon table and demanded to be fed. She’s since eaten two cans of food and is working her way through a third.

This morning we put together our St. Martin Worklist. You’ll notice a few items from the Bermuda list that didn’t quite get done, and some things that we will have to do at every landfall.

• Clear-in and pay bridge fee
• Banking and Bills
• Investigate freefall anchor operation - Maxwell
• Buy new cams for traveller - Ronstan
• Buy spare solenoid
• Subscribe to sail mail
• Get up and running with skype
• Investigate D-link phone
• Source 12volt (possibly LED) cockpit light
• Replace two salon reading lights with LED and add a third
• Install Velcro to hold settee cushions in place on port tack
• Laundry
• Clean foul weather gear
• Air out/ Dry out
• Adjust furling line
• Find suitable laundry to clean ultra suede cushion covers
• Seal rough edges of bimini cover and sail cover with rope cutter
• Measure and buy new hatch seals
• Buy dingy lock and chain (lots of theft in St. Martin)
• Buy lock and chain for spare motor on rail
• Pump down refrigeration.
• See if we can buy some additional fridge gas
• Work out voltage difference on link panel
• Purchase grill if prices are reasonable
• Measure and replacement swim ladder feet
• Buy small palm for sail repair
• Call Thurston re: spreader chaffing protection, fourth reef installation and slatting of luff of mainsail
• Talk to Joe Mello re slatting of main (perhaps it is a rigging issue rather than a sail construction issue)
• Talk to local Quantum sail maker about new roller-furling staysail (on this last passage we decided that the convenience and safety of not having to go forward in big seas to set the staysail will be worth the money) and about main adjustments after talking to Thurston and Joe Mello
• Complete watermaker installation
• Complete new autopilot installation
• Clean racor filter bowls
• Retrieve topping lift that is wrapped around the spreaders (Sten hauled me up the mast this morning in the bosun‘s chair - super fun for me, not so much for him J)
• Deal with chaff of reefing lines
• Clean
• Insall blocks or line in storage compartment at base of companionway stairs
• Buy gaff, boat hook, and MOB pole (to replace items lost on first leg)
• Buy mast head tape (so we can find our boat in a crowded harbor)
• Go to produce market on Wednesday
• Do some X-mas shopping at the duty free shops
• Remove peeling paint from dorades
• Do dinner in Grand Case
• Buy down below/ never-leave-the-boat shoes for both of us
• Buy Sten a light weight foul weather jacket and a light weight hat
• Buy Danika a pair of quick dry shorts for passage
• Tighten bolts on binnacle
• Remove adhesive residue from S&S’s dodger pattering
• Complete stereo installation
• Service port staysail winch
• Relocate bilge pump float switch
• Investigate steering column noise
• Calibrate depth sounder

That should keep us out of trouble for a few days.

Bermuda to St. Martin - November 26, 2006 - December 2, 2006

Our second passage was much easier than our first. No force 10 storm. No 30 foot waves. No 30 hours hove-to. No 60 kt gusts. We did have a steady 25-35 knots of breeze for much of the trip, with seas that ranged between 12 and 20 feet. Without the first trip, I would have been terrified when the seas got big, but instead we simply reefed down and set the staysail. With each passage we become more confident in ourselves and the boat.

But lest I make is seem like a walk in the park - we were both taking turns booting at the leeward rail for the first two days, but by the fourth day we were both comfortable functioning down below. Unfortunately, we were on port tack for almost all of the trip, which means that our settee is barely useable, you have to brace yourself to keep your perch on the head, anything you try to cook in the microwave attempts to coat the front of your foul weather gear when you open the door, and the only comfortable place to be down below is in our bed. Sten did manage to make some fantastic grilled cheese sandwiches and quesadillas. I made tea one morning (baby steps folks, baby steps), which is quite a bit harder in a boat that is rolling back and forth than on our stove at home.

It was really to rough to fish, but on the second to last day of passage Sten put out the fancy lure that he bought at the NPT boat show to see if we could catch a sushi dinner for our first night in St. Martin. Within 10 minutes it was hit by something big and pelagic, which promptly bit off the business end of the arrangement. We were bummed about the loss, and Sten admitted that he should have had it on a wire leader, but it was really too rough to be dealing with fighting (especially with no gaff - lost overboard during the first leg) and cleaning a fish.

Other than our personal discomfort, and Lenore’s hunger strike part II, one of the only bits of trouble on this trip came from our autopilot, which beeped at us quite a bit to tell us that the big rollers that we were taking on our stern quarter were causing it to be off course. One time it shut down on us. We knew from our delivery run last summer that the Robertson AP22 was a bit overpowered running downwind in big following seas. As part of our refit we purchased an AP26, and installed a support bracket, ram, junction box and control head, and ran most of the wires; but we didn’t have time to hook it all up (wires and pump) and install the rate compass before heading south. It is on our St. Martin worklist, but chances are, we won’t need it until we head to the ABC’s on route to Panama in March, so it may not happen until down island. The other concerns we had this passage were the refrigerator (it still takes too long to come down in temp), the batteries (charging still seems to take a long time), the steering cables (making a bit of noise), and the new mainsail (makes a hell of a lot of noise downwind and needs some chaffing patches at the spreaders). We’ll address these during the next month, while we hang out in and near St. Martin, with its duty free chandleries and plethora of marine services.

November 24, 2006

The other night, just when I thought we were finally done with the battle of bilge, I went in search of a glass of port to enjoy while I read. I didn’t have a bottle in the liquor cabinet, and I knew I wasn’t allowed to touch the bottle that Jay and John had given us before we left [it was a present and a promise - the port needs 5 more years to come into its own, in the meantime we're to take it around the world with us, and enjoy it with Jay and John when we return - pretty cool, eh?], so I went hunting in my deep wine storage. I pulled up the floorboard in our stateroom to discover yet another slew of bilge sludge. Yuck. So we cleaned it, but I didn’t find any port. Now I’m frustrated and really looking for a drink. So I delve into the not so deep wine storage, in the bottom of my hanging locker (closet), which happens to have a head (toilet) hose running through it. No surprise, the stuff in there is wet. But the salt water doesn’t appear to have come from below, as the bottom of the locker is sealed off from the bilge. I figured it came from the cap rail. Until I noticed that one of the head hoses was dripping. Double yuck.

At this point, I’m grossed out, thirsty and in a foul temper. Sten tightened down the hose clamp, and cleaned out the locker, and generally avoided me. Standing at the galley sink, cleaning the outsides of bottles of wine with antibacterial soap, I couldn’t figure out why we would have a leak in the hose heading to the holding tank. We don’t use our holding tank. Like everyone outside of the US, we just let it flow overboard. Which is why I won’t swim in most harbors.

The mystery revealed itself this afternoon. I was standing at the galley sink, dishing up some wet food for Lenore, while she rubbed my ankles and mewed. As Sten finished up in the forward head, I could hear him pumping out the head. Lenore stopped rubbing my ankles, hunkered down , and began hissing at the floorboard next to us. It was sitting askew, as though something under it had shifted, which didn’t make any sense because there was very little under that floorboard. As Sten continued pumping away, I reached down to pick it up, only to find bubbles around the inspection plate on the top of a tank. I called to him to stop, and he came out to look. I asked him what the tank was, and he told me that it was our “black water” tank, which is a nice euphemism for holding tank. Gross.

At some point in the past few weeks, the handle on the valve in our forward head had been switched from the position that sends our waste overboard to the position that sends it into the holding tank. And somewhere along the way, probably in the storm, the hose that allows gases to escape from the tank, had gotten clogged. A few weeks of use was enough to pressurize the fiberglass tank so that it expanded enough to lift the floorboard, and send Lenore into attack mode. There was also apparently enough pressure in the system to back fluid into the hose leading from the holding tank into the aft head and to leak out the point of least resistance, all over my wine storage.

After we fixed the problem, we cleaned up and headed over to the Dingy Club to meet up with Paul and Sonya, and drown our sorrows in a couple rounds of dark and stormies. Since I’ve made so many references to them, and enjoyed so many, it is only fitting to share the recipe: pour 1.5oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum over ice, top with ginger beer, and give a generous squeeze of lime (in a pinch lemon will do, but I wouldn't advise it). Rinse and repeat until your head woes fade away.

November 23, 2006

It was so sad to be away from home on Thanksgiving. Rather than try to do some pale simulacrum of T-Day, we opted to have pizza. As soon as we served it up in the cockpit, and sat down to enjoy our beer and pizza, Sten looks up at me and says, “It’s coming.” I’m looking at him, blankly, when the first rain drops come pelting in between the dodger and bimini. Perfect.

When we spoke to my family tonight, my mom asked me what we did all day. I told her about the bread baking and doing some tourist stuff, but didn’t go into much detail. Just to give an idea of how we spend our days, this is our Bermuda Work List:

• Dodger Repair
• Staysail Repair
• Change Racor Filters
• Reprogram Link Panel
• Check VHF receiver for incoming traffic
• Investigate freefall anchor operation
• Investigate GPS antenna operation
• Exchange winch drums
• Cover traveler bolts (cut them instead)
• New traveler cams - Ronstan ???
• Burn frayed mainsheet bits that were chewed by the traveler bolts
• Locktite mainsheet shackles
• Refuel - Diesel & Gasoline
• Water
• Hook-up masthead anchor light
• Check hatch seals
• Clean transom
• Rebed chain plates
• Repair aft head shower pump (decided to swap aft and forward pumps instead)
• Caulk in mast fitting for topping lift
• Rerig reefing lines to reefing points 1 and 2
• Rig small lead lines to reefing point 3
• Remove boatlife from various spots on deck
• Restow storm jib
• Dry out v-berth
• Move bilge pump switch so that it faces forward
• Outboard refresher course for Danika
• Clean (this turned out to be a multi-day ordeal as bilge water had gotten everywhere during our first passage. We ended up emptying ever locker and storage place below waist level to clean it out)
• Adjust bimini
• Repair locker doors
• Open up Nav Station electronics panel and cleanout
• WCS
• Clean engine pan
• Replace solenoid
• Laundry (two times)
• Stow remaining stuff for next passage
• Restow engine room from watermaker installation
• Add tie downs to book case
• Provision for next passage
• Be tourist - Rum Swizzles, Maritime Museum, Beach
• Install Airmail software and subscribe to sail mail.

So that’s how we spend our days. But we’ve also been having a bit of fun too. Paul and Sonya from Event Horizon www.eventhorizon.cc spent last winter in Bermuda. They’ve shown us around to some wonderful local haunts, like the Black Horse Tavern in St. Davids. They’ve also taken pity on our lack of electronic sophistication and invited us over tomorrow night to catch up on the last episode of Lost.

November 21, 2006

We’ve had a string of grey, cloudy days. I’ve been reading voraciously - four books in the past three days. After too many days of lazing around, I finally got motivated to do something productive. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I baked bread. After Sten ran the generator, I put the dough in the engine room to rise. A few hours later, when the two golden, crusty loaves came out of the oven, I was prouder than I’ve been of just about anything I’ve ever done. I’m not sure my mother or sister would believe it without tasting it for themselves, but it was actually pretty good. Good enough for Sten to call me a magician. Though, I’m not sure whether his statement that “it was all the more incredible for your having made it” was a comment about the goodness of the bread or his surprise that I could actually bake.
















In our land-based life, I produced paper, not food or anything else particularly useful. Sten worked, but he also did most of our cooking and most everything else to keep the house going while I simply worked. Out here at anchor, I can no longer make what had been my primary contribution to our partnership - my income. So I’m trying to acquire new skills to be somewhat useful in this new life.

One morning before we left Rhode Island, I was walking through a Walmart, carrying a mop and a bunch of other cleaning supplies, all the while clutching my blackberry, the last vestige of my professional life. I’ve since left the blackberry back in the States and traded it for some yeast and flour. Somehow this seemingly slide back to the 1950’s feels like progress to me, at least on a personal level. It is certainly more delicious than drafting disclosure documents. But I have to wonder whether my father was right - whether I’ll get bored out here without the intellectual stimulation that work provided.

November 17, 2006

I would like to take a moment to express how f’n tired I am of bilge water. We’ve been cleaning the boat for the past week. It started with the sail locker and the forward cabin, and we’ve worked backwards from there. It seems that every day I go to open a new compartment that I haven’t been in since before the trip, only to find more salt water damage, like this:
















That’s what’s left of the charger for the cordless drill.

Basically, everything that we stowed on the boat below waist level, just three weeks ago, we’re taking out, cleaning, and restowing. When it get’s to be too much, we run away from the boat for a while, to pretty places like this:

November 12, 2006, Sunday

While sitting outside at one of the restaurants on the wharf, we ran into the delivery crew of the catamaran who had lent the guys the dingy pump the night we arrived. We bought them a round to thank them for their help, and asked them about their trip. The captain deadpanned “Well, you know, Fontaine Peugeot is French for piece of shit.”

There was a beautiful Little Harbor 62 tied up to the dock in front of us. It had also suffered storm damage, including a nasty bit of work to its starboard bow and pulpit where the anchor had come loose and swung free, removing an arc of awl grip from the hull.

It is somewhat reassuring to know that we weren’t the only ones to get knocked around out there. But after a few days of enjoying Bermuda’s hospitality and drinking dark and stormies, the fear of the dark and stormy night that we faced begins to fade in our memories, and the sense of accomplishment about what we managed to do, and pride in our boat’s strength grows stronger.

Mata’irea’s Newport to Bermuda crew, the evening before Bill and Merrill flew back to the States:

November 11, 2006, Saturday

We picked Lenore up from the animal hospital this morning. They gave her intravenous fluids, and she apparently ate like a champ all night. We were planning to send her home with the guys, but when the animal hospital handed us an international health certificate from Bermuda, a rabies free country, which would make it much easier to clear her into other similarly strict countries, we began to reconsider.

We brought her back to the boat, and she continued to eat everything in sight. In between binges, she sleeps in cockpit, fully stretched out, to give her tummy room to expand.

















Meanwhile, Bill and Merrill took care of doing all of the laundry, and we began the process of airing out and drying out the boat. But we’ll wait until they are gone to get into the really deep cleaning.

Arrival in Bermuda - November 10, 2006, Friday - 32.22N, 64.40W

By the morning, Lenore was completely lethargic. Sten and I were on watch at dawn, talking about our plans. He turned to me and said, “Boat for sale, real cheap.” We agreed to get down to the islands and enjoy the winter island hopping, before we scrapped the whole plan to sail around the world.

I put in a call to the Bermuda EPA at around 10am to alert them to her condition and our desire to clear her into the country so that we could get her to a vet. Bermuda is a rabies free country, so their rules about bringing pets into the country are very stringent. We had beautiful sailing conditions, and surfed downwind at a hull speed of 10.8 and 11 knots during our final approach to Bermuda. I called the EPA again as we approached St. George’s Harbor, and Jonathan Nesbitt said that he would meet us at customs.

When we tied up to the dock at 5pm, there was a gentleman waiting for us, but it wasn’t Jonathan. We weren’t sure what his intentions were, but we all expected him to try to sell us something. During the weeks ahead we learned how wrong we were. He is just a sweet older guy who tries to greet as many boats as possible, and give them a bit of advice about where to eat and which buses to take. But we were all a bit too shellshocked from our crossing and off balance on solid ground to pay him much attention. I hope that we didn’t come across as too rude, but I fear we did.

As we cleared into customs, Jonathan Nesbitt arrived. He took me and Lenore off to the Endsmeet Animal Hospital, while the rest of the crew went off to anchor and then to dinner. I didn’t know how long I would be, so I grabbed our handheld radio and shouted to Sten to monitor channel 49. It wasn’t until I returned to St. George’s two hours later, and tried to find 49 on the radio, that I realized that there was no channel 49. We’re so green.

While I was off at the vet, the guys tore the boat apart looking for the dingy pump. I’d inventoried everything as I stowed it, but they couldn’t find my inventory (which was sitting on the counter). After calling Sten's mom to see is she happened to know where the pump was, they ended up borrowing a pump from a crew that was delivering a catamaran.

That night Bill and Merrill took us to dinner at the Carriage House. We all had steak and fresh salads, and it was beyond wonderful. Before dinner, Merrill picked up a newspaper that had an article about the storm. As we were coming into Bermuda, we had heard the announcements on Bermuda Harbor Radio about a boat that had been abandoned in the storm. The article gave its location, and described the waves we had been in as being 30 feet tall, just a bit higher than the 3-4 or 5-8 feet that Bill and I had been assuring each other of as the storm built. The guys had also heard from some other cruisers that 3 other crews had been airlifted by US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers. We all counted ourselves to be quite lucky to have escaped with minor bruises and minimal boat damage. We toasted our good fortune with a round of dark and stormies, a pretty fitting drink considering what we had been through over the prior few days.

November 9, 2006, Thursday - just about the same position as yesterday at this time

After midnight, there was a brief lull, and the wind speed dropped down to about 15 knots. Rain was pouring down, pummeling Merrill who was sitting on the leeward side of the cockpit. Soon, the winds built right back up to the 40’s, and Merrill declared “It’s back.” At 1:30, Bill relieved Sten. We both tried to rest in our berth from 1:30 to 3:30, but after much discomfort and a bit of bickering, I decided that it was futile, and went up on watch to relieve Merrill, who at that point had been on watch for almost 12 hours.

By morning we had drifted 17nm east of our course. We still had SE winds, so our position for approaching Bermuda had become worse during the prior 24 hours. We remained hove to, but changed our heading to the west. Eventually, the wind began to veer to the south, and slooooowly to the SW. At 9am, we began motor sailing under the storm jib alone. That afternoon, Bill and Merrill saw a double rainbow during their watch, but I was too concerned about Lenore’s continuing deterioration to find much joy in it.

Two days into the trip and her hunger strike, I had called her vet, whose assistant wasn’t at all concerned, and Suzy and Alena who began looking for advice on how to get her to eat. I was able to reach Alena, and she did some research. I took the advice she found online and worked with what I had. I tried to use a fresh caulk syringe (no needle, just a curved plastic tube) to force water into her mouth. She spit it back out. I dabbed food and half and half on her face to force her to lick it off. Alena had found that a primary ingredient in homeopathic motion sickness meds was mint. I happened to have some essential oil of peppermint on board. I mixed it with honey and dabbed it on her mouth and nose as I had done with her wet food. She began foaming at the mouth. Poor kitty. She spent the worst of the storm hunkered down in her litter box. She hadn’t licked the honey off, so she had litter stuck to her face. She was truly the most pathetic sight, and she didn't want anything to do with me.

After the storm had passed, and we were all certain we were going to be fine, I finally broke down and cried on Sten’s shoulder for a few moments. I wasn’t crying about what we’d been through, and they weren’t tears of relief, rather I was distraught because I was certain that we were killing our cat. Each hour that we couldn’t make headway towards Bermuda, was another hour that we were keeping her away from medical help.

That night Sten and I stood a night watch together - 6 to 10pm - the first and only time that we’ll probably ever do that in relatively calm conditions. We had a close encounter with a ship that told us that it couldn’t see us on radar, which is disconcerting, since we have a monster radar reflector on our mast. Merrill and Bill stood watch until dawn giving us a chance to rest.