Monthly Archives: January 2016

Challenging Chores

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Wednesday 27th January

The sun is rising behind us and even on a relatively benign night such as we have just had, the appearance of the sun is always welcome. We are 25nm north of the San Blas Islands and the point in our heads, where, throughout all the years of planning, the real adventure begins.

Bonaire to San Blas my route plotter informs me is 670 miles The San Blas are a group of small coral islands and to enable us to safely navigate the reefs it is important to arrive in daylight. This meant we either had to go fast or much slower and the high winds that are common off the Columbian coast have ensured this trip has been really quick. We have made really good time averaging about 7.5kts. The winds have been lively we have often had all the sails deeply reefed with gusts of over 50kts.

It’s not been the easiest of passages, we are all feeling a little jaded. Until this morning, when the sea has calmed down we have had a large swell, luckily mostly behind us. The middle days were the windiest and particularly rough with 4m waves looming up behind the dingy on the back of the boat. They seem to hang towering above you for a moment, before lifting the stern of the boat and if you are lucky, cause the boat to surf at great speeds, we broke our surfing record this trip with a top speed of 16.2kts! Not many waves catch you straight on of course and the further to the side they get, the more you roll and the more uncomfortable it is.

Even in a small roll life can be challenging, take two examples. Firstly cooking, the cooker is gimballed, that is, it rocks with the boat and therefore is always on a flat plane. It does take a big leap of faith to feel comfortable with a pan of hot food that is leaning dramatically towards you, looking like it will topple at any moment but of course the food is in fact flat and the surroundings and you are the things that are tipping over. Nothing you put on any other surface stays still, next time you cook even something simple just notice how many bits and pieces you have around you. Now try to imagined you are having to wedge yourself against the counter to steady yourself and that everything you put down is sliding back and forth, constantly – that is cooking at sea. We have overcome some of these problems by cooking in short stages, keeping as much as possible in the lockers till needed and we have numerous nonslip dishes, boards and mats that in most conditions keep things relatively still. We have deep bowls to help keep the food from spilling while you eat and a drinks rack to keep mugs and drinks upright. On short trips or when it’s very rough we resort to something pre made from the freezer, beans on toast or a sandwich but even for this trip, of just under four days, with three meals a day, that’s twelve meals and you can only eat so many sandwiches or tins of beans.

Then think of taking a shower, again if we are sea for one or two days we don’t bother. We are lucky, Raya has a large water tank and an efficient watermaker, so we can shower when we need to but if it’s at all rough it’s not easy. Firstly you need to undress, try taking your clothes off while you are clinging on to stay upright. Then into the shower, the soap, shampoo, conditioner etc won’t stay still, I put mine in the sink and step precariously out for them as necessary. To wash your hair takes two hands – again just try it with one, so I keep myself upright by planting my feet wide apart and pressing my bum against the wall, washing quickly. It feels great to be clean but still you need to dry and again you need two hands, comb your hair or whatever and then get redressed. This is not an elegant life.

One returns to the cockpit from the galley or the bathroom hot and bothered and in need of a rest. We are reminded yet again that the sailing is often the easy bit. But on the days when the sea and wind are feeling kind to you and when you arrive at somewhere as unforgettable as the San Blas Islands it is all definitely worth it.

Bonaire Bound

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Wednesday 20th Jan
Jonathan and Sheridan flew out Saturday, they are sailing with us to Panama and through the canal with a few stops en route. After a morning provisioning and lunch at the beach we readied the boat to leave. Midmorning Monday we said a fond farewell to Grenada to sail westward. It is often hard to find a moment to look up from coiling the lines, stowing the fenders and checking the charts as we leave a marina or anchorage but I always try to make sure I say a quiet goodbye to places as we sail away.

For the first few hours the winds were light and directly behind us, add to that rather lumpy seas that rolled the boat and flogged the sails, it wasn’t comfortable. The 410 nm to our next destination, Bonaire, seemed like a long way away. Within a few hours however the sea settled, the wind increased and backed slightly to the north and a strong westward current appeared. For the next 48hrs that’s pretty much how it stayed. We were running a downwind rig with the genoa poled out to windward, the boom on the other side as far forward as the shrouds would allow and the stay sail pulled tight in the centre. With the favourable current we have been flying along often at over 8kts with the promise of arriving in Bonaire with an hour or two of daylight remaining. Today unfortunately the wind has dropped and is back in the east, so to keep us on schedule the engine is on.

But it has been a pleasant sail, conditions have been relatively benign, with little rain, sparkling sea and moonlit nights. The watch system has worked well and with Jonathan, an experienced sailor, onboard, Rick has got much more sleep than normal. We have been entertained by shoals of flying fish and flocks of fishing birds. We saw again the elusive green flash as the sun dipped below a crisp horizon and at night we have whiled away the hours identifying the stars using a clever star guide app on my iPad.

It is amazing how far the flying fish can fly, a few feet above the waves they swoop and glide, looking much like a swarm of giant dragon flies. For some reason at night they fly much higher, sometimes high enough to strand themselves on our decks, as Sheridan can attest to. During her early morning watch she was startled as one flew straight into the cockpit and hit her on the head!

We are sailing less than a hundred miles from the Venezuelan mainland so we have had plenty of bird life around the boat as well. Our favourites were the masked Boobies, largish white birds with black around their faces, on their tails and under their wings. They dive spectacularly, vertically straight down, to catch small fish which they eat on the surface before taking off and diving again.

Not too much luck however with the fishing this trip, there was the ‘one that got away’, a 3ft Dorado that escaped as Rick attempted to haul him onboard and a Spanish mackerel too small to bother with, otherwise the rods have been quiet. We have noticed one odd thing, all our catches on the boat so far have been with the starboard rod, whichever lure is put on the port side nothing happens?

Landing the ‘fish that got away’

Friday 22nd January 

Bonaire is the B of the ABC islands, three islands that lie north of Venezuela and are part of the Netherlands Antilles. The coast off Bonaire is very deep and the water crystal clear, the National Park to the north is home to the rare yellow shouldered parrot and many of the beaches are turtle nesting sites. The authorities are making a big effort to preserve this pristine environment, imposing strict rules, there is no anchoring anywhere around the Island, large sections of beach are off limits and to dive or even snorkel you need a permit. Yachtsmen are asked to dispose of their rubbish correctly, use their black tanks at all times and be careful not to allow anything to end up overboard. A couple times a year the local population don thier scuba gear and take to the harbour to clean the sea bed.

We approached around the south of the island past the salt lakes, used still, to provide salt for export. We pass three coloured obelisks along the shoreline, spaced about half a mile apart, that years ago were used to indicate the location of varying grades of salt available to the ships arriving to take salt around the world.

The main island is kidney shaped with a small island lying to the west, providing a well protected natural harbour at its centre. We sail in as the sun sits low in the sky and pick up a mooring bouy off the main town. Kralendrjk is an interesting place, which we are finding as hard to describe as to pronounce. It stretches long and thin along the sea front, the buildings architecturally unremarkable but solid and colourful with their orange roofs and yellow and blue walls. The traffic moves along the streets at a snails pace and the locals, a mix of Caribbean, Dutch and American, are happy and helpful, there is a definite feeling of a place stuck, pleasantly, in the past.

After checking in at customs and immigration and wandering around, we pop into one of the numerous dive centres to buy our snorkel permits and get the low down on the best spots to visit. The island of Kliene Bonaire, an easy dingy ride away, is one of the spots recommended, so we collected our stuff and motor across. 

A wet crossing in a very full dingy

As we approach, the white sand and turquoise sea is breathtaking and when we put our heads underwater the clarity of the water is amazing. We are surrounded by hundreds of fish, of dozens of species, large dazzling Parrot Fish, inquisitive Sargent Major’s and large silver Bermudan Chub, yellow and blue Scrawled Filefish, two foot long Trumpetfish and tiny iridescent blue Angel Fish. The corals seem to sparkle in the sunlight. Bonaire, our guide book tells us, is one of the top three of the Worlds scuba diving areas, we were sceptical, could it really compete with the Maldives or the Red Sea, after our first rate snorkel we decide to stay another day and take a dive trip to investigate.

  

About 30m off the beach a change in colour from turquoise to dark blue marks where the sea bed drops away to hundreds of meters deep, creating what’s termed in scuba speak as a wall. These walls are brilliant to dive as they are covered in coral and fish and importantly to us, without a guide, you can’t get lost. The coral was extremely petty, hundreds of different varieties of hard and soft corals, the branches swaying in the current. The small fish weave in and out and the larger ones patrol up and down the sides. A shoal of bright blue Chromis rush past us, we peer warily into the never ending blue to see what might be chasing them. After 40mins we come to the top feeling exhilarated, but top three, well perhaps at other spots on the island.

Jonathan and I diving the wall

Calm, Colourful Days

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Sitting on deck we watch a deep red sun set dramatically beneath the horizon and as the resulting flaming sky fades it reveals the smallest slither of a moon, that following the suns path, sets itself a few hours later. The last couple of days have been good days, I can’t remember the last time we have really relaxed and soaked up our life afloat. The weather has improved, we have calm, blue seas, blue skies and a soft cooling breeze. Caribbean weather at last.

At anchor in True Blue Bay

We left the marina still with grey skies, more squally showers and battled against a strong head wind around the bottom of Grenada and into Clark Court Bay. The entry to the bay was through a pass in the coral but the charts were accurate and the channel buoys in place so the lack of sun to show up the depth of water wasn’t a problem. Once inside it opened up to a large, deep and protected harbour and with surprisingly few boats inside we found a quiet space to anchor. I don’t know whether it was coming from the noise of the town surrounding the marina but it seemed incredibly quiet, the wind dropped and we relaxed.

We had been drawn to this spot by the promise of sausages. On the opposite side of the bay was Whisper Cove and a small marina, the guide book told us of a butcher that sells good quality local meat and home made sausages, looking out at the jungly green hills surrounding the bay this seemed unlikely but we took the dingy across to explore. We entered behind the few boats moored at the pontoon and hemmed in by mangroves it was shady and a little spooky. As we tied up to a neat and tidy dock we realised that the undergrowth was in fact managed, a pretty tropical garden. We climbed the hill to a veranda and an extremely welcoming restaurant, “Steak, Chips and a Beer for £8” said the blackboard, it tasted as good as it sounded. And sure enough through a door at the back of the restaurant was the butchers, having sampled the produce we stocked up with sausages and enough meat to get us to Panama and headed back to the boat.

Our next stop was a few bays down, we sailed past the crowds in Prickly Bay, around a small headland into the near deserted True Blue Bay. On shore The True Blue resort is a muddle of dark pink, blue and orange buildings nestled in the undergrowth. It has an equally colourful waterside restaurant the Dodgy Dock. 

I wonder why it’s called the Dodgy Dock Restaurant?

The bay lived up to its name, with the improved weather the sea is true blue. We haven’t done much, Rick filled some dents in the swim deck, I scrubbed around the waterline of the hull, we have read, explored in the dingy and foraged ashore for Internet. This we have found in the restaurants, so each day we have logged in and lunched.

After a day alone, we were joined in the bay by first one, then two other Oysters. One of the things we are really enjoying is meeting so many new people. It is rare in life to meet and make so many new friends but everyone has so much in common with each other that friendship within the cruising world is easy. 

Over the last week we have enjoyed a glass of gin or two with a couple from Tasmania, Bill and Naomi who are cruising the Carribean before sailing back to Hobart. A young couple, Charles and Zoe, with a beautiful, 1984, 37ft Oyster who like us have upped and left to sail around the world. Finally a lovely family from Cork, we first met during the ARC, on thier Oyster 53 Crackerjack, Sully, Joey and the kids, who are enjoying the Caribbean for a few months. 

People are extremely generous with their knowledge and time, happy to help each other out, freely swapping experience, information and discoveries. We discuss past adventures, future plans and the continual lists of maintainance to complete.They tend to be brief encounters but there is a real sense of community and with trackers, blogs and social media we can all follow each others progress and no doubt will bump into many of them again elsewhere in he world.

Holed up in Grenada

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Before we left experienced cruiser told us that sailing around the world was just carrying out boat maintenance in exotic places. And so it is we find ourselves in Grenada, an island of wooded mountains, white sandy beaches, reggae, spices and rum, tied up to the dock of Port Louis marina, a marina much like any other, with spanner and cloth in hand and little or no time to explore. We are very aware that not only are the places we are about to visit even more exotic they are also more remote, so we are working hard here, in relative civilisation, to get the boat in as good a condition as possible. Doing anything is hard work in this heat, everything taking more time than normal, our clothes are soaked with sweat. We have to stop frequently to try and cool off and however much water, tea or beer we drink, it’s hard not to get dehydrated and tired, never the less, we are pleased with what we have achieved.

Rick has managed to fix the wiring problem on the “up” mechanism on the anchor and with help of the rigging company here, Turbulence and Harry back in Southampton the main sail furler is also fixed. He has been through all 26 of the through hull fittings that are below the water line and checked they are in good condition, repaired a leaky lid to the watermaker oil reservoir, got the boom lights, that have never really worked, working and almost sorted a problem with the gas supply to the cooker. 

Repairing the furler

Raya has been scrubbed and polished  inside and out and the provisions left over from the Atlantic crossing have been sorted and re-catalogued. Spares have been ordered and the charts for the next passage to Panama have replaced the windward Islands on the table.

While we have decent internet I have been battling with all the paperwork required for our transit of the Panama Canal and our visit to Galapagos. This has required dozens of emails to the agents that we have had to engage to help with this process and numerous forms, copies of passports and crew lists have been sent. 

Luckily the marina is very well placed with most of our requirements within a dingy ride. The chandlers, a supermarket, even the main town of St George’s all have dingy docks. St George’s, the small capital is surrounded by steep hills that run right down to the protected harbour. The waterfront is lined with rather incongruous Georgian style buildings, a legacy of times when the harbour was busy with Clipper yachts exporting spices particularly nutmeg to Europe, now the Clippers mostly carry tourists.

Yesterday feeling that we deserved a break we took a cab to a beach restaurant that had been recommended as one of the best on the island – The Aquarium. It lived up to its reputation, the location was picture perfect with tables right on a stunning beach, we played in the waves, ate lunch under the palm trees and drank too much rum. 

The beach at the Aquarium Restaurant

Today it was back to work but we had some help. One of the poles that support the Bimini had taken a bash during the Atlantic crossing and was proving hard to fix. We seem to be making a habit out of bumping into people even though we are half way around the world and bizarrely Rick’s brother and wife, who are on a proper cruise arrived into Grenada for the day today and with thier friends Bob and Yvonne, popped over to see us. Between the three boys they applied their combined engineering knowledge and a couple of hours and plenty of tea later we had a workable Bimini pole. 

Most of the jobs done, tomorrow we plan to leave the marina for a few days and anchor ina quiet  bay somewhere and catch our breath ready for the next leg of the journey.

Visitors, Tony, Brenda, Bob and Yvonne

Happy New Year

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Well here we are at the dawn of 2016, time marches on relentlessly. We have achieved so much in 2015 but this new life is a continuous succession of challenges. This year we set off into the Pacific and waters unknown. Rick points out that when we swapped our house for a boat, as we set off from Southampton for Plymouth, did our first night sail, spent time at anchor, crossed our first ocean, it was all unknown and this is just another step. However as we waved goodbye to Rachael, Matt and Robyn for a moment our links to home and our comfort zone seemed stretched thin.

Rachael and Matt re-enacting Pirates of the Caribbean where it was filmed on Petit Tabac

Boxing Day brought yet another day of squalls, we were headed for the reef studded bay at Clifton on Union Island, with the hope of being able to snorkel straight off the boat. But with the weather being so stormy and the reefs so close we decided we should stay for as short a time as possible. 

We did have to go ashore however, as Union Island is the most southey island of the Grenidines to have customs and immigration and before we could enter Grenada we had to check out. This is one of the downsides of island hoping in the Caribbean, each island or group of islands is a new country and requires you to fill out a huge form in quintuplicate or whatever five copies is, on entering and again when you leave. This process takes place in a variety of drab offices, manned by stern and bored custom officers. You are advised to treat these formalities with due respect and to be smartly dressed, not so easy when you have arrived by dingy, are soaking wet and are  protectively clutching all your precious documentation. You are often required to queue at three different offices that each take money from you for various unknown reasons and to get your five forms stamped, they do this with such relish you wonder how long thier rickety desks will last.

Paperwork all correctly completed we stopped for a beer, Union Island was quite different from the islands we had visited so far. Between the small town of Clifton and customs at the airport, a five minute stroll, was a goat farm. The town was sleepy and friendly, the locals proudly announced it was the Caribbean of the 1960’s. We would have liked to stay but the straining of the anchor against yet another squall persuaded us otherwise and we sailed on to the Island of Caraicou, part of Grenada and another customs office.

Papers again stamped we settled at anchor in Tyrel Bay where we spent a pleasant couple of days dodging the rain showers and relaxing. There was a nice beach, yet another good beach bar and a mangrove swamp to explore in the dingy. The visibility for snorkelling hasn’t been brilliant but we did have a final swim at the marine park just north of us here in St Georges on Grenada. Statues have been placed on the sea bed and make for an interesting sight amongst the fish and the coral.

  

We are now moored up in the very plush – great showers and Internet cabled to the dock, Port Louis Marina, St George’s where except for a few days to explore we are based until Jonathan and Sheridan arrive and we head to Panama. Tonight there is a big New Years Eve party, at lunch time we sat and listened to the band setting up, they were brilliant so we have bought some tickets, have put on our dancing shoes and are heading across to join in. Here’s hoping our ears can take it. Happy New Year.