23 - Same thing every day!!!!!

Those of you who know the rest of Pedro’s really bad story, will appreciate our title.  But in reality this past month or so has been anything but!!!  We’ve dropped anchor in a new harbor, city or country every couple of days.

Since, our last post, we left the USVI and headed over the Spanish Virgin Islands of Puerto Rico.  We headed first to Culebra to meet up with family and friends of Dan and Alison.  Alison’s mother, sister and a couple of friends came for a weekend visit.  As all of their bunks were filled with her sister and mother, Nicki and Lena joined our boat as extra crew. We took advantage of the extra crew and had a great sail from the town of Culebra over to Playa Tamarindo for snorkelling and  to hike across the hill to Playa Flamenco. 

No sooner had we tied up to the mooring ball than Pedro saw two hawks fighting overhead.  Both landed in the water and while one was able to take off right away, the other could not.  Pedro jumped into the water and offered the bird a ride to shore.  It was not immediately receptive of  his assistance but quickly realized it was the best option.  He swam the hawk to shore and it was able to walk up the beach to rest, dry off and eventually fly away.   

The snorkeling in Tamarindo was the best we’d see so far this year.  The vibrant coral seemed healthy and the various fish species plentiful.  Definitely worth seeing if you’re in the area.

After a marvelous lunch on the beach thanks to Alison, we all decided to hike across the mountain – yes, probably just a hill but felt like a mountain – to see the world famous Playa Flamenco touted to be the second most beautiful beach in the world.  I’m not sure where the first most beautiful one is but this one was beautiful.  Fluffy white sand for miles, gorgeous water in multiple shades of turquoise and the abandoned military tanks that have been painted with various graffiti made the whole experience one of a kind. 

Back on the boat, we headed back into the town of Culebra to dropped off our weekend crew.  We were turning the boat around for Pedro's uncle and aunt – Fred and Beth – so we went to town in search of lunch and a laundromat.  We had lunch at a food truck selling roast pork and various Puerto Rican side dishes (we asked what they were but have already forgotten – all were good or at least interesting). We found a very small laundromat (only one working washing machine) in the back of the local gas station near the ferry terminal.  We laughed as we were able to get our laundry done for only $1.50 but we spent $8 on the beer and cookies to entertain ourselves while we waited!
 

The next morning we awoke to gorgeous rainbows.  Alison took our picture before we took off for Vieques.  The 20 mile journey was a perfect 4 hour sail and we found an anchorage very near the ferry dock where we’d arranged to meet up with Fred and Beth.  

Turned out that the dingy dock we used was right next to the local fish market.  In addition to our newest crew, we were able to pick up lobsters for dinner that had been caught just hours before!    We explored the town and picked up a few more groceries and went back for our grilled lobster dinner.

The next morning we picked up anchor and headed back to Culebra to show Fred and Beth around the areas we’d discovered, walked the beaches and through the town.  

We all got a great night’s sleep in the calm anchorage - Vieques the night before was a little rocky- and the next morning we sailed over to St. Croix.

The sail over to St. Croix was more into the wind than we like so it took about 10 hours.  We arrived after dark and dropped anchor near Fredricksted for the night.  As we’d previously seen Fredricksted we opted to instead to continue sailing over to visit Christiansted the next morning.   A friend described the St. Croix cities and Fredricksted is more local and Christiansted more tourist oriented.  I would agree but Christiansted is also more quaint, has great grocery and boat supply stores and we met some amazingly friendly people.

We needed to continue heading east.  As winds this time of year – commonly referred to as the Christmas winds – are predominately from the east, this meant a pretty rough trip with a lot of tacking back and forth.   It took us about 36 hours but we safely dropped anchor in Marigot Bay, St. Martin.  We checked into customs and found a rental car.  We explored the French side of St. Martin the first day – found an amazing restaurant on the beach for lunch – and the Dutch side of St. Maarten the second day – found the best grocery  store we'd seen in the Caribbean and got our propane tank refilled. 

Now that we’d managed to get east into the Windward Islands, continuing south meant mostly easy day sailing.  

Fred and Beth’s neighbor’s son (keep up), owns a resort on Antigua called Hodges Bay and we were informed that he was on island. He invited us to use the mooring ball located right off of this beach but the east winds would have made that pretty rough.  So we dropped anchor in Jolly Harbour, Antigua and again were able to get a rental car – the taxi’s all charge per person so a car was a much better deal.  The resort is gorgeous!! We grabbed a drink at the beach bar, were given the full tour, enjoyed a great lunch – the head chef is Edward Lee who owns a couple of high end restaurants in Louisville, KY and has been seen several times on the Food Network – and got to lounge around to our hearts content!  If you’re looking for an amazing resort in Antigua, this place is it. 

Beth has been wanting to try her hand at paddle boarding and we just happened to have Pedro’s blown up and ready so the girls took advantage of the relatively calm area at the beach near our anchorage to try it out.  She picked it up very quickly and the boys enjoyed a couple hours of drinking beer without any women around! 

Next we headed to Guadalupe.  We dropped anchor near the town of Deshaies. We checked into customs, walked the town and to a park with a nice overlook with a view of the anchorage, then found a  great French bakery for lunch!  As it was Sunday and most places were closed, we decided to head a little further south and dropped anchor near Pigeon Island.  Again, the boys chose beer and no women so Beth and MaryAnn went in to check out the beach town.  It’s exactly that.  Various shops, restaurants and bars.  The sand was very black which we found interesting but it was still fun to walk around. 

Continuing south down the islands, we next pulled into Portsmouth, Dominica.  We arrived too late to check into customs so we couldn’t explore town.   We decided to continue on further south the next morning and found a mooring ball – it’s a marine sanctuary and still over 100 feet deep very close to shore – in Roseau the capital city of Dominica.  This town was much larger than the last few we’d been in so we walked around for a few hours, found a farmer’s market and a grocery store and stopped to have lunch and a couple of drinks.  We didn’t get a chance to fully explore Guadalupe or Dominica as the waterfalls and other natural wonders would have entailed another day or two each and we really needed to get Fred and Beth to Martinique in plenty of time to catch their flight back home.  We’ll definitely head back, though.

For the entire trip they'd been with us, Beth had been giving Gary a hard time because we'd not caught any fish - we didn't troll the entire time but we did try several days.  Well, we'd no sooner pulled up the anchor, got our sails set and were settling in for our last day of sailing and "fish on"!!!!!  Gary pulled in a really nice Mahi Mahi for our last meal aboard.  

Last stop is Martinique. We’re currently anchored in Fort de France the capital city of Martinique.  Fred and Beth arranged a hotel for a couple of nights to allow for extra time in case we got here early –that didn’t happen – and we think to get their land legs back.  Their hotel was a ferry ride away in Anse Mitan a lovely little beach town.  The hotel has a great pool so we too spent a day relaxing and exploring the beach town.  Great dinner at a local French restaurant too.

Well, our crew has left us and we’re staying in Martinique awaiting the start of Carnaval.  From the looks of the costumes for sale around town, we’re pretty sure it’s going to wild.  Dan and Alison on Equus are meeting up with us here too in a couple of day so we won’t be alone for long. This island is VERY French.  We’ve met a couple of people who speak English but for the most part have been trying to communicate as best we can.  This has been our biggest challenge yet as most other islands readily spoken English.  We'll keep you posted!  

Until next post!

22 - The leaving is the hardest part!!!!!!

We’ve heard many times that the hardest part of cruising is leaving your last port behind and the people you meet and fall in love with.  As I type this, we have just pulled out of the marina that’s been our boat’s home for the last month.  It’s impossible to believe that it’s been a month since we landed back in St. Thomas.  

Since we hoped to complete several boat chores on the never ending list and we both planned to fly back to the mainland, we decided to get a slip for the month.  Not knowing any better, we chose Sapphire Beach Resort and Marina because it seemed centrally located and the price was almost half of what we were quoted for the marina in “downtown” Red Hook.  Well, we definitely won the lottery with this place.   From the moment we pulled into the marina and a guy (Brian, of Brian and Jess) pops out of his boat and asks if we need help docking, we were welcomed by a community that was absolutely amazing.   We met Jeff and Karen aboard Ecstasy and Wayne and Kenta aboard Rochelle.  These amazing people taxied us (or Dan and Alison or both) just about everywhere.  They took us to boat supply stores (numerous ones so we could see selections) and hauled our massive purchases around.  They drove us to grocery stores, a warehouse store for bigger provisioning or the local K-Mart to get a few incidentals.  They helped with lines whenever we took off for day sails, invited us to parties, aboard their boats for happy hour, over for dinner, out for dinner or just to hang out.  Jeff and Karen (our closest neighbors and the parents of the most adorable German Shepherd named Zeba with whom we completely fell in love) even took us out for a Bon Voyage (until next time) dinner party as Dan and Alison, us and an adorable 25 year old we’d gotten to know and love named Lexi, were all planning to leave the next day (Lexi is crewing on a 109 foot yacht heading to St. Martin).  We’ve already made plans to go to an amazing restaurant whose master chef is a fellow sailor a few boats down from our slip whenever we return the island.  These people were definitely very hard to leave but they will stay in our hearts and we know we’ll see them sometime again!

As the saying goes, make new friends but keep the old, so we were excited to also have our Cocoa Beach peeps Janice, Rick, Michelle and Larry make their second excursion (they came to New York while we were there).  They are absolutely perfect!  We went over to St. John for a day of hiking and sightseeing, we took a tour of St. Thomas that took us to some areas that we’d definitely not seen before, we took our boat out for a sail over to St. John for beach walks and paddle boarding and we spent a lot of time laughing and enjoying each other.  Can’t wait for the next port of call and adventure with these guys.

Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea, it was definitely not all fun, food and drink while we were in St. Thomas.  We definitely attacked with vengeance our long list of boat chores.  First on the list was getting varnish on the teak all around the outside of the boat.  The ocean crossings had done a job on this. Several areas were completely worn off.  We spent a couple of days sanding and scraping and then Pedro managed to get a coat of varnish on a day for each of the next 4 days.  Finally, she was back to her old shiny self!!!

Next, Pedro had discovered a leak in the coolant line for the engine (we thought we had it repaired in Hampton but apparently not).  So he decided to just replace the entire line of hose. That took about 20 feet but it’s all done!

Next, apparently in hose changing mode and because we’d realized that almost 20 years of flushing salt water though the toilet had left considerable build up within our hoses (this was discovered during a mini repair mid ocean on our crossing from Bermuda which is about as fun as it sounds), we decided to change all of the head hose.  This took most of the 50 feet of hose that we ordered and took a couple of days.  But, we can now safely and freely flush.

The solar panels that came with the boat were somewhat outdated so we decided to upgrade.  We had three 85 watts panels and we decided to replace them with three 160 watt panels.  We found the panels at the local boating parts store (Pedro suggested that we walk the 2+ miles along very narrow and curvy roads carrying these panels but MaryAnn bummed a ride from Jeff and Karen) and we got another ride from Niles (the guy who rented us the slip) to a metal fabricator about 30 minutes away to get the brackets to hang them.  We were even able to pass on the old panels to a fellow sailor who’d lost their old panels during a recent storm while in the Dominican Republic.

Next, Dan offered to go up our mast to repair our masthead light (we think it got dislodged during repairs in Bermuda).  Luckily this was an easy fix and we were quickly back in business.  While we had him up there, he checked all of our standing rigging and reported that everything looks good.

Then, while we had Dan and Alison, we put Alison to work making us a new sail cover.  The old one had been patched several times and the Cabo Rico logo had worn off.  We wanted a new one and she volunteered to sew it.  It took the better part of 3 days with her sewing and cutting non-stop and Dan and MaryAnn helping but the new cover is so perfect and we’re so excited to have the logo (cut out of an old recycled sail) on it too!!!

Finally, the boat chores list was whittled and our month had come to an end.  We are heading over to the Spanish Virgin Islands of Culebra (to pick of friends of Dan and Alison) and then to Vieques (to pick up our aunt and uncle sailing buddies for our next passage down the islands). 

Until next post!

                                                                              

21 - Virgin Islands at last!!!!

Well almost 7 days to the hour from leaving Bermuda and a 1 ½ months from leaving Hampton, VA, we dropped our anchor in the British Virgin Islands!!  The weather had been getting increasingly warm as the latitudes decreased but it was great to finally be where we were warm.  The sail down was mostly uneventful (don’t ask Pedro about having to fix the head in the middle of a rolling ocean) and with the exception of about a day, we were able to sail the entire time in about the direction we wanted to go.  We took off from Bermuda with about 5 other boats we’d gotten to know (everyone was also waiting for a good weather window) but quickly lost touch with 2 of them.  We kept our buddies Alison and Dan aboard Equus within sight or at least radio distance for the entire trip and another boat Julia Max, we were able to talk to on the single side band radio twice a day (we set up our own little radio net for a little extra safety and comradery).  All in all, everyone made it to the Virgin Islands unscathed and about the same time.

We checked into customs in Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda and walked around some then decided that it would be best to head over to Trellis Bay on Tortola to try to get an anchorage spot (luckily we did because it filled up very quickly) so we would be able to attend their monthly fireball party to celebrate the full moon.  What a great party!  The local artist sets up these metal sculptures that are filled with wood and lights them on fire.  They also had a Moko Jumbie working the party as well as an acrobat.  The art gallery was open as was the restaurant and bar.  We met a ton of great people and even met a guy who gave us a lot of information on where to visit in the islands. 

The next morning we walked all around the bay checking out the numerous boats that had been destroyed during the hurricanes.  There were many!!!  Leaving Trellis Bay, we headed over to Marina Cay to visit the Pusser’s Rum store and just walk around the island.  The hurricanes did a lot of damage here and not much was open.  It was still a fun spot to see and we did get some Pusser’s run since we had to have the ingredients for pain killers!!  Next, we found Buck Island with the hope of snorkeling.  Not so much!  The reef was almost completely dead.  There was no real live coral and only a very few fish that we saw.  Very sad.  We believe this was again due to the hurricane.

From Buck Island, we decided to head into Road Town on Tortola so that we could do some shopping.  This town too was suffering from the effects of the hurricanes from numerous destroyed boats almost everywhere and many buildings that had yet to be repaired.  We were able to find enough stores for our shopping and even managed to find an Indian restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner (yes, MaryAnn admits that she may have a problem but it was delicious).  On our way back to the boat MaryAnn and Alison attempted dinghy Christmas caroling but there were no other occupied boats in the area to hear them (probably not a bad thing).

Christmas morning, Alison fixed an amazing brunch of smoked salmon (it was the last of the salmon that Pedro smoked before we left Hampton) eggs benedict and fixings!  We had mimosas to top everything off.  Pretty perfect morning!

We left Road Town and headed over to Norman Island where we were told we would be able to hike to the top of the mountain for a great view.  The hike was fun and the view was great!  Back from the hike, we found evidence of previous bonfires on the rocky shore beach and decided that we would have our own.  What a great time that was!  We roasted hot dogs with all of the fixings and got to sit around the bonfire for a few hours enjoying the cricket serenade and the crystal clear night sky!

Next, we decided to head back to Virgin Gorda to snorkel the Baths area.    The Baths were so crowded that we decided to try the area just outside of them (we’d all been there before so it wasn’t necessary to try to squeeze in).  Again, the coral was mostly dead and very little fish life.  The granite boulders are cool to snorkel around but not a lot of life.

From there we headed over to Gorda Bay where we told we might see some flamingos in the salt ponds at sunset.  We walked the beach, found the salt ponds, and enjoyed happy hour but no flamingos.   We did, however, find a unicorn!

We then took the dinghy over to Leverick Bay where we were able to dock the dinghy and hike up another (paved roads but much much steeper) mountain.  Again, the view was pretty fabulous.  Back down the mountain, the bar at the marina at Leverick Bay served up the best painkillers we’d has so far (could have been the exhaustion of the hike but they were great).

The next day, we decided to head back west.  We stopped in Soper’s Hole to check out the little town (it too was badly damaged by the hurricanes but they are definitely trying to rebuild). 

Then onto Cane Garden Bay.  This town was the most reconstructed one we’d seen and several restaurants and bars and a great grocery store were all open.  In addition, they have a very nice and large beach.  We had planned to stay only one night before heading over to Jost van Dyke where Foxy’s has an annual New Year’s Eve Party that is renowned.   A few restaurants in Cane Garden Bay were also planning New Year’s Eve events (one was to be a masquerade party) and reports from Jost van Dyke, eluded to the fact that Foxy’s was the equivalent of spring break with no room for anchorages so it would be a long wet (it was a really windy night) dinghy ride.  So we decided to stay put and Alison went to work making us masks using some of her old sail cloth (www.sailmates.org or sailmates on Facebook to see her other creations).  The parties were a little more subdued but were still great and we even met up with some old friends whom we’d last seen in Bermuda.  Turned out to be a great way to end the year!!!

The next morning we made our way over to Jost and realized that the party was still going on.  We waked the beach, hiked a little and went snorkeling.  Again, the island is rebuilding but the reef is mostly dead after being destroyed from the hurricane.  Very sad!

Finally, we decided to head over to the USVI.  We pulled into St. John’s cleared customs and remarked that we were back in the US after almost exactly 2 months.  We found a great anchorage in Christmas Cove where we were able to get Pizza Pi pizza and enjoy a pizza picnic on the beach.  Pizza Pi is an old sailboat that has been converted into a floating pizza restaurant. The pizza was really good too.  After lunch we decided to try snorkeling again!  Finally some life!  The reef, while damaged, was still alive and gorgeous.  We saw a small (about 4 foot wing span) eagle ray and swam for the longest time with a turtle.  Best snorkeling we’d had so far!

When were in Maryland we’d met some friends who own a Cabo Rico 56 named Quetzel (our boat but bigger).  We’d kept in touch with them and when they heard we were in the islands, they talked us into meeting them in St. Croix for the J’ouvert Carnival Parade.  It’s an annual event on St. Croix that marks the end of the Christmas season.  We decided to take a nice 6 hour sail and see what it was about.    WOW!!!  They really go all out for this and we really enjoyed ourselves.  They even had a great fireworks show that we could easily see from the boat.  

The next morning, we walked the beach finding a ton of great sea glass and walked around Frederiksted some.  Very interesting architecture and not too touristy.  Definitely some damage from the hurricanes but also appears to have suffered from economic downturn too.  Could be a a really neat city and it looks like they are trying to come back.

 We stayed one more day to visit the Cruzan rum distillery too.  We thought it funny that Jim Beam actually bottles the rum (it’s made here and shipped there for bottling).  Pedro’s parents live just down the road from the Jim Beam distillery.  We didn’t really explore much more of St. Croix as we plan to stop there again later and really needed to get back to St. Thomas to attend to some boat chores and repairs.  Nothing too major thankfully but it is a boat!  We are settled in here in St. Thomas in a great comfortable marina easy walking distance from Red Hook and not too far to walk to our friends on Equus anchored in another harbor for the next month so we’ll hopefully get to explore some more in between boat chores.

Until next post!