Size Does Matter

Tim's is bigger than mine. He was supposed to get a 44ft boat but when the charter company found out there would be 8 of them, they were forced to get a 48ft boat, but Tim didn't tell them there were actually 9 instead of 8. Jerry's is bigger than mine. Cheryl says she likes the big one in Florida better.

We spent a week anchored off the mega dock in Charlotte Amalie. The unofficial size for mega yachts is 100ft and they are not really interested in little guys like us. They have their own collection of specialized Gucci type stores at this dock. Believe it or not, Joan wasn't even interested in seeing what the prices were. I guess if you have to look at the price, then you can't afford it. We saw some 50, 60 & 70ft boats sneak into the yacht harbour, probably hoping that some day they would have a boat the unofficial right size. 50's & 60ft boats look pretty small beside the 100ft boats. The 100ft boats looked pretty small compared to the 200ft boats. There was a big size difference between the 200's & the 250's (Kismet). Natayana at 300ft was grander again. None of them approached Princess Marianna at 350ft with a helicopter on the back deck. The mega yacht harbour is beside the cruise ship terminal and even Princess Marianna became quite small compared to the cruise ships. When we were developing the breakwall for the Lion's Head Harbour, one option we looked at was sinking a Great Lakes freighter for the breakwall like they did in Port Credit (they used 3). The cost at the time was $30,000 - the value of scrap steel. I'm going to buy one of these 730ft Great Lakes freighters. I have all kinds of friends storing various items for winter in Lion's Head. I'll stop storing Jerry's boat & cars at the house and store them on the ship, so now my ship has a Lincoln & a Corvette, 28ft runabout and I'm sure I can find canoes, kayaks, seadoos & dinghys that need storage as well. Tim has all his sports equipment stored away for winter, so I'll store that and now my ship has a basketball court, volleyball court, archery range and a fitness centre. My ship will come complete with a fitness trainer (Nathan). Fuel might be expensive, so maybe I can go over to Europe and pick up a couple of windmills for Wiley in exchange for fuel. Maybe a better idea, I'll just have Wiley store a windmill on the ship (they are only 400ft tall - half the ship's length, with 300ft of sweep on the blades). A nice 2 mega watt would do. Heck, the boat would easily hold 2 - lets get 2! This may produce a surplus of power so now when I visit an island and plug in, I'll be able to light the island up.

I'll need some mechanical help, so I'll do all the welding, Joe will become the ship's electrician & Mike will be my diesel mechanic. Peter's restaurant is doing well in Thunder Bay, but he probably needs a winter break. He won't be able to serve Princess Diana again and I won't let Prince Philip on the ship, but I'm sure we can find some other royalty down here. For the summer maybe I'll just dock the ship in Port Elgin or Kincardine - plug into the grid & make money........Stand back & look at the decadence that my ship has. Maybe Bruce's is the biggest!

The week in St Thomas was very unique and it's easy to see why as many as 7 cruise ships can be here on one day. St Thomas was a bit of a slave colony but functioned more as a central trading area for the entire Caribbean. This required large warehouses which have now been converted into an endless montage of stores. I think if I said, if you put all the jewellery counters end to end, they would easily approach a mile and I do not think I'm exaggerating. To see the 200-300 year architecture was interesting. Many of the stores don't have opening doors or glass windows, but simply the hurricane shutters which are opened during the day and padlocked at night. This gives the old downtown area a quaint look.

We have been in St Croix for almost a week now and enjoyed its different historical architecture in the city of Christianstead. Some of the buildings are crumbling ruins (think Roman Coliseum, Stonehenge) no garbage dump here.

Later today we will leave St Croix for St Marten, an approximate 18hr sail. Next posting should be from there if all goes well!

Back to Reality

We are at American Yacht Harbour on St Thomas waiting for Tim Matheson's group of charterers to come in at the end of their charter, but since it is now dark, we assume they will show up early tomorrow morning. Our understanding is that their flight is at 11:00a.m. so it will be a busy morning for them & we'll likely barely have time to hear the highlights of their charter week. The house picture in our blog last week, I think I found that particular house in a real estate magazine. If you want it, it's for sale - price $32 million.

We spent the week back at St John, doing a bit of sailing and touring the south side of the island. In Lienster Bay, we got our first dose of reality of what life was like 200 years ago on the slave sugar plantation. Rum is simply a by product of making sugar. In 1733 the slaves revolted and controlled the island for 6 months. Eventually they lost and slavery continued for another 110 years.

We had one free night of anchorage in Coral Bay, but Joan's best comment was "this place looks like a slum for boats". There were all kinds of derelict boats shipwrecked on shore and there were all kinds of people living on derelict boats that would never sail again. We were happy to leave early the next day, looking for a more picturesque anchorage.

The snorkeling around St John has been the best - swimming with turtles and stingrays and once in a while seeing these stingrays jump 10 ft in the air. One of our anchorages on the south side of the island was Little Lameshur. It's claim to fame was that during the 60's NASA ran an underwater program here where some aquanauts stayed under water for 2 full months. The program was called Tektite and its purpose was to see how people functioned in small spaces previous to the long space voyages. There was a nice museum on this program at the Virgin Islands Environmental Resources Station. I'm sure it would be possible for BPDS senior science environmental class to come to the centre for a trip. This area is also a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

On my second day at Little Lameshur, I wanted to do some hiking to a former plantation great house, sugar factory and pictographs. First stop on the trail was the great house. While walking the trail, numerous mongoose scurried across. They were an introduced species to control the snakes and rats in the sugar cane fields; but much like the slaves, they didn't like their new job. The mongoose hunt during the day and the rats & snakes come out at night so they decided to settle on bird and turtle egg nests instead. They are a pest but there is no way to get rid of them now. Arriving at the great house, it was all boarded up as someone had tried a restoration but had obviously given up. Walking around the back, there was one doorway pulled off. It was very dark inside but the sunlight was able to highlight the arched plaster entrance way which would have been impressive in its day. I slowly walked in, a little bit nervous about the quality of the floor as all these homes had cisterns in the basement and I didn't want to fall through the floor and drown - so I just continued to creep in slowly - wishing I had my x-country skis to spread my weight over more area. There was lots of crap on the floor and I wasn't sure what animals were responsible and were they waiting for me outside. Pretty soon I got my answer. OH SHIT - they are dive bombing at me. My first reaction was to grab my hat and wave it above my head to try to protect myself. OH SHIT! my sunglasses were on my hat and now they're somewhere on this dark floor. I can't run out as I'm too worried about the safety of the floor. I continue waving my hat above my head and find my sunglasses but the earlobe piece is missing. I still don't know what is attacking me. I grab my glasses (minus the earlobe piece), carefully shuffle towards the door. Nothing followed me outside - so now it's time to turn & look back inside. I thought they were birds nesting but now I can see the house is filled with a very large bat colony. Joan is thankful that she wasn't with me. The house was in partial disrepair, which was great for me as I was able to see building construction. There was all kinds of special brick work and fancy cornices - some in disrepair but also some had been refurbished. Just before leaving, I spotted a plaque on one of the porch pillars that was dated 1846 - one year after slavery ended. The journey continued down the valley to the sugar factory. This was the last operating one on St John and closed about 1907. Its first operation was under slave labour and when the slaves were emancipated, it was converted to steam power and worked that way for over 50 years. All the steam equipment was still there and again I was able to marvel at the machinery that was built in 1861 - some of it looked like a good dose of WD40 and it could be back in running condition. From my previous experience at the great house, every room I entered started with an inspection of the ceiling and yes - there they were - great thriving masses of bats in clusters of probably 100 or more - again Joan is thankful that she wasn't with me. The third part of the trip back up the trail was to the sometimes waterfall. I sat down for lunch beside a pool of still water - it was too dry for any waterfall. While eating lunch, I looked up and there he was staring at me - a Tatino indian pictograph face carved into the rock. After lunch I inspected the next lower pool and there were more carvings in the rock. This second set of pictures was placed so that they were reflected in the still pool of water but here in the water, their images were upside down. Upon leaving the waterfall pools, I came upon 2 unexpected inhabitants - were they wild goats - no maybe wild donkeys - no must be on the Bruce Peninsula - those were 2 whitetail deer. They must hang around the pools as the only source of fresh water. During this hike I passed miles and miles of stone fences, obviously piled by the slaves, to mark roads and planting fields. The sugar farms disappeared when slavery ended. The slaves were not free labour but were simply a commodity and they were bought and sold just like any piece of equipment. At the end of the slave rebellion in 1733, many slaves chose to jump off the cliff rather than to return to slavery. For us - who have only known freedom - the concept of slavery is simply words and pictures, but their stories and hardships were real.

US Virgin Islands

We went to St. John's this week. I could lie and tell my mom it's a church, but no it's just really one of the three main islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The USVI is really a recent terminology as the U.S. bought them from Denmark in 1917. It was the Danish who ran the slave plantations in the 1800's and because they needed money in WW1 they sold them to the States. 2/3 of St. John is a national park. I know, we said we were decadent last week, but maybe it was this week that we were really decadent. We never sailed once, but moved 2 or 3 miles every day to a new anchorage beach. The day's activities were swimming, snorkelling & beaching.....sounds pretty decadent doesn't it! We knew Tim Matheson was chartering this week, but we miscalculated his starting date as we had booked into the marina tonight hoping to see him, but they left this morning. However, he was able to catch up with us in an anchorage early in the afternoon before he headed off ot the BVI's.

The monster homes, possibly the Rockerfeller estates that Joan mistook for hotels at Cinnamon Bay were pretty impressive as you can see from the picture included here. Alot of the old plantation ruins are marked on trails, but we haven't had a chance to pull ourselves away from water based activities to put on the hiking shoes and heaven forbid socks!

Decadence & the Drapers

The BVI's are a special place - no doubt about it. Think about an entire country that doesn't smoke cigarettes. Of course there are people smoking cigarettes - they are dumb white people from off island and they probably have to look hard for a place to buy them as they aren't very visable. They also avoid (or ban) all the North American fast foot restaurants. You also can't have seadoos or motor bikes over 125 cc's. One newspaper story told about the police consficating a large motorcycle, but the owner simply broke into the police station that night and took it back, but smuggled it off island.

Of course, now we are in the USVI and all that American culture is full face in front of you. For the 6 weeks in the BVI's, we never had any soft drinks or obviously fast food. Two days in the harbour here, we've eaten at Subway twice and the beverage was obviously a soft drink.

Joan's indulgence has been to search out the ads for a hair salon and she found one at the spa at the Wyndam Resort. Now the serious question is what has caused those gray roots to show. Is it:
a) Sailing on life jacket & safety harness days

b) Trying to pick up the mooring ball

c) Worrying whether the anchor is going to hold

d) Trying to handle the dock lines when docking

e) Spending 31 with Bruce (24/7)

f) Always the Mate - never the Captain

g) Boats float, but Joan doesn't

h) Trying to keep the boat headed into the wind for sail take downs

i) Trying to hang on when heeling angles approach 45 degrees

j) Trying to get into the dinghy without falling over or falling out.

Now our decadence pales in comparison to some other people down here. A couple of weeks ago in the North Sound, I saw a nice mega yacht come in so I went down to have a look at it and its name was Rising Sun. It had some unique features like the anchors were not exposed on the side of the hull but were hidden behind doors that lifted up when it was time to anchor. At the aft end, there were a number of garages in the side of the hull where the fleet of accessory boats were kept, ranging up to 30 or 40ft. I couldn't see it, but the empty deck space at the back end was the helicopter landing pad. A recent article identified this boat (ship) as being 450 ft long. My quick calculation makes that about 120 ft longer than the Cheechimon (ferry). The owner of the boat is Larry Ellison of Oracle (computer hardware or software). He is the America's Cup sponsor for the U.S. entry.

After our open air taxi ride across St. Thomas today, seeing some of the poorer sections, some of the locals might find our lifestyle of sailing quite decadent.

Cruising with Jeremey & Melissa

Sometimes the stars align and you hit a home run (Nathan only hit a few) and at other times, the stars don't know what the hell alignment means. The day before Jeremey & Melissa arrived, sailing to the airport anchorage was another one of those safety harness, double reef sails. We never took the double reef out for the entire week that Jeremey & Melissa were down here with us. Their plane arrived on time and so did they, but they were the last ones out of the baggage claim area because it's hard to claim your baggage when it doesn't arrive. They had to run to catch their connecting flight in Chicago, but I guess the baggage couldn't run quite as fast. All those warm northern clothes they arrived in just isn't going to cut it down here in the Caribbean. Smart thinking Melissa had packed her bathing suit in her carry-on though. Baggage didn't arrive in on the next flight that night, or the first flight the next morning either. We weren't about to sit in the anchorage and wait for luggage so we told them we would keep in touch as we travelled through the islands and they would have to find us. Baggage finally arrived 2 days late and because the airport was on our return route, we picked it up. The smiles on Jeremey & Melissa's face brightened a little bit after 2 days of borrowing "old" people clothes.

Cane Garden Bay is the anchorage where they taxi all the cruise ship passengers for a day of sun and fun. All the lounge chairs are neatly lined up on the beach for the throngs that will arrive. We happened to be lucky and be there on a day where there were no cruise ships in so we had most of the beach to ourselves - didn't have to share. Jeremey found some literature that put a price on renting Richard Branson's house on Necker Island. Most literature says that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it, but the number Jeremey found was $47,900 per night! That might make it an expensive week. Because of the strength of the winds, we almost had Peter Island to ourselves as well. The night before Jeremey & Melissa were to leave, the airport anchorage at Trellis Bay had a Full Moon Party at the beach bar. Some of the local artisans talked and demonstrated their skills - pottery wheel work and kiln firing were impressively demonstrated. But more was still to come. Even though it had rained quite heavily during the day and early evening - which meant we weren't sure we were going to see the full moon - the sculptured metal ball bonfires were able to be lit. Later in the evening, we had another chance to see the Jumbie stilt dancers again and unfortunately one fell from a great height during the routine but wasn't hurt. We had the good fortune of running into Adam Matheson twice this week. The first time, we passed each other as it took the brain awhile to register that that face might be someone you know. The second time, we caught up with each other at the Full Moon Party.

The flight home for Jeremey & Melissa had more adventure as a flight was delayed resulting in a missed connecting flight, but they did eventually get home early in the morning.

Our visitors visa for the BVI's expires tomorrow but we left the BVI's today & cleared through U.S. customs at St. John. Tonight we sit in St. Thomas at Red Hook on the patio terrace. Two bars have competing bands so the music gets a bit mixed. We hope to be travelling in the USVI's for the next 2 or 3 weeks.

Note to Tim: Clearing in and out of the BVI's might be easiest at Jost Van Dyke. This would have the added advantage of going to Foxies twice. If Adam has not made plans past your charter and wants to sail the Leeward Islands with us, contact us at draper.bruce@yahoo.ca or 284-545-6389 (if we're still using our BVI cell phone sim card).