Preparation Complete - in Transit

This blog is being brought to you from Thunder Bay. Bruce, Tim & Wiley left St Thomas early Monday morning (April 19th).....at least that was the plan and I haven't heard anything different. I left St Thomas on April 16th and after seeing the airports in Miami, Memphis and Minneapolis, finally arrived in Thunder Bay 12 hours later......unfortunately my luggage didn't arrive until 2 days later - luckily I have sisters to borrow clothes from.

Now that my part in our Caribbean adventure is over, you might be wondering what I (the non sailor) thought of my time living onboard a 39ft sailboat for 4 months. One question I have - who else thinks they could live with their spouse 24/7 in the limited space of 39 ft while floating on the water, especially if your spouse's name is Bruce! Enough said about that! I did thoroughly enjoy the weather. Hard to beat a consistent temperature of 80 degrees with a soft breeze - the stronger breezes however were my downfall. I really don't like to be heeled over to the extent that wearing a life jacket with a safety harness clipped to the railing is a must.

It was nice to look forward to the newness of each day - going to places we had never been before where just finding a grocery store was an adventure. The beaches were wonderful and the turquoise water warm and inviting (unlike Georgian Bay). I did miss the ordinary, mundane things like a daily shower, being able to do laundry whenever I felt like it & a flush toilet. All in all a small price to pay for experiencing life in a tropical paradise.

Would I do it again........in a heartbeat!

What have you done for me lately?

A couple of times we have mentioned the 150 lbs of tools that we brought down with us and of course tools occupy a special place in my heart. Shortly after we got down here, the hinge on one of the hatches broke and it was time to effect a repair.

Wrenches, allen keys and even drill bits were put into use. The problem with the drill bits was I had no drill. Had to use the vice grips on the drill bit to turn and remount my new hole. Of course, you know where this is leading....let's increase that 150 lbs of tools by buying a new battery drill.

Rivets for repairing the hinge were in stock, having brought them down. The valves on the heads were leaking, so a repair was made with a new valve brought down in my tool package. When I repaired the engine water leak, the hose clamp was in stock in the tool kit. Moving the baby stay so that the dinghy can be stored on deck on the trip home required drilling holes in the deck, wrenches, hack saws - again most of the parts were in stock in the tool kit. For the trip home, we will carry some extra jerry can fuel jugs on deck to extend our motoring range. I needed a board to go between the stantions for attachment. Went to the local hardware store (lumber store) but after the 1km walk, they informed me they don't sell lumber any more. On the way to the lumber store, I had noticed a 2x10 leaning against the wall of a business (looked like a piece left over from a big crate). I asked the owner if I could buy it - he said it was free - no charge. When I asked him if he could cut to length, he gave me that funny look and I knew the answer was "NO". I took my board back to the boat and then had to retrace my steps to the hardware store for a saw. Yipee - more tools! The free 2x10 only cost me $23.00 for a hand saw. The fuel jug rail is now mounted and ready for the trip home. Before I get too smug about all the repairs and spare parts that have worked, talk to me after the ocean crossing and see how many things we had to fix on route and did we have the parts and tools.

We are hoping to leave April 19th from St Thomas. Tim & Wiley will be on board for the trip home. While I might have enough tools down here, I don't have enough sails so they are each bringing a spinnaker and more line. It's 1500 miles to New York City. My target time is 11 days - 10 days would really put a smile on my face - 12 days would be a disappointment and 13 days would be just plain ugly. The average person walks at 4 miles per hour. The power walkers you see in your neighbourhood, swinging their arms, probably do 6 miles per hour - or our approximate sailing speed.

We will push off from the marina at Nanny Cay, Tortola and get our customs clearance from the BVI's to leave tomorrow. Every location we leave now is a goodbye to an old friend. Joan especially is sorry to leave Deadman's Bay on Peter Island where the beach is exceptional and where we spent the last week. Next blog will probably be our last from the Caribbean.

Anguilla

We had a short stop in St Maarten on the way back from St Barts. While waiting our turn for the lift bridge, we had to jockey our position with Nanuman. On his deck I would guess it was 80ft long and about 12" in diameter. His spinnaker pole probably cost as much as might whole boat. Nanuman is a brand new replica of the famous J boat Endeavour II. An 80ft spinnaker pole and no life lines. Once through the bridge and into the breeze, Joan & I hoisted our sails for a great sail to Anguilla. We watched Nanuman motor off to St Barts for their 100ft plus only boat race.

We are only allowed to overnight anchor at one spot in Anguilla and it's not really the commercial centre so one of the things that we did was a taxi tour of the island. Because of my building construction background, I was pumping the taxi drive on info for the cost of building on Anguilla. Stew Jones take note, how much work would you be able to do if a concrete block costs $20.00 instead of our $2.00 or a yard of concrete costs $600.00 instead of our $100.00 dollars in Canada. The taxi ride was maybe a little bit short of our 2 hrs promised but then the taxi driver is paying $10.00 a gallon for his gas compared to our $4.00. Anguilla still officially belongs to Britain and the 14,000 inhabitants have no interest in Independence. Anguilla has decided its tourist market will be low volume, high end and as such has some pretty fancy resorts which we saw on our taxi tour. (Joan's kind of place). We did our customs work, clearing out of Anguilla, leaving at midnight for the night crossing to the BVI's. 14hrs later, we clearing customs again to get back into the BVI's.

We have had a hard time these past 2 weeks trying to keep in touch as a sailing regatta starts this week in the BVI's and dockage at a marina is hard to get. Anchoring is great and cheap but leaves you without internet. Will be exploring spots we missed when last in the BVI's and revisiting those places that we especially liked such as Deadman's Bay where Joan had a relaxing time floating the afternoon away. All too soon, it will be time to plan the trip home.

Voulez-vous couche avec moi ce soir

La rouge tete, oui, non, avec, merci , bonjour- that is about the extent of my French so when it comes to a choice of clearing into the French side of the island of St Maarten or the Dutch side - which one am I going to choose. Yes, you know, I went to the Dutch side and happily it's been rare to hear people speak Dutch. Most conversation is in English.

While reading a local newspaper (in MacDonalds) there was a picture that broke my heart. There was a Moorings Beneteau 505 (50ft) sitting completely submerged on a reef just outside their charter base. They didn't think they could get it off in one piece so they are going to take hydraulic chain saws and cut it to pieces and take it off the reef that way. Until they remove it, I imagine it will make all the charterers leaving their base extremely nervous.

We went for an island taxi tour and it's very evident with the different cultures on the French and Dutch side. I think it is fair to say 2 common characteristics on the French side were thinness and smoking. Joan seems to be taken a little bit with the French pastries. Most of the islands over here are a country unto themselves. St Maarten happens to be two countries, but you have to clear customs in with your boat as well as out with your boat. If you don't clear out, the next country may not let you in.

So we cleared out of St Maarten Dutch side and headed for St Barts. Remember how I avoided the French in St Maarten, well St Barts is definitely French. Obviously I was going to be nervous about clearing in. Usually the captain is the only one allowed off the boat so the double bugaboo about St Barts is not only is it French but their customs form is computer driven. After playing dumb and asking for help (the keyboard seemed to be different) I was able to complete the forms and clear into the country. St Barts is hands down the neatest, cleanest, least improvised island that we have seen down here. Restaurant cafes are endless around the harbour with lots of public waterfront walkways. The island was French during the pirate days but France gave it to Sweden for some trading rights into Stockholm, but after 100 years, Sweden decided it was too much of a burden, so they gave it back to France.

In another week, St Barts will hold a sailboat race but I don't yet qualify to enter. To take the starting line, the qualification is that your vessel must be over 100ft long. I was thinking if I bought another 393 (39ft), the 2 boats would give me 78 ft and 2 masts - I'm not sure if I would be ketch or a yawl or a schooner. Now 78 ft doesn't make 100, so maybe if I talked to the guys cutting up the 50ft Beneteau, I might be able to get a 22ft piece to bring me up to the 100ft. If their section had a mast as well, I would have 3 masts and that might make me pretty unique.

Small cars and electric cars are certainly the "in" thing in St Barts and we saw some pretty unique, probably European, vehicles. St Barts is as far south as we are going to go so technically we are on our way home. I'm tired of clearing customs. One of the islands further south requires you to register with the port authority when you arrive, then leave that building and go to another one for customs, then leave that building and walk down the street to the police station for immigration.

Antigua is getting a very bad name regarding crime and apparently 2 cruise ship lines are going to stop calling into there. The volcano at Montserrat is still putting out ash and depending on which way the wind blows, the ash is landing on and doing damage to boats in Nevis and St Kitts.
Heading off to Anguilla tomorrow.....or maybe the next day.....depending on the winds!

Sint Maarten/St Martin/St Maarten

I can't believe that I've started prepping some items for the trip home. I have bought some extra jerry cans for water, emergency rations and diesel for extra motoring conditions. Also bought the chart for Bermuda. A number of people have expressed an interest in sailing home but I wasn't able to give them a plan of attack until now. I would like to leave Saturday, April 24th from Charlotte Amalie, USVI to Bermuda - distance about 850 miles (6 or 7 days). Waiting for the next weather window, we would probably leave Bermuda for New York City about May 1st (distance about 650 miles - 4 or 5 days). You cannot make a landfall in Bermuda in gale conditions and if such existed, we would simply continue on to New York City as one trip. If this is of interest to you - contact Trevor at 416-903-5190 or email address trevor_draper1@yahoo.ca. If you're interested, try to get back to Trevor by March 20th. When you give him a $200 deposit for boat equipment, you've booked your spot on the return voyage. You will still need to budget air fare & food. Airfare from Buffalo to Charlotte Amalie (STT) will probably be reasonably cheap.

I have talked about the extravagance of various yachts but when I entered the lagoon in
St Maarten during the Regatta week, my jaw dropped and my eyes dilated wide open. This put the mega yacht harbour in St. Thomas to shame. It didn't matter whether it was massive power boats or sailboats, they were all here. Of course, I'm here with my 39 footer but that other former Lion's Head cottager outdid me. He brought his 131 ft sailboat and because it doesn't have the volume down below, he also brought his 161 ft power boat for evening activities. Make sure you keep buying those Timbits & coffee. Yes, Ron Joyce keeps his boats in St Maarten and St Bart to promote his Nova Scotia resort - Destination Fox Harbour.

The size and scope of these race boats is unbelievable. Visione, the largest sloop in the world at 236 ft didn't race but of course was here to showcase itself - and yes, there are some smaller boats in the Regatta, so Stew should check out the results of the one 36.7. The racing is during the day and the partying is during the evening. We attended 2 of the 4 evening sessions and the slogan for Regatta is Lets Have Some Serious Fun. What's nice about the bigger islands is that they have some semi taxi/bus minivans for a dollar or two.

Checking out our bank statements on the internet, we noticed numerous charges on our Visa that were a mystery to us. A call to the Visa centre and we found out that Joan's Visa card number had been stolen. The Visa centre was very nice and thankfully we only had to cancel Joan's card and that folks is called Utopia. Imagine someone else taking Joan's card away from her on my behalf. They will issue a new one but we're not sure if it will get down here or not in time for her to use it.

We were going to leave the other morning and while doing my morning checks, I discovered about 7 bucket fulls of water in the bilge below the engine. After bailing all the water (bilge pump doesn't extract from under the engine), starting searching for the possible problems. After quite some time, I discovered one hose clamp had busted and this would be an easy repair because of all my spare parts and tools which we lugged down in our luggage.

People who have sailed with me know when we have a problem, we fix it and we don't dwell on our bad luck. Quickly we move to start counting our good luck. This problem arose at dock in a marina, not out on the open sea pitching and rolling. The repair was easy, no further damage was done to any other components.

Joan got an extra day at the marina which means one extra shower....PRICELESS!

OSR (Ontario School Record)

After 18 hrs of sailing, we found St Maarten which was probably a good thing since I didn't have charts of Africa. As soon as we arrived at 7:30 a.m. the Coast Guard came by and boarded our boat for inspection. The officers were very polite and it was a very pleasant experience. More about St Maarten in the next blog - just wanted to let everybody know that we arrived safely and the Heineken Regatta just happens to be on this week!

When any student starts school in Ontario a file is opened on them for their entire school years. In the old days (my time), there were lots of anecdotal comments in them so you can imagine what my file looked like. Now-a-days it's more factual, mostly report card and assessment information. During my 30 year teaching career, I chose to never look in an OSR for any student as it was my choice to treat the student as he presented himself to me and not based on anyone else's assessment. I wanted to use this philosophy when going to the US Virgin Islands and not having any preconceived notions of the islands. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to go in with no previous knowledge or opinions. When Trevor was down at Christmas the radio stations were promoting all kinds of family activities at beaches and parks. The announcers always finished off on a personal note telling the listeners to please leave their weapons at home for the holidays. While reading one of the cultural books on the BVI's, the author noted that one year they had a homicide and some years they didn't, while St Thomas had 23 homicides for the month of March that year.

We spent almost a month in the US Virgin Islands and had a wonderful, safe experience. Now, it should be noted that we are not night owls and much of the crime happens after dark and we were already back on the boat most nights before dark. Living beside the United States, it is easy to forget how well they do things. The history in the BVI's has disappeared and only exists in the printed form. The USVI has the same history but it is very well preserved and documented for presentation to the public. The national park of St John is done to that same standard as all the national parks in the US mainland. The park system can easily tap into the expertise that exists on mainland USA.

The BVI's best attribute is that it caters to the cold weather (northern) tourist who want sun, beaches and booze - to let loose one week a year or more if you're retired like us!

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!