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!