St. Martin

We had an unusual stay-over on St. Martin.  First, we stayed more than two weeks.  There have been few islands where we've lingered so long.  Second, we had visitors for both weeks.  We have never had visitors back-to-back before.

Our daughter, Esther, and her friend, James, met us in Marigot Bay.  St. Martin is a divided island.  The northern part is French, and administered by France.  The official currency is the Euro, though US Dollar is  widely accepted.  Locals speak French, though we found that nearly everyone has good English. The southern part is Dutch, and administered by the Netherlands.  Their official currency is the US Dollar, and English is the main language spoken.

We really like the French part of the island.  Restaurants are extremely good, there is lots of excellent cheese and wine in the grocery stores, the people are friendly and helpful.

The week that Esther and James were with us started very windy, and that limited our activities a bit.  Gretchen and they visited a wonderful beach (Friar's Beach) one day while David waited on Callisto for the watermaker repairman.  We had a quite strenuous sail from Marigot Bay to Grand Case.  We also took a daysail from Grand Case to the small island of Tintamarre for some more beach time.  There was a running Pinochle tournament (David lost).   All in all, a very pleasant visit.

The day before Esther and James left us, Gretchen's mother, Lois, and her mother's friend, Pat, arrived on St. Martin.  Lois isn't much for clambering into and out of dinghies and so they stayed in a hotel near Orient Bay.  The weather had improved, and we enjoyed beach days in Grand Case and Orient Bay, and a tour of the main town on the island, Phillipsburg.  David was finally able to get a haircut in Phillipsburg, and has less hair on his head than he's had in many years.

It was a bit strange (and quite peaceful) to find ourselves alone together on the boat after all this activity.  We rested up for a day, and started our journey back south.  We need to be in Grenada by early May, to prepare for the hurricane season.  Our next stop is St. Barths.

More on Antigua

It was great spending a whole week on Antigua.  We were able to be in several different harbours and realized that there are lots of different cruising experiences available.  

Our first stop was Falmouth Harbour.  It was just a few days before the RORC 600, which is a sailing race of 600 miles around several of the Caribbean islands. Here is a link if you want to know more.   http://caribbean600.rorc.org/ It was very fun to see the raceboats and their crews while on shore and out practicing from our mooring.  Antigua also prides itself on its youth sailing program, so we were able to cheer the kids on in the late afternoons as they raced around the boats in the harbour.

On the RORC race day, we left for our next anchorage, right after the start of the race.  It was a bit rainy, but soon cleared up, and we were sailing right behind the classic yachts Adela and Windrose.  Absolutely gorgeous.  We suspect that Callisto was also in some of the pictures from the helicopter, but, of course, edited out...

We sailed most of the way to Nonsuch Bay on the eastern side of Antigua.  This reminded us of the Tobago Cays, there is nothing between you and Senegal but the Atlantic Ocean..and the large reef, of course.  No restaurants, no vendors, just a few other boats, enjoying the sand and water, plus lots of kitesurfing.  A very different perspective from the bustle and big money in Falmouth...

Our final destination on the island was Jolly Harbour, at the western side of Antigua, to allow for a shopping day in the capital St. Johns, and a quick taxi ride to the airport for our friend’s return to the US.   We had a quick sail, but quite a bumpy ride, with large rolly waves.  Our friends definitely won the iron stomach award!  We stopped at Carlisle Bay, a smallish bay just north of Falmouth Harbour, and Callisto was the only boat in the harbor well until evening when we were joined by only two other boats.  Since we had been “roughing it” for a few days, we decided to have both lunch and dinner at the resort.  A very good decision, the food was excellent, and the service included a wine sommelier, all very civilized.  The snorkeling was also very good, David reported seeing many new types of coral and some large starfish. 

After a leisurely breakfast next morning, we headed to Jolly Harbour.  The marina and condo development there is quite large, with several more homes in the planning stages.  We anchored outside the marina, and “enjoyed” the wet dinghy rides into the marina.  From there, we went by taxi to St. Johns, the capital of Antigua, visited the local museum, and walked around the restored quay near the cruise ship dock.  We also took advantage of the local market, replenishing our fresh vegetable and fruit supply.  

Antigua turned out to be a great place to entertain guests, get in some great sailing, and enjoy several different aspects of Caribbean living. 

VIsitors

Another fun thing when cruising is having visitors.  We just finished spending a week with old friends, Ed and Ellen Antal, who flew down from New Jersey to be with us in Antigua.

Having guests sure breaks up the routine.  We love showing off our boat, our sailing skills, and the wonderful places that we get to experience.  This past week was filled with philosophical discussions, some card playing, lots of swimming and snorkeling, and plenty of bragging on our kids.

The boat does feel a bit smaller with four people on board, but it works very well for that number.  The main downside is that we have to eat meals in the Saloon, rather than in the cockpit.  Our cockpit table really can only handle two people.

Now we are in a bit of a hurry to get up to St. Martin, where we will meet our daughter, Esther, and her friend James for a week on the boat, and then visit with Gretchen's mother for another week.  The forecast is for strong winds and fairly big waves, so we should have some lively sailing the next few days.

Green Flash

One of the fun things about cruising in the tropics is the daily sundown ritual.  Every evening, as sundown nears, we relax in the cockpit (perhaps with beverage in hand), and watch the sun disappear behind the horizon.

An important part of this is watching for the elusive "Green Flash."  If conditions are just right, the very last bit of the sun on the horizon turns a brilliant green, for less than a second.  It requires a clear view of the sea on the horizon, and an absolutely clear sky.  This makes it quite rare.  Despite watching virtually every day, we never saw the green flash in 2011, and so far only once this year.  The rarity is part of the fun.

We have never heard a really good explanation for the physics behind this phenomenon.  There is an old joke about floating (green) beer bottles, but it probably has more to do with the sun shining through the sea water.

Still Sailing

We continue to sail nearly every day.  This is very different from our experience last year, when we often would sit at anchor for a week between passages.

And the sailing has been great!  Most days we have been able to sail at very comfortable angles to the wind, which means we sail fast and directly to our destination.  Winds have been very strong this year, nearly always more than 20 knots (40 kilometers/hour, Beaufort 6).  We have been sailing very fast -- which for our boat means speeds around 8.5 knots (16 km/hr) or even more.  We have also sailed almost every day with our sails reefed, to cope with the strong winds.

Blue skies, blue water, sun shining, and fast sailing.  It doesn't get any better than that!

We are now in Isles des Saintes, which are several small islands off the coast of Guadeloupe.  This is a fantastic, beautiful anchorage, with pastel-colored houses in the village.  Guadeloupe is a part of France, and the French influence is very strong, especially in the restaurants, wine selections, and general attitude.

We have only two more passages before arriving in Antigua.  We expect to be there on Wednesday.

Lots to Catch Up On

Since our last post there have been several adventures.  Here's a sampling:

Invasion  We have had absolutely no problem with mosquitoes this trip, and have become somewhat lax about screens.  One evening, David left the screen on the main entryway open when he went to bed.  Mistake.  A bird (or maybe more than one) came into the boat during the night, and apparently stayed for quite a while.  When we woke in the morning, there was bird poop everywhere.  Hard to deal with before you've even had a cup of coffee.

Mustique Blues Festival  This is the seventeenth annual festival, and we sailed there in order to go to a couple of concerts.  Mustique is one of the Grenadines, a perfect tropical island.  It is privately owned, and the development company has made it a destination for the rich and famous.  Homeowners over the years have included Mick Jagger, Tommy Hilfiger, and Raquel Welch, among many other familiar names.  Apparently we missed Prince William and Kate by only a couple of days.  This wasn't all bad, because we heard that security made much of the island inaccessible to tourists.

The concerts were a lot of fun.  As usual, as "mature" adults, we ended up going to bed before the really good acts came on stage.  But we're used to that.

Sailing  Since we have a commitment to be on Antigua by the middle of February, we've been doing a lot more sailing this year than last.  It has been very enjoyable.  Yesterday, for example, we had some of the best sailing we've ever experienced in the Caribbean.  The winds were strong (20+ knots, Beaufort 6) and from a favorable direction, the waves big but well separated.  We sailed at 8.5 knots (even touching 9 knots a few times) much of the way, and arrived in St. Lucia 3-4 hours before we had planned.  This was a 55 nautical mile trip, and we made it in under 8 hours, including time for raising the anchor and setting/dousing the sails.  Exhilarating and magical.

Commissioning

When you first launch a sailboat, or relaunch one after a long period of storage, you have to go through a process known as “commissioning.”  This simply means going through the boat, system by system, to ensure everything is working properly, and fixing everything that is not (or at least every important thing).

Callisto had a particularly challenging commissioning period this year.  Even some things that were working at first failed before we could get the other problems fixed.  Here’s a partial list of the repairs

• Battery bank – this was a problem that we caused, but a big one.  We depend on these batteries for all of our electricity.  We checked the water level in our batteries when we first got on the boat.  As is normal, the water levels were down a bit, so it was necessary to add more.  The boatyard had been doing this on our behalf through the summer and fall.  On the galley counter was a big bottle labeled “Battery Water.”  Usually, you just use distilled water, but this is hard to find in the islands, so there are some commercial brands available in the chandleries.  Distilled water, naturally enough, is colorless.  This water, though, had a green tinge.  Hmmm.  I guess the manufacturer tinted it to make it “special” and worth the high price.  WRONG.  This was a 50:50 mixture of distilled water and engine coolant.  Putting it into the batteries was a BIG MISTAKE.  It ruined them.  Fix: Replace all four batteries.  These are big batteries, and expensive.

• Fresh water pump.  This provides pressure to all of our faucets.  It took longer than usual to prime, worked fine for a day, and then quit.  Fix:  Replacement.  Another significant expense.

• Dinghy Outboard Engine.  Wouldn’t start.  At all. This is a big problem, because your dinghy is your only way to get to shore.  We have oars, but rowing an inflatable boat against a strong wind is very slow and no fun.  At first we thought it was lack of spark to the spark plug.  No replacement parts for the ignition system could be found on the island, ordering them meant a two-week delivery time.  But we hired a guy to look at the engine, and he found that the problem was actually the float in the carburetor.  Fix:  Clean the carburetor.  Now we have spare ignition parts, in case we ever need them.

• No hot water.  We had had the engine coolant changed while we were gone.  We usually get our hot water from the engine cooling system (like you get heat your car by circulating the water from the radiator).  When the coolant was changed, we got an air bubble in the circulation system, and no flow to the hot water tank.  We needed help from the yard in diagnosing this, but it was an easy fix.

• Galley Faucet.  This broke right off, on day two after launching.  No idea why.  Fix:  Replace.  Fortunately, rather inexpensive.

We needed to stay very close to the boatyard, in Prickly Bay, until we had all of this taken care of, since we needed access to parts and advice.  So our plan to cruise the southern part of Grenada was abbreviated somewhat.   But Prickly Bay is very nice, and has lots of cruisers.

We did move over to Clark’s Court Bay for a few days.  This was a delightful spot.  We found a great little restaurant/bar at Whisper Cove Marina, and as a bonus they had their own little butcher shop with a great selection of high-quality and reasonably priced meats and sausages.

We finally left Grenada on January 26, finally got our sails up, and had a very boisterous sail to Carriacou.  We are currently in Clifton Harbor, on Union Island.