Guadeloupe

Earlier this year, David said that we might be bored this season since we have “done” the Eastern Caribbean for a total of five times.  WRONG!  We have been finding the sailing challenging, the anchorages wild and “rolly” at times and working at keeping up a semblance of a fitness routine with lots of rainy days. 

It’s a good thing we always build a lot of flexibility into our schedule and have really good weather sources, one of whom is a retired Canadian weather forecaster who volunteers his time early every morning.  Thanks Dennis! You have given us great advice on the best time to move to the next destination.

We have now reached the northern end of Guadeloupe in the harbor of Deshaies.  Last night we watched a fishermen free dive 40 feet plus to retrieve a fish trap.  Fish traps of this design have been in use for literally millennia.  He knew we were watching, came over to Callisto and gave us three fish, two snappers and a grunt.  He wouldn’t take any money.   I poached them in garlic with salt and pepper, no wine on the boat, so it was definitely simple, but delicious.

Today we walked to Grand Anse, the next bay north.  This walk has two purposes, the beach and Samy’s Resto/bar.

Samy has two wood fires going, one for the grilling of main courses, the other for the huge pot of rice.  Today Mahi Mahi and chicken were on offer with grilled plaintain and shredded pumpkin salad.  Samy also used his machete to open up some young coconuts and gave everyone a glass of coconut water.  The ti punch is of course, made with white rum with sugar syrup and fruit juice.  He pours the rum and adds lime slices, the customer does the rest to taste.

After lunch we walked the Grand Anse Beach, about a mile long.  The surf is always pounding and the sand is great for taking the callouses off those feet...

Tomorrow we have over 40 miles to go to Antigua, mostly upwind.  Another challenge, especially for David, who will have to wake up to an alarm at 6:30.  We hope to be underway by 7 and arrive mid-afternoon in Falmouth Harbor.  Another set of northerly swells is due to come in, which makes some anchorages uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous.  We anticipate a lot of boats seeking smooth waters in Falmouth, so we may run into people we know.  We plan to be in Antigua about a week, then it’s northward to St. Martin for the first of February, with a stop at St. Barths, Nevis or Monserrat on the way.

Sari Sari Falls

We are on the island of Dominica, which is one our favorite places to hike.  This is a truly beautiful and largely untouched place.  It is extremely mountainous, with hardly any flat land to support agriculture.  It is said that Dominica has 365 rivers, and I believe it.  Many of these rivers have exquisite waterfalls.

Some really beautiful waterfalls are spoiled by hordes of cruise ship passengers.  Others, though, are hard enough to get to that casual visitors never see them.  A few years ago we visited Victoria Falls.  To get there, you have to wade through 5 river crossings, and scramble up big boulders.  This year we opted to hike to Sari Sari falls.  We were joined by fellow cruisers Craig and Bobbi, who we had just met the prior day, and by our guide Jones Younis.

The guidebook describes this hike as moderate, but that was before tropical storms washed out the main path.  Now you have to take an alternate, and very challenging route up the riverbed.  I think I counted six river crossings, but I may have missed one.  This photo gives you a sense of the boulders we had to scramble over:

We climbed up the riverbed for about an hour and a quarter, often out of breath and always very careful of our footing.  We encountered an older woman who had fallen off a narrow section of the trail.  We gathered she had broken her wrist, and Jones told us that she was taken out on a stretcher.  Reason to be careful!

Our self-confidence grew as we went along, and the many places where you had to stretch awkwardly for the next foothold seemed a little less daunting.

In the end, it was worth it.  This is among the best waterfalls we have visited in the Caribbean.  Here's a photo and a video showing what we saw:

It only took us an hour to walk back.  Downhill is not easier, but we were more familiar with the terrain.

After the hike, we went to have lunch with an acquaintance, Moses James.  Moses is an old Rastafarian (almost as old as me), and we met him for the first time when we visited Victoria Falls.  He has an establishment called Zion Valley at the trailhead.  When we were first there, there was just his "Rastaraunt" and beautiful fruit and vegetable garden.  Since then he has expanded, and offers some very rustic rooms to rent.  His sons are doing the cooking now, but he appears to have trained them well.

Rastas are vegetarians, but they still can make a hearty stew.  Ours had lentils, breadfruit, yams, plantains, potatoes, Callaloo, and Moses' secret mixture of spices.  Absolutely delicious, and when seconds were offered I gratefully accepted.  As often happens with Rastas, we heard some perspective on philosophy, and some fascinating history of how Moses grew up in the country, tried city life, and returned to the land.  His holding has a world-class view of the confluence of two rivers, and is completely beautiful. If you want to stay there, here's the Airbnb listing:
Zion Valley

The taxi ride to and from the trailhead showed us just how much Dominica's infrastructure has suffered from recent tropical storms.  Our route was about twice as long, because the direct route was washed out.  There was a great deal of rebuilding work along the alternate route, and a couple of pretty sketchy temporary bridges.  We hope they can get things put back in order soon.

Big Dogs Arrive

The marina in Marigot Bay is getting more and more crowded as the holiday approaches.  In the past couple of days, three very large sailing vessels became our neighbors on the dock.

First to arrive was the sloop, s/v Ghost.  Our navigation instruments receive signals from the Automatic Identification System required of all large vessels.  This tells us, among other things, some basic information about the boat. We learned from the AIS that Ghost is 33 meters long and 7 meters wide (that’s 108 feet x 23 feet). That seemed pretty big to us.

The following day s/v SPIIP came into the marina.  She is sloop rigged, and even bigger:  the AIS reports she is 34 meters long and 9 meters wide (that’s 111 feet x 30 feet). 

Later in the day, the ketch-rigged s/v Rosehearty cruised slowly into the bay.  Rosehearty is 56 meters long and 10 meters wide (184 feet x 33 ft).  She is simply enormous.  Watching her dock, I would estimate that there were at least 8 crew on deck.  No telling how many were below during the maneuver. According to her website, you can charter her for $225,000 per week.  Not including fuel or booze.

Well, our homey 14 meters is plenty for the two of us and some occasional guests. It is interesting, though, that the basic process for tying up stern-to the dock is exactly the same for our boat and the behemoths.

Christmas Winds

Often, at this time of year, the Caribbean experiences a few weeks of unusually strong winds and waves.  Because of the timing, many people refer to these as the “Christmas Winds.”  They don’t always happen exactly at Christmas-time, but usually pretty close.

Sure enough, the forecast for next week is for 20-25 knot sustained winds, and gusts approaching 30 knots.  This much wind creates big waves.  Out in the open ocean near St. Lucia, the forecast is for waves as big as 4 meters (13 feet).  That’s the average of the wave heights, there will be some waves that are much bigger.  One forecaster described the expected sea state as a “washing machine.”

We don’t mind sailing in 25-knot winds, we just reef our sails.  But sailing in 4-meter waves is another story.  We experienced waves that large, and even bigger, when we sailed from Virginia to the Virgin Islands in 2010.  But they were out in the blue water, which means far apart and not very steep, and Callisto simply rode over them.  In the Islands, they are close together and steep.  No fun.

Of course, when you’re cruising you can choose what weather to sail in.  We work very hard to avoid sailing in conditions like this.  Frankly, even riding at anchor in many harbors isn’t comfortable.

As it turns out, we are currently in one of the most protected harbors in the southern Caribbean, Marigot Bay in St. Lucia.  We had guests earlier this week who aren’t experienced on boats, and chose to tie up in the marina here to make it easier for them.  We had originally planned to sail north today, stopping in Rodney Bay for a few days before going to Martinique.  With the weather forecast, we’ve decided to stay here for several more days and then go straight to Martinique.

Keeping a flexible schedule is important in dealing with the weather.  This can be difficult, though, when we have visitors on the boat.  People’s flight arrangements are not very flexible.  We deal with that problem by planning to arrive at the meeting point several days in advance, giving us the needed flexibility.

 

For example, our daughter and her husband are flying into Martinique on 26-December.  Our working float plan had us arriving on Martinique on 21- or 22-December, with the option of arriving even sooner if need be.  That way, we have at least a week of flex in choosing our sailing date.  While they are with us, we hope to make the passage to Dominica with them, and then return to Martinique.  But if the weather fails to cooperate, we’ll just stay in the protected waters to the lee of Martinique.  Flexibility is the key.

Generally, by the middle of January the Christmas Winds are gone, and we settle into the typical tradewinds, with windspeeds in the teens. Much more relaxing!

Holiday Colors!

Servicing the Winches

There are two boat chores that I dread, even though David is the one doing most of the work...first is lubicrating the heads, second is servicing the winches.

I like the phrase servicing the winches, since changing just one letter conjures up a completely different task....

We have six winches on Callisto, plus a windlass.  A winch is a device that uses gears to multiply force.  In sailing, the person who operates the winches is called a grinder...usually me.  This is what I use all those rowing muscles for in the winter....

We use our winches to give us mechanical advantage for raising and setting the sails.  We also use them for lifting heavy objects on and off the boat.  Each winch has six gears, several roller bearings, all held together by small pins and matching up the teeth of the gears.  Of course, the material that allows all these parts to move easily is GREASE.  And, grease gets dirty and deteriorates over time, especially in the tropical, salty environment.  

So, it's a two person job, one to make sure none of the bits gets lost when we take the winches apart (me), one to clean off the grease using mineral spirits and elbow grease (not me), and one to hand out paper towel, rags, doses of grease and general moral support, again me. (aka criticism about how the job is being done)  

This was also a two afternoon job.  We have two large winches that weigh 50 pounds and have lots of surfaces that need lubrication.  We did the job and then looked in the cleaning bucket and found spacers (gasket like rings) left over.  Whoops!  Everything had to be taken apart again and the pieces put in place.  Day two went better, but the mess!  We have good soap and scrub brushes, plus we have been blessed? with a solid day of heavy rain today for a good fresh water rinse.    

Enough about boat chores!  We are in Admiralty Bay in Bequia, which is part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  This is the place where we took our first Scuba course, and we always try to do a few dives while we are here.  Our first dive was at the reef we used in our class.  It is in great shape, lots of nice corals and sponges and many different fish species.  We also had a treat of seeing four different kinds of eels on our dive...plus lobsters and two wrecks.  

We plan to leave on Friday for St. Lucia, where we'll be joined by some friends and family over the holidays.  

Grenada to Carriacou

We’ve been on Callisto since the 7^th of November.  The time has passed quickly, we’ve been working hard (at least David has been) and having some fun as well.

First of all, yes, the weather has been quite good.  Some hard rains, but WARM…30⁰C (86⁰F).  That is also the temperature of the ocean.  It is good to see Grenada looking very green and lush.

David had a very bad cold when we arrived, and is still coughing a bit, but carried on in spite of feeling cruddy.  He installed a new solar panel, skills needed--carpentry, metal working and electrical expertise.  No parts fell in the ocean and we now have a total of 495 Watts of solar power.  Yippee!  

Last week we worked with “Hands Across the Sea” in the Boca Secondary School library.  The library has received over 1,000 books that needed to be catalogued and receive “check out” cards.   “Hands” delivers NEW books and we were very impressed by the topics for all reading levels.  Carlene, the librarian seems to have a good relationship with the students, and all seemed eager for the books to be ready for use.

We moved from Prickly Bay to St. George’s bay this past Tuesday in anticipation of sailing up to Carriacou.  This takes a little time off the trip, plus we wanted to make sure that the first time of putting up the sails was not under any time pressure.  We left about 8:30 with the weather a bit iffy in terms of rain showers.  We managed to scoot along just in front or just behind them.  

We’ll be here until Monday or Tuesday, and then move on to Bequia.  Yesterday we went snorkeling, since David’s sinuses are not yet up to a scuba dive.  I finally learned how to “duck” down with my snorkel to get closer to the underwater sights.  

This afternoon David and I are helping Diane at the Lumba Dive dive shop with swimming lessons.  She teaches swimming to Carriacou children and is helping prepare some of the kids for competition.  In the summer she had over 60 children participating.  We are expecting about 30 today.  Should be fun, and we’ll see if photos are ok to post.  

PS--we have been struggling with slow internet, here's what someone else thinks, too.