|
|
February 5th - Tortola, BVI
|
Planning our passages for overnight seems to work out
the best for us. It is much easier on the kids,
and therefore on mom and dad, since they get to sleep
most of the way instead of complaining of boredom.
Joe and I don't seem to experience any adverse effects
as a result of our modified sleeping schedule. We
trade off watches on a three or four hour rotation, and
neither of us suffer much the next day. I imagine
this is because we get so much sleep on a regular basis
that we can do without a few hours here and there
without even noticing it.
We
made the 90 mile trek between St. Martin and Tortola
last night. It is a bit of a challenge to
calculate the transit time, since we never know for sure
how fast we will be traveling. It is an important
calculation so you can ensure that you don't
arrive anywhere close to land before daylight.
This was our first dead downwind passage, so we figured
on about 6 knots as our average speed. With the
wind directly on our butt or stern, our speed is
generally much slower than if it were coming from our
side, or beam. Additionally, it is very difficult
to keep the headsail flying with the main raised, since
the main tends to blanket the headsail, stealing all the
wind before it reaches the front of the boat. So,
we left our anchorage in Marigot at 4pm, and unrolled
our biggest headsail, the genniker, without raising the
main. Oops! We were going 8 or 9 knots
instead of the anticipated 6 knots. There were a
few squalls on the horizon, and the genniker requires
that someone go forward onto the bow to furl it back
up, so we decided to do that in the daylight and sail
with the gib for the rest of the way. It is a much
smaller sail, so we slowed down significantly, as we had
hoped. I'm on the midnight to 3am watch as I
write, but we are looking good for making landfall
around 7am.
We
went back to St. Martin after two nights in St. Barts,
primarily to see our friends on Blueprint Match.
Paul and Michele Grego (www.gregoadventure.com)
are planning a 10 year circumnavigation with their two
kids, Merric, who just turned 3, and Seanna, who is one
and a half. They are heading south, exploring the
rest of the Leeward and Windward Islands before hitting
South America for hurricane season. They might do
the Caribbean again next winter, or maybe the Western
Caribbean coasts of Mexico and Central America, and then
transit the Panama Canal for the South Pacific. At
any rate, our paths are taking us separate ways and this
was our last opportunity to see them for a while.
I am sure we will hook up again somewhere out there, but
we just can't tell how long it will be before that
happens. We did try to convince them to come to
Europe with us, and they put the hard press on us to go
the other way, but in the end we both stuck with our
original plans. We will leave it to fate to bring
us back together again.
We
were lucky enough to arrive in Marigot on Thursday in
time to help celebrate Merric's third birthday.
The girls were thrilled to enjoy yet another one of
Michele's cakes and we just love any excuse for a party!
Chuck and Pam Usrey, from the boat Helen Louise, were
also in attendance. They are a fellow Caribbean
1500 boat and have been close companions of Blueprint
Match since we all arrived in the BVI nearly three
months ago. It was really great to see all of our
friends after being out of touch for most of January.
We had spent New Year's with Blueprint Match, but they
stayed in the Virgin Islands while we have been
traveling the Leewards. Unfortunately, the kids
were tired and hungry so we had to make it a quick visit
but we made plans to host everyone on Zia for tacos the
next night.
Joe has some work he wants to get done on the boat that
requires it to be out of the water. We had
scheduled to be hauled out back in Tortola on the 6th,
but he wanted to see if it made sense to do it in St.
Martin instead. There are a huge number of boats
in the lagoon at Simpson Bay and plenty of boat yards to
do the work. Paul had already done the research
for his own catamaran and pointed Joe in the right
direction. So on Friday, after getting Juliana
most of the way through school, Joe took off to check it
out while I finished up with the kids. The prices
turned out to be very similar to what we had been quoted
in Tortola and they would have to haul us out with a
crane instead of a travel lift which is a little
riskier, so we stuck to the original plan to haul out at
Nanny Cay back in the BVI.
We
headed back to our favorite lunch spot, Jimbo's, through
the cut into Simpson Bay from Marigot and across the lagoon.
The service is pathetic, and the food isn't that great,
but they have free wi-fi and a pool for the kids.
I did post Joe's articles and
a bunch more pictures on the bottom of the page with the
ones from
January.
We
had met another family, a German couple with a 7-year
old daughter, who had seen our kids playing on the bow
and come over to introduce themselves. We had a
play date for Anthonia to come over later that
afternoon, so we couldn't linger too long at Jimbo's.
We hit the grocery store on the way back to the boat.
I had previously found crunchy taco shells in every
grocery store I went to, so I hadn't been stocking up on
them. Of course the minute I ran out, I couldn't
find them anywhere. My poor luck continued at the store
in Marigot. I managed to get the ground beef,
which they grind for you on the spot, but the lady
couldn't believe I really wanted 2 kilos. I made
the mental calculation again to make sure I didn't mess
up the conversion and decided that yes, 4.5 pounds
was about right. Turns out we had plenty of taco
meat left over, but that is always a good thing.
Why cook it twice when you can cook it once and eat it
twice?
We
had quite the crowd over for dinner. Paul and
Michele from Blueprint Match, Chuck and Pam from Helen
Louise (who both had the crunchy shells in stock, thanks
guys) and Bob from Rockhopper were all in attendance.
Georg and Nathalie came by to pick up Anthonia and have
a drink with us but wound up staying for dinner as well.
It was great fun and I believe I have converted some
more folks over to tacos ala
Christy.
It turns out Georg and Nathalie, who are cruising on a
Catana 472 called Legaris, are heading in our same
direction so we made plans to have another play date on
Saturday and exchange contact information. The
three girls got along very well. Anthonia had been
going to the international school in Palma prior to
cruising so her English is quite good. She was a
bit shy at first, but warmed right up as Cassie and
Juliana talked their little heads off.
Joe and I had a few hours to ourselves the next day
while Cassie and Juliana played on Legaris with their
new friend. I actually bought an outfit for the
first time since we got down here. We had a nice
lunch, cleared out through customs, and stopped off at
Legaris to pick up the girls. We got a tour of
their boat, enjoyed a nice espresso and swapped email
addresses. We will make an effort to see them
again in the Bahamas. It is a good find to hook up
with not only another little girl boat but a catamaran
to boot!
February 5th - Peter Island, BVI
Funny how it kind of feels like we are back home.
I
was down sleeping when Joe fired up the engines at 7am
(right on schedule) in front of the customs dock in
Roadtown. The office doesn't open until 9am on
Sunday, so Joe came back to the boat and I whipped up a
big breakfast (I have GOT to stop eating!). When
we get hauled, the fridge and freezer will not work so
we have to eat up as much as possible (great!) and then
figure out a way to store the rest of it in our cooler
for a couple of days without it spoiling (the green
chili is safe as it doesn't matter if it gets refrozen).
Anyway, by about 10:30 everything was tidied up and we
were all checked in and we contemplated our options.
After a long night sailing, a nice beach and some
swimming were the ticket so we headed to the closest
such place we knew of on Peter Island. It was a
one hour motor upwind across the channel. It was
great to know exactly which spot fit the bill without
having to consult a cruising guide. We might have
wound up staying in the middle of the town rather than
going through the trouble of figuring out "where to
next?" if we hadn't spent so much time here already.
We
swam into the nearby beach, a small one on the eastern
edge of Deadman's Bay, isolated from the much
bigger beach associated with the hotel here. We
met a very nice couple who are here chartering for a
couple of weeks from the Channel Islands off the
northern coast of France. The place sounds
spectacular but they are definitely off the beaten track
for cruising. Being on the Atlantic coast of
Europe they are much more exposed to weather and I don't
think many people actually cruise there. Sailors
are always leery of a "lee shore" which means a
shore that the wind is blowing against, and therefore
your boat onto, if anything were to go wrong.
You always anchor on the leeward side, the one on the
opposite side of the prevailing winds, of an island as
opposed to the windward side. It isn't as rough
and the consequences of a potential mishap are usually a
lot less severe. Not to say that we consider any
windward coast as off limits to Zia, but the more
experience we have under our belts before signing up to
a whole coastline of that, the better.
There are so many more charter boats in the Virgin
Islands. You meet a lot more cruisers over in the
Leeward and Windward Islands of the Caribbean, as well
as people who just keep their boats there and visit as
often as possible. As I look out at the anchorage
now, out of the fifteen boats, we are one of only two
private boats here. The boats are also mostly
catamarans as opposed to monohulls. The ratio is
definitely off over here precisely because of the
overwhelming number of charter boats. They sleep a
lot more people more comfortably and are better money
makers for the charter companies.
We've tried calling our friends who are here, Jaimie,
Cenou, and Equity, but no one was up on the radio.
We anticipate seeing them all tomorrow at Nanny Cay
where we are getting our boat work done, so we'll have
to wait until then. Wish us luck on the haul out. You never know what
lurking problems you might discover when you pull a boat
out of the water!
Love,
Christy, Joe, Cassie, and Juliana
Next entry
>>>>>>>
Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
|
|
|
|
