Rethinking the plan, turtles galore, new destination, laundry… all in one day!

Folks,

Last couple of years we’ve waited to get our photo’s up to date before we did the post.  This delayed things a lot so I’m trying more to update when we have decent internet and I’ll add the video or photo’s when I have time.

We spent a few days wandering around over to our old favorite anchorages in BVI and St John’s and then had a problem with the reefing lines on the main.  I think this is solved now and the details would be boring to most so I’ll save them for a dedicated post.  I will say it’s amazing how important it is to have confidence in your sailing rig.  Wind around here is variable and often starts out at 10 kts and increases to 25 in the afternoon.  So during the day we often need not only the first but the second.  And then next day we need to shake out both easily so we can start again.

So now to the plan.  I think I’ve documented earlier we planned to sail the Virgins for a couple of months then head south to Grenada.  But this year we have a very short sailing season compared to previous years.  Instead of starting in November we got here January 5th and then we end early due to a graduation (hurray for Aaron!).  We may also take that opportunity to do some extra precautionary medical stuff that Trevor wants Chris to do this year.  So this means instead of 8 months we have about 5.   And we want at least 3 here in the Virgins so that only leaves less than 2 months to hop quickly through some of the best the eastern Caribbean has to offer, including at least 2 weeks of getting Tookie all ready for another 6 months ashore.  One of the first things we discovered about ourselves is that this life works best if we do what’s best for us.  Amazingly this sounds like a revelation but it’s mostly because we’ve read hundreds of accounts of cruisers in the Caribbean that all do basically the same thing.  A large part of this is weather driven but it seems like we can get too driven to do something others have done successfully and we have to make an effort to figure out what’s right for us.  Questioning “the plan” starts with discomfort of some aspect such as the destination, our supplies, or the weather window.  In this case it’s a combination of the weather windows and the stuff we want to do.  There’s just not likely enough weather window to do what we want to comfortably.  When we plan for “lucky weather” we usually get a very uncomfortable ride.   So the new plan is we do the south islands next year.  We’ll have a LOT of time to do all the stuff we want to here in the Virgin’s and just have a longer golf season back in Florida this year.  So that’s the new plan.  We wander the Virgins for 5 full months.  Should give us time to take a passage to St Croix and back over to the Spanish Virgins and Anegada.  We’ll most likely haul at Nanny Cay this year but that won’t be firmed up ’till next week.

Oh and what about the turtles?  Well the story about our first ever visit to the turtle refuge on Buck Island is mostly a photo and video opportunity.  We got lot’s of both and are working on getting it finalized.  In the meantime let me thank Bill and Charlene on SV RSVP for finding this gem in the first place.  We went over yesterday and literally had the entire anchorage to ourselves until right before departure.  We saw at least 10 turtles and swam with them and right up to inches away from them a lot of the time.  Also we were treated to a large ray and a smaller ray.  It made superb video and we’ll post it soon.  After the snorkeling we had a delightful down-wind sail over to Lindbergh Bay and happy hour with RSVP ashore at the Emerald Bay Beach Bar and Grill,  finished up with drinks and baked Brie on Tookie.  Charlene was kind enough to show us how to prepare her rum, nuts, cranberry version.  It was fantastic!

As I write this Robin has washed a load of towels in our splendid Splendide washer.  We’re sooooo lucky to have it and not be forced to the laundry search every where we go.  At the end of a load it spins on high speed and I feel the boat vibrate for a few minutes.  Then before you know it we’re the laundry boat again.  Towels hanging all over the outside of the boat with these super duper clips Robin gets at boat shows.  We usually dry this was as the washer doesn’t need the genset as it operates fine off the inverter and batteries.  But about half the time just as it gets dry we get a rain shower.  That just happened again today.  Robin gets a little infuriated but they’ll be dry and fresh again soon.

OK it’s lunch time and I need to tend to the grill.

Best regards,

Chris and Robin

Anchored in Linbgerg Bay, St Thomas

A catch-up of Robin’s Stuff

So every now and then I need to post an update of photo’s that Robin has captured.  She quietly captures some special moments and I can’t really say they fit together with special meaning other than it’s a look at what’s important to her… and that alone says a lot about what happens in her mind.  No wonder I love her so much I can’t stand it!

On the NE end of St Thomas there’s a little place called Red Hook.  It’s a hogepodge of marina’s, bus terminal and shops that seems to attract tourists, cruisers, and locals.  So we’re wondering down along a path close to the water on our way to Fish Tails for lunch and this lizard scampers right across the path and stops to take a look at us.  Robin grabs the camera and gets these shots:

Stops to look and make sure we're OK to continue along the walkway

 

As we tied the dinghy to the Government Dock to clear customs at BVI there was a very fast herron sitting on the dinghy next to us. Robin captured a blurry photo over my shoulder as it lept into the air at the last moment.

So just to give you an idea of how many opportunities there are to photograph wild life Robin turned around to get a great pose of a Pelican watching her attempting to photograph the herron:

This one was curiously watching Robin photograph a nearby herron... we didn't do too well with the herron but this guy saved the day!

 

One of Robin's absolute fascinations is with rainbows. This one was captured as we emerged from light rain showers on our way to White Bay, Jost Van Dyke on the west end of BVI. Pretty cool huh?

Perspective on boat storage

Here's the view of our boat with tie-down and hull support. Anchors were drilled with an augar about 6' down.

Now that we’re well on our way for the 2012 season I thought it might be helpful to document what we did to prepare and what we’ll do differently this season for boat storage.  Many people don’t store their boats during storm season and choose to just find a good location to “hide out” and a lot of people are like us.  We like a break from the boat and would take time off anyway so hurricane season makes sense as a good time to leave.  There’s a financial incentive too since removing Tookie and placing her in a secure yard, even though it’s in the window save us a LOT of money on insurance.  The savings more than pays the storage costs for us since our hull value and insurance costs are so high.  So here’s what we learned about storage:

• Select your yard early.  The good ones book up early and it’s hard to decide which one as there are good and bad stories about all of them.  Last year we didn’t select our yard ’till late March.  This year we’ll select it in January.  When you do this you have to pay up with a deposit so it forces somewhat of a schedule on you but in reality we all have that anyway as there needs to be a plan for hurricane season.
• How do you select?  Read up in the cruising guides and online accounts but the best thing we know to do is talk to people that have recent first-hand experience with the yard.  Check with your insurance broker; they don’t really recommend yards but you can ask them if they’re familiar with your preferred yard and if they’ve insured boats that use that yard.
• Strip the boat of all windage as much as you can.  Make sure you put this in the hurricane plan you submit to the insurance company as it can help you get a better quote.  It’s a pain to do this but it also gives us a good opportunity to inspect the sails and canvas.  Usually there are some minor repairs that you’ll find and the off-season is a good time to address them so they don’t become major.
• Mold is a big problem for boats being stored in the Caribbean.  Make sure your boat has some ventilation and when you do this it means some moisture can get in during hard driving rain.  Ensure this drains to the bilge or out the bottom somewhere.  We seal the hatches with tape (and yes it’s a pain to get off months later but a little solvent based cleaner works fine).  We also leave solar powered vents set up to flow air through the boat.  Our secret weapon to deter mold is moth balls.  We hang ladies nylon hose “bags” throughout the boat with each holding 1-2 cups of balls.  We know of several boaters that have done this and it seems to work extremely well.  Just plan for 2-3 days to air out the boat when you recommission.  Some people put dehumidifiers on board and pay someone to check them.  I’m reluctant to do this since I’m not real keen on having something with that much power operating and relying on a “service company” to do their job while I’m away.  But I have to say there are a lot of people with way more experience than us that do this and haven’t had any problems.
• Remove ALL food except unopened jars and cans.  We know of cases where insects bore right through plastic bags and make a mess.  Lock-tight containers should be OK but we don’t chance it.
• We leave the solar panels connected with the Solar Boost charger.  We’ve done this for storage at the dock in Florida and at the yard in the Caribbean.  No problems so far and no batteries that need replacement when we get back.  BUT we have maintenance free batteries.  If I had wet cells I don’t think I’d do this unless I had a good battery watering system in place and a guy that would check water level for me that I trust.

Robin vacuum bagging bedding and linens into one compact package. She's taking Yoga now and I think she's invented a new pose. We're calling it the Swan Boob Smash pose.

• Vacuum bag all linens and clothes left on the boat.  We use the kind you can get at Walmart that suck down with a vacuum.  Robin uses the boob smashing technique to help on large items and everything is fresh and usable when we get back.
• Clean all the stainless with Spotless Stainless before you leave.  It’s the only cleaner we’ve used that works.
• Remove valuable electronics’s from the cockpit and store them below.
• Store the dinghy out of the sun below the boat if you have a cat and can do so or deflate it and protect from sun damage.  If you store it outside make sure it’s locked and secured.  There is so much trouble with engine theft we’ll store the engine on the boat this year.
• Double dose all fuel with stabilizer.  We fill the tanks although there is controversy about doing this.  After you dose with stabilizer run the engines a while to make sure it’s circulated through the fuel system.  Run the dinghy engine dry after doing this by removing the fuel hose while the engine is running and letting it stop by itself.
• Flush out the holding tanks.
• Wrap throttles and winches in Saran wrap.
• Make a list throughout your cruise of “parts to get” while you’re home.  Double check it for anything you missed and be sure to bring it with you when you leave the boat.
• We didn’t return to the boat until January and in hind sight this was a mistake.  It meant that the yard moved our boat several times to make room to launch other boats when most people want them back in early November.  When they moved our boat they took all the tie-downs loose and more importantly they didn’t re-attach our dingy with chains as we’d left her.  The boat right next door to us did the same thing and their dinghy and engine have never been found.  Next time we’ll come back to the boat in November like everybody else and launch her unless we have a firm agreement with the yard she’s not to be moved until we get back.  Part of the problem was caused by our late planning last year which resulted in placing the boat in a slot that was not really good.  It had poor access that required moving several boats to get to the ones that were on the inside.
• If you can, hire someone to photograph your boat and check on it.  It makes life a lot less stressful to look at a photo of her periodically.  Obviously you should get local references and first-hand recommendations for this person.

Here's a viw of the bow looking back. You can see the dinghy under the boat. Next year we'll at least remove the engine and store it in the boat.

 

I hope this helps make your boat storage uneventful.

Chris

We’re off again!

Folks,

We had a few hours to kill waiting for the ferry to Spanish Town so we stopped in one of our favorite water front spots, The Green House.

We finally departed Florida again January 5th for another 5 months of sailing, starting where we left off in Spanish Town BVI.  After an uneventful flight to St Thomas we had a couple of hours to kill while we waited for the ferry over to Spanish Town.  We stored our bags and for a small fee had a guy watch them for us while we wondered down to The Green House Bar and Restaurant right on the water front just a few blocks from the terminal.  I pondered about the lifestyle we enjoy and how it’s a little schizophrenic.  Half in eastern Florida as a retired couple that golf and play with other retired friends and half cruising sailors wandering the Caribbean.  Cruising sounds way more glamorous than it really is but it is pretty good.  No it’s fantastic and we’re some of the luckiest people in the world to be doing it…  I drifted back out of the daydream and returned to relaxing over my first “dark and diet” (dark rum and diet Coke) watching the tourists wander around all the little shops and then gazed at the empty spot in the bay where we had anchored many times last year.  “Cheers baby!” I said to Robin noticing her eyes were wandering around probably with similar thoughts.  Soon it was time to head back to the ferry for a short hour and a half ride to Spanish Town.  We arrived just after sunset and zipped through customs and immigration to a cab and up to Fisher’s Cove Resort in  no time.  Bill and Charlene  had arrived earlier in the day and were at the bar waiting for us with son Patrick.  We had a nice visit and they filled us in on what

Beautiful view off the breakfast veranda at Fisher's Cove Resort. Smallish cruise ship in the distance

the boats looked like.  Good news was the boats were in great shape; the moth balls had done the trick and eliminated any mold issues.  The awful news was that Bill and Charlene’s dinghy had been stolen.  I may do a separate entry on the dinghy saga later but for now let’s just say losing your dingy is a real pain in the ass!  They’re expensive but that’s not the tough part.  Getting new one over here is almost as bad a process to go through as losing it.  The yard did take responsibility for the loss and after a LOT of negotiating Bill was kept almost whole on the loss but then began a month of trying to sail around without the “taxi” and finally pick one up.  As I type this it’s Jan 21st and it looks like the engine will be available next week in Tortola and then the dinghy later in the week over in St Thomas.  Our Canadian friends deal with these things better than anyone we know.  Bill gazes off and says something like “there’s people in the hospital that would trade places with any of us”.  How cool is that?  Then we just order another drink and talk about something else. After a nice visit we headed to the room for a great night’s rest.

 

Bill and Charlene splashed first and we were right behind with SV Toucan Dream

Next day our focus became readying the boat to be splashed. We had planned to do some minor repairs on Friday and then splash Tookie on Monday since the travel lift doesn’t operate on weekends. But we got things done quicker than plan and were the last boat splashed on Friday.  Bill and Charlene had planned all along to splash on today (Friday) but we were a “fit in”.  SV RSVP splashed just before Tookie and we gave “dread lock” the bald crane operator a nice tip for staying late to put Tookie in as well.  Then over to a slip in the marina for a few days to get things put back together and start up our systems.  The marina ended up costing almost as much as the resort room so we revised our plan and got out with the bare necessities and finished the rest on the hook.  So with the toilets, water maker, genset and engines commissioned we attached the main sail and jib then departed the marina Wednesday and motored out with almost no wind to St John’s at Caneel Bay, one of our favorite beaches the locals call Honeymoon Beach.  It was good to be back!

Next morning we headed over to St Thomas to start unloading boxes of supplies that we’d sent from the states during our visit home.  We had 5 large shipping boxes containing everything from spare pumps to toilet paper.  We’d planned to stay at Yacht Haven Grand Marina right around the corner from Flagship Yacht Services who were receiving and storing the boxes for us but the season was busy and no slips were available so we anchored in the harbor and ferried the boxes one or two at a time ’till we had the boat so full there was barely room to move around.  It was clear we had to get the stuff unloaded and into storage very soon so we worked pretty hard to make that happen.  Most of the stowing plan was Robin’s and she’s pretty organized about it.  She maintains notes about all of it on her ipad so we know how many of each part and where it is.  As I do maintenance she adjusts the amount in storage.  This becomes incredibly valuable later on.

Over the next few days we got our canvas that needed repair to a shop on the east end of the island and a few minor repairs to the boat done and things got back to normal… well normal for us, some of the most fortunate people in the world!

Around the BVI in 7 days – Part 1

Folks,

My sailing buddy from way back in 2001 came to visit again this past week with his wife Ruth.  We’ve sailed with them several times and one of the trademarks is Trevor’s evening martini.  So we start preparing for their arrival the night before icing down the martini glasses.  After a couple at the dock we headed out in the morning for St John’s.  Ruth is pretty picky about her beaches and wasn’t hard to please.  So we did several days including Trunk Bay, Cinnamon Bay, Watermelon Bay, and Francis Bay.  Then we headed out the short 4 mile trip to Sopers hole to clear in.  Since we’d done this before and now had the forms it was pretty easy.  Customs and Immigration people can be very nice and happy or they can be “little man” complexed monsters that would have been fired a long time ago for being extremely rude if they worked anywhere else.  So there’s always a little anxiety as you approach.  We were luck this time.  The guy was more than decent and easy going.  So we got our fee paid and were back in the dinghy and on our way out the channel to Cooper Island for a delightful lunch and some basking in the Sun.

From here we sailed up Sr Francis Drake Channel to Spanish Town where we planned to take a mooring ball and depart early in the morning for The Bath’s.  A famous snorkeling stop that has a lot to offer in the way of beaches, caves, and snorkeling.  This time it also had something more to offer…

No mooring balls were left so we took a slip in the marina and had a good time wandering around Spanish Town for their local Carnival.  This time of year each island has a carnival and they’re all on different weeks.  We just lucked out and got there for the end of carnival.  Loud music, parades, and special tents were set up all over the place.  After TM’s (Trevor’s Martini’s) we sacked out and were up early to get down to the Bath’s before all the cruise ship’s traffic.  Trevor had this idea to stop at Devil’s point where there were mooring balls and a place to tie up the dinghy only about 50 yards from the beach.  So I landed the dink on the beach, emptied all the people and beach stuff then tied up Tookie II and swam back ashore.  This was a great way to see the Bath’s.  We just walked up the beach a short ways to enter the semi-submerged caves that led right up the the Bath’s.  As we got close I noticed a short cut swim so Robin and I went that way.  About half way I noticed something on my belly that tingled.  Then suddenly everything BURNED BAD!  JELLY FISH ALL WRAPPED AROUND ME!  I turned to warn Robin and luckily she hadn’t gotten any.  As I swam back the pain got worse and worse.  As I trudged up the beach pulling the slippery jelly tentacles I was really starting to weaken.  I’ll spare you all the further details but I got most of them off and back to the dinghy with a lot of help from Trevor and back to our boat on the mooring ball.  After I trying several treatments that did almost nothing Trevor got his electronic medical information device to produce a superb solution.  Almost scalding hot water.  Not exactly the thing you really want to do on something that burns real bad but it worked like a charm.  Then another secret to get all the tentacles off was to soap up with shaving cream and shave with a credit card!  Another great idea that finally got all the buggers off me.  Soon I was relaxing and recuperating.  Trevor went back to enjoy the beach a little at least with Ruth but even that was interrupted with  and elderly lady that had gotten stung and was having problems breathing.  Soon he was in action again helping her out and still not having much fun I’m sure.  Eventually they did get a little beach time but unfortunately this just wasn’t the best day of the trip for Trevor and Ruth.  But I sure was glad he was there.  If he hadn’t found the treatment I was ready to call rescue.  It really hurt that bad.  Thanks Trevor!