Hello All,
Where to start, I guess the weather is usual, it's been far from usual this year. You may have formed the opinion from the photographs that it's all blue skies and 30 deg +!
We don't generally take photographs during torrential rain and cold howling winds which we have had a plenty.
We have worn our U.K. foul weather jackets, rigged our U.K. cockpit covers.
We are currently if you look on the google map at the top of the page on the island of Culebra which just off the coast of Puerto Rico. During our two weeks here we have had sustained strong winds from the east, for three days we were unable to get off the boat due to high waves in the anchorage.
The good news is that during 35 knot gusts our BBA did not budge an inch, it was like being tied to an oak tree or having your fingers stuck together with super glue, nothing moves.
We are also at the furthest point from Grenada which is East of our position and where we need to return and then haul out at the end of our trip.
We need westerlies which hardly ever occur or little wind as it will all be on the nose until Antigua where we finally turn South down the Windward Islands eventually arriving by the end of April, where has the time gone?
So after Andrew and Mait our Dominican friends left us in Antigua we were soon joined by Mike and Peggy our Canadian friends to sail with us to St. Maarten where they would spend the season on their own boat, Peregrine.
Again the weather was not kind and we needed to be in St. Maarten by the end of the week to meet Des and Jan who were joining us from Falmouth.
The trip was to say the least a little boisterous, all 80 miles of it,
I often wondered how many waves are there to the mile?
Not quite sure of that one, all I know is that we had to go over everyone of the buggers!
As usual Out-Rageous took it in her stride and kept us safe.
St. Maarten is the place for duty free purchases for the boat and two of the things we needed to replace was our dinghy and cooker.
We are very pleased with our new dinghy whom we have named Aly min yum, the name being the metal of her bottom.
The cooker was not without problems, after a whole day fitting it
on day three the large burner would not stay alight quickly followed by the other two. By then we had left and were 90 miles away in the British Virgin Islands. The only way for them to remain alight was to jam a wooden spoon against the knob! Now Lynn was really pissed!
After many emails with the supplier and manufacturer a fix was proposed by the manufacturer and that was to remove the knobs, roll up a pieces of foil, shove it in the hole and stick them back on!
We now have a $ 1,500 cooker with bits of foil keeping the burners alight. Congratulations to Force Ten stoves on innovation
and wonderful customer support!
A note here to remember we sold, more like gifted our old stove and dinghy to a nautical version of Fagan called "Shrimpy" who runs a second hand boat part business.
After leaving St. Maarten we sailed for 90 miles and arrived in the BVIs to blue sheltered waters and the beginning of a great time with Jan and Des, I have to say as the pictures show a great time was had. It was a pleasure to be with them both, taking part in such things as snorkeling, "painkiller cocktails" and wheel barrow riding, in the Caribbean, not to mention "De Loose Mongoose".
Our time with them was over all too quickly.
Lynn had been so looking forward to Mark and Claire joining us and I have to say I throughly enjoyed their company, it was so nice to have young people on the boat.
They were here on their honeymoon so
we joined the two single bunks together in the guest cabin just to make them feel at home as there is no telly on our boat!
What was a surprise to us was how they both were familiar with the Cornish card game of Euchre, which provided many evenings entertainment.
I had suggested back in the summer that Mark and Claire obtain a temporary US visa so that we could explore the US Virgin Islands which are part of the same Island group as the BVIs. The closest, St. John being only a mile away, however all of the US border controls applied.
We were so glad to be away from the charter boats that dominate the BVIs. It has the largest charter fleet in the world, more on that later. Nearly all of the island of St. John is a national park. It was great, with some of the best snorkelling to be found in the Caribbean. Both Mark and Claire took every opportunity to explore the underwater life and it is this subject that forms the basis of my next "true story. "
We had anchored off a well known snorkelling beach, which was in a small bay with a rocky outcrop and it was this outcrop that was "the snorkelling spot. " Day boats would arrive with Americans who sun bathed on the beach and swam in the small bay adjacent to the outcrop. We had been there some two or three days and on this trip we had some great sightings of beautifully coloured reef fish, shoals of hunting Snapper, turtle and Octopus.
Mark had bought a small underwater camera and although I have not seen the results I am sure he had some good pictures.
So I was there on my own, although there were a good deal of other snorkelers as well as families on the beach; when I couldn't believe my eyes, there in about 6' feet of water gliding and hunting between the rocks was a 5' Nurse Shark.
Now the Nurse Shark is completely harmless and lives on a diet of small fish and molluscs, there are no known attacks on humans!
Unfortunately I conveyed none of this to Mark who was about 20 yards away or indeed to my fellow snorkelers or people on the beach, no I just quickly spat out my snorkel and yelled at the top of my voice two words: " MARK SHARK!"
Can you picture the scene? There was a father and his small child close to me whom the Nurse Shark had just swam between,
the child leapt in his fathers arms after clearing the water by two feet, they were gone like a scalded cat!
I quickly explained that the Shark was harmless and eventually Mark came and we had a most memorable experience swimming with the Nurse Shark.
All to soon, their visit was over and we returned to the BVIs to enable Mark and Claire to catch their local flight back to Antigua, then on to the UK.
It was whilst back in Trellis Bay, famous for "De Loose Mongoose" bar that we had another experience.
Just after Christmas whilst still in St. Maarten we heard a very sad event of a young Cornish family from Newquay who had set off
On their dream adventure, not to dissimilar to ourselves.
They saved and bought a yacht and rented out their home, they embarked on a round the World tour. They had two children Heath aged nine and Isla aged seven.
After crossing the Atlantic and within some 460 miles of the coat of Antigua in bad weather, their rudder came off which eventually disabled the boat leading to them being rescued but losing their boat.
They were landed in the Caribbean with nothing.
