Christmas Cove, St Thomas. USVI
Ailsa at Sea
Richard Kennedy
Tue 12 Mar 2013 02:35
Kirk to Ailsa, the aliens here seem to be particularly peculiar e.g. Boston Red Sox game live tonight!! Can you beam down Scotty to make sense of this?
Yes you've guessed we have arrived in the US Virgin isles. Home from home for the yanks.
We arrived in St Thomas to meet Caroline (our daughter) + some nice chap who seems to be a cousin of Scotty - called Steven - she picked up on the way - who are here to spend the next 14 days cruising jolly hockey sticks land - I.e. the British Virgin Islands. Suffice to say it is very lovely, the sea is azure and the temp a pleasant 80 although the mossies know no different.
Now you may be wondering where the Klingons have got to. Well alas they are not far over the horizon. The eternal equation of balancing output from batteries to input from charging sources has led Scotty to conclude that the batteries are reaching the end of their useful life - to explain this to mrs kirk I have used the analogy of the piggy bank i.e. if you take out more than you put in then piggy is empty. Suffice to say the chandlery in St Thomas has never had it so good after I ordered 5 group 27 AGM batteries. Good news is the generator has worked faultlessly since our repair in the Star base Lucia.
A word about spreaders. We visited Antigua about 10 days ago. Definitely yuppy land. There is clearly a spreader pecking order. For the technically minded spreaders are the bits of the mast that go sideways about half way up and which the shrouds are pulled round to support the mast. Well the thing is the more spreaders, the taller the mast and the bigger the yacht. Suffice to say we have only 2 spreaders (small yacht) but in Falmouth harbour, Antigua there were many yachts with lots of spreaders - and here is the nice bit when you have three or more spreaders you seem to be required to light them up at night - I haven't yet worked out whether this is a legal requirement for navigation purposes, an excuse to run the generator or failure to comply with the 12 days of Xmas rule. Anyway it looked pretty spectacular at night. No doubt enterprise would have had 5 - spreaders that is.
So onwards and upwards we have had some good sails - north to st Martin, west to st Croix - not popular but worth the visit - nice and Scandinavian but alas no Danishes - then north to the Virgins.
One pretty significant lessen that we are learning is the fundamental direction of winds. So straight forward it has been to get north and west with the winds blowing mainly from the east (trade winds) we now have the task of going east and south to get back to Grenada - even the non nauticals should be able to work out the mechanics of that. No doubt Scotty in the engine room will earn his keep! But more of that to follow.
Meanwhile we have to avoid the yuppies (Klingons with a small k) and head for Necker ( now we know why it is called virgin airways) following the footsteps of POTC en route.
More to come
Captains log star date 10/03/2013
Kirk out
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