13.01N 62.07W
JENNY
Alan Franklin/ Lynne Gane
Thu 3 Jan 2008 06:46
|
Hello everybody, we have now left Bequia and
are on passage to Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles just off the coast of
Venezuela some 420nm away about 3 days sailing.
The highlight of our stay in Bequia was the New
Years dinner where 10 of us made it through the bad weather from Antigua.The
food was excellent the wine quite passable and the company brilliant with a
steel band and fireworks it was a really good evening.Having said that it was
not the same as being at home with family and friends being away from them just
makes them a bit more special.
Anyway that's enough of that.Bequia is so pretty
and the people as with all of the Caribbean so far are nice and fun loving they
do like a joke and a bit of banter,whilst of course taking your US Dollars at
the inflated prices us outsiders have to pay, but they do it with such humour
somehow it doesn't seem to hurt quite so much as being served by a sour
faced shop assistant in the cold UK,even the customs and immigration have a
laugh and joke have you ever tried to make one smile at
Gatwick.
Great as our stay was its nice to be back at sea
looking forward to arriving at a new location, out here where the air is clean
the wind is refreshing life is relatively uncomplicated just the routine of
running the boat and watching for the weather.Mind you we still have no
generator to charge our batteries as it has developed a fault in the water
temperature sensor which shuts down the engine,still after numerous telephone
calls new ones are on there way via or friends in the USA who are joining the
boat in Aruba and sailing it with Alan to Panama where Jenny and myself will
rejoin to sail the Pacific.Fortunately we can charge our batteries using the
engine but it uses more fuel and takes longer.
Whilst we were in the bay at Bequia a sailing ship
called the Maltese Falcon (perhaps the owner was a Humphrey Bogart fan) came in
,this yacht must be about 300 ft long all high tech carbon fibre with computer
controlled everything including the sail settings and mast angles it cost
millions to build and at least USD 100,000 to charter + expenses,don't think we
could afford to start the engine.But it is an impressive sight to see her at
sea.
As we are now short of power generating capacity we
have shut down our power hungry electronic charting system in favour of paper
charts and a GPS.Paper charts are relatively straightforward they are our map of
the see ,however in order to know where we are on the chart we use satellite
electronic piece of kit called a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite ) instrument
which cross references position signal derived from satiates orbiting the
earth,it was devised by the USA mainly for military purposes but is used
throughout the world for navigation.In the old days we used to take star sights
using a sextant and a watch ,did anyone see the program on BBC called Longitude
without an accurate timepiece sailors could not accurately determine their
position on the sea as the position of the stars was related to a given
time of day.Hope you all understood that.
Its not bad this pencil and ruler navigation we all
get to lazy using the electronic gizmos it gives us something to do on the
watches it is now 2.30 in the morning the boat is going well at 7.5kts we have
both head sails poled out and about 13/15 kts of wind
By the way we did get back to our fishing routine
today with no luck I think we are using the wrong coloured squib on our
lure I will have to experiment, please do not laugh the colour is very important
to the fish. I am told by 12 years old Bradley our fleet guru on such matters
and many more he reads too much he needs to get out more ( only joking
Bradley).
That's it for today
|