February, March, April 2015

O.K. My best intentions to keep this blog up to date have obviously failed miserably; just don’t know where the times gone, anyway here we are 29^th April 2015 with an abbreviated up-date for the last three months.

I wrote in the last blog that we were in Barbuda, an island we really loved, where we had a fantastic chill out time. We left there and sailed through the reef by Boon Channel and anchored in Jumby Bay, Long Island, a small island with a few houses and a couple of holiday resorts, very pleasant swimming and beach activities. From there we sailed to Great Bird Island, an uninhabited island surrounded by reefs. Great snorkeling, clear water, lots of fish, we swam with several small rays. There was also lots of shells, especially conch shells, we went ashore and climbed to the highest point to admire the views. Back on Kaimin a fishing boat hailed us and we bought two of the largest lobsters I’ve ever seen they were delicious. Eventually it was time to head back to Jolly Harbor and prepare to go back to the UK.

We were in the UK for six weeks however I didn’t keep a diary, but we did the usual things, such as John obviously had lots to catch up with at work, visiting clients and works in progress, whilst I caught up with the housework, gardening, the post and purchases for the boat. We caught up with friends and family as best we could. We managed to have James and Henry for a couple of days taking them to the ski-dome for their first lessons in ski-ing and snowboarding, I think this got the seal of approval. John went to Riga for a long week-end with David and a group of guys, whilst Stacey and I went to London to see Changing of the Guards, Billy Elliot the musical and a craft fair, I really enjoyed having quality time with her.

There was also some sad moments during our time at home as my cousin Donald died, I was pleased that I’d managed to visit him and catch up with some of my Dad’s side of the family before he died. Unfortunately John’s uncle, Bill, also died, and we were able to attend the service to celebrate his life and catch up with the family.

We also had a number of on-going projects to sort out:

My extractor fan had stopped working, whilst that was being replaced we decided to have some additional electrical sockets installed and to tile behind the cooker instead of keeping the splash back.

My tenants had given notice; there were a few bits and pieces that needed to be done to the house before we found new tenants.

John was also trying to organize tarmac for the road outside our house to be completed whilst we were away and sort out the completion of his Mams extension, so all in all it was a hectic few weeks.

After the few weeks at home we flew to New York for a week for our Blue Water Rally reunion and to meet up with past sailing friends, we were then flying on to rejoin the boat in Antigua. New York very cold; Antigua vey hot; plus boat parts equals nightmare for packing.

When we touched down in JFK there was about five inches of snow on the ground and still snowing, the wind was blowing and boy was it cold, much colder then the UK. We soon forget the cold, as we meet up with everyone from the Rally and the wine and beer start to flow. Did I mention that I’d given up alcohol back in the UK would I stand the test? Whilst we find out what everyone had been doing and reminisce about past times we do the touristy bits, a guided tour around Manhattan, a cruise along the Hudson River to see the Statue of Liberty and dinner in New York Yacht Club. A great time was had by all, but all too soon it was time to say our goodbyes to most of the Ralliers. However Jenny and Peter, Mike and Lorraine, John and I head off on a long, looooong  train journey to see Niagara Falls.

Niagara Falls was partially frozen, a low mist hung around, there was spray from the falls and an occasional light rain but it was amazing. We pulled our hoods up walked the walk and took our photos like true brits. We stayed overnight in a great hotel, had a fantastic evening meal, and then it was time for the looooong train journey back and for us to say cheerio, as we had to be at the airport for 4am in the morning flying back to Kaimin in Antigua.

Friday 27^th March we’re back on Kaimin in Antigua and in the warm. We quickly unpack or perhaps I should say unclothe and unpack and stow things away. Katherine and Rob are joining us tomorrow for a weeks sailing, so there’s the usual food to buy and beer, and beer, and beer.

We have a lovely week with Katherine and Rob, sailing back to Barbuda, anchoring off most of the time, swimming, I think Rob could swim the Atlantic, as long as he could stop for the occasional beer, eating, drinking, chatting and just chilling out. All too soon it’s tie to drop Katherine and Rob back in Antigua for their flight home.

John and I had been discussing where to sail next we had to be out of the hurricane belt by 1^st June. Our options are to sail North to the East Coast of America, East to Bermuda and then back cross the Atlantic to the Azores or South to Trinidad, we opt for Trinidad.

Sunday 5^th April we’ve provisioned the boat, paid our marina fees, cleared customs and immigration and by 10 am where sailing out of Jolly Harbor towards Trinidad. John would like to fly back to the UK around 20^th April so we have a few days to stop and visit different islands along the way.

Our first stop was in Dominica where we picked up a buoy and after clearing customs and immigrations John found an unusual bar that sold rum with a choice of snake or centipedes in it. We arranged for an island tour with Poncho and visited several spectacular waterfalls and hot sulphur springs.

Our next stop was Martinique where we dropped anchor in Grande Anse D’Arlets at around 5pm on Wednesday 8^th April but we we’re on our way again by 7am the following day. We sailed all day and rested over night at anchor in Vieux Fort Bay St. Lucia. Next day were on the move again by 6am picking a buoy up in Mustique at 4pm. John wants to get to Trinidad to make sure we have somewhere safe to leave Kaimin whilst he fly’s back to the UK, The sailing has not been easy with gusty winds and confused seas, and continually having to tweak the sails, has made sailing all day, anchoring at night a bit of a chore so we decide to stay a couple of days in Mustique.

We had visited Mustique in2007/2008 and had loved it mixing and dancing along with the famous in Basils Bar, but this time we were disappointed. We had to clear immigrations but were not allowed to walk the streets to get there, we had to be escorted because the ‘famous’ insisted on a strict security system. Most of the island was out of bounds, the local people no longer seemed happy go lucky, most were security guards, taxi/buggy drivers, in the infamous Basils Bar there was no music, it no longer seemed like a Caribbean Island, more like an International Island Resort.

Our next anchorage was in Hillborough Carriacou, a lovely unspoiled town and people, John takes a particular liking to the Rum and buys large quantities for the boat after sampling sufficient amounts ashore. He struggles to get out of the dinghy back on to Kaimin, I’m not amused and tell him he’s p*****. We find out the next day that the rum is 100% proof and so it is watered down by 50%. I’m still not drinking, goody two shoes.

Monday 14^th April by 10 am we’re on our way for an overnight sail to Trinidad. We have an excellent sail South Easterly winds force 4 to 5 and have the main mizzen and headsails out, but reefed, our new sails are performing exceptionally well. We arrive in Chaguaramas Bay Trinidad 7.15 am Wednesday 14^th April. OK this is Trinidad.

Saturday 27^th December Kaimin is berthed on the clearance dock in Antigua and I go ashore to do the necessary paperwork. There is an orange painted building with 3 white doors, immigration, customs, and port authorities, a lady is sitting outside and tells me to go into immigration first. I open the door and a uniformed man sweeping the floor barks at me to wait and close the door. I wait outside; he eventually beckons me in and asks for our clearance papers from our last port. I have a beautiful leather file with everything in individual plastic folders that I hand over. He barks at me ‘No you must give them to me’ and holds his hand out. “Yes Sir’ You can imagine the thoughts going through my head, he then tells me I must enter all the boats details, crew and cruising details on the computer. It’s not switched on, he can see me looking how to switch it on, but doesn’t offer any advice, eventually I find the on/off switch but then it needs log in details which I have to ask for, in a very official voice he tells me the log in details that will be unique to us and that I must remember it and that it’s very important that everything I enter is correct otherwise I will have trouble wherever we go, great! half an hour later three pieces of paper are printed he stamps them, signs them tells me to take them next door and then come back.

Next door the printed forms are checked against our documents, stamped and signed again and I return to the first door. He keeps one of the forms and tells me to go to the last door, deep breadth. 3^rd door has a lovely lady who chats away whilst filling forms in, asks for payment and gives me our cruising permit that’s it all done I breath a sigh of relief then I’m given the parting shot ‘you must come back and check out  before you leave’ I’m really looking forward to that. It’s a good job John hadn’t been with me I’m sure he would not have kept his temper.

Anyway back on Kaimin we are escorted to our berth and by 5pm we are standing on land. Oh Yes!

Jolly Harbour is lovely; close to our berth are small bars, restaurants, small shops, and a swimming pool. Behind the marina buildings is the most beautiful scenery, high mountains covered in trees and plants and blue skies with fluffy clouds everyone we talk to, locals and other boaties, are happy, smiley and friendly. Bliss! Smile, breath and relax.

Unfortunately we’ve only got 2 days here as we have arranged to meet some friends in St Kitts 1^st January but those two days were lovely. We cleaned the boat, swam, shopped, drank in the bars and had delicious meals in the restaurants. We checked out of Jolly Harbour on the evening of 29^th December and it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.

By 6.30am Tuesday 30^th December we were on our way to St Kitts. We have a really good sail Force 4 to 5; the guys catch three small Tuna. We sail through the narrow channel between St Kitts and Nevis arriving at the entrance to the marina at 2.30 pm. We had tried to pre-book a berth in the marina but had been told they didn’t take bookings. We radio the authorities and the marina office, but the marina is full, so we have to anchor off and dinghy ashore to clear immigration, customs and port authorities.

The guys launch the dinghy and fit our brand new outboard, it has to be run for 10 minutes without moving, and then we have to run it in for 10 hours.

We dinghy ashore and visit the marine office first to see when we can get a berth, a lovely guy called Charlie tells us that the marina is full as its carnival time, but if we phone at 9am in the morning he’ll see what he can do. We then clear customs and walk into town to clear in at immigration and port authorities that are near the cruising ships dock. Once again the officials are difficult but not as bad as in Antigua.

We explore the town it is chaotic, the streets are pot holed with huge open drainage ditches running along the side. Sometimes there’s a bit of a pavement sometimes none, the shops are tumble down buildings sometimes with holes in the walls and just a tin roof, but they’ve been brightly painted to distract from the squalor. All around in front of the shops on the streets anywhere there’s a bit of space are street vendors with rickety trestle table selling coconuts, drinks, sweets, or bits of plastic junk etc. or ½ an oil drum BBQ with spicy chicken or steak, and popcorn machines everywhere, everyone is happy and friendly. The roads are grid locked with rusty and dented cars, pick-ups and vans and people weaving in and out of them. There’s loud music blaring out and it’s all hustle, bustle and noise. We spend a quite night at anchor and have the fresh Tuna for our evening meal.

The following morning after breakfast John and Denzil decide to visit Charlie again and are successful in obtaining a berth. The berth is between two poles at the bow that have to be lassoed as you reverse in then stern lines to the pontoon. We berth like professionals, and everyone is impressed.

New Years eve Denzil goes into town for the Carnival and John and I go to a fantastic French restaurant and have a delicious meal. We decide to go back to the boat to watch the fireworks but we fall asleep and miss them.

New Years day we meet Andrew and Dawn off a cruise ship and we spend a lovely chilled day, having drinks on Kaimin and going out for lunch. Andrew and Dawn have to be back on the cruise ship by 5.30pm so we decide to check the carnival out.

The carnival procession is split into groups of people from different churches, each group has a massive truck or a tractor pulling a trailer with it’s own generator and a band playing extremely loud calypso or reggae music, the speakers are the size you see at our outdoor music festivals and the beat vibrates through your whole body.  Behind the bands are scantily dressed dancers, young beautiful girls, young men and Mamas with asses the size of double decker busses but one and all are shaking their butts. Their costumes are absolutely beautiful, brightly coloured with exotic headdresses, but the dancing is more like an exhibition of various sexual movements and sometimes quite shocking. It’s crazy man! The streets are packed with onlookers with police and military controlling the crowd, but everyone including the officials are laughing, happy and well behaved, and we did not see any trouble anywhere.

Whilst in St Kits we went on a scenic narrow gauge train journey around the island. The slaves built the railway track to carry sugar cane from the fields to the refineries. We are in an open carriage with a lot of locals, being served rum punches and listening to a hilarious commentary about the places we pass. The scenery is magnificent but in places the track goes over deep ravines on what they describe as bridges, all I could see was the railway track with nothing holding it in place scary! Another day we caught the local bus to Brimstone Fortress engineered by the British but built by the slaves. It’s high on a volcanic hill and the walk up takes about an hour,and a lot of sweat, but the views from the top make it worthwhile.  The fortress is a world heritage site and is well maintained without being touristy and explains the history in an easy to understand manner.

By Tuesday 6^th we are ready to leave and head back to Antigua to collect our new sails.

First night at sea, sometime in the night the wind dropped and the engine was put on. Denz had opened his bedroom hatch for some air unfortunately a ferry came to close to us, causing a massive tidal wave that sent water through the hatch wetting all his bedding.

We had a really good sail on the 12^th December 154 nmiles in 24 hours, with the main, mizzen and headsail out romping along at 5 to 7 knots over ground, but it didn’t last and by the night of the 13^th the engine had to go on, unfortunately it stopped 4 times during the night, but started straight away once it had been bled, its definitely a fuel problem.

There was much discussion about the engine, should we turn back whilst we still could, but we were not in any danger out in the big ocean, the worst that could happen is that we’d be becalmed, but we do need to know that we can rely on the engine to get into a marina once we’ve crossed the Atlantic. The guys decide that air has to be getting into the fuel system somewhere. When they check all the ‘O’ rings and connections that had been undone to clean our fuel system in Sotogrande they find several that are loose, these are tightened up and we hope that has solved our problems.

John developed a really heavy head cold and was feeling very ache, he thinks he must have caught it on the flight back, so I did his 8pm to 12pm watch for a couple of nights and sent him to bed early with paracetamal. After a couple of days he’s starting to feel much better.

We learnt early on that although our IT comms worked in Lanzarote once we got out to sea we could not send emails or get a weather forecast other than by the SSB and this takes hours frustrating but not a lot we can do about it.

The guys have been catching fish most days which helps pass the time and they love reeling them in and seeing what they’ve caught.

Stacey had made us an Advent Calendar with gifts or forfeits for each day and this has also helped pass the day time, up to now we’ve each had a Christmas tree decoration she had made from red felt, Denz had a cover for his bean bag made out of the old blue water rally flag, John had a bar of dark chillie chocolate which he ate with a beer, John also had a forfeit and had to scream as loud as he could on deck, and I had to sing Jingle bells it all helped to release the tension building up about the engine.

We decide to head further south so the guys put our twin head pole rigging up for down wind sailing, but the ballooner had not been up an hour before it tore in two. We had known our sails needed replacing and have new once waiting for us in Antigua but we were hoping they would last us across the Atlantic. Loosing our ballooner is a real blow as we were expecting to use our twin headsail rig for most of the sail across the Atlantic. We decide to configure our sails, into a traditional goose wing, with the headsail poled our to port and the main to starboard, this seems to work well and once more were romping along and then were surrounded by dolphins and life’s good again and we all felt great.

On the 19^th December we had a lot of rain and squalls with large waves, it was overcast and grey but we were still romping along when we saw another boat at the side of us, the only boat we saw. They called us on the radio and Denz had a bit of a laugh and joke with them, they ask if they can come close and give us some cigarettes in exchange for beer. Denz tells them to stay away. Later on whilst I’m on watch they call again and ask if we’ll slow down as they can’t keep up with us and it would help the crews moral if they were close to another boat during the night. Boats just don’t do that and I was very suspicious, why did they want us to slow down. After us all discussing what had been said on the radio we realized that we did not know their boats name or where they’d come from or their intensions, but they knew we were only three on board, I was scared and we all felt vulnerable, perhaps too many horror movies and stories about pirates but we decided we’d feel safer with a few miles between us. Once there was four miles between us we relaxed a bit but the discussion about our close encounter with a boat of unknown intensions continued for several days and we all agreed on a protocol for radio contact.

We had continued to make excellent progress sailing everyday up to evening of 19^th December when the wind died to force 2 so the engine had to go on again. During this time the guys have caught a fish every day and we’d continued to open Stacey’s gifts, one that caused great laughter was a Christmas jumper and hat for John that turned him into a Santa’s helper with jingle bells, and Denz had a forfeit of having to give me a big cuddle and then John, so I’ve got a great photo of John dressed up and Denz giving him a cuddle.

The engine is still playing up and the guys still believe its air getting in the system. We remember that when the mechanic changed the fuel filter he hadn’t got a new ‘O’ ring so the fuel filter is changed. For the next four days we had very little wind and had to have the engine on all the time but Hallelujah it doesn’t stop once. Our new concern was whether we would have enough fuel if the wind did not pick up.

Christmas eve were sailing again and I made some cheese pastry ready to make sausage rolls and chees straws for Christmas Day a bit of a tradition.

Christmas day we had a really good sail during the night and by 7am the sun was shining and we were romping along at 6 – 8 knots. After breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled egg and real coffee we open one or two cards and the rest of our pressys. John finds a few Christmas songs, which nearly brings a tear to my eye as I thought of all the family. I made the sausage rolls and we had roast pork, with roast potatoes and Brussels, nearly a Christmas dinner.

We sited land on the 27^th December at about 8 am, we had crossed the Atlantic once again, but before we could step on land we had to clear immigration customs and port authorities and that proved to be an episode on its own.