Heading South

And here we are anchored off St George's anchorage, Grenada.  It's their Carnival and we're undecided about what our level of participation will be. The anchorage is quite rolly at the moment as a tropical waves pass across us.  Yesterday was heavy rain from unexpected directions.  The prevailing winds are from the East and we had winds from the West as the big dark squall clouds rolled through.  Our light sensor activated anchor light came on in the afternoon it was so dark.

Today is better, and we have laundry out to dry, which truly is tempting fate.  It's muggy and cloudy though with only light winds so another poor day for generating power via the wind generator and solar panels.  Later in the the day we'll run the generator to top up the battery and heat some water.

We met up with our niece Izzy, who has been living and working in Grenada since the beginning of the year.She gave us the whistle-stop tour and we're hoping to do some sightseeing together when the weather settles down. 

(This intro was written a week ago and we'll catch you up to where we are exactly at the end of the blog.  If I have to keep changing the verb tenses I'll never get this posted!)


We arrived in Grenada on the third of August after slow island-hop down the Windward Islands. From Antigua we rushed past Guadeloupe, pausing there only long enough to hit the Carrefour and Leader Price Supermarkets at Pigeon Island and then on to for Les Saintes, the little dot on the map just below the main island of Guadeloupe, for our stop for the night.

The next morning, we sailed south to Dominica where we dropped at anchor off Portsmouth for just over a week, which finally took gave us a chance to do some sightseeing.  When you arrive at anchorages like Dominica in the Windward Isles you are almost always approached by 'Boat Boys'. I've never been easy with that name. Really, they are locals in boats who offer various services from getting you ice or your propane bottles refilled, or taking your rubbish away or arranging taxi's or tours. It's their job (possibly one of several like fishing) and they are often adults with families to support. Once you have accepted the services of one of these guys, you are less likely to be hassled by all the rest.  He is also a contact point and a source of local knowledge.

  

       
Albert was our guy for our stay in Portsmouth and along with fishing, one of this other hats was a tour guide on the Indian River. 

We had heard of these tours where you are rowed up a river, and had sent some guests on them, but the only river I've seen in the Caribbean was the one we climbed up in Guadeloupe and I just couldn't imagine how it worked.

Well, it's a completely different type of river; its a tropical marsh land.

From the website SearchDominica.com

The Indian River is like a mini Amazon teeming with life – situated in the center of the town of Portsmouth to the North of Dominica.

The  river was named  Indian River after the settlements of the Kalinagos formally known as Carib Indians that existed on the upper banks  of that river.

The Indian river gushes down the Morne aux Diables  Mountain range and  meanders to the gently lowlands of Portsmouth  where it flows gracefully into the Caribbean sea. Due to its’ unique formation,  being below the sea level the water at the lower areas of the rivers  is  brackish, contributing to its unique vegetative growth and life forms.'

Looking at those roots, you can just imagine the torrential rains of the wet season raising the water level to several feet up the trunks.  

And on the right, if your a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean, you might recognize this as the witches house in the swamp. And on the left is the sign for the Indian River Cafe, where you can eat drink and watch the hummingbirds.



Another site we visited was the the Cabrits National Park and Fort Shirley.

                             

The Fort was beautifully restored with lots of places to take shelter in the frequent rain squalls that barreled across the bay.

                                

The park has numerous walking trails and the one we chose was doable even in the rain.

           

I particularly liked the Black Crabs. We never saw a live one but did see lots and lots of shells in the path.  They are obviously as tasty as they were attractive.

             

The trees are fantastic.  We were very impressed with the spiky bark and lofty canopies as well as the creepers and mosses, climbing up or dangling down from trunk and limbs.  

Dominica was wonderful but when the weather changed for the better we made the short hop over to Martinique, where we stocked up for the last time on things we can only get in the French islands like lardons (diced bacon), strong chorizo sausage and some nice cheese and wonderful baguettes.

We then by-passed St Lucia and did a long sail down to Chateaubelaire on the North West Coast of St Vincent. We arrived just at sunset and were off early to arrive in Bequia by lunchtime.

The anchorage off Princess Margaret Beach was full to bursting for much of the time we were there.  We suspect the French islands had their summer holidays and many came south from Martinique.  

Much of the work that needed doing on the boat was done is Bequia on this visit. We re-caulked the leaky windows.  

Most impressively Tim designed and commissioned the new console for the chart plotter and instruments.  It looks amazing and in time there will be a 12 volt cigarette lighter socket in the one remaining spot on the left side of the console.

We had the zips replaced on the both the main and mizzen sail covers.  Tim also had them add an extra strip of cloth on each side to make the cover roomier and easier to zip closed.

        

We also did a bit of scraping and varnishing, though rather than varnish we're using an oil product that should be easier to maintain.  Varnish is very unforgiving and needs a lot of upkeep in the tropics.

Bequai is perfect for snorkeling and I've become quite adept at spotting octopus.    My favorite moment was when I spotted a spotted eel in quite deep water.  It had its head down a hole and was wriggling away to get in deeper.  As I watched, movement caught my eye and I saw the tiniest octopus circling around behind the eel.  Its tentacles looked like filigree and curled so delicately around the blades of grass as it sidled away. I'm pretty sure the octopus had escaped from a backdoor when the eel came knocking on the front door. 

Taking photos underwater can be very frustrating.  The water filters out the colours, the water itself is often murky and the GoPro Camera I've been taking photos with has no view finder and taking closeups can be very hit or miss.

           

Sea Anemone with a little shrimp that you really can's living in it and a Porcupine Fish which might look small but was at least a foot long.

              

One of the many spotted eels you can see poking around any hole or hollow, and hiding under that rook are lobsters.  Lots and lots of lobsters.  The lobster season had not yet started and you could find some under almost any rock you chose to look under.

The day before when I'd snorkled sans camera, I saw a Stonefish, Black Speckled Eels, Lionfish and a Spotted Eagle Ray.  I console myself by thinking that I probably would have missed the shot anyway.

Here in Grenada now it is particularly wet and windy here at anchor in Prickly Bay.  We had a wonderful sunny day out yesterday, Saturday the 14, with our niece Izzy, who gave us the Grand Tour of Grenada.  This blog, however, is quite long enough and I dont want to skimp on the telling so I will save that for the next. We will be heading for Trinidad within the next day or so and will write up Grenada once we're there.

It's not all sightseeing and socialising

On a good day, I wake up all bright-eyed and bushy tailed not long after dawn, and once the skipper is up with a cup of coffee to hand, I head for the foredeck to follow a half hour of Bend and Stretch Yoga Class with Melissa McLeod (www.doyogawithme.com) on my iPad.  

I have been doing the same class for years.  One, bending and stretching really is a great thing to do, two, with a little maneuvering I have enough space for the whole routine on the foredeck and three, it really is very easy and even if I haven't done it for a while it's not too much of a stretch. Our friend Skipper Tim on Stormbird took this photo of me in English Harbour, Antigua.  He was very kind.  I could have looked much sillier.

On a not so good day, it's either raining or the boat might be rolling too much from side to side, or the skipper might have a lie-in and as we sleep in the forward berth it wouldn't be fair for him to waken to the thumpings and bumpings that is me doing yoga, or I might have overslept and the sun is too high, it's too hot and bright and I can no longer be bothered.

My other exercises of choice are swimming and snorkeling.  English Harbour is a particularly good spot. It is well protected behind a rocky reef and at this time of year it is a fish nursery with schools of juveniles everywhere.  

One cloudy wet morning, I saw a school of maybe a hundred squid sized from barely a bite to a substantial main course. Maybe they are telepathic because I never saw that number or variety of size again.  I did come across four during a later snorkel.  They stood out because when I was close enough to worry them a little but not enough to move off, three of the four splayed their tentacles at me in 'talk to the hand' type of pose.  I have never seen this before and was so intrigued I did some searching and found this Squid Defense Video.  It doesn't mention the behaviour I saw, which I suspect is to make them look bigger and scarier, but it is interesting none the less.  

There is a wreck of an fishing boat sitting on the sandy bottom that is covered in soft corals and the hiding place for all sorts of fish.  I always hope to see the large Porcupine Fish that has been lurking around the wreck or among the rocks nearby for several years to my knowledge. I'd guess it is not much less than two feet long and even though it looks like an astonished baby if it suddenly appears out from under a rock, it is quite startling.

I'm drifting off topic, so back to work now.

My type of snorkeling is a bit tame for Tim, but he does get into the water if there's a chance of free diving or to scrub the hull. The warm waters of the Caribbean and the critters living it it are more than a match for any type of anti-foul you chose to protect the hull and all need attention if you don't want to drag around your own little eco-system. The growth starts with soft green 'grass' that gets longer and thicker in a surprisingly short amount of time.  This provides a home for tiny shrimps, crabs and critters. We do get some barnacle growth as well but that's more in marinas or in very places like the Lagoon in St Martin or Nanny Cay in The British Virgin Islands.  They have little flow of water and a lot of boats and businesses making the water very dirty.

At anchor, Tim dons mask and fins and free dives to give the hull a light scrubbing that clears most of the grass every few days.  If we've been in a marina for a while, we will anchor Larus into clear water and Tim will use a diving tank with a regulator (mouth piece) attached by a 25 foot hose.  The tank stays on deck and the length of the hose lets him do a more thorough job more quickly and easily.  The propeller and propeller shaft, which are bare metal, are barnacle magnets and need heavy duty scraping that's hard to do on one breath. 

Tim also washes (and polishes if the conditions are right) the topsides whenever they're looking a little grubby. Exhaust from running the the engine or generator leaves a dirty trail along the water line. 

There are the one off messes to be cleaned off as well. Bird poop is the most common, but once while swimming around the boat, I found that we'd been inked by a startled squid. Happily it just wiped right off.

We'd been putting up with a constant clicking from the nose cone of the wind generator for a week or so.  It had some how come slightly a drift and was clicking with every rotation.  

  

So one fine day, Tim scrambled up the mizzen, (in a Bosun's Chair with me taking up the slack on the mizzen halyard) to the wind generator and stuck it back down with a dad bf silicon.  The wind generator bracket is an excellent spot to work from.  It was made by our friend Paul when we were at the Itchen Ferry Boatyard in Southampton, UK.

Electrics, electronics and communications are Tim's baby and he's always working to improve our systems.  Recently he changed our radio setup so that the radio now has a permanent GPS position signal. This means it the instruments are off or stop working we can still use the radios, (VHF & HF), to make DSC calls. The 12 volt charger in the cockpit for the anchor light stopped working, which meant the headlining in the galley coming down and a lot of fiddling with wires to get it working again. 

Tim has changed the keel cooler that cooled the refrigeration compressor to a water cooled system which cools it by circulating water from our fresh water tanks. This is great but the next step is to get the compressor out of the hot engine room and into a locker in the saloon where it will be cooler.

Latest and greatest, he's been working with Dr John, and SSB expert (among many other expertise) to improve the quality of our Single Side Band Radio reception and transmission.

  

We're due a laundry day but need to start early in the day.  We hand wash everything in a large bucket and although we wring out every drop we can it's still much wetter than anything spun in a machine.

There is a tropical front passing through bring lots of rain at the moment so I've rigged some lines in the cockpit for drying.

Once a month we clean our three fans.  One is in the main cabin and can point into the galley or into the saloon. (Strangely enough, Americans call it a salon while Europeans call it a saloon.)

The other two are in the fore peak where we sleep, one at the head and one at the foot of the bed.  We look after our fans lovingly because it could be an awfully long night without them. 

Another important bit of kit that needs monthly cleaning is the pump for the Lavac Toilet.  Scale builds up inside making the pump less and less effective and efficient.  Cleaning the scale requires the pump taken apart and treated with an acid.  This is one of the jobs that has the skippers name on it.

Almost a year ago, Tim surprised me with the sewing machine I've felt the need of for a while.  I'm definitely a novice seamstress and some of my clothing repairs have been ropy at best, but I am getting some things done and improving all the time. We don't like spending needlessly, however, and I'm getting pretty good at recycling.  

Flags always take a beating and we tried to repair rather than replace.  The green of St Vincent and the Grenadines courtesy flag and the yellow point of Ocean Cruising Club burgee had all but disappeared.  
I picked apart one of our two Ireland courtesy flags and used the green portion to repair the V&G flag. I've saved the rest for future repairs. 

The OCC burgee just got a trim and a hem to make it shorter, but less likely to wear and, to be truthful, I didn't have a big enough bit of yellow.  Will keep my eyes open.

Our cushions in the saloon were squashed pillows. No matter how you pummeled or shook them they scrunched down into an uncomfortable lump, so  I cut one pillow in half.  I remolded it into two plump rectangles.  I stitched these back into their respective half of the pillow cover and looked around for something to make cushion covers. 

I'm loath to get rib of worn, faded, stained, holed articles of clothing.  We use them for work clothes, patching, rags and now custom cushion covers.  I searched online for instructions on how to make cushion covers and it really is very easy, particularly if you chose the 'pocket' type with no zip. So a 20 year old fleece (Mark Warner circa 1990 used wrong side out as the right side had epoxy resin on it) and an faded navy golf shirt became to cushion covers. 

Tim finds them very comfortable.

I have one more pillow that needs become a couple of cushions and I've been eyeing up our various t-shirts trying to decide which ones to be given a new lease of life.


 
UV light isn't just hard hard on your skin or eyes it also kills fabrics, sealants and varnish dead.  

We recently had our sprayhood restitched in Antigua when every thread exposed to the sun failed. The canvas is still good but we need to get out the bees wax to seal it where water leaks through the new seams. 

The zippers on both out sail covers are perishing and will be replaced, hopefully in Bequia where we are headed next .

The covers on our inflatable fenders are getting chaffed and torn and need replacing as well.  This is something I'll turn my hand to as one is already unusable so I can''t make it any worse.  We need to find the right sort of fabric and thread (UV resistant) and we hope that Trinidad will be the place for that.

We have lots more chores waiting for the right time and place. 

UV light and salt water doesn't do the vanish on the interior wood any good either and there's work to be done there.

The curtain tape on that the curtain slides go into is just crumbling away due to sun exposure through the window.  

The caulking around the windows has shrunk/cracked and has been leaking.  The starboard side, which is the sunny side of the boat when at anchor due to the prevailing Easterly winds,  was replaced shortly after a particularly wet passage,  The port side windows aren't as urgent but are top of the list of things to do.

The cruising life is by no means a case of all play and no work, but at least for us it is heavy on the side of play. 

 

Deshaises to Jolly Harbour, English Harbour and Barbuda

Back in Deshaies, we did a walk that we’d heard about and read about but had never done. We walked up a mountain by way of the Deshaies River.

The two hour hike wound its way up the river bed to nearly the top of a rainforest covered mountain.

I have to admit, that by the time we got to the road, which is your route back down the mountain, we opted not to do an extra 20 mins there and back to a waterfall, cus I was pooped. We'll save that for next.

This was the road down the mountain and the walk felt almost as long as the climb up. I did manage to gather some windfall mangoes on the way down. The mango trees were huge and it is a long drop for a ripe mango, but I managed to gather a few and made a mango ginger sauce to go with my homemade yogurt. It was very nice. (Right now in Antigua, everyone and their mother is selling mangoes. It must be the peak of the season because you really can't go very far without someone trying to sell you a bag of mangoes.)

Later in the day we had front row seats for a group of fishermen, two in the water herding fish and 4 on the boat managing the net.

We often see the local people fishing in the off season in the bays and off the beaches which are normally full of anchored yachts. I don't know if they fish elsewhere during the tourist season, or if they work in the tourist industry and go back to fishing when the that source of revenue dries up.

On Saturday the 4th of June we left Deshaies in the early morning and headed in a northerly direction to Antigua. In the wind-shadow of Guadeloupe we had light winds and Tim put out our fishing line.

We have caught fish between Antigua and Guadeloupe on other passages, and the last time it happened we had to abandon the fish we'd caught because the wind came up strongly and suddenly, and I didn't feel like filleting a fish while 'over on our ear'. This journey start out with much less wind than we usually experience, so when the fish bit and Tim landed it, I was ready on the aft deck with a cutting board and my sharpest knife. I had just managed to take off the first fillet when the empty bucket we put a freshly caught fish in, made a dash for the side of the boat. The wind had come up and we were suddenly over on our ear.

Tim quickly reduced sail and we passed bucket, cutting board, knife and fish into the cockpit, where I finished the job. It was a small male Mahi Mahi, as you can tell by the beginning of the bump on his forehead, and we grilled the fillets on our new BBQ in Jolly Harbour. There really is nothing quite like fish that fresh.

Tim got the BBQ while I was in Canada and it has been such a treat cooking on it. We've had burgers a couple of times and I have a pork loin that will make marvellous souvlaki.

         

We also have a small cooler type freezer that is truly changing the way we shop and, most importantly, how often we can have ice cream. :)

Once we'd managed to clear in to Antigua, (We arrived about 1600 Saturday afternoon and were just in time to see the Port Authority lady closing up shop an hour before she should have. We were able to clear in with Immigration and could, therefore, go to the very good supermarket in the marina. We came back Sunday when the Port Authority was due to open and hung around on the Customs Dock until we were asked to leave. Monday everything was back to normal and we were able to finish our clearing in), we sailed around to English Harbour and spent a few fun days with friends on other boats.

Monday, the 13th of May, we headed north for Barbuda, the other half of the country which is called 'Antigua and Barbuda.' Small islands are often grouped together with a larger neighbour for administrative purposes, like Trinidad and Tobago.

Barbuda is a low lying island to the north of Antigua. We had a lovely 5 hour or so sail averaging 6 and a half to 7 knot over the ground. Barbuda is so low lying that we couldn't see it on a clear day until we were less than 5 miles off the coast.

Honestly, it is hard to find a more pristine beach anywhere. We didn't have the 13 miles of beach to ourselves but we could only see them if we squinted.

Our friends, Peter and Betty, who had been here the previous week had seen horses roaming the beach. We didn't, this the exception of a pile of droppings on our last day down at Coco Point on the south end of the island.

During walks along the beach, we did see some pretty darn interesting things.

We are pretty sure that the first photo is of turtle tracks leading up the beach to where the eggs were laid, and the then the far tracks are of her sliding/finning down the beach back into the sea. We are less sure that the photo on the left is of the little flipper marks of baby turtles as they make their way down to the sea but it would make me happy if it was..

All this activity happens at night, and although the beach glowed eerily in the moonlight, we didn't feel the need to disturb them.

I did wonder if we didn't see any horses because they encourage them to be elsewhere on the island when the turtles are nesting.

The warm shallow water seemed to be something of a nursery for baby Lemon Sharks.

          

They were so close to the shore, maybe a dozen of in total, but they were very fast and very skittish. So this was the best I could do.

          

Unlike this little fella who just sat and stared. The photo on the right gives you a sense of the pink in the sand.

I have a little more like to post but the formatting is starting to misbehave, which seems to happen when it gets to be a certain size, so I'll save it for the next blog.

Back into cruising mode with a new blog site

Blog 82

We've switched blogs! This one is easier  for us to deal with and we think the 'commenting' will be more satisfactory. To view any previous posts just click on the link on the right.

Hmm… we are now in Guadeloupe soon to be on our way back to Antigua so there seems to be quite a chunk missing from our blog.

Firstly, we are on our way back to Antigua so that Tim can finish of the oral exam part of the Yacht Master Ocean course.  Once he’d completed the first part of the course, way back in March, we headed to St Martin where Tim covered the base while the manager was on holiday.  During that time that, I flew back to Canada for an extended stay to visit and get some dental work done.  I had a much lovelier time than Tim, but he got through it, and on the 23^rd of May we left Fort Louis Marina headed directly for Martinique.

The reason we were sailing straight to Martinique, a two-day passage, was to be offshore long enough for Tim to get all the sextant sights he needed to complete the course. It was a good plan except for the fact that the sailing was pretty miserable.  We were on a fetch (one long tack) in moderate winds and in an uncomfortable sea.  We were both rather out of shape for living life on a 15 degree angle and I was feeling it. Guadeloupe, only 6 rather than another 24 hours away was developing a very alluring je ne cést quoi.

Tim had got all his sights done, moon, stars and noon so there really was no reason to carry on if we weren’t enjoying it.  And we weren’t, so we didn’t.  We changed course for Deshaies on the north west corner of the Guadeloupe and arrived late afternoon of the 24^th with that beaten with a stick feeling you get after a tougher than normal workout.

And this was our route.

After a couple of days in Deshaies, we head down to Les Saints via Pigeon Island, where we anchored over night.  Pigeon Island is within the Jacques Cousteau Underwater Reserve Guadeloupe and the snorkeling and diving is very good.

We sailed for Les Saintes on Sunday the 29^th and anchored off La Tete Rouge. 

That's La Tete Rouge on the left and Larus to the right of it.

There fewer and fewer spots to anchor in the Saints every time we visit.  A favourite bay to anchor in is next to Le Pain de Sucre, a spectacular rock formation, and most of the anchorage has been converted to a mooring field.  You can anchor behind the yellow buoys but the depth is generally too deep.

We did quite a lot of walking but enjoyed it most in the early morning.

I did the early morning walk two days on the trot because I forgot the camera the first time, but it was worth it.

Although we'd seen the fishing cages the day before, there was no one about so I could take my time getting photos.  The sticks leaning against the tree in the background are what is used to make the frame for the chicken wire. 

Grand Bourg, the only town in the Saints is, not surprisingly, very picturesque and it follows the curve of the bay right around to the beach next to La Tete Rough.

  

Behind the town where the terrain becomes more mountainous were groups of houses between fields. The photo below on the right is a goat field.  You can tell the fields that have goats because there isn't a slip of greenery to be seen. 

             

("Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin," said the Billy Goat Gruff.)

Most of the goats are well and truly fenced in, but there were some exceptions.

They've even posted a look out.'                                                        

This must be what goat heaven looks (and smells) like. I did wonder what they do with all the goats.  I hope they have a thriving local cheese trade.   

I know, probably too many photos of goats.

These walks were to the south of the main town on the way to, but not as far as, Le Pain de Sucre.  We hadn't visited this area before and really enjoyed it.  When we head south again, we'll definitely have another look around Les Saintes.