Dec 15–31 St. Maarten and BVI December 15 we did some grocery shopping to use up our East Caribbean dollars before leaving Antigua, our last EC country. The cashier at the Epicurean grocery store was incredibly patient with Linda as she pulled out all the coins we'd been accumulating. (1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 25 cent and one dollar coins) There was no one else in line and the cashier said, "No hurry, I'm here till 8pm." It was only 2pm! We left Antigua at 5pm that afternoon for an overnight sail to St Maarten. There was a light south wind that made for a very comfortable sail. Besides sailing we kept ourselves busy cooking, eating and watching a movie and the hours slipped away pretty quickly. Having done the same passage last February also added to the comfort level. We got to St Maarten the next morning just in time to make the 11:30am bridge into Simpson Bay Lagoon and anchored in the same spot we did last February. It almost felt like coming home.
Simpson Bay was the same as last year. Lagoonies and the Turtle Pier were still big gathering places for cruisers and we saw a lot of familiar faces. BB had made it safely to St Maarten with his broken fore stay and was getting his rigging repaired. Laurel from "Here Today" was there. She and Linda had a girls day out on the French side of St Martin and had a wonderful 2 hour lunch at a water front cafe - good way to spend our very last Euros. Val, Ron & Olivia on Exodo were in St Maarten with guests for Christmas. They included Jennifer in many of their activities since one of their guests, Courtney, was the same age.
On December 20 we watched a red sailboat named Guppy come through the bridge into Simpson Bay Lagoon. It was captained by Laura Dekker, the 15 year old Dutch girl trying to become the youngest around-the-world-solo-sailor. She had just completed an Atlantic crossing from the Canary Islands to St Maarten to earn the title of youngest solo sailor to cross the Atlantic. Jennifer thought it was interesting, but she has no plans to attempt a solo trip of her own in 2 years when she's 15.
Early morning on Dec 21 there was a lunar eclipse. Since Jennifer had just studied lunar eclipses in her science lessons, Linda woke her up every half hour from 2:30am to 5:00am to check out the real thing. Jennifer didn't really appreciate the extra visual aids her teacher insisted on using. She thought the picture in the text book was adequate.
Santa was scheduled to make an appearance at Lagoonies on Christmas Eve. We arrived too late to see him, but saw a lot of other people we knew. We started visiting and before we knew it, the band had started. Jim couldn't leave with a good blues band playing, so we were committed for the whole evening. Maybe this was the "Christmas in the Caribbean" that Jimmy Buffet sings about. Linda would have preferred a more traditional Christmas Eve. However, there'll be opportunities for that back in North Carolina in years to come.
On Christmas Day we went to a potluck dinner with other cruisers. It was held in a combination laundry-mat/boating consignment shop/internet station - Shrimpy's. And yes, they were doing laundry on Christmas Day (mostly linens for the mega yachts). They did stop the dryers while we ate. The food and the company were terrific. Our contribution was baby back ribs and garlic mashed potatoes. For some reason baby back ribs are very inexpensive in St Maarten. Jim took advantage of that and bought and cooked them until he perfected his process - a combination of pressure cooking and grilling.
A couple days after Christmas the wind shifted to come from the south again. Time to move on. None of us was really ready to leave, but the weather window was too good to pass up. We had another comfortable overnight sail that put us in Virgin Gorda in the BVI's. After a rest day there it was on to Tortola to officially check in and have Shepherds pie at "The Pub" - comfort food English style. We checked our options for New Year's Eve. The fireworks at the Bitter End Yacht Club in Virgin Gorda sounded good. We sailed hard to weather in 25 knot winds (gusts to 40) most of the day to get there. Jim loved it. He said Opus loved it too. It was a perfect way for him to end the year. There were no fireworks and we were too tired to go ashore and party. However, we were anchored so close to shore we could take in the music and excitement right from the cockpit of Opus. At midnight people cheered, mega yachts blew their horns and flashed their spotlights, and we popped a bottle of 1.98 Euro French champagne, from Leader Price in Martinique, and welcomed in the New Year.
Dec 9–15 Guadeloupe and Antigua When the weather is good we move, so we were in and out of Guadeloupe in 2 days, stopping only in The Saintes and in Deshaises. We did some shopping in The Saintes since Guadeloupe was our last French country and we needed to use up our Euros. We've been avoiding souvenirs, but now that we're seeing these countries for the last times we want to have a few things that are a little more concrete than our memories. In Deshaises we ran into Laurel on "Here Today". BB, another single handler she'd been buddy boating with, had just broken his forestay on his boat and they were waiting in Deshaises for milder weather to go to St Maarten for repairs. Jim helped out by hoisting BB up his mast so he could secure his roller furling jib to prevent more damage. Afterwards we all relaxed and had drinks and appetizers on Laurel's boat. Only a seasoned cruiser (12 years in the Caribbean) could relax after breaking their forestay.
The next morning we were off to Antigua. We spent a day in English Harbor, home of Nelson Dockyard that was used by the British Navy back in the 1800's. We hiked up to Shirley Heights above the harbor for their weekly Sunday BBQ and steel pan drum band. It's the site of Fort Shirley and has a commanding view of both English and Falmouth Harbors as well as nearby islands. (Montserrat, Nevis, St Kitts)
The next stop was Jolly Harbor, Antigua. We saw the boat Mistral again with the 5 German guys who were on Sea Cat's tour to Victoria Falls. This time they seemed like old friends. Jim really had fun trying to use his German even they most of them spoke fluent English. We had two must do things while we were in Jolly Harbor. One was to take the bus to St Johns and have a shawrma for lunch. It's basically a gyro sandwich made with carved, slow roasted rotisserie chicken and special sauces. It's a Syrian thing, but Antigua's the only place we've found them and they're unforgettably delicious. Our second must-do thing was the visit Agnes Meeker. She's the grandmother of one of Jennifer's North Carolina friends who gave us a wonderful tour of Antigua back in January. This time Agnes invited us to her home to meet her brother and several friends. We had a lovely evening and learned a little more about Antigua. Thanks Agnes. We look forward to seeing you in North Carolina next time. Enjoy that new car!
Dec 2–8 Dominica Dominica remains one of our favorite countries. It has lush green tropical rain forests with very rugged and high relief. The combination results in a lot of beautiful scenery and a lot of waterfalls. Add to that rich volcanic soil that produces tons of fruits & vegetables, good snorkeling and friendly people.
Even though this was our third time in Dominica, we still went to snorkel at Champagne. We haven't gotten our fill of watching the gas bubble out of the ocean floor there like bubbles in a glass of champagne. You can hear them too. It sounds like small pebbles being rolled in the surf. Some of the vents are warm to the touch - leave it to Jennifer to check that out. They probably smell like sulfur, but we kept our noses in our masks. Champagne also has resident sea horses, the only ones we've seen in all of our snorkeling, and a fantastic reef - at least in terms of fish. Our friends on "Ubuntu" were in Dominica at the same time so we snorkeled with them.
Other cruisers had told us about Victoria Falls, so this time we paid for a land tour with Octavious (aka Sea Cat). 5 guys from Germany on the boat Mistral joined us on the tour. We learned about some of the local plants as we drove across rugged terrain from the west coast to the east coast of the island. There were short stops to drink coconut milk and eat the young coconut meat, taste sugar cane, cacao beans, cashews and grapefruit, eat roasted plantains, smell bay leaves and lemon grass, and even drink some local moonshine. Bay leaves are an important crop in SE Dominica. They process and export both the leaves for spice and the oil for use in lotions and cosmetics. Linda and Jennifer both recognized the smell of the oil.
The hike to Victoria Falls was a combination of hiking on a trail and scrambling over the boulders and across the river. We were glad we had Sea Cat as a guide since it wasn't very obvious when and where to cross the river. Victoria Falls is sourced from the "Boiling Lake" further up in the mountains. By the time the water gets to the falls and drops 80-100 feet it's cool and comfortable for swimming. We all went in and Sea Cat even took Jim right under the falls. There was so much spray and wind that the rest of us lost sight of them for awhile. Several years ago when the tsunami hit Thailand the water drained out of the "Boiling Lake". It's come back, but not to the same level. It makes you wonder how things are connected under the earth.
After our hike/scramble to and from the falls we were all hungry. The lunch Sea Cat had arranged for us was ready and waiting. Moses, an old Rastafarian, had cooked up a delicious vegetarian stew over a wood fire in his open air kitchen. He served it to us in calabash bowls with spoons made of coconut shells. It was a thick stew with lentils, pumpkin, dasheen, plantains, callilou, papaya and locally grown spices. They call it "broth" even though it's thick and chock full of chunks of fruits and vegetables. We all went into Moses's kitchen and helped ourselves to seconds.
One of the stops on the way back was at the mouth of a river. A half dozen people were wading in the river putting stones in burlap bags to secure them in place so the water would run through them. They were catching something called titire(teeteeree), little squirmy worm like things about the size of the tines of a fork. They're only in the water a few days a month, right after the full moon. To see a whole bucket of these things reminded us of the kind of stuff they'd ask contestants to eat on the old TV show "Fear Factor". They looked creepy, but they were kind of a delicacy. We had titire acaras as an appetizer a few days before the tour and thought they were pretty tasty. An acara is made of dough and is deep fried kind of like a hush puppy in America. Titire were mixed with the dough to flavor the acaras.
Sea Cat told us Dominica has 365 rivers and gets most of its electricity from hydroelectric power. They're experimenting with big windmills for power too. He also told us other countries offered the chance to lounge around salt water beaches and drink alcohol, but Dominica offered fresh water, exercise and healthy fruits and vegetables. Which country would you choose??
Our plan was to sail to Portsmouth, a good anchorage in the NW corner of Dominica, and then sail on to The Saintes in Guadeloupe the next day. Once we got to Portsmouth we realized we weren't quite ready to say good bye to Dominica. We spent one more day, took one more tour and it was worth it. A guy by the name of Alexis took us on a tour of the Indian River. Motors aren't allowed there so he had to row us up the river. Bloodwood trees grew along the banks and formed a canopy completely across the creek. Their roots branch out in the water kind of like cypress trees. Scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where they go up a river at night to see a voodoo lady were filmed there.
We had told Alexis we were also interested in seeing parrots - the national bird of Dominica. He offered to take us on a hike to the top of a hill to look for parrots as part of our tour. The hike up the hill was even more interesting than the river. It went right through his friends plantation. As we walked past different fruit trees he would point them out and give us a taste. We tried 2 different kinds of grapefruit, oranges, mandarin, star fruit, bananas and sugar cane. He pointed out passion fruit, papaya, dasheen, callilou, yams, ginger and sorrel. Besides just tasting, Alexis would pick a few extra for us to keep. We never did see a parrot, but we ended up with a backpack full of fruit. Alexis rowed us down the river again. When they were filming Pirates of the Caribbean, he had rowed the film crew and stars to and from the movie set in his boat. He said that crowd was much more interested in drinking rum punch and smoking ganja in the bar than hiking through the plantation, eating fruit and looking for parrots.
Just a few more extra notes here. Sorrel is a red succulent flower that they use to make tea, especially around Christmas time. They boil the sorrel flowers with ginger and cinnamon and add sugar. Without the sugar it looks and tastes like red zinger tea. Plantations here aren't huge farms or orchards were everything is in neat rows. Trees and bushes are helter skelter everywhere and the ground crops like callilou and dasheen and yams are just growing in between the trees. It seems like you are just hiking through a jungle, but almost everything you see has edible fruit. Nov 20 - Dec 1 Rodney Bay, St Lucia and Martinique We left Marigot Bay and moved north to Rodney Bay, St Lucia to meet another friend. Matthias had just flown in from Germany to spend a month on his boat "Gink", getting it ready for an extended cruise with his family next spring. We first met Matthias, Anke and their daughter Lena last June and sailed with them for about 2 weeks. They were a good match for us - another small family on a small boat with a small budget living out their dream to sail. Since "Gink" was at the marina, we splurged and spent a couple days at the marina too instead of anchoring out. It made visiting and shopping easier and the fresh running water and wide dock gave us a chance to do some cleaning on the boat. While we were at Rodney Bay Marina Jennifer submitted her short story to "The Caribbean Compass" and it was accepted! It may be published in the January issue.