Week 33;June 24 –June 28 Week 33 June 24 to 28 This week we either stopped at or anchored at Pigeon Island, Guadeloupe; Terre de Haute, Les Saintes; Plymouth, Dominique; and St. Pierre, Martinique. Our plan is to continue to move south whenever the weather is good. School goes on now regardless of whether we are sailing or anchored, as both Linda and Jennifer are anxious to finish 6th grade! On sailing days when it’s too rough to be inside the boat, Jennifer does her reading on deck and Linda has gone to doing some of the assignments with her on deck just discussing the answers instead of trying to write anything. The books and workbooks occasionally get splashed, but most dry quickly in the sun.
We anchored in Terre de Haute for a couple of days. It’s another cute little town with houses with gingerbread trim and lots of flower gardens. Jim made his daily trips to the local bakery for pastries for the girls and sticks of fresh bread for the day. Linda and Jennifer took a walk to the beach. They had trouble with the French signs and ended up at the wrong beach, the one you weren’t allowed to swim at, but that turned out to be ok because they found Jacob’s Tear sea beans and ram’s horn shells. Our boat looks pretty small in the harbor here. Many of the other boats are 50’ – 60’.
Plymouth, Dominique was only an anchor stop, but Jennifer says it was her favorite one so far. That’s because Sim told her that the Black Pearl from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies was anchored almost in the same spot we were when he was there several years ago. His friends had even seen John Depp, who played Captain Jack Sparrow, at the bar we could see from our boat. Of course Johnny and the Black Pearl weren’t there this year. This is Pirate of the Caribbean territory though.
The sail (that’s sail, not motor-sail) from Plymouth to St. Pierre was a good one. We’re finally going more south than east as we go from island to island and can take advantage of the trade winds instead of fighting them the whole way. St. Pierre would have been an interesting place to explore if we had stayed there for a day. It was completely destroyed by lava flows in 1902 and the whole city has been rebuilt since then around the ruins of the old one.
A fitting on our propane tank was leaking one day this week and the tank was almost empty before Jim discovered it. Until we find a place to refill it, we’re preparing meals that require little or no propane. Scrambled eggs and sausage and canned meals of lentils and sausage are two of our favorites.
Week 32;June 14 –June 23 We covered a lot of ground in the last 10 days. We entered the British Virgin Islands, stopping at Sandy Island for snorkeling, Road Town on Tortola to check in with Customs, and Virgin Gorda to stage for our next long ocean passage. The BVI’s have beautiful clear water sandy beaches, good snorkeling and green mountainous islands. No wonder people charter boats here. We had a fun day on shore in Road Town. Our first stop was the Pusser’s Rum store where Jim had to stock up on the good stuff. We had lunch at an English pub by the water with many of the folks we’ve been traveling with including Sim and Rosie from England. We opted for Shepherd’s pie instead of cheese burgers since we were in British territory now. Linda found a reasonably priced laundry mat with hot water (first time in months) and Jim found block ice. It’s those little things that can really make your day! We also ran into Mark on Natie M. who we hadn’t seen since George Town. He’d been to Cuba since we saw him and had many stories to share. All six of the remaining “Southbound boats” were together in Virgin Gorda. That called for a get together. It takes a large boat like Absaroque to host all 13 of us for drinks and appetizers.
We set out from Virgin Gorda with our friends on Alianna, for what may be our last long passage for awhile. We bypassed St Martin and went straight on to Nevis because we had a reasonable weather window. The scenery is changing on us now. The islands are volcanic. We passed the island of Saba, which was a text book example of a volcanic island. It rises straight up out of the sea and has a caldera on top. All the little islands seem to have permanent clouds hanging over their tallest peaks. It kind of gives the impression that the volcano is still smoking. The first afternoon we saw some dark clouds ahead and watched a waterspout come down. Jennifer checked it out with the binoculars and thought it was fun to see the water spraying up where it hit the surface of the water. Jim tacked to keep us out of the storms path. We arrived at a good anchorage in Nevis after about 36 hours of motor-sailing, had a good meal and a good sleep. The next morning we got up rested and listened to the Chris Parker weather forecast. He made it very clear that if you needed to move, today and tomorrow were the days to do it. So on to Montserrat we went. Montserrat had clouds over it’s peaks too, but this time there was a real active volcano blowing smoke and ash. The volcano erupted in 1995 destroying the city of Plymouth. Since then the south half of the island has been off limits. It’s been relatively quiet since 2004 and you can see a lot of vegetation coming back on top of the lava flows. Like Saba, this is a text book example of a volcano and lava flows.
Following Chris Parker’s recommendation, we pushed on for one more day to the little harbor of Deshaies on Guadaloupe and stayed for a couple of days. We were finally able to turn off the motor and get in some real sailing again, which made Jim and Sim quite happy. Deshaies is a very picturesque little harbor with red roofed buildings along the shore and up the mountain. There was even a white church with a steeple/clock tower. No excuse for Jim to ask what time it is. Guadaloupe is a French speaking country that uses Euros as their currency. The first thing we did after going to shore was get some local money and find the bakery for bread and pain de chocolate (chocolate filled croissants). Linda, Jennifer and Rosie went on a hike up a river bed. No real trail here, just scrambling up the river boulder to boulder (as the guide book said) for a couple of hours. There were cascading waterfalls and small pools everywhere and tropical plants and trees along both sides. Jennifer found lots of seed pods with hard seeds that she hopes to make into jewelry. They got back to town exhausted and ready for a snack, but found that nearly all the business shut down between 12:30pm and 3:30pm. While we were in town, we saw a large funeral procession. It wasn’t a long line of cars as in the US. Here the people walked down the street behind the hearse carrying all the flower arrangements with them. Kind of interesting.
Linda made a large pot of split pea soup to go with the good French bread and butter. We were looking forward to a good relaxing meal with Sim and Rosie, but the first thing that happened was Jennifer spilled her soup and got a bad burn on her arm. She was quite brave about it. Jim is in his medic role taking care of it. This might limit her snorkeling for awhile and give us some more time to focus on school work.
Week 31;June 8 –June 13 This week we covered the Spanish Virgin Islands (Vieques and Culebra), which are actually US territory and then went on to the US Virgin Islands. The west side of Vieques is a popular weekend hangout for boaters from Puerto Rico. It’s close to the east coast of Puerto Rico and has some beautiful beaches, clear water and good anchorages. Luckily we were there on a Monday so the only other boats there were Alianna and Seven Bridges, a boat we met in Boqueron with a child on board. Jennifer can spot boat kids miles off! We left the next day for Culebra and spent a day there exploring the town. Our friends John and Janet on Ventoso were one island away on Culebrita, so we moved on to spend some time with them. It was quite a nice reunion, as our friends Sim & Rosie on Alianna also knew John and Janet, having met them in the San Blas Islands and several other places over the last 5 years. John, Janet, their son Dugal and his fiancée Laura took us to the lighthouse on Culebrita and took us snorkeling in some tidal pools. The light house though dilapidated today, must have been one awesome structure in it’s day. It looked like it had 8-10 rooms around the base that all had tile floors of marble – definitely from the Spanish era. The tidal pools were a treat – warm water and lots of very colorful fish. John took us over the rocks to the main reef. If your were willing to dive down in the cooler water, it was more spectacular than the tidal pools. A visit with John and Janet wouldn’t be complete without Janet pulling out the recorders and music. John accompanied Janet and Linda on the guitar. After dinner it was Dugal’s turn to play the guitar and he had us all singing along with him. What a fun time. Jennifer is getting good at making ankle bracelets. She made one and gave it to Laura, so she could be a “sea gypsy” too. I think Laura was quite pleased to be accepted into cruising family and marked as a sea gypsy. Even if she wasn’t, Jennifer was quite pleased to have made the ankle bracelet on the fly and presented it as a gift to a new friend.
Thursday we heard the other “Southbound Boats” on the radio. They had left Ponce, Puerto Rico, and were on their way to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. They completely bypassed the Spanish Virgin Islands. We caught up with them in St.Thomas the next day. We enjoyed a day on shore and got some good shopping in. We bought a waterproof camera in one of the duty free shops, since one of the control buttons on our old camera had stopped working the day before. Jim found Pusser’s Rum in a K-Mart for a fraction of the price he would have paid in the US – couldn’t resist, had to buy a bottle.
Jennifer took her final test in Math for the 6th grade. Now if we could just finish Science, Geography, Grammar, Spelling, Reading, Art, Composition and History, we’d be done! It’s hard to keep up with studies when you’re on the move and visiting new countries and meeting new friends and old friends. We just call those field trips and that’s an education too.
Week 30;June 1 –June 7 We made Salinas our home base for touring around Puerto Rico. It was a nice safe harbor with easy access to fuel, water, ice, diesel, laundry and rental cars. We rented a car for 2 days to do some shopping and traveled to San Juan. Stops at Wal-Mart and McDonalds were a treat. It took Linda most of a week to find places for all the canned goods and supplies we picked up at Wal-Mart, at prices close to what we’d pay in the US. Jim picked up a new anchor at West Marine in San Juan to replace the one that dropped off the boat between Rum Cay and Mayaquana back in early April. In Old San Juan we toured 2 old Spanish forts, a beautiful old cathedral, walked through a lot of parks and plazas and along the old city wall. We even found the old Army hospital where Jim was born. He didn’t realize it was right on the water. Maybe that’s where he got his love for the water and sailing. In Ponce, PR, we replaced a power supply for our laptop that had gone bad and visited many of the other boats we’ve been traveling with. Most of them had stopped at a marina there for repairs. Luckily we had none this time. Near Salinas, we checked out some hurricane holes. Jim took the latitude and longitude of a good spot in the mangroves should we ever need to run back and wait out a big storm in this area. It’s always good to know what your options are.
We got a shipment of mail from Jim’s family. Of course they’d thrown in a few extra goodies for us, so it was a little like Christmas. Everyone got new swimsuits that we’d ordered back in January. We even got a batch of party mix made by Jim’s dad. Linda will be busy for a while dealing with all the paperwork.
We left Salinas Saturday night after we got our mail and caught up to Sim and Rosie on Alianna, who we’ve been traveling with. Sunday we were back in our routine of motor-sailing in the wee hours of the morning to take advantage of light winds moving along the coast of Puerto Rico in short hops, arriving at anchorages mid morning and playing in the water in the afternoon. Monday morning we’d left the main island of Puerto Rico behind us headed for the island of Vieques in the Spanish Virgin Islands.