Chaguaramas, Trinidad

We left True Blue in the early afternoon on the 27th, and made an afternoon stop at Hog Island, to have a swim and a rest before the overnight passage to Trinidad. It was a good sail, but a bit on the "good exciting" side of the scale; the winds were around 20 knots or so from the east, and the seas on the high side of the forecasted 5-7 feet. We did what I think of as our usual watch schedule: Susan 1800-2200, Leigh 2200-0200, JP 0200-0600. No one slept much; it was hot and a bit bouncy below decks, and there was a squall around 1130 and then we needed to stay a mile away from the Hibiscus oil and gas platform that is about 30 miles off the coast of Trinidad, so JP stayed around after the squall for that maneuver.

JP put the engine on about 10 miles from the coast, as the wind was both "variable" and squally, and we came through the Boca de Monos into Chaguaramas around 0700. We were on the dock at Customs and Immigration by 0830; the process was pretty painless and we were in our slip at Crews Inn at 0920.

Here are some Grenada and Trinidad pictures:

2011 06 Grenada

It is hot here, as expected, and we 1) do not have an a/c because the pump was on its last legs so JP took it out in Grenada (a new one is on order and due here on Friday) 2) do not have POWER during the day because the electric company is working on things at the marina from 0800-1400(ish) during the day, so the a/c we rented after chasing one all over town isn't much help and 3)it rains regularly and sometimes HARD so having the hatches open is a problem. Not a great start to our planned several month stay here, but I will probably feel better when the a/c and power problem is resolved (fingers crossed, by Saturday sometime).

We have prepared the maintenance list and are getting ready to take it to the yard to get the process started. It's kind of a daunting prospect to think of leaving her here for nearly three months anyway, and when I look at the list I am even more anxious. This has been the plan all along, but now that it is "real", it doesn't look so easy to do as it was to say all these months.

On a funnier and more positive note, a story. Years ago, my friend Joan gave me/us a copy of the book "An Embarrassment of Mangoes", by Ann VanderHoof. Ann and her husband, Steve Manley, are a Canadian couple who took a two year Caribbean sailing sabbatical (about 15 years ago) on their 42-foot sailboat Receta; she wrote about the adventure when they got back to Toronto, and I am sure one can find many a dog-eared copy of the book in the collections of many folks who have done or want to do the same thing - me included. They got back to the Caribbean on a more or less full time basis about five years ago, and last year, around the time we were getting ready to head out, she published a second book, focused almost exclusively on the food of the region, called Spice Necklace. (EOM had a lot of food stuff too, including a number of Island recipes and cooking stories). I have both on my Kindle.

It has become a running joke on Raconteur that I consult "Ahhhnnnn" the way other cruisers consult people like Van Sant, Street, Chris Parker, Herb Hilgenberg, et.al. "What does Ahhhnnn say?" "Ahhhhnnnn says...." "Ahhhnnnn and Steve said...." etc. Even our fishing technique borrows a (jokey)bit from them.

SO: maybe nine years from Joan's gift of the book, several charters, the purchase of Raconteur, the voyages to and from the Chesapeake and Lauderdale and the Bahamas, and the 3,200 miles of this cruise later....we pulled in to the dock at Crews Inn (I was struggling not to be sideways and not to hit Blue Horizons, the boat in the next slip), I looked up, and saw....Ann VanderHoof, walking down the dock toward Receta, in the slip opposite and two slips away.



Kind of a nice coda to this leg of the journey.

Carriacou, and the "home" stretch

Here are our photos of the Grenadines, including Carriacou:

2011 06 Grenadines and Carriacou

After Bequia we headed first for Mayreau, which has a very small "half moon" beach and anchorage; we had a nice beach barbecue, but the anchorage was horribly rolly. We now classify anchorages not "rolly" and "not rolly", but by HOW rolly...Mayreau was maybe a 7.5 on a 10 point scale. It's not life-threatening, but can make cooking, sleeping and general maintenance much more challenging and tiring.
From Mayreau, to Union Island; we have very fond memories of our first stay there, on a charter in 2005, despite that fact that Susan injured her good knee on the way there and we needed to find a doctor (who assured her, correctly, that it wasn't irrevocably damaged, and that a few weeks would heal it, which was exactly the case). Anyway, we were interested to go back to see if it was as we remembered it (including Happy Island, the pile of conch shells turned beach bar that featured in our Christmas Card that year). It is truly a lovely, amazing anchorage, right on the reef (both times we were led in by a local "boat boy", this time Angelo, and took a mooring from him). We stayed several nights, did indeed revisit Janti on Happy Island (in a wild squall); we found a little market called Captain's Gourmet (I think), with a French woman proprietress (and homemade yogurt), and generally enjoyed the stay very much, despite the regular squalls. We are having a series of tropical waves, every four days or so, so we are traveling with an eye on them.
After Union, we headed for a night on Petite Martinique, which is one of the three islands (with Carriacou) that makes up Grenada. It is a fishing village, off the path of most cruisers, and we had an enjoyable (and only moderately rolly) overnight there.

As I write, we have been at Carriacou for several days, and will head off tomorrow to Grenada for our last stops before the passage to Trinidad.

Alex complained that our pictures are not "Fair and Balanced", so we tried to take a few of the "other side" of life in Paradise; not sure we really succeeded, but here they are:

FairAndBalanced

To be honest, I think we try not to be excessively "American" in our views of things that are different here, but of course we don't always succeed with that either...

Bequia, Grenadines, in a thunderstorm

Susan and I came ashore to drop off our propane tank to be refilled, drop a bag of trash, pick up a few groceries, and scope out a place for dinner. I stopped by an internet shop, and have been uploading the photos from the Pitons:

Pitons

and from our couple of days in Bequia so far

Bequia

It is raining like crazy, with some thunder and lightning, probably the advance party for a tropical wave that is due here soon. We will probably stay through tomorrow (the propane won't be ready until noon-ish anyway), and then we are planning to stop at Mayreau, maybe the Tobago Cays, and then Union, before heading to Carriacou (which is part of Grenada) and then on to Grenada proper. We are only a couple of weeks from the end of this leg. When I can, I will post an updated log of our journey. We have logged almost 2,900 nautical miles since we left Kent Island in October.

Martinique and new friends

After a few very nice days in Dominica, mostly in Prince Rupert Bay near Portsmouth, and one overnight in Roseau, we headed on Saturday morning for Fort-de-France, Martinique. In the end we decided against anchoring right off the city (the largest in the Caribbean) and headed for a place called Trois Ilets on the other side of the bay.
We had a big adventure on the way: We caught a large swordfish, which yielded 33 pounds of fish. When we got to the anchorage, we sought out fellow cruisers to share our bounty. Neighbors on Dreams at Sea and on Magus happily took us up on our offer.
In return, Magus had us and Tsamaya for dinner on board last night - a gourmet feast, as Yani on Magus is a trained French chef, Indonesian-born. Tonight we will have sundowners with Dreams at Sea.
Tomorrow we will likely head on south to Rodney Bay on St. Lucia, and perhaps a little marina stay.
I am typing on a French keyboard, so don't really have the patience for much more hunt and peck!

Covering a few nautical miles

We have been mostly on the move since my last post. We hopped through Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgins, then spent a few nights in the British Virgin Islands - including a quick haul-out for the required out-of-water survey for the insurance company, which we were able to do at Nanny Cay on Tortola in the BVI - and then took another long (41 hour) passage from Virgin Gorda to Des Haies, on the northwest coast of the French island of Guadeloupe.
We arrived here on Friday morning the 27th, spent a quiet day and then rented a car on the 28th to see some of the interior. On the 29th (yesterday) we headed for Iles des Saintes, off the southern coast, and tomorrow will we move on to Portsmouth on Dominica (after trying to find fuel at Baie de Marigot, just around the corner; we have not taken on fuel since Soper's Hole in the BVI).
Some of our photos in Guadeloupe are here:

2011 05 Guadeloupe

We are forecast to have some stronger wind and seas over the next few days, until Friday, so we will likely stick around Dominica until then, before heading to Martinique for next weekend.

Great passage, and...

We set off from Ocean World/Playa Cofresi on Thursday around 1030, intending to land at Mayaguez on the west coast of Puerto Rico by Saturday morning. Contrary to all conventional wisdom, the gods were smiling, we had great conditions for nearly all of the dreaded Mona Passage, and we were able to come on around to Ponce on the south shore instead, by early afternoon on Saturday after about 50 hours underway. We were tired but delighted to have another 280 nautical miles behind us.
The weather and sailing conditions since have been mixed at best, but mostly yukky. We spent the weekend at Ponce Yacht and Fishing Club, enjoying a but if Puerto Rican music, food and drink at the nearby malecon (seaside) boardwalk, doing a little light provisioning, and then heading about 8 miles south and east for what was meant to be a day of R&R at Isla Caja de Los Muertos.
We found a set of moorings maintained (?) by the park service, and got one fairly easily. It was Monday so the place was deserted; we gather it is a favorite weekend spot for locals. There was a LOT of roll, but it was just one night so no worries (?). JP and Susan swam to the beach and explored the island for an hour or so. After they returned, the weather kicked up a bit more from a smallish squall, at which point JP noticed first that we were lying in an odd position to the mooring ball, and then that in fact, the ball was no longer attached to anything and, therefore, neither were we. We started the engine PDQ and Leigh drive while JP and Susan attempted first to get the mooring on board (to keep it from becoming jetsam) and then, when that proved impossible, to detach from it. There is a second anchorage area on the island, so we went there and spent the night uneventfully.
Left around 0500 to head for an anchorage at Puerto Patillas; good sailing for about two hours followed by major squalls and downpours for the next FIVE hours it took us to finish the 30 or so miles.
Heading around the corner to the east coast tomorrow, hoping for better but the forecast is not encouraging.
Neptune giveth, and Neptune chargeth for the gifts.

One week in the Dominican Republic

It took only a couple of days for us to address three of our four technical issues - the generator needed a new belt, but a bearing had seized (which probably caused the belt shredding, JP guesses) so the mechanic here fixed both and the gen is now fine. We MAY have identified the cause of the engine not charging the batteries (intermittently); only time and another voyage will tell. With the gen working, that is less of a worry. JP and Susan labored to fix the davit support that had come out for the second time, and feel pretty confident that it will hold for a while. They also made some adjustments to how the dinghy is attached, making it a bit shorter and reducing the torque on the cross-straps.

SO - with only the compass left to be fixed (and that seems to require the ability to turn the boat in all directions in very calm waters) - we set out in our rental car on Sunday to explore a bit of the Dominican Republic. We drove first to the capital, Santo Domingo, in the south, for an afternoon, evening and overnight. We enjoyed a bit of people watching in the Zona Colonial, on the Parque Colon, strolled a bit of the old city (too hot for much of that - mad dogs and Englishmen and midday and all that), and had a nice dinner in a restored colonial house near our hotel in the old city.

After breakfast on Monday, we headed for the mountain area that is north and west of the capital, to a town called Jarabacoa, to stay in a very nice resort hotel called Hotel Gran Jimenoa. It is right on a bend in the river Jimenoa that absolutely roars - lovely, lovely spot - and though May seems to be off season, the staff was very friendly and the rooms comfortable. The location is the main draw, and there are many activities in the surroundings, from white water rafting to climbing the highest peak in the Caribbean (Pico Duarte, 3,400 metres), to hang gliding...we elected the rather tamer visit by car to two of the waterfalls that are nearby, Salto Jimenoa Dos, and Salto Baiguate.

I am finding it hard to write concisely about our impressions of the DR. Susan said today that there is a 100-peso economy (about 36 pesos = $1 US) and there is a 1000-peso economy - meaning, you can get a meal for 100 pesos or so that is delicious, plentiful, served in a safe and friendly environment - and then you skip from that to the more standard $20 and up entree type restaurants (at or near the hotels, for example). We saw brand new high-rise condo buildings in Santo Domingo on the Malecon (waterfront) that could be in Miami, and plenty of very nice vacation houses both near the beach here in Playa Cofresi and near Jarabacoa. We saw lots of people clearly making subsistence incomes selling produce, breakfast foods in the town square, flowers by the side of the road. We were greeted warmly nearly everywhere (the hotel in Santo Domingo was an exception that we can't really explain) by nearly everyone; music is played in what to our ears is a nearly relentless fashion - everywhere, all the time, and at full volume - and if there isn't music playing, someone is usually singing. I guess what I would say is that it is very apparent that this isn't a place you can understand quickly or easily, but it is easy to see how people fall gradually in love with the DR and want to stick around to see and understand more.

You can see a selection of our photos by clicking on:

2011 05 Dominican Republic

We are back at the marina now, and have spent today provisioning in Puerto Plata, returning the rental car, topping off the water tanks, cleaning the boat, checking on the weather, and generally preparing to head out again tomorrow. We are going to try again to make a long passage; our target is Boqueron, on the west coast of Puerto Rico. It's about 250 miles, so we should arrive there sometime early on Saturday...though I am NEVER supposed to say such things.