Monthly Archives: June 2013

Deshaies is a quiet little town, mostly empty now that the season is well over. Even the cruisers come into the harbor just to rest for a night or two before continuing south.

We hoped to find a way to visit the Parc National and its volcano and waterfalls but the prune-faced lady in the tourist office was adamant that it was “not possible.” It was possible to visit the Jardin Botanique and she even called and ordered the shuttle to take us up the mountain, saving us a steep mile-long hike. We waited by the dive shop for the van.

The park opens at a huge koi pond and two kids were busy feeding the fish into a frenzy. “Mamma Mia!” they both giggled, as the fish climbed all over each other for the food.

The garden is spectacular, with many plants we recognized as house plants but in much bigger versions, plus orchids and palms and other beautiful tropical plants from around the world. Many of them were so bizarre that we both thought they could have been inspirations for the great animators of the past, or for the art directors of fantasy movies.

There’s an aviary of Australian rainbow lorikeets and a little vending machine where for fifty cents you can fill a little cup with nectar to feed them.

We took our time walking the pathways and ducked under an arbor when the inevitable rain came.

Eventually we got hungry but the garden cafe was too pricey for us, and we were sorry to see that the stock in the snack bar was ruptured.

That news sent us back down the mountain to our local boulangerie for sandwiches made on half a baguette and a TV tuned to tennis on Eurosport. Can’t improve on that.

We had to find the Pelican Cafe to clear in, take down our yellow Q-flag and run up our French Flag. it’s supposed to be up a canal which is inside an inner harbor under a foot bridge.
We’ve gotten pretty good at sniffing out official clearing-in buildings. They like lots of flags, formal architecture, and take themselves way to seriously.
The two guys in front of us took forever at the check in computer and got the pouty no no no. Marce must have gotten an A because after the official cash register woman checked out the screen she said,”voila.”
It didn’t take long for us to sniff-out a boulangerie.
We’ll save this for later!

There is incredible beauty here in Deshaies Bay. To see several rainbows every day it’s got to rain every day, and to watch 40knt wind fan the rain into a veil of rainbow perfect tiny drops its got to blow forty knots. Between the wind and the shredded rain I think I’m beginning to see a dead pig floating our way.

We dropped anchor about two o’clock in the afternoon Friday, well before the predicted bad weather. Just as we finished anchoring we got a serious rain shower and managed to quickly deploy our temporary side rain catchers and between them and the permanent rear gutter we captured fifteen gallons, enough, I always think, for a load of wash.

We really should have dinghied in to shore and cleared in to Guadeloupe, but instead we decided to replace our temporary fix to the camber spar. You’ll remember that when we changed out the jib while on passage to St. Thomas I dropped the critical piece of kit into the ocean. We ordered a new one and finally got it just before leaving Charlotte Amalie but true to Schulz form we hadn’t got around to installing it. So out came the tools, off came the shackle we used in the meantime, and on went the new bit. We were particularly pleased that the new one was pre-drilled so we could attach a safely line to it and not send this one to the deep, where we are convinced that watery denizens are constructing new boats out of all the parts lost overboard from other boats.

Let me tell you, crossing a chore off the never-ending list is pretty exciting. But the excitement this weekend didn’t stop there. We are serious sports fans and this was a great weekend for our favorite sports. This morning at 9 AM was the men’s French Open tennis final, which we managed to listen to on the Roland Garros iPhone app. The radio commentators do terrific play-by-play and while it’s not as good as watching live, we still felt the excitement of the moment and enjoyed the match. Vamos Rafa!

During the match I did three loads of wash and made enough water to top off the water tank. These two things may not seem exciting to you, but when you’ve been at anchor in a place where you can’t make water, and consequently can’t do laundry, getting caught up and cleaned up is pretty exciting.

After the tennis we moved on to the Canadian Grand Prix. Unfortunately there’s no live radio broadcast of the race so we had to content ourselves with live lap-by-lap blogging for that. We’re hoping we can watch the race on demand when the various broadcasters stop bickering and let the fans watch online. Still, it was an exciting race even if Jack’s a little sour that my guy finished ahead of his guy.

Just after the race was over the predicted winds moved in. We hadn’t really taken the weather warnings too seriously but we’re so glad that Macushla emphasized the need to be tucked in by now. Holy cow! We haven’t seen sustained winds like this since our time in Nyack up the Hudson River. I’ve seen the anemometer hit 41 so far and it hasn’t dropped back into the 20s for hours. It’s starting to get dark and Jack’s taking new bearings so he can make sure we’re not dragging.

Maybe this is too much excitement for one weekend. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we’ll go ashore and do a little exploring. But tonight it’ll be watch and watch until the wind dies down.

It was one of those what-have-I-gotten-us-into moments. We were standing particularly sharp watchful lookouts on our stints at the wheel. No, the autopilot was working perfectly but there should be boats about and plenty of things that go bump in the night. Like little Islands and such. In fact I’d just found a couple directly in our path toward Montserrat, represented by just a black pixel or no more than two. I had thought they were just pumpernickel crumbs from the sandwich I was eating but everytime I brushed them off the screen, there they were, still there. I expanded the scale to 1/8 nm and found out they were called Redonda and, I guess, Lesser Redonda, not much more than a rock really. Unfortunately that meant hardening up into the wind even more, not Escape Velocity’s best point of sail. She’ll do it but nobody will enjoy it.

Another squall line moves in bringing rain and a healthy 30 kts but we’re getting used to this by
now. It’s dark. Very dark. Incredibly dark. Dark hole dark and now it’s raining and the spume is streaming off the bow lights that I forgot to take off before things got rough out here.

Every thirty minutes one of these things roars through. The interesting thing is what happens to the wind after the squall passes. Suddenly the wind speed drops to nothing and boxes the compass, causing all kinds of havoc with the delays built into the chart plotter as it tries to keep up with the constantly changing heading which causes even more disorientation in Yr. Humbl. Skpr’s brain.

I decided on a more aggressive active approach. I start up an engine and steer by the compass until the electronics settle themselves. At one point the chart plotter showed us sailing back towards St. Martin but the lights of St. Kitts were clearly starboard of us which meant that we were still on our 140 degree pinching up course we’ve been on since we left Simpson Bay. The same thing happened on our passage to St Thomas. As much as we both love night passages, there are times when you wonder what you are doing out here in the dark.

False dawn seemed to come welcomely early and it would have been if the autopilot hadn’t started to get in on the act with the ever popular, blast-from-the-past RUD DRV error message. This error message takes a little time to clear out of the system and for the next two hours about every fifteen minutes it was beep beep beep RUD DRV!

So much for Mr. Pollyanna. I promise to be sullen, disbelieving, and sarcastic about all repairs from now on.

We passed close by Montserrat, maybe two miles off shore and to see the phenomenal forces that reshaped their world up close was amazing. The half of the mountain facing us was gone leaving the cone empty but massively steaming and the capital thirty feet below the surface buried in ash. Still a beautiful island but the malevolent spirit of the place is palpable.

One by one the pearls in the stream floated by. Saba, not much more than a volcano cone – I’d keep my eye on that sucker – St. Barts, St. Eustastia, St. Kitts, Guadeloupe.

Here we’ll stay for a few days in beautiful Deshaies Bay. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had an anchorage this calm and peaceful, certainly nothing as stunning. We read in the guide books that you clear-in at the Pelican Internet cafe and reasonably fast WIFI is available out in the anchorage for less than what we’ve come to expect. I like this place already.

About fifteen years ago we went on our first overnight passage, and our first sail out of sight of land. We were heading up the coast of New Jersey from Cape May to New England and I remember watching the horizon excitedly waiting for all traces of land to disappear. But we weren’t used to traveling as slow as you go in a sailboat and for hours and hours, all through the night, the lights of Atlantic City remained visible, with the tallest of them, Trump Tower, still a bright red presence long after everything else had faded. We couldn’t sink it.

We are right now — and I still get goosebumps when I think of it — sailing southeast in the Caribbean with St. Martin behind us, Saba and St. Eustatius to the west, St. Bart to the east, and St. Kitts up ahead. The day started out beautifully, with the wind 14-15 kts, the seas a little higher than we like but not too uncomfortable, sailing close to the wind. We were only making about 3 kts but we didn’t care. We have three days to get somewhere and tucked in before any bad weather moves in, and only 130 or so miles to Guadeloupe, our intended destination.

But then we got headed, meaning the wind changed to right on our nose and nearly stopped the boat in her track. We looked at the chart to see our options. We’re sailing about ten miles off the coast of Eustatius, so we can’t go west, and the other tack we could take given the wind angle will not help us in the end. We reluctantly started an engine and we’re now motorsailing on our original course, hoping the wind backs again to where it’s supposed to be, from the east.

With the engine and the slight advantage of the sails, we’re now making 5.5 kts and rolling with the swells coming off the Atlantic. I look up from my comfortable spot in the cockpit where I’ve been alternately reading and napping.

“I can still see Trump Tower,” I say to Jack, and we both look around us and identify the islands. St. Martin is just a smear on the horizon. Saba, the tallest will be visible until nightfall.

It’s ten minutes later, and this is how quickly things can change out here. We’ve run into a squall and suddenly the wind is 20-25 kts with a little rain. We turned off the engine and we’re making 6 kts under sail alone. We can see blue sky on the other side of it but in the meantime we’re charging through the waves and working to hold our course.

After this, we’ll have one more upwind passage; then it’s downwind all the way. I can’t wait.

This morning, as the “dead pig” floats past Escape Velocity, we find the Escapees aboard EV sadly wishing beautiful St Martin adieu. Ultimately it is the people you meet and the friendships that are forged that shape the experience, not how many palm trees or how fine the sand is on the beaches, and we’ve made a few.

Our anchor begrudgingly came up at an honest 8am with a clay and shell mixture that looked like a large ball on the end of a thick steel shaft. I had little time to deal with the mud ball because we were due at the fuel dock and the bascule bridge opens promptly at 9am and waits for no one.

The causeway bridge mysteriously closed last night which might have kept Macushla from getting out of the French side of the lagoon this morning but as we rounded Isle de Sol with a full fuel tank, they were there waiting.

We decided to anchor on the south side of Simpson Bay anchorage, opposite from where we ended up on the way into St Martin. Just as rolly but with Marce not feeling well we might just as well have stayed inside the lagoon if it weren’t for the fact that our water tank was reading zero. We heard that strep was found in the lagoon water so we didn’t want to chance making water but I wouldn’t expect the little buggers to get through the RO membrane anyway.

Guadeloupe is next up with a buzz by Montserrat on the way. Marce never met a volcano she didn’t like. This destination features very little Easting so with fingers crossed and touching wood we should have a nice sail for a change.

On the repair side of the ledger:
*Autopilot repaired again…maybe for good. Call me a cockeyed optimist but I feel good about this repair.
*Dinghy lock cable replaced.
*Camber spar fitting in hand.
*Watermaker is running well.
*Marce has sent and received email and received grib files via SSB. This is not in any way to say that the beast is fixed, but it’s something positive for a change.
*Old jib sail repair is moot since the sea claimed it off the foredeck on our way here
*fuel cutoff valves and fittings are in hand, though not yet installed
*1/3 of the rain catchment system is finished and working
*mainsheet has been replaced.
*new teak mounting block for manual bilge pump.

Stay tuned.

As I ran Andrew, our autopilot expert, out to his next boat which meant leaving the lagoon, under the bridge out into Simpson Bay he casually mentioned that he and his wife Lyn were planning to fly over to Anguilla for Sunday jazz at Johnno’s on the beach and might we fancy coming along. We fancied!

Our last small plane flight, a DeHaviland Beaver float plane, was from Friday Harbor to Lake Union in downtown Seattle, with several stops in between. There were seven adults, some full figured, stuffed into that plane. Quite a thrill. This promised to be a rare chance for us to see this paradise from something other than sea level. We were really buzzed about the trip.

I grew up around small planes so I have a lot of happy memories associated with them. Andrew emailed our instructions to bring a swim suit, sun screen, passports, water and a camera and show up at the yacht club at 10:30am. We were ready.

First there was the car ride in which we felt like we were hurtling around the mountainious roads of St Martin, but we knew it was only the “boat effect” again. When you travel by dinghy you only learn isolated pockets of an Island with no information to tie anything together, so we kept saying oh this connects to there. Andrew and Lyn kept up a constant patter of where to go for what. This sort of local knowledge is like gold when you don’t have time to find out for yourselves.

It was obvious that we weren’t heading toward the main airport because when he parked the car on a narrow oil and chip country road we piled out nowhere near anything resembling a bustling airport.

Next came the serious business of filing a flight plan, clearing out of St Martin, customs, and I don’t know what else. This was an international flight after all, even though we would only cover about six miles of ocean. We watched as Andrew and Lyn went through the extensive preflight checklist, as a team. Boating is easier.

Their friend Rob, whose Cessna is parked next to Andrew’s was also going to fly over for jazz on the beach and was duplicating the same preflight checklist on his plane.

Lots of radio chatter, mostly numbers, and with the engine roaring, in what felt like 300 feet we were off the ground. Slip sliding this way and then that with small deft movements of the controls Andrew checked the Cessna’s desire to wander and soon we settled down to a beautiful tour at 1000 feet of the magnificent surrounding Islands.

More chattering numbers over the radio and we landed and parked at Anguilla airport, cabbed it to Johnno’s and it is indeed fifty feet from the brilliant turquoise waters of Road Bay on the most beautiful crescent-shaped powdery sugar white beach, Johnno’s is open air and the music had already started. Dos Presidentes, por favor!

The beach dogs or coconut hounds had already started gathering in the hopes of a handout. Music was spontaneous and fun and the water was sensational at the breaks.

The return flight back to St Martin was done so quickly that it was hard to believe. Marce flew back with Rob to keep him company.

We rolled to a stop, hopped out and helped cover and tie down the planes. We wanted to celebrate a great day the Schulz way, with ice cream. Andrew and Lyn knew just where to go, the Carousel Gelato, a place we’d passed a dozen times but never noticed. It was a great capper to wonderful day.