Playmates For The Young and The Old Ep. 31

If you can only spend a short time down here in the Virgin Islands, you must come to St. John. It’s a splendid spot to relax and it keeps pulling us back. At the end of last week, we were in Cinnamon Bay, on the northerly side of the St John. After spending several days there, the boys met a child from another family and in short order where playing and swimming at the beach. Her name was Azaline and she harkened from a rugged family from Maine. These folks came to St John for two weeks and, unlike 99.9% of the rest of the tourists who sought out comfy beds and air conditioned restaurants, her family was tent camping at the Cinnamon Bay campground! The campground has bare sites, canvas tent setups, and small cottages. I walked up to the tent site to see for sure that they were camping — I was quite impressed! Some might consider our life on a boat to be similar in style to camping, but when it rains at least we could get some positive protection out of the way in the cabin, and we could take a lot more of our ‘stuff’ with us. I must tell you, Maine breeds some hardy folks! While I was walking around the campground with my Sunday River t-shirt, I ran into another Mainer kid, complete with a big backpack and canteen. A few days later, we noticed we were anchored right in between two other boats that had Portsmouth, NH as their hailing port. Yikes, it’s a New England invasion!

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A Carib-USA Concoction Ep. 30

Now, I don’t want you all to get to upset that, after reading the headline above, you think we are heading back home early! Fear not, we’ve had some difficult times, but this family is charging onwards through the Caribbean! This week, we are experiencing a little peek back into the US culture and shopping scene as we enter the US Virgin Islands. We arrived here after a great couple of days circumnavigating the island of Tortola. After leaving Trellis Bay on the eastern end last week, we sailed on to Cane Garden Bay, to Sopers Hole, and then back to Roadtown. Cane Garden Bay was described as being picture postcard perfect, with white sandy beaches shaded by plenty of palm trees, and I must agree wholeheartedly. What do you think?

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Paradise Lost, Paradise Found Ep. 29

After a frustrating week at the Village Cay docks last week trying to get boat work done, we needed a little fun — after all Thalia was the goddess of comedy! On Friday night, the roads of Roadtown were bedecked in a Christmas Festival. They closed off Main Street and jammed it full of booths of vendors selling food, handicrafts and toys. “Main Street” here is so narrow, it is a one way road, and the booths, being at least 10-12′ square, didn’t leave but the gutters on both sides for all the crowds to pass by. And, believe me, you want to be careful when you walk by a gutter in these parts!

Thankfully, it didn’t take us long to find a local reggae band — down here, it’s all reggae or rap, with an occasional blues band. Here’s a video of some of the music. If you are looking out the window into a snow storm right now, this might put you in an island time, low-stress mood!

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Glimpses of Paradise Ep. 28

Our first full day in Roadtown, Tortola brought forth much activity despite the exhaustion we were feeling from the many nights of interrupted sleep. I can’t properly describe what it was like on our first night at the marina to actually lay down in a berth that was staying exactly level, that there was no noise of sails or winches or engines, and where I knew I could rest peacefully until the morning light arrived! I had not slept much during the 12-6am period since we had left Hampton.

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How to Get To Tortola, One Day at a Time Ep. 27

When I first read about the Caribbean 1500, I was a little confused by the name, for if you look at a chart, Tortola is about 1270 nautical miles away from Hampton, VA. Folks that are wiser then I on these topics, particularly those that have done a lot of ocean crossings like my friend Sean Bercaw, were quick to point out that sometimes to get from point A to point B meant something other then a straight line. In this voyage, it’s customary to head more east of the ‘rhumb’ (or direct) line so that you can be in a position to pick up the prevailing easterly trade winds that begin to form south of Bermuda. If you ‘rhumb line it’, you risk being stuck with an upwind battle several days before arriving, just at a time when you can nearly smell the palm trees and the savory rum. However, the seasonal weather patterns were a little off this Fall, as were advised at a weather briefing conducted by visiting Nashua New Hampshirian Ken Campbell from Commanders Weather Inc. This, of course, steered the troops into a bevy of discussions — should we listen to this fellow from New Hampshire, who said to get your southing in early or should we follow tradition and favor east. Some in the ‘southing’ crowd were even talking about hugging the coast down to Cape Hatteras, NC area and then shooting across the Gulf Stream at the point because it was supposed more narrow. At the cocktail gathering that night, I pushed the question to as many people as I could and got as many different answers. A lot of this back-and-forth discussion was a good place to put the nervous energy I think most people felt on the night before leaving. So, heck, we were going to enter ourselves in the ‘easting’ group and see how it went. It seemed like Ray, Karen and I all agreed, and it just felt right to go with tradition when this was our first ocean crossing.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines! Ep. 26

Well we finally left Hampton this week, after a few stops and starts and a few more trips to the hardware, marine and grocery stores. I think we have successfully discovered every nook and cranny on this boat and shoved those spaces full of provisions!

At the start of the week, we spent time with Ray Smith, our new crew member, to get him oriented to the boat and the rally. Ray’s a very amiable fellow, and plus, he owns a Jeanneau sailboat so he can’t be that bad! We all headed over to Bluewater Yachting Center on Sunday morning, Nov 5 with great anticipation for our departure the next day. However, the favorable weather window we had was closing rapidly and the rally organizers decided to postpone the start until Wednesday or Thursday. Although we were experiencing an exceptionally pleasant high over the area, there was an intense low moving towards us and would put us in rough conditions the first few days out. It was great to hear that the organizers made this decision, as one of my reservations about joining the rally was the likely pressure they would feel to send 75 boats, with crew members anxious and return flights already booked, off on schedule despite the predicted weather. The last thing I wanted to do was be out in rough conditions the first few days, especially in the Gulf Stream, which we would probably encounter about 24 hours into the voyage. So now we had even more time to prepare. If we weren’t ready for the trip with this extra time, shame on us! We spent one afternoon out on the Norfolk harbor practicing tacks, jibes, and reefing so that Ray could become comfortable doing these kinds of things, in the middle of the night if necessary. We also conducted a process called swinging the compass. This process measures the amount of error the ship’s compass has compared to a normal magnetic compass. With the many pieces of equipment, wiring and other objects that may throw off the compass onboard, it is good to have a deviation table of these errors, and the rally inspectors required it too. It is done by comparing the ship’s compass to a hand bearing compass every 15 degrees on the compass rose. When I’ve done this before, and when we did it now, it caused a bit of confusion to other boats in the area. I imagine they wonder why we can’t keep to a respectable course and why we continue in circles!

Each day during the week, we had a morning briefing with the rally and the latest weather was of course the main topic of discussion. At this point, we had become pretty used to the dinghy ride from our home at the Hampton municipal docks to Bluewater Yachting Center, the center of the rally and where most boats were docked. Here we are on a particularly bright clear morning. That’s Ray in the picture as well.

Here’s a shot of everyone in the rally tent, being briefed by the Carib1500 head, Steve Black. On the last few days before the start, no one skipped these briefings — we were all weather fiends at that point!

On Tuesday, it looked like we were going to be set for ‘launch’ the next day. The low would be passing over us in the evening with heavy rain at times. We decided to not dip into the ship’s stores so close to departure and instead opted for dinner ashore. We had been advised by the fleet doctor to not drink the night before. He said a sure guarantee for sea sickness would be fatty foods and alcohol, so we decided on a simple Italian restaurant and got loaded up on carbohydrates instead!

The evening passed as forecasted with steady rains and a morning that was bright and clear. One fellow boater on the dock that morning said I looked like I had a ‘bone in my teeth’! I’m sure I did, as we had been at the dock here for almost 2 weeks and we were all anxious to get moving! The start was set for high noon off of Thimble Shoal light. At 10am, we disconnected our shore power (bummer, no more heat!), cast off the lines, and headed out the harbor. Here we are, standing on shore in the States for the last time for many months!

As we approached Bluewater Yachting Center, we came to an immediate halt — this was the equivalent of the SF Bay Bridge at rush hour!

You can’t see it too well in this picture, but there is a continuous line of boats in front us out the channel to the harbor!

Once we finished the procession out the channel and entered the harbor of Hampton Roads, we were quickly enveloped in a layer of fog, not unlike the heavy fog of Maine. Where moments before we were surrounded by boats, now we could only see one or two at a time. Then, boats around us started to make erratic turns this way and that — what craziness was this about? Seconds later it became clear, as the superstructure of large containership loomed above the fog ahead of us! You could see the bridge, but not the hull, and to make matters worse, this ship was not blowing fog signals! The navigable part of the harbor in this area is very narrow, and knowing that half of the fleet was still behind us, this looked like imminent disaster unfolding. Ray grabbed the VHF and contacted the captain on Channel 13, letting him know that there was a fleet of 75 sailboats all around and in front of him. This captain blew Ray off by saying ‘Yeah, I can see them all’. Right! Even if he could find them all on radar, that doesn’t mean that our fellow sailors wouldn’t make a sudden last minute move unknowingly in his path. He passed through the fleet without incident though, and we all started milling around the start line. Here, you can faintly see the race committee boat in the fog.

Here’s some new friends of ours on Heaven Won’t Wait, a Beneteau 42. They are from Halifax so you know we had a lot to talk about! They also have their 10 yr old son Devan aboard. Coincidently, two of their crew, Linda and Mike Whitehouse know some of the folks we met in Rogue’s Roost, Sue Vey and Ben Doucette — indicative of the small world we are living in presently!

The start was more like a power boaters affair, as nearly everyone decided to motor across the start line. In this rally, you are allowed to motor if you wish and your total engine hours are logged and incorporated into the scoring. So there we went, motoring to our destination some 1500 miles away!