Category: Sailing

We left off on last week’s update in Basseterre, the main town on St Kitts. After having done the touristy stuff in that area, we headed to the southern end of St. Kitts for a well recommended anchorage named White House Bay. While we didn’t find a single house on the shoreline, white or otherwise, we did find remnants of an old dock which presented itself as we landed the dinghy. We took this opportunity to get another workout for our muscles by walking around a rather large salt pond. Now, we’ve run into several salt ponds on this trip and you might ask why it is called a salt pond, how did it form and why do we care, anyway? A salt pond is a body of water separated from the open ocean by a narrow stretch of land, over or under which the seawater can flow into the pond during heavy seas or storms. If you ever take a swim down here, you’ll notice right away, as all of us did, that the seawater here is very salty – you wonder sometimes if you are caught fish being laid down in the salty hold of a trawler, awaiting a trip to the market! Well, this seawater offers a great chance to make salt – on purpose or not. As the pond heats up under the ferocious rays of the tropical sun, the water slowly evaporates and leaves a more and more concentrated salt solution behind. Eventually, wind-driven flakes of salt crystals blow ashore and these can be cleaned and dried again to produce the salt we all call ‘sea salt’ that goes into grandma’s great cooking. Here’s a chart of the salt pond we ‘circumnavigated’ on our hike.

As you can see, there are actually two salt ponds, and these are narrowly separated from the ocean by a skinny beach.

Continue reading “Never Say Never Ep. 41”

Yes, we have truly, honest to goodness, left St. Martin! I was beginning to think of it as home… saying hello to all the marina staff, being recognized in the grocery store across the street, hopping on the local buses to go anywhere on the island. After so much time in one place, most of us developed an affection for St. Martin. Zachary, however, was very happy to see it become increasingly smaller behind us as we sailed away this past Tuesday (February 13th). Our second attempt at a manufactured rudder was completed over the weekend and installed on Monday. We were launched in the afternoon and were thrilled with our test-drive! It was perfect and we also have a greatly increased steering radius (an adjustment we had done while the rudder was being made). Once we cleared out of customs and immigration and grabbed a few groceries, we tossed off the dock lines and pulled away from Bobby’s Marina. Our plan was to go to St. Kitts, which would be about 60 miles. We all agreed that we didn’t want to approach a new island in the dark so we decided to anchor in the Philipsburg Harbor and leave early in the morning. This allowed us a very relaxing night on anchor with a great breeze helping to clear our memories of the three-and-a-half weeks we had spent “on the hard”.

Continue reading “A Visit to Sugar City Ep. 40”

Yes, you read it correctly on our ‘current location’ posting… we are still in St Martin and still dealing with our rudder issue! Last Friday, after a day of breakneck speed trying to get the new rudder mounted back on the boat and connected, and a quick coat of antifouling paint, we splashed in the water moments before the yard staff headed home for the weekend. I promised one of the employees, Melvin, a beer when we were all done. After all, he played the lead on this day to get the new rudder, complete with new bushings, rudder stop bar, and cabling, installed before 5pm, skipping his afternoon ‘tea’ break to make it happen. Hanging out on a floating boat, drinking beers with several of our friends, and knowing that we could now start on our trip again, it couldn’t get any sweeter then this! The next few days were supposed to be blustery and high swells beyond St Martin, so we chose a short hop to the neighboring harbor of Simpson Bay, still on the Dutch side. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. As we motored out of the Philipsburg harbor, I tried my best but could not ignore the fact that the boat was being pulled strongly to port as we motored. If I steered to port, she headed that way with ease; if I steered to starboard, I really needed to muscle the wheel over and hold it firmly. Something was clearly not right with the new rudder. I didn’t want to face any more bad news – denial seemed like a better plan – but when Karen took the wheel, she brought some reality to the scene and we agreed that it would be foolish to go on with a boat that couldn’t steer straight.

With spirits dashed, we headed back to the dock at Bobby’s Marina for what promised to be a long, lonely weekend. At various times, we each tried to boost the morale of the others, but Karen did the best job of bringing us out of our collective funk. She suggested we spend one night anchored out in the harbor away from the marina, feeling the cool, mosquito-free breezes and the peaceful lapping of the water on the hull. It was a moment’s glimpse back to the cruising world, a world that we had to remind ourselves we only left two weeks ago, but continued to stay out of our reach. In our excitement after the launching, we had radioed our rally friends, who were in various attractive destinations down island such as Nevis, Martinique and Dominica, and told them the good news that we were on our way to catch up to them. Now, it would be even longer before we caught up with them. It took all the strength we could muster to keep from dwelling on the negative. The kids were particularly upset, especially Zack. This was one of those challenging times as a parent, when you feel the same pain that your children feel, but you need to stand tall, ignore the feelings you might harbor inside, and be a good example to help them through it. We’ll need some more practice at this!

Continue reading “Standing Tall Ep. 39”

As we peek at the calendar this week, we notice that we have moved beyond the halfway mark on our journey! In some ways, it doesn’t seem possible that we have been living aboard Thalia for seven months. In the same breath, though, it seems a very long time since we lived in our Bedford, NH home; the boys running around the yard with neighborhood friends. We talk of home a lot — missed friends and activities mostly — yet now this also feels like home and we acknowledge that we will miss this life when we must resume our land-based lives. In a way, knowing that we have passed the halfway point nudges us to now hurry to see all that we can in the time remaining. However, this life is supposed to be one of slowly taking in other cultures and enjoying the day to day.

While some ideals remain ambiguous in my mind, one thing I’m certain of is that I feel compelled at this juncture to do a highlights tour of our journey so far and, hopefully, bringing in some pictures we haven’t yet displayed of our past wanderings.

Come back with me to Portland, Maine … late June, 2006.

Continue reading “Half Way Mark, A Look Back Ep. 38”

Like a clutch of shipwrecked sailors, we have found a way to deal with the sudden change of life ashore. This is our first full week of living ‘on the hard’ as they say. Thalia is parked up in the yard at Bobby’s Marina here in Sint Maarten, but we are trying to continue our normal routine as much as possible. We’ve actually stepped up the pace of school a notch, doing 4 full lessons a week now. While you school-aged kids reading this may be envious of our kids because they get 3 day weekends, these 4 day lesson weeks will be necessary for them to stay on track each week through about July without taking vacation weeks. With the Calvert school program, you can decide to take vacation weeks off like normal school kids, or just keep an even pace going for the entire year, and we have chosen the later. So far, the kids are adapting well to the new pace, as long as both Karen and I have the time to work with them steadily through the morning. I don’t know how teachers do it with 20+ kids… it is truly a miracle that they keep themselves together and get the class all moving in something like a forward direction. Hat’s off to you school teachers out there!!

Continue reading “Life, Interrupted Ep. 37”

As I have explained a few times to my older son, it is often best to assume the mind-set of expecting change as the inevitable. When we get too set in our comfortable day-to-day lives, even the smallest change like a new teacher assignment for a child can send us into a tail-spin. Something much larger, like the lose of a loved one, is much more disrupting emotionally and psychologically but we might be better able to deal with the big changes in life if we don’t head into that tail-spin for the smaller ones!

Of course, we recognized that this year would be one of constant changes for us — new “home” in ever changing ports, constantly changing means of provisioning, unexpected weather and boat maintenance and, potentially, a different language or currency to accommodate. So, sometimes we get a bit stuck to the things within our control, like our upcoming travel plans or the islands we want to keep on our “hope to visit” list. When something happens to alter this, we all need to remind ourselves that change is inevitable and then adjust to the new situation.

Continue reading “Thalia Travels South East to Saba Island and Beyond … or not?! Ep. 36”

If you read many tales of long-term cruising sailors, eventually you run across a time in their travels where they discovered an urgent need to change gears. By this I mean getting off the boat for awhile or inviting friends onboard — something to mix up the experience a little. We did both of these this past week. Three wonderful friends of mine from Bedford flew down here for a four day weekend of sailing while Karen and the boys got to stay at a beach resort on Tortola. For the guys, this was the second installment of the winter respite concept, having tested the idea out with much success in Key West, FL last February.

So, with bags in hand and eyes agleam, the guys — Steve, Matt and Don — walked off the plane and made the 5 minute stroll to the dinghy dock at Trellis Bay for a little fun in the sun. They made me promise to make sure they were prominently displayed on the website, so we’ll kick things off with a few profiles! Continue reading “A Fork in the Road Ep. 35”

Since Tom wrote his piece of this week’s log before I had a chance to write about the week from my perspective, I knew I had to play off of his chosen title of, “A Fork in the Road”. I thought maybe I would write, “the other fork” or some such jumble of words. Then, as I thought of the experiences that the boys and I had during our 4-night, 5-day stay at Long Bay Beach Resort I knew the title had to encompass our reliance on restaurant food while we were off the boat.

Tom’s friends very generously put our kidsOur and I up at the resort while they enjoyed touring around on our boat. As the trip came into view, the boys and I all eagerly anticipated sleeping in a real bed–one that didn’t move, taking a real shower and letting the water run while we soaped up! It is the little things you miss! And, I would be misleading if I didn’t mention my excitement at the prospect of not washing a dish for 5 days! Nor cooking a meal, nor lugging the food for the meals from grocery store to dinghy to boat. There were several restaurants on the resort grounds, which was a good thing since the resort was quite secluded from surrounding villages or eating establishments. The interesting fact was that only one restaurant was open at a time for the evening meal! Our first night at the resort, the open restaurant was on the more dressy side… heavy on the etiquette!

Here is a picture of the boys after our first hot hotel shower as we make our way down to the restaurant.

Continue reading “The Dessert Fork Ep. 34”