Monthly Archives: May 2014

One must roll along

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Perfect plans only work in a perfect world.

I know I don’t live in a perfect world, do you?

We had high hopes for St Barts again. The customs part worked flawlessly, we cleared in and out without issue. Enjoyed the burger at the finest water front establishment to the tune of a c-note.

The thing we really needed was fuel, diesel to be exact, we hadn’t fueled up on 2 years of vacations and we had a long way to go. Do YOU trust your gauges in your car? They always count down to zero miles to go, and then go negative. How far negative will you risk it? Well, yeah we have probably 200 liters or so, thats 40hrs of motoring, or 200 miles at 5 miles per hour and we are on a 400+ mile journey to Grenada. Yes we could sail, and go nice and slow, tho the South of East forecast doesn’t even permit that. The bottom line, we are on vactation, not trying to live on a shoe string, lets be safe and find some fuel, just in case.

So we showed up, fenders out, ready to fuel up at the surging dock – but not really – the cement looked like it ate fenders for a snack. These nice guys caught us on the way in, they too needed diesel but the pumps were empty, in our broken french thats what we understood and they might have more by 1pm.

Hmmmm……

Searched for an anchor spot, so we didn’t really get the nice spot we wanted at Shell Beach. Now we still needed to clear in / out of a country to carry our paper work forward, that part worked like a charm. Nevis is where we head to.

On the way back from lunch/internet/customs/grocery we stopped by the fuel dock and they said come back at 7:30am … and they would have diesel and be open, or at least thats the french to english that we understood.

So now what… what to do…

Back to the boat to stow the vittles… and contemplate the fuel drama…

Getting antsy

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So best laid plans all sound good after a long hard day. We decided to bust on out of SXM Oyster Pond over to St Barts. We are checked in Frech, St Barts is French and on one blog I post I read that you don’t need to clear out of SXM if traveling to St Barts. We’d have to get taxi ride to the other side of the island where the customs dock is, and that blog post said there wasn’t even an option to choose going to St Barts. So we are going to try it, worst thing is we might have to sail back to SXM to get the necessary paperwork, at least we will have fueled up and be on a down wind sail for the jaunt back to the far side of SXM.

The one item we forgot was Denis had one of our boat keys, and getting in touch is very difficult when the cell service is down as it has been for the past couple of days. We knew he was in the area cause his dingy was close by, and luck would have it it came to the boat with the key in the AM.

Now we had to figure out how to undo the chains that are covered in guk, and around the dock polls. The process of swapping lines for chains so that we could release them from the boat was messy and took at least an hour, only a could of small cuts on the barnacles at least, so not bad.

By 11am we were pretty set to go, made a plan on releasing the stern lines and going foward on anchor with a little bit of cross wind. Christine on the starboard side then to guide a floating rope away on the port side, Wayne to pull up the chain and bridle, and me to keep us crabbing into the wind without blowing into the bank/other boats. All worked out, slow is pro and slow is what we did. A little excitement as we got blown a bit and driving over the last mooring ball, but using the other engine it was fine.

Slow trip round the shallow bay the depth warning hadn’t quit going off since we turned it on before we dropped the lines always adds to the stress. But the crew put away the gazillion fenders we had out, and then we were ready to navigate the reef, all but one of the markers were spotted and the waves weren’t too big, we just barely beat the incoming Ferry at the last mark, turned to head to St Barts and yup, the wind instruments were doing their job, pointing to where we wanted to go, wind directly on the nose. We knew that was going to be the case, so we just motored without the sails that direction along with a few other catamarans, and one monohull that was working the tacks, when the wind finally came to the 30 degree mark we could have tried to sail, but we were only 45 mins out, would probably have taken longer to get the sail up, so we pressed on to Columbier Bay and grabbed a ball and finally fed the crew, the snack an hour earlier was just a hold over till we got stopped.

The freezer, the damned freezer. Turned it on again, still nothing, does’t get cold – that means no long term meat storage, but most of all that means no ice, no ice for cold beverages. Nothing floating in your cup, drinks taste the same but no cling in the glass feels like we are camping. Oh wait thats what sailing is, camping on the water and moving along slowly. At leas we have some insulated cups that keep everything cold for long periods even without the ice.

Swam round the boat, cleaned some of the gunk off speedometer so that’ll work on the way back found a spot on the hull that had been rubbing on a chain/mooring while we were in Oyster Pond, will need some antifouling applied, nothing too bad tho.

Grilled chicken fajitas for lunch and pasta and salad for dinner. Lounged in the hammocks on the deck watched the other boats, read books, hooked up the windlass remote replacement, that went swimming on the last trip.

Tomorrow we go into Gustavia to clear in get fuel and some more provisions at bigger grocery store and maybe a trip to the Chandlery to get some boat parts. And get some wifi to post these past posts.. :0

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Slackers we are not – busy

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Wow, sunday fun day. Slept in for what seemed like an eternity on a boat, then a child started screaming bloody murder. No not on our boat, nor not really a child at all, it came in rhythmetic sequences, the moorings and sunsail marina was just across the way from the dock we were on and it was time to do some fiberglass trimming. So by slept in I mean 7:38am the sun had been up, I tried to stay asleep, but the child, er fiberglass repair was not having any of it. So.. the day begins.

Dress the baby, pull off all her covers and let the sails breath is the order of the day, so much to do, seems like it’ll never be ready. So we tackle one thing that leads to 12. Starting to uncover the main sail, leads to a trip up the mast to fix the lazy jacks that just parted ways. On the bright side, I got the measurements I was needing to finish replacing the lazy jacks.

Uncovered the dingy, all good there, but a little deflated, so I pumped her up with air – easy task. Dropping the dingy in the water to do that task envolved dropping past the stern cross lines that are keeping the shack from swinging side to side. A push here, a tug there and its finally in the water, but no engine. So we stab the outboard, sailor speak for taking that sharp propellor and engine and attempting to mount it on transom without dropping it overboard, again perfect success. Fired up on second pull, awesome. Took it for a spin, not so awesome, only firing on one of two spark plugs, has happened before and I brought spares, but Wayne decided to tackle that and just cleaned the old ones and re-installed them, seemed to be much better. Call it a sucess, so a beer is deserverd. Just as it is after any small task. So the day goes.

Started the big engines, no problem. Put the jib sail up, not much wind so no problem, we know the wind is not in our favor but we pretend we will sail soon.

Christine unpacks our luggage and puts the interior of the boat together so its not a ramshackle of stuff everwhere. That takes at least as long as everything going on outside with uncovering and making a mess outside.

A break for lunch, we think its breakfast, but well close to noon. So thats 5 oclock somewhere, and somewhere is where we are. We hike to the top of the hill to grab breakfast outside the marina, but that place is closed so the second part of the plan was a small provision run. We continued to the small but well stocked grocery, looked around had just about everything in small portions. Stepped outside to try the restarunt next door, but its only open for the occasional dinner. Back to the grocery to buy just what we could carry back to the boat, then the nice lady offers to drive us back to the marina. Score, we load up on cases of water, beer and mixers – oh and some food too. A couple proteins and pasta type things to hold us over till we make it St Barts where we know of a grocery close to the dingy dock.

Back to the boat, we still have to carry our goods 1/8 of a mile but much better than the full mile. Still starving as being unsuccessful at breakfast/lunch but drop off our golden items to that when we get back the presidente beer will be cold. Turn on the freezer and put the proteins in the freezer. Leave to the Dingy dock for lunch.

Des’s Dingy Dock, most awesome food. The Grouper wrapped Shrimp and the rack of SXM ribs were awesome. The cold beverages were good too. Would recommend Des’s in Oyster Pond, we met the chef and thanked her for the great grub.

Did I mention they pour strong drinks in the islands.

Back to the boat, the work continues, putting things away, uncovering stuff, trying to see if our 75 feet of hose would reach the faucet, only one water tank would reach, unable to rinse the boat, fill the starboard side but its all good. Changed out the interior salon speakers, stored lots. Beer is good.

Christine wore herself out, and took a little nap. Wayne and I continued to puts, put the fishing poles up. Checked the diesel, talked about getting out of here and a plan to get away from the dock. We are med-moored, meaning our anchor is on the bottom and our stern is tied to a dock, or lines have been in the water for 5 months, lots of growth, nasty, nasty nasty. So I spend a few hours getting squirted by the muscles and what not trying to clean up the lines for our eventual departure. Started with a brush but moved on to a putty knife, I stunk. Like I imagine the Lockness monster to smell. It was worth it, but not a fun task.

When Christine woke, we made a plan to have some appetizers for dinner and possible departure monday morning.

Twas a good day, lots of projects/work accomplished, some naps, so plans lots of sun.

Getting anxious to get out of the bay tho.