Not exactly sure how to spell his name, but he is the hardest working crew member, never causing a scene. Best of all never competes for my cold beverages. See Otto is so reliable you always expect him to be there, especially with a short handed crew.

Auto, can steer the boat, perfectly, either by the course or by the wind, He takes orders and does exactly as he is told, makes managing the sail trim/sail changes and dousing the sails so much easier with an extra helping hand.

Well, when we splashed, I guess we left him on shore. The Raymarine electronics kept saying “No Pilot”, heck, I was on board, and at the helm, sorta a pilot of sorts. He wasn’t really needed on the first trip to the mooring ball, but the other effect was that the gauges at the helm station were not picking up depth, or speed. This is not a show stopper but surely makes for a more stressful trip.

We have 4 positions where auto can be commanded from either port or starboard helm, and inside from the nav, or even on the foredeck while lounging with a cocktail. Luckily we found that that the inside and foredeck, controllers worked and auto was on board, just on the front of the ship. We ran the 15 foot extension cable and it almost reached the helm, so basically all systems go for the first 2 days with a cable running out to the helm. The one gauge that is in the center of the cockpit, never really came worked. On a whim, I disconnected it and we had our pilot back onboard, now since everything is daisy chained, taking that one out stopped the signals down stream, so a little creativity and cutting up a beer cap, fashioned some jumpers and all but that center multi-view gauge works, even Otto showed up at both helms along with depth and speed.

Otto has been doing a great job on this trip, seems he just had issues with the multiview gauge, and it was him or the multiview, otto won. Push button steering is in business.

Plan came together. Woke up in the Tobago Keys, bacon and an omelette for breakfast before a morning snorkle/swim. Started with a tenative plan to head straight to the reef, but once we got there we kept going and going and going, practically swimming the length of Keys between the turtle sanctuary and the island we were parked near. Lots of fishies, gopro was and continues to act up, but managed to fill the memory card, maybe there will be some usable shots. On the way back we spotted an awesome spotted ray, small but swimming and gracefully cruising through the water. Damn, of all times to be out of camera, but we made it back to the boat.

Swam back to the boat, noticed the water contour, I could almost reach down and touch the sand in front of the boat with my arm while swimming. Our rudders hovering a mere 12 inches above the beautiful white sand. 12 inches is floating and not touching, Took a slightly different route to the anchor to not go over that shallow spot on the way to pick up the anchor. Windless still taking its time, but we got up and motored the 3 miles to Mayreau and peeked in to Salt Whistle bay, its beautiful but crowded, there was room for us, but last time we did that I was up most of the night with a fender fending off the other boats when the wind died. Didn’t sound like fun, so we kept going to Saline bay, it was pretty empty. We split two boats furthest away, and all was good.

The sand fleas that were on that beach last time, looked to be gone, it was nice and deserted. Then as night approached others came, 3 monos parked behind us, spoiling our well chosen spot. Oh well, we went ashore to find out the real deal with church, and stopped by various watering holes on the hike up the steep hill to church.

First stop, Dennis’ hideaway, Christine continued up to find the mass time at church and drop off some donated items–I stopped and had a beer. Supposedly to get some wifi too. No dice, had signal but no connectivty, so as Christine came back, another local, said the wifi at his place was faster. Okay, I can have another beer somewhere there too.

Second stop, Robert the Righteous, Rasta as they come, full of stories and storied bar, we had quite the converstations and even visited his new VIP addition to his bar. I can say it was fun. Wifi, was better but got mostly caught up in the conversation, church, politics, family, work hard, play hard. Some other charters and crew also stopped by with lots of kids and the drum circle was in full force.

Then it was getting close to dinner time, so back down the hill. But right here is another bar, we he had been to before, so one more, its gotta great view, restaraunt below, and bar above that looks over Saline Bay and Union island. Quick one there, and spotted a grocery store, on the way down the hill, so took it all in, picked up a couple of cold beverages to try. Not sure about them, but gotta experiment sometimes.

Grilled up some chicken sammiches on the boat, and a few beverages to cap off a pretty sweet day.

Church was at 8am, and Christine was told to not to be late by the priest himself, they start at 8am.

Robert the righteous

Up normal time, no big surprises in the night, wind died, had to turn on the ceiling fan. Keep yer head down or you might loose a noggin, not really its a nice little fan that keeps the wind moving, and provides a nice white noise when the waves aren’t lapping against the hull. All boats stayed where they were all night, no bumps in the night.

Project to figure out why the Anchor windless doesn’t want to run continously, seems to suck up about 10 meters of chain than runs off to the the local quickie mart and picks up a cold Carib. When he comes back he is good for a few more meters then says “I need another drink” so I thought I’d give it the college try and see if cleaning the connnections would help, It seemed to when there was no load on the windless, but in use this would prove to be a different story.

Tyrell Bay, nice bay, lots of boats, reminds me a lot of Admiralty Bay in Bequia couple islands up the chain in the grenadines. Super pleasant customs and immigrations officers. Customs opens at 8am, so we left the boat at 8:15, was it open when we got there? Sorta, Customs was outside at the bar, and immigration hadn’t arrived yet, still very nice, I got the forms, filled them out in triplicate cause the computer systems weren’t working (sailclear.com) as is frequently the case. Then had to wait for immigrations to arrive. Paid for a cruising permit, not sure I needed too, but didn’t have enough understanding to argue. Got passports stamped and back to the boat.

Short day, just around the corner to another country. We stopped at Sandy Island for lunch, the wind was howling, we didn’t bother raising sail on that first 2.5 mile run, that was directly into the wind. We did get to watch a Moorings charter boat try 3 or 4 times to pick up a mooring ball, doing several 360’s, and then ended up with one crew memeber in the water tying the line to the mooring. Truth be told there was not an easy way to attach a line to the mooring ball, but we picked up ours mooring on the second attempt with neither of us leaving the boat.

Had some good ole Texas breakfast tacos, and talked about going to see what Sandy Island had in store, but also had good internet so text’d pictures from there and wasted too much time. I wanted to clear customs without having to deal with finding someone on a major holiday so we pressed on to Clifton at Union Island. Motored into the wind, a monohull was crossing but we were a head of them, then we paused and raised sail. Double reefed main, and double reefed jib, dropped dagger boards and pointed as high as we could, we made the run on one tack, we could see the mono had its crew hiking out, and pointing well too, we out paced em, and eventually they didn’t make the point on union island and had to tack back out. All sounds like it was a race, and it was in my mind, but…. it wasn’t a fair race, we did have the engines running about 1400 rpms, so I guess we cheated… 🙂

Rolled into Clifton harbor around 2pm, sure every time we come here we are hounded with boat boys offering up mooring balls, ice, trash, etc.. you name it, but today when we wanted one to offer a mooring ball, we couldn’t find one. See, Clifton harbor is deep, like 15 meters deep, so when you let out scope you need LOTS of chain out to make the boat stick. And with our windless acting lazy, like me, a ball sure would have been nice. We circled twice, in 25 knots of wind, and the ferry was leaving picking up his anchors, really didn’t like me driving about, got a air horn “hey buddy, I’m moving too” signals from him, at least it wasn’t a dreaded 5 blast, that says “I’m going to run you over” kind of signal, more just short and “yo, I’m bigger than you”.

We spotted a ball, or something that looked like one, we got close it was submerged ball, a boat boy came by and said no, not for you and said follow me and then promptly disappeared. Tried another option on the outside reef area, it was full, nothing with extra room, so back to plan A, the 13 meters of water, we got it down to 10 meters and dropped the hook, it hooked good and I was off to clear us into the Grenadines. As I’m tying up the dingy and the ‘Anchor Yacht club’ or kite surfing captial, A plane arrives, There goes a quick trip to customs, customs is a walk from the dock to the airport, and plane passengers always get the first crack at the customs agents.

Lots of waiting around, but cleared in, and back to the boat, dingy still acting up but I’ve figured out how we can get along, it tolerates me, I twist the throttle, at low speeds it likes the choke, and high don’t choke it.

Now 3pm, dark is 5, we need to make a plan and get somewhere, as we are at Clifton, parked between 2 steel cargo looking island boats, not a pleasant spot, with only minimal chain/scope for this quick stop. Tobago keys it is, its relatively close, shallow and normally quite nice.

Getting out of Clifton is going to be a challenge with the windless. I’m not sure I have enough Carib on board for it and 60 M of chain. We try, we pull some up, wind is gusting, we rest we pull some more, we manually raise some while he rests. if you don’t know chain is heavy, manually it takes some effort. We set the hook in 11 meters of water, we almost had the 20 meter mark of chain on board, and Christine and I swap possitions, she takes the helm I man the chain, and its anchor away mid position change. She gets the boat back into the wind, I crank the windless up to the 10m mark and finally he comes back from his beer break for a bit, and we get the hook on board, are off to the keys. Yes, we all had beverages after that, none for the windless, he had his while on the job.

Tobago keys, windy and rocky today, only catamarans out here, there are 2 or 3 mono’s that are braving the rolls, but we drop anchor in 3m of water and the shallow depth alarms are going off at 2.4 meters frequently, I can take the boat hook off the stern and touch the sand, so hopefully the wind doesn’t switch too far from the North and put us in really shallow water.

Used my new Grill stand and grilled up some Jerk chicken wings for dinner after a great day in paradise. Stayed well sun blocked up today, as I missed a few spots yesterday. Looked like rain earlier, but just cooled off.

Wanted to go out the ‘end of the world’ reef, but I think the wave/wind direction needs to be more south than north to make that a good place to be.

Tomorrow over to Mayreau, positioning for Christmas day church on top of the hill that overlooks the Tobago Keys where we are today.