We had a great week with Ben and Alexis.  The wind has become very light, but we’re slowly making our way back to FL this week.  We expect to be back on the mainland early next week and there will likely be no communication between now and then.  Sorry moms.

Then we’re starting up the east coast according to our most recent plan.  Could arrive in Boston Harbor middle of June or so.  We’ll see.

Does anyone know what the balls in the picture labeled “mystery-balls” are?  They are thin-shelled, crunchy spheres, like hardened shellac bubbles.  No sign of a seed or larva inside.  They covered a forest trail by the millions.   Our guesses include: tree seeds, ant waste or larva, and potting soil additive.  So, we can’t even answer the question “animal, vegetable, or mineral?” !

Here are some nice pictures without much commentary.  Yes, that is a water spout.  We’ve had some remarkable weather this past week.  We’ve managed to keep Perspective safe, but we were up for a good piece of the night four days ago helping a large (50+ ft) catamaran get off of the rocks.  During a midnight squall, it drug its anchor into a nasty karsty shore.  In a hard blow a cat is an unwieldy piece of flotsam no matter which way you turn it.

It’s not obvious in the picture of the beautiful anchorage, but we have three anchors out.  It’s always interesting figuring out how to set three anchors, and often times, more interesting figuring out how to weigh three anchors.   We were expecting big squalls in a small anchorage hole and didn’t want to move around too much.  This is also where we caught the big Mutton Snapper in the picture.  We stuffed ourselves for two meals and then invited friends over to stuff ourselves for a third meal and then sent them home with the leftovers!

Capt Sharkbait is well.  He earned his second merit badge in swimming: successfully swimming to and climbing the swim ladder onto the swimdeck.

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that Kelsey and I are headed off to some remote islands in the northern Abacos to “get away from it all.” You probably won’t hear from us again until the last week of April, but don’t worry, all is well and we’ll return with more stories and photos. Love to all.

(yesterday) The wind is strong out of the northwest today, filling the harbor with white-capped chop and a whole herd of boats. There must be 50 of ‘em anchored here, noses to the wind, and at least that many at the marinas. Joshua’s on shore, in search of internet and a connection with the outside world. I’ve been baking bread and quilting to Willie Nelson. Yeah, habit dies hard.

The VHF is on channel 78, a normally empty channel, and Joshua has the handheld on shore. No word from him, probably has his head in the clouds getting a good dose of email, downloading and Skype. The best place to scam internet that we’ve found is sitting in the grass behind the laundromat. On the radio, meanwhile, I did overhear a conversation about how to make meatloaf in a pressure cooker, and a couple snooty yachties trying to make cocktail and dinner plans. Jesus, they make me cringe, so helpless and so demanding. This really illustrates the range of people (or lifestyles) you’ll find in a group of boats. Some are out here to travel and experience the Bahamas or the joy of sailing. They catch their own fish, conserve their fresh water, and enjoy Milwaukee’s Best in cans in their own damn cockpits. And then there are the rich bastards on the mega-yachts with tinted windows and jet-skis dangling off the back that like to complain about the local restaurants but don’t think twice about dropping $50 on a skuzzy hunk of snapper. Disgusting. Meatloaf and cheap beer are humble if not necessarily virtuous.

It disturbs me that I have such a violent reaction to THEM. Really, there’s the whole continuum of folks out here, from rancid American capitalists to happy retired couples living the dream to righteous filthy hippies. On some level I’m a hypocrite for living on a fancy boat and turning up my nose at the bigger ones. Sure, my shit stinks too, but rude is rude, and when the wind blows the wrong way, we all get trapped in the same corner of the pasture.

We hope to escape soon, and get back to a place with good diving and water clean enough to take a bath off the swim deck. We’ve spent several nights at Manjack (said “nun-jack”) Cay, and loved it. The main anchorage is in a large bay between Manjack and Crab Cays, and has a strong wifi signal broadcast by a beneficent couple of cruisers turned back-to-the-landers (literally) living on shore. The north anchorage puts you within a mile of a good stretch of barrier reef, but is only comfortable in settled weather. We explored both ends of the island with our visitors a couple weeks ago.

Sarah, Viki and Ed, we miss you! It was great to have such good friends on board and to share this beautiful corner of the world. Sarah arrived by ferry midday on a Sunday, and we had a swim and a relaxing afternoon at Green Turtle Cay before sailing over to pick up Ed and Viki by the airport. This turned out to be something of an adventure. The wind was 20+ knots out of the SE, blowing up 2’ chop in the Sea of Abaco. On top of that a comparable swell was refracting through the Whale Cay Cut. We anchored off the windward shore, keeping the engine running with one eye on the rocks.
I stayed at the helm while Joshua tumbled into the dinghy and buzzed in to pick them up at the ferry dock. The bow of Perspective reared against the anchor rode, and the wind kept us pointed at an uncomfortable angle to the offshore swell and jumbled reflected waves from the mainland. It was a mess. And the sun was down with just a glow of red over the trees. Joshua pulled the dinghy up to the starboard side and bags and people piled up with the waves and down into the cockpit. As Joshua and Sarah were pulling in the anchor, they discovered that the flukes had neatly snagged an electrical cable. The bow was still bucking away, with Sarah crouched on the front. Joshua turned back to me and drew his hand horizontally across his neck and yelled something I couldn’t understand. That was not one of our carefully practiced anchoring gestures (point to go port/starboard/ahead, thumbs up to throttle up, down to reverse, etc.) The boat and waves kept thrashing with some luck they shook the cable off. Joshua pointed at me to “Go!”, and we got out of there and set the sails as fast as possible. Somehow nobody fell in the water, the anchor (or cable) held us off the rocks and the kitten slept through it all locked in the quarter berth. Anchoring in the new moon pitch black at Manjack was another story…

We used a long stretch of settled, windless, beautiful weather in Florida to make more repairs and finish provisioning. The extra time allowed us to have a forespar pole repaired, install an awesome new Garmin chartplotter/radar, dig to the bottom of the sail locker, climb the mast, explore small holes and passageways in the bilge as we ran wires and took out old ones, archive some of the outdated electronics to Jeff and Vicky’s shed, tighten stanchion bolts, redo all the corroded electrical connections on the boat, lube the rigging, put up sails, repair the outboard carburetor (twice), shove beer cans so deep in the quarter berth holds that we’ll have to be marooned on some lonely shoal and dying of thirst to dig them back out, and much much more. Our friends the lovely Wilkins family spent the last night in Florida on board with us. Bodhi and Kieran chased (and were chased by) Saba all around the deck. Joshua rowed them to shore in the morning and we set out from the Lake Worth Inlet, anticipating the wind to clock around and blow us up to the Abacos ahead of a cold front.

The passage went pretty well. We planned to head NE around the Little Bahamas Bank, and then cut back SE intending to get as close to Green Turtle Cay as possible before the wind picked up out of the north. On Sunday the wind stayed strong out of the SE, and we skipped across the Gulf Stream on a close reach, at times making 10 knots ground speed. We neared the Mantanilla Shoal around sunset, and the waves got a little funky bending around the bank from a NE swell. Pulled in a reef on the main for the night, and were about to start night shifts when a shuttle launch left a brilliant flame across the western sky. After that it got pretty boring for about 10 hours. Rounding the corner earlier than expected, we still had a SE wind and could barely point east. There appeared to be about a 2 knot current against us, maybe an eddy of the Gulf Stream? More research needed… We pulled a series of jagged, delirious tacks that left a disheartening track log across the fancy new chartplotter. Monday morning things looked up a bit, with the wind more out of the south. Soon it fell to less than 5 knots, so we got in some final naps and then kicked on the engine to make some progress. About this time I looked up to see two long tears in the leech of the genoa, right along the sailcover. Bummer. We try to avoid burning diesel as much as possible, but when we do, it’s nice to get the refrigerator nice and cold while the alternator is running. So I flipped the fridge switch and the water pump promptly sucked air and cut off. Joshua pulled out a mess of fenders and crawled in the sail locker to reset the fridge; I eased up on the throttle, flipped the switch, and the stupid thing tripped again. Now we suspected that something else was up, so he shut the inlet seacock and checked the water filter. Fine. One more time, and it worked. ! We piled all the gear back in the sail locker, went in to make some tea, and discovered that the solenoid that controls the propane for the stove had burned up. And that the bottom of the fridge had a tepid puddle from the bag of ice I threw in there (in a supposedly waterproof bag, damn it!) This is really how it is on a boat: things break, and you have to fix them. Things get messy, and you have to clean it up before you break more things. And sometimes, you have to throw back your head and scream. We spent the rest of the afternoon mopping and wrenching to the roar of the engine. The air was completely still around sunset, so we cut the engine, drifted, and ate dinner in the cockpit and enjoyed the silence. There was just enough daylight left to take down the genoa and raise a jib. Nightfall brought slightly more wind, so we sailed through the darkness and arrived at Spanish Cay around 9am Tuesday morning.

Saba? Saba, you say? The kitten just slept and slept and stumbled to his food bowl and litter box and slept some more. He was WIRED as soon as the anchor touched sand.

Since getting here, the pace of life has changed a little.  We ducked into the Sea of Abaco hours before the wind started to howl out of the north, so we’ve still been spending a lot of time on the boat.  Yesterday evening we busted out the dive gear and took the dinghy around to a shallow, protected channel next to some rocks.   It was awesome.  There were only a handful of fish, but it was so great to be in the water again.  The wind is likely to continue into next week, but as soon as it calms, we hope to get out to the barrier reef.

Tomorrow we’re picking up Sarah and Ed and Viki!

Sailing voyage 2009 might begin tomorrow… Joshua and I picked up Perspective in Indiantown, FL a couple weeks ago.  Bottom paint, hull wax and a new radar/chartplotter later, we’re about to hop in the Gulf Stream and head for the Abacos.   The plan is to stay in the northern islands for a couple months and then head on to the Chesapeake Bay when the season is right.  Photos and stories soon!

After a quick 24hours in Montserrat, we sailed for Nevis, spent more time hiding from 30 knot winds, jumped to St. Kitts for a day, and set out early the next morning for the Virgin Islands via Saba.  Passing Statia that morning, we were greeted by a flock of empty tankers, and a view of a hillside covered in immense oil (silos?).  Who’s oil is this and where is it going?  Something to speculate while staring at waves and waiting for the fishing pole to tsssing! to life.

We arrived at Saba around noon, grabbed a mooring ball and a backpack and started hiking up.  Back down by evening, a quick nap, and an all night sail to St. Johns. Whew!  Now we’re down to only fingers and heading north FAST.  This is it for the blog,

Love you all and see you soon!

Boqueron is the local 24/7 beach party village and it didn’t take too long before we were ready to move on. Loud latin dance music well into the night doesn’t make for a nice peaceful anchorage. We started to move east along the south shore of Puerto Rico and were immediately introduced to the real meaning of “beating”. Beating is the sailors term for sailing to windward, close-hauled. When the seas are big (we try to wait for seas less than 8′), going into them is the last thing you want to do. It makes an uncomfortable ride which is prolonged because the waves and wind keep the boat speed down to about 60% of normal. To make matters worse, since sailing directly to windward hasn’t been invented yet, we have to sail about 50-60 degrees off of the wind. This means that by tacking back and forth we cover about twice the distance that would be traveled in the reverse direction. Traversing from western Puerto Rico to the Virgin Islands has been a long, slow, and sometimes painful experience that really does give a boat and crew a solid beating.

While in Salinas, PR we took a small vacation from the marinated life and went inland in a rented economy car. We saw old, historic San Juan built by the Spanish with giant walls and canon ports etc (apparently several other countries thought Puerto Rico was nice too). We went into El Yunque, the largest rainforest in the Caribbean. And we visited a dry forest, reknowned for its diversity in avian life. A chance encounter with a crazy birder from BC introduced us to some of PR’s endemic (and therefore threatened) bird species.

The Spanish Virgin Islands are in between PR and the US Virgin islands, but really they are part of PR. On Vieques we picked up our guests Ed and Viki to take them to the USVI. Vieques was a US military bombing range until recently and a large part of the island is still off limits, supposedly because of unexploded ordnance. The local reef was full of pieces of bombs and other military hardware; we tried not to drop the anchor on any unidentifyable hardware.

Getting over to the US Virgins was a real relief. Here is much more like the Bahamas, with nice anchorages, clear water, and beautiful reefs. Above water here is much nicer than the Bahamas. The tall mountains (>500 meters) have more lush vegetation, forests and some beautiful rock features. The volcanic soil is much kinder to flora than Bahamas sand. The island of St. John is mostly a national park with beautiful hiking trails, sugar plantation ruins, and pleasant anchorages.

Ed and Vicky left us by ferry. While sailing en route back to the ferry dock, we ripped our main sail nearly in half. It had several small tears that we had mended, but this new, huge gash was in a new spot and unexpected. We took the sail to a local loft for the major repairs, but after some investigation and consultation, we decided that repairing this sail was foolhardy. It would likely tear again, and next time could be hundreds of miles offshore. Consequently, we’ve ordered another sail from the mainland. In the meanwhile, we’re doing some major boat woodwork renovation, diving, and catching lobster. Hopefully by the end of Feb, we’ll be back on the path south and east.