Warship Foxtrot 831

Today while sailing from Guadeloupe to Antigua, Fay noticed a "cruise ship" behind us, and two sail boats passing to port headed to Guadeloupe. Upon closer examination I thought perhaps the ship behind us was a military vessel. We watched for awhile and could only see it's bow bearing down on us from astern; and with no AIS target. Finally at about 2.5 miles I called on the radio to see how they would pass and they immediately responded as "Warship Foxtrot 831" and said they would pass to port.

But as they pulled abeam on our port side, they slowed and matched our speed for about 10-15 minutes. While alongside we thought it was interesting that they were not flying any flag, other than a French courtesy flag, and we could read the name "Van Amstel" up near the bridge. Finally they came on the radio and interrogated us regarding our registration and trip plans. Satisfied with the answers they wished us a good passage and turned away. We assumed they were the US Navy doing drug interdiction and found us interesting (but why?).
We Googled F831 Van Amstel and it turns it was a Dutch navy frigate. We still think they were doing drug interdiction, but who knows why they found us interesting.

In any case we're now in Antigua and will dock tomorrow at the Cat Club. Next week Antigua Rigging will replace our Furuno autopilot with a Raymarine autopilot which we hope will be a huge improvement.

Third time is the charm

We wanted to visit Guadeloupe, but didn't want to take New Morning to
the marina in Pointe a Pitre. While rocking in the wake of one of the
ferries that serves The Saints we were inspired to just take the ferry
to Guadeloupe for the day. So on Monday we went into town about 8:15
for the 8:30 ferry, but it never came. They told us it was broken and
would be there on Tuesday. So on Tuesday we went to town again, and
they assured us it was late, but had just left Three Rivers and would
On Wednesday we changed the plan and went for the 6:45a ferry since it
spends the night in The Saints and we'd be on the first trip. It
worked! So on Wednesday morning about 7:30 we arrived in Three
Rivers. And quickly discovered that Wednesday was Abolition Day, most
of the island was on holiday!

However we were still able to rent a car and did see a lot of
Guadeloupe. Most spectacular were the waterfalls in a national park.
And since it was a big holiday they were celebrating by offering fruit
juice, fruit, cake, etc. to the visitors. Between the time we arrived
and when we returned from the water fall the rangers had dressed for a
party; US national park rangers never looked like this!
The rest of the day we drove around much of the rest of the western
half of the island, but most things were pretty well shuttered for the
holiday. We did find a great restaurant on the ocean for lunch and
made the most of that with rum drinks, great food and wine. But when
we drove through Bas Terre, the largest town on the west coast, it was
shuttered and empty. Overall we found Guadeloupe to have spectacular
scenery, so much more lush and green than the other islands we'd
visited. To get our departure processed today we ended up driving
from the NW of the island to the capital and saw more very lush
countryside; really a beautiful place.
We were surprised that we'd never really heard of Guadeloupe, despite
it having a population of 450,000 and clearly being fairly
prosperous. It turns out that 93% of the tourists are French and
clearly they don't market the island to anyone outside of France. Too
bad because it's got some pretty spectacular scenery and good
infrastructure.

Another correction

Well it turns out that the cuttlefish picture I posted is not a cuttlefish at all.  What we observed and photographed is a Sepioteuthis sepioidea, or Caribbean Reef squid.  More information and some good pictures here: http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/Ssepioidea.php.  The name is not nearly as interesting, but the squid were still fun to watch and look pretty cool.  They do change their color like the cuttlefish which means we have enormous latitude for adjusting the pictures in Photoshop - we can't get the color wrong because they change color all the time anyway!

Cuttlefish

We've found some great snorkeling here and came across a large number
of cuttlefish. Fay got this great shot of this fairly rare member of
the squid family. Fay had only ever seen one before in all of her
diving experience. We saw 30-40, with groups of 10-20 swimming in
formation. I added few more pictures to The Saints.

Correction

A few days ago I commented that Fay always wins the board games. Fay
would like the record to show that I have won the "best of 3" cocktail
hour backgammon tournaments three days running. Hence, she doesn't
not always win...

More pix

In "Where We've Been" I added a few pictures for The Saints.

The Saints

We've been anchored off Bourg des Saintes since Tuesday. Yesterday we
hiked to Fort Napoleon at the top of the hill overlooking the harbor
and to the north the site of the Battle of The Saintes in which the
British navy defeated the French in 1782. Despite their loss in 1782,
today Guadeloupe and The Saints are French!

This was the only clear day we've had since we arrived, it's been
constant rain and squalls. The town is beautiful, clean, fresh and
being French, has great food. Unfortunately the anchorage is fairly
exposed and has a constant stream of ferry and fishing boat traffic
which has been slamming us around quite a bit. A good dinner tonight
and then we're going to look for a little smoother place to drop our
hook.

Pain de Sucre - Sweet!

On Monday, two days ago, we sailed 77 miles from Antigua to Les
Saintes, a group of small islands just south of Guadeloupe. We had a
great sail, very fast for the first four hours, beam reaching with a
reefed main in 17-20kts of wind and doing 8-10kts through the water.
The autopilot couldn't handle the quartering seas so we hand steered
most of that leg. Then on the lee side of Guadeloupe (a very large
island) the wind went flat so we motored for two hours at about 7 kts
and did a couple of tubs of laundry. When we came out from behind
Guadeloupe we had 25+ kts and sailed close hauled the last hour to
arrive in just under 10 hours.

We were pretty tired by the time we arrived so when we didn't see an
easy place to anchor in front of the town of Bourg des Saintes we
motored about a mile to this anchorage named for the small piton of
rock known as Pain de Sucre you can see in the picture. We anchored
in 35' of water that is crystal clear, we could see the bottom even in
the fading light at the end of the day.

It's been raining fairly steadily since shortly after we arrived which
probably helps explain why these islands are so green. We welcomed
the rain yesterday to give the boat a good rinse. We even applied
some soap and water to loosen up some of the more stubborn salt, then
let the rains wash it all away. But now the boat has been thoroughly
rinsed many times and we're ready for some sun. The sun came out
briefly late in the day when I shot this picture, but it's been mostly
overcast and rainy with some gusty squalls. We'll hoist the anchor
and look for a place in front of the town shortly, then see if we can
find a good bakery!

English Harbor

On Friday we returned to the English Harbor / Falmouth area, this time
trying the English Harbor side. The anchorages were very full,
especially for a boat our size. English Harbor is rimmed by hills
that protect it from the prevailing winds, but which cause the winds
to swirl and gust throughout the harbor. This in turn sends the boats
in different directions which means that rather than swinging
together, they can drift in different directions and are more likely
to "go bump in the night". So we had to find some swinging room.
Even with just 75' of scope on the anchor, add the length of the boat,
and double it to get the diameter of the swinging circle: it's about
260', or about a football field! We didn't find our own football
field, but we found enough to get comfortable and settled in.

On Friday night we had dinner with some cruisers who are bringing
books to schools and kids in the Caribbean. You can help too - see http://www.handsacrossthesea.net/HandsCrew.htm#join
. Dinner was at a great pizza parlor with a real wood fired pizza
oven. We liked it so much we went back again last night!

We've definitely noticed an overall rise in the temperatures and
humidity. It's officially the "off season" at many of the hotels here
and we can understand why.

Tomorrow we're going to leave for the The Saints, a cluster of small
islands off the south coast of Guadeloupe. Depending on how ambitious
we are in the morning, we may go all the way tomorrow, or may stop
overnight in Deshayes on the west coast of Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe and
The Saints are French so we'll be looking for a good bakery.

Waiting in Limbo

Actually we're waiting in Nonsuch Bay on the SE coast of Antigua. We
have a pretty steady 20-25 knots of wind, then in the squalls we get
up to 35-40 knots and lots of rain. Fortunately we're behind a big
reef so there are no seas, just the wind chop. At 30 knots the dinghy
went airborne (always the dinghy problems...) so we strapped it to the
foredeck about 11:30 last night.

The forecast has this wind and squalls for another 3-4 days so we're
doing some things around the boat, playing some board games (Fay
always wins), reading and hanging out. Once things calm down we'll
head to Guadeloupe.

11 days on the dock

Way too many days on the dock! We departed the Cat Club yesterday
morning and had a really beautiful 3 hours of sailing to Nonesuch
Bay. It was all upwind sailing, but the breeze was 13-16 knots with
only 4-5' seas so we had really nice sailing conditions with 17-21
knots of apparent wind. We "raced" a 50'+ ketch all the way, just
catching up to them before we dropped our sails to motor into the
bay. It was so nice to have a good fresh breeze in our faces, sun on
the water and to be sailing again. New Morning was really going to
weather beautifully and Fay and I were both enjoying it so much we
took turns steering the entire way.

We've concluded that we really don't like being on the dock. First,
we're almost always there because we are having some work done on the
boat so we end up working all day. Then the dock itself always has
mosquitoes or other biting insects (Fay is quite sensitive to these),
more noise, less ventilation, less privacy and forget about getting
into the water. And or course we have to pay for the privilege as
well. Water and power are always charged separately but the total
usually works out to about $100 / day; pretty expensive for a parking
space!

It was warranty work again, trying to get some more things sorted
out. This time Lyman Morse had hired local companies to do the work
and it was a mixed bag. Some of the companies did good work, others
less so. But none of them actually finished their projects so there
is more to do next time. I also took the opportunity to do most of
the 250 hr service on our engine.

The two big projects were the bow locker and the refrigeration. The
bilge in the bow locker was reshaped so that we could use just one
bilge pump rather than the three pumps that were originally
installed. That was more or less completed, but there was one item
overlooked that I'll address next week. The refrigeration is an
ongoing saga. The work last week didn't solve the problem, but it was
one more step along the way to further isolate the problem. Hopefully
we'll reach agreement on a solution this month and it will get
implemented over the summer. Additionally a number of paint and
varnish flaws were corrected.

Our other ongoing saga is the autopilot; it has been both unreliable
and inaccurate. I've resolved to replace both hydraulic pumps and the
course computer this summer. More on that later.

The law of unintended side effects seems well entrenched in the marine
industry. I've learned over time that whenever work is performed on
the boat to fix one system, another system will have been broken in
the process. The problem is that I never know which one; I have to
wait and discover it, usually at an inopportune moment. Yesterday it
was the windlass, the critical winch that hauls up our 120lb anchor
and usually another 150 - 250lbs of chain. Fortunately I discovered
the problem while we were dropping the anchor and while the windlass
is useful to make adjustments, it is not required. Two hours of
diagnostic and repair work later I had found the wire that had been
cut by the electrician removing the two bow locker bilge pumps that
were no longer needed, made a repair and the windlass is now working
again.

The forecast calls for a lot of squalls this week so we're probably
going to hang out in Nonesuch Bay and let them blow through, giving
the boat a nice freshwater wash and us some time to relax, clean the
interior of the boat and catch up on various items we ignored while on
the dock. Once the weather forecast improves we'll probably leave for
The Saints and Dominica. But more on that when our plans firm up.