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.

Sail Magazine

I just discovered a nice article written by Sail Magazine, you can read it on their site at Sail Magazine. If that link doesn't work for you there is a PDF of the article on the bottom of About New Morning.

Comments

Comments are now enabled on the blog so if you have something to say
or share, just hit the "Comments" link.

Antigua-Barbuda pictures

Added pictures from Antigua and Barbuda, two islands, one country.
This is what Barbuda looks like as you approach it from the west. A
sliver of sand between the sky and the sea, with the
"highlands" (towering 150' above the island) in the distance.

You can find them in Where we've been or http://www.newmorning.info/page41/page57/page57.html

Another week of repairs

We made it from St. Barths, back to the Catamaran Marina in Falmouth,
via Barbuda and Nonesuch Bay. Now it's another week of work on the
boat (paint, varnish, rebuilding the bow locker bilge, etc.) while Fay
goes to San Diego. More later.

Just the Facts

A did a little reorganization of the About New Morning page added a
page with all the basic information. I should have better connection
next week and will post some photos from the the last few weeks.

St. Barths

We're back in St. Barths. We arrived yesterday afternoon and immediately connected with Chris & Kelly on Verna Breeze. A couple of beers, a great sushi dinner and a big thanks to Chris & Kelly. Absolutely incredible that our dingy was drifting in open ocean (7 miles off Barbuda) and crossed their path. They snagged it on the first attempt and towed it all the way to St. Barths.

So we're reunited with our dinghy which appears to be no worse for the unscheduled 60 miles drift and tow. We'll spend a couple of days here while we wait for the winds to relax a bit, then head back Antigua.

Dinghy found!

We listened to the Coconut Telegraph this morning and confirmed that
our dinghy had been found. We spoke with Chris & Kelly on Verna
Breeze who picked up our dinghy floating by about seven miles offshore
from Barbuda. So now we're going to return to St. Barths.

Unfortunately today is a holiday in Antigua / Barbuda (Easter Monday)
so we can't check out, we have to wait until tomorrow. This means
we'll either leave later on Tuesday and arrive late in St. Barths, or
we'll travel on Wednesday.

Dingy lost!

We got up this morning, had breakfast and then noticed that our dinghy
(and almost new Yamaha 2hp outboard) was not hanging off the back off
the boat where we had left it last night. We had been comfortable
that crime was minimal here so we didn't bother to haul it out as we
usually do. This is really bad, basically like finding your car not
in the driveway when you live in suburbia. You can't go anywhere!

We immediately called our contact in Barbuda and the Barbuda police
and both promised to look further. Then we went on VHF channel 16 and
issued a Securite call about our missing dinghy. Not thirty seconds
later we got a call back from a boat who had listened to the "Coconut
Telegraph" this morning (a cruiser net on the single side band radio)
and heard a report of a boat named Verna Breeze that was sailing to
St. Barths and had picked up a drifting dinghy seven miles offshore!

Thirty seconds after that call, another cruiser hailed us, said they
had heard about our situation and offered to provide any help they
could, ferrying us to shore, etc. Really great support from the
neighborhood!

We've called the port captain in St. Barths and asked them to let us
know if the boat checks in at St. Barths. Tomorrow morning we'll join
in on the Coconut Telegraph and see if we can contact the boat that
picked up the dinghy. At this point we're hoping that rather than
being stolen it was a case of me doing a sloppy job of tying up the
dinghy! We may be making an unplanned return to St. Barths.

Stay tuned for more on this breaking story!

Barbuda-ful

We've been anchored off 11 mile (or is it 14 mile or 17 mile?) beach
on the west coast Barbuda for the last 4-5 days. We actually lost
track of what day it was, thinking it was Saturday when in fact it was
Sunday! There is a powdery white sand beach off the bow pretty much
as far as you can see to port or starboard. The water is a
kaleidoscope of blues, constantly shifting as the sun dodges around
the clouds. When we get some bandwidth we'll post some photos, it's
hard to imagine without seeing it.

Unfortunately the water is fairly murky. The sand is so fine,
combined with a steady swell breaking on the beach that the water
within about half a mile of the beach is churned up and not very
clear. We're in about 15' of water and can't see the bottom, in fact
we can't see the bottom of the keel! But it's 80 degrees and we had a
nice swim to the beach and back yesterday afteroon.

Earlier yesterday we got the grand tour of Barbuda, it's 1600
residents, saw a lot of the 62 sq miles, the frigate bird rookery, the
lagoon and the village. At two-foot bay we hiked from the beach up
through some caves to emerge on the cliffs above with a stunning view
of the bay and north shore (rumored to host more than 300 wrecks).

We're tentatively planning to move to the southwest coast, and more
white beach, in a few days.

Brochure sailling

Yesterday we sailed from Five Island Harbor on the west side of
Antigua, to Barbuda, about 32 miles. It was "brochure" sailing all
the way. Once we got pointed in the right direction we had 13-15
knots of true wind on the starboard beam which gave us 16-19 knots of
apparent wind at about 60 degrees. We moved really nicely through
4-5' waves (as reported by Wind Guru, I can never estimate wave
height) at a steady 8-9 knots with the autopilot having a good day and
steering a straight course.

Warm wind, warm water, 8-9 knots of boat speed and only the occasional
splash onto the deck. That's what the brochure said!

We're now anchored off 11 mile beach and look forward to a little
exploring later today.

Warranty week

Last week was warranty week. Fay went to Pittsburgh for a family
visit while I moved the boat to the Catamaran Marina (aka Cat Club).
Jim came down from Maine and spent the week on a long list of items
ranging from cosmetic to annoyance to needing new fiberglass work.
Some of the more major items still need work (like our ongoing
autopilot saga). We'll return to the marina in a couple of weeks for
another list of items, and then yet another set of items will be
deferred until this summer.

Jim also brought some great pieces with him from Lyman Morse. We got
a new "cocktail" table for the cockpit, small and easy to set up, just
the right size for cocktails, or dinner for just two. Michael made
new poles for our bimini which are really great. The bimini looks
better than ever and is keeping the cockpit shaded and cool, yet still
allows good air flow and view of the horizon.

We decided to leave New Morning at the Car Club for hurricane season.
She'll be in a one piece cradle, strapped to mother earth with the
decks stripped and the boom removed, but the mast still stepped. And
of course we hope that no hurricanes will pass through Antigua this
summer.

Fay returned on Saturday and yesterday (Sunday) we moved to Five
Islands Bay and anchored again off the Hermitage resort. It's a
beautiful spot and a peaceful anchorage. The produce containers
arrive in Antigua on Monday so tomorrow Fay will go shopping for
produce in Jolly Harbor. Then on Wednesday we'll sail about 30 miles
to Barbuda. The beaches are supposed to be unbelievable (11 miles of
uninterrupted white sand) and very few boats. Eleven miles of beach
is also a fairly open anchorage, but we're hoping that the east winds
and seas will mean the west side of the island is pretty calm.

Earth Hour

Sadly I must report that there was no evidence of Earth Hour in
Falmouth Harbor. The mega sailing yachts continued to light the sky
with the up lights on their spreaders, looking oddly like small oil
refineries. And the motor yachts continued to illuminate the water
around their hulls with high intensity underwater lights. And of
course all the mega yachts had abundantly lit decks, cabins and
walkways. The homes around the harbor were also lit up. I guess the
message didn't reach Antigua.

But from what I read, the major cities of the world did participate
with some notable landmarks darkened for an hour. Hopefully this will
build grass roots support for reductions in carbon consumption.

One lap around Antigua

Last week was basically one lap around Antigua. We departed Falmouth
and had a nice sail, mostly downwind, to Five Islands Bay where we
anchored off the Hermitage resort. The next day we motored around the
NW corner and threaded our way between reefs and small "islands" to
Jumby Bay.

Jumby Bay is directly across from the main runway of the airport so we
got some pretty big jets going over a few times each day. It's also a
very upscale resort (though still under construction) with rooms and
villas from $2,500 - $12,000 per day (including meals and liquor)! We
anchored off their beach and enjoyed the same view and water for
free! Pictures soon.

On Monday we picked up Caitlin at the airport and returned to Jumby
Bay. Tuesday we sailed down the east coast, with seas on the beam, to
Green Island. We spent 3 days at Ricketts Harbor swimming,
snorkeling, sleeping, eating and sipping sundowners. We also made a
dinghy excursion to Harmony Hall for a nice lunch and a bottle of
Ferrari Carano (Sonoma county).

On Friday we sailed around the SE corner to Falmouth and completed the
loop. We capped the week with dinner at Le Cap Horn restaurant to
celebrate Caitlin's 21st birthday.

Today Caitlin flew back to school and Fay went off to visit her sister
in Pittsburgh. Next week Lyman Morse will be here to so some further
warranty work and attend to a variety of problems, with a tilt to more
joinery and carpentry issues and less systems problems.

More St. Barths pictures

I added new pictures of St. Barths, including the turtles in anse de
Colombier. Look under "Where we've been".

Catching up

Way behind and a lot of stories to tell!

We escaped Gustavia and moved to Anse de Colombier, a pretty anchorage
on the NW corner of St. Barths. Colombier is a marine preserve so
there are moorings along both sides of the cove and anchoring is only
allowed in the middle. When we arrived the only mooring open was quite
close to the shore, but our depth showed 8' under the keel and it was
designated as suitable for a 60' boat so we hooked up and went for a
swim. While swimming we noticed that the keel seemed pretty close to
the bottom, or maybe the water was just really clear? Upon further
investigation I figured out that the depth offset in our instruments
had been reset to zero when we updated the firmware back in January.
We had been sailing around thinking we had 5.5' more water under our
keel than was actually there! When we thought we had 8', we actually
had 2.5'. We were still floating, but a couple of big swells could
easily have bounced us off the bottom.

The next day we waited for some boats to leave and then moved to
another mooring so we'd have a little more water under the keel; this
proved costly. I'll spare you the details, but at the end of the
exercise we were successfully moored in deeper water, and both our
boat hook and our 2hp outboard motor were on the bottom of the cove.
Fay was able to free dive and recover the boat hook, but the engine
had been ripped from its mounts and we finally resolved to leave it
there, though we did later inform the preserve management so that they
can remove it if they are so disposed.

With our flopper stopper deployed the persistent north swells were
manageable in Colombier and the many green turtles were a constant
source of enjoyment. I'll post some turtle pictures when we have more
bandwidth. We also connected with John Tipp and had a great dinner
onboard MOAB with his friends from Detroit (who report the economy is
really destroying the city).

We monitored the weather and when a window appeared that would allow
us to avoid the usual "wind on the nose" for the 84 mile passage to
Antigua we moved back to Gustavia to prepare for the passage to
Antigua. In Gustavia we cleared out, did our last shopping at the
French stores and used the internet connection to catch up on a few
things. Unfortunately the north seas persisted and the anchorage at
Anse de Corosol was full so we had to anchor across the channel in
what was virtually an open roadsted with a strong roll 24/7. We had a
great dinner at Eddy's restaurant, but no sleep for two nights.

We departed for Antigua at first light on Monday the 16th and arrived
in Falmouth at 4:55pm. We succeeded in having the wind at 40-60
degrees apparent for most of the trip and averaged just under 8 knots.
The first six hours were pretty rough with lots of rain squalls,
confused seas and wind up to 35 knots, but then the sun came out, the
seas backed off and we had a pleasant and fast sail to Antigua for the
last five hours. Fay asked for, and received, a big rain squall in the
last couple of miles so New Morning got a nice freshwater wash and was
sparkling clean as we entered the harbor. The anchorage at Falmouth
was wide open, very calm and we were asleep by 8:30pm!

The next morning we connected with our friends (and double
circumnavigators) Beth and Evans. We chatted away the morning, then
launched the dinghy (using the 15hp engine), made to the trip to the
Antigua Marina and walked to Nelson's Dockyard at English Harbor where
it took us only 3 hours to clear in with immigration and customs. That
night Beth and Evans joined us for dinner and a spirited discussion of
politics and the economy.

Over the next couple of days we made the decision to put New Morning
on the hard at the Catamaran Club in Falmouth for the hurricane
season, got a SIM card for our telephone, purchased a new 2hp engine,
did some grocery shopping, had a nice dinner ashore and enjoyed a
couple of sunsets with a gin and tonic in hand. It's amazing how such
simple things can consume two entire days.

This morning we departed Falmouth and had a nice sail to Five Island
Bay on the west side of Antigua. It was really nice to do a few hours
of downwind sailing! Tomorrow we'll sail around the top to the North
Sound and find a nice quiet anchorage. On Monday we'll pick up Caitlin
at the airport and initiate her into the cruising life.