A bit more beating!

15/05/2011

We left Les Saintes on yet another 46mile beat up to Dominica, bypassing Portsmouth, and heading on to Roseau, the port of entry at the southern end of the island. Dominica itself is a very beautiful looking island, filled with rain forest vegetation, hikes, mountains and waterfalls…..making it another of our must spend more time here islands… but not this time!
The anchorage down at Roseau is deep, rolly, and not very appealing! The only thing it had going for it was its proximity to Martinique, a mere 36 miles away! We anchored there shortly after lunch, and put up our yellow flag, with no intention of checking in, hoping that the bureaucracy would not trouble us before we set off at 6.00am next day. (Mary and I have really become quite brazen about evading the unnecessary paperwork, cruising permits, entry fees, launch and recovery of the dinghy, involved in a quick overnight stop.)
We were happy to up anchor and set off on our next leg, which proved to be a fast, wet beat with winds between 18 and 25 knots. We did the 36 miles in exactly 6 hours, which included about 10 miles only averaging 4-4.5knots. We sailed with a full main, staysail, and about a No3 genoa, right up to the last 6 miles before Martinique, where we took a reef in the main. There is almost always an acceleration zone as one approaches or leaves the islands, where winds gust and build way above average. This has become one of our common strategies. This can be important around Martinique, St Lucia and St Vincent in particular, but is very common throughout the island chain.
Along the way we flew past a Jeaneau 40 with 3 reefs and a rag of headsail. Later in St Pierre, they told us that they had left Roseau at 3.00am, and arrived an hour after we did, taking a full 10 hours! They told us they were in no hurry, but looked exhausted!
StPierre is a town on Martinique, which also shares a tragic volcanic eruption history. Mount Pelee erupted in 1902, having given plenty of warnings. Why St Pierre was not evacuated remains a mystery, but when the mountain side collapsed, it buried the town, killing all 29933 residents. There was only one survivor- the single occupant of the town jail! No, he was not the guy who first said” Who said crime doesn’t pay!”
Although it is also a quaint town, with lots of history, the anchorage is rolly and only good for a one night stay! We had intended to move on down to St Annes/Marin at the bottom end of Martinique, a mere 32 miles on. The first 16 mile leg to Fort du France, turned into a very uncomfortable bash into 25-27knots, so we bailed out and decided to call in at the capital for the night. We anchored alongside the Fort, went ashore for a walk around, just to get off the boat for a while! We bought a new boat hook, and failed in our quest to find Mary a “second skin” for her snorkeling. The town is described as vibrant and very Parisian and French. Bull! It was grubby and third world! We went back to the boat, and moved 3 miles over to a very pretty and protected little beach called Anse D’Lane, where we spent the night.
The slog resumed next morning , as we beat our way towards St Annes, tacking inside Diamond Rock, before resuming our starboard tack on to St Annes, which is a very big, shallow and protected holiday resort area. Just around the corner from Club Med, lies the Cul Du Sac Du Marin, which is the yachting mecca of Martinique with every conceivable service …. including all 17 yacht charter companies of the Caribbean.
I’ve had a bit to say about the anchoring skills of some of these bareboat clowns, and I suppose I should have appreciated bareboat sailing hazards too! Yesterdays experience was another eye opener! We were beating as hard on the wind as we could manage, doing about 6.5knots on starboard tack into 22knots of wind. Bearing down on us were two charter boats fresh out of Marin….a cat and a monohull, both with only badly trimmed headsails, but effectively on port tacks. The cat continued to come straight for us, making no attempt to drop down and enable us to pass port to port. Rules of the road be damned … they do not know them! This sudden awareness on my part forced us to do a quick snap tack to port for two minutes, before making another quick tack back to starboard, so that we could pass safely between them, as they all smiled and waved, oblivious of the near disaster!
As Mary remarked afterwards, they were probably too inexperienced or stupid to have even appreciated our slick collision avoiding tacks! I did however fulfill one of my lifelong dreams! That is, I gave the Cat skipper a fully orchestrated French National salute, complete with a full right arm wind up, catching my right bicep in my left hand, to show him a fully extended right hand middle finger pointing skywards! Very satisfying!!!

The Beat goes on !

14/5/2011

We left Nevis a tad disappointed, and beat our way down to Monserrat, the volcanic island that blew its top in 1995, when Mount Soufriere erupted and buried the capital, Plymouth. Conditions became harsh on the island and people left such that the population is down to 4500 today, from the 11000 before the eruption. The volcano still bubbles away and smokes, but is generally quieting down. There is still a 2 mile exclusion zone around the volcano, and yachts sailing too close on the downwind side risk ash on their decks, and burn holes in their sails! We anchored in Little Bay, never intending to go ashore. A mistake which we will rectify next time we pass, as we would like to do the full island tour. When we left the next morning, we went around the top end of the island to make for a better point of sail to Deshaies, Guadeloupe. This route took us past the lava runs, and ruins, which are a stark reminder of nature’s destructive power.

We have also come to realize that the crew of Sheer Tenacity are like Salmon….. always swimming upstream! As one heads north after hurricane season, the prevailing winds are NE… and we beat! By the time we head back south before the next hurricane season, the prevailing winds have switched to SE,…. And we beat!! This is all due to the movement of the north Atlantic High (or Azores high), which moves up and down with the seasons.

As a result of all our beating, we have learned new tricks to enable us to point so much higher, (35-40degs to the wind), despite our extra wide spreaders. Sheeting in the staysail like a blade, (using the lazy sheet to achieve the correct shape), and feeding a second sheet between the shrouds to an inner track, on a reduced genoa.(to stop it chafing on the spreaders). And so we completed another 42 mile beat to Deshaies, before popping 20 miles down the coast to Pigeon Island, and the Jacques Cousteau National Park. Earlier that morning, we had heard a Pan Pan, but couldn’t understand the details. Along the way, we sailed through a mess of wreckage and diesel, before coming across the wreck of a trawler, “Caribbean Rush”, on the rocks. This was the Pan Pan! The previous day we had listened to a Mayday rescue, 20 miles off Dominica, co ordinated by Guadeloupe Maritime Rescue, in English.

There is so much more to see on this fascinating French Island, that we are determined to swat up on our French before we come this way again! Whatever one thinks about French attitudes, you just have to admire their checking in systems, anchoring freedom, the best dinghy docks in the Caribbean, their well stocked supermarkets, with all the lekker goodies, such as cheeses, wines, salamis, sausages, bagettes, plus top rate medical and maritime rescue facilities.

The next day we worked our way down to the bottom of Guadeloupe, to stop over at Les Saintes, once again with stiff beat! Anchoring behind the Ille Cabrit, we were to witness our third maritime drama in as many days. The big black square rigger anchored next to us was having a crew member airlifted off by helicopter. Cigatura poisoning, we learned later. The Les Saintes area is super little group of French islands (part of Guadeloupe).They are very unspoilt, and Bourge, the main town in the island group, is a quaint little village with boutiques, eateries, superettes with a continental feel. Never having had crops like sugarcane, cocoa, grown there, they therefore never had any slaves there either….with the result that the population is relatively tiny, mostly white, and very French! We enjoyed some of the cleanest water, and best snorkeling ever, until Mary was stung by sea wasps! Despite this, we are determined to spend a whole lot more time here next year, trying to parlez a leetle more Francais !

The route march south begins.

13/5/2011

Easter Monday in St Martin, and everything is closed… even customs! Mary and I decided not to wait, but to use a little 6hr NE window on Tuesday to push on to St Barts, from where we would be able to make for St Kitts in the prevailing SE which would follow . It proved to be a good call, and we anchored in Colombier Bay, and dinghied round to Customs in Gustavia, who to our surprise, were open!
We cleared in and out, confirmed the next day’s weather, and set off for St Kitts the next morning. The winds were about 25knots and we had a wet, wild, and bouncy 25mile crossing. We had hoped to find a little shelter and relief around the back of the island for the 13nm up to Port Zante. Fat chance!! Yes, the seas got a little lower, but the winds wrapped over and around the mountains, getting up to 35knots at times on the nose! It was a long and slow crawl for the last 13miles, before we could drop sails and anchor in the lee of two cruise liners at Basseterre. I went ashore by dinghy and negotiated two days in the Marina, for a bit of R & R, as the anchorage was a washing machine.

The town is quite attractive, and Port Zante is a purpose built mall and Duty Free complex aimed at cruise liners. We were able to top up with diesel and provisions, and eat one of the worst little rip off lunches ever, in a little restaurant overlooking “The Circus”, based on Piccadilly Circus.

Once again, we experienced a common Customs and Immigration problem. With few exceptions, they are all fully qualified BA’S…. (as in Bad Attitude!) It seems to us, that around the world, these officials get the job based on their BA qualification, rather than their HR skills or efficiencies! Indeed, some of these folk have upgraded their BA’S to MBA’S…. (Moerse Bad Attitude), and even the occasional MFBA!

Two days after checking in, a quick look at the weather picture, indicated that it would be better to depart St Kitts/Nevis on day 8, rather than day 7, as had been entered on my clearance form when checking in. As a courtesy, we popped in to customs to advise them of our plan to leave one day later. Not a big deal we thought, given that we would have been give up to 6 months with our UK passports, if we had so requested. “No, No, No!’ says the MBA Customs lady. You now have to go to the Office of National Security, to apply for a Visa extension. I tried to reason with her, by asking if she would have given me a month, two days earlier, if I had asked for a month. “Yes”, but you said you would be leaving in a week!” ‘About a week” I said. The form says a week, so you have to go to National Security now. Clearly she was making a push for her Phd. MFBA!

So off we go across town , to join yet another queue, of illegal’s, to request a one day visa extension, for which we had to fill in forms in triplicate, and pay a further admin fee, justifying our reasons…Bad weather ! By 10.30 am all forms were filled in, and we were told that Mr Benjamin was out for lunch, and we would have to come back this afternoon, or tomorrow. Given that it was only 10.30am, I expressed my frustration at all this “bullshit for a one day extension for bad weather” quite loudly …Loudly enough for Mr Benjamin to pop out of his office and demand to see my application and passport. He took one look, and said” No problem”, you can just change the date when you check out of Nevis!
We left Port Zante with a bit of our own BA, and anchored in White House Bay at the southern tip of St Kitts, close to a radically rigged super yacht called Maltese Falcon. From there it is only a short putt to Nevis, which in the pilot books, looked lovely.

We found an Island struggling to recover from Hurricane Lennie. All the palm trees along Pinney Beach were gone, and the anchorage was filled with mandatory mooring buoys (95% empty, at EC $ 58 for two nights (R180)) .Anchoring is not allowed, and the fees are collected by customs when you check out, based on the number of days in Nevis. The buoys are the governments attempt to make the cruisers help pay for hurricane damage, and from our observations, the cruisers have caste their votes by going elsewhere! We had a pleasant lunch of chicken wings and beer at Sunshine’s beach bar, but clearly business was poor with not many cruising patrons . Pictures on the walls, showed much happier days, with visitors such as Mel Gibson, John Travolte, Wesley Snipes, Morgan Freeman and a host of other celebrities enjoying Sunshines. Our waiter also asked if we knew Hershel Gibbs, as he was always here during the World Cup Cricket!

This visit only confirmed our view that the mandatory buoy rules do nothing to encourage business, and only serve to harm the local businesses even more! But why should we be surprised. Most governments are control driven, and totally fail to understand that marketing and capitalism is driven by freedom of choice! I have yet to find a customs or immigration official who understands that they are usually the visitors’ first contact with their country, and as such they should be welcoming, friendly and efficient! Has any Government employee in any country ever studied marketing?????? I doubt it, as that would imply a willingness to learn!

BVI – Last impressions

11/5/2011

When you look forward to returning to a place before you even leave, then you know it possesses a bit of magic! My last blog was from Marina Cay, from where we planned to pop over to Spanish Town, and check out, to start our return trip to Grenada. The pilot book indicated that Customs would be closed on Easter Friday, so we went over on the Thursday, and checked out, indicating that we would be departing early on Saturday from North Sound.
Once again, books are wrong, and bureaucracy steps in to ruin the best made plans of mice and men! They informed us that we could not do that as it would be more than 12 hours after we checked out! “But you will be closed tomorrow”, we say by way of explanation. No, we will be open, so you must come back tomorrow and pay overtime because it’s a public holiday! “But we were going up to North Sound later today, to leave from there!” No you must come back here to check out first!

There was only really one choice…. to lie! “OK,” we say, “We will still check out now, go on up to North Sound, and leave tonight!” We did not think that there was any chance of the coast guards being active over Easter, and in any case we could always develop a little mechanical or health crisis to explain the 48 hr delay, if necessary!

So we returned to North Sound, and spent 3 more glorious days , enjoying the crystal clear water, and preparing the boat for the return leg. Even our resident giant Barracuda seemed to welcome us back, but he is a bit off putting when it comes to swimming around ones boat!

We had spotted an 18hr window of light NE winds, which would avoid us having to bash into the normal prevailing SE winds for the 80 odd miles to St Martin. We left on Sunday at 8.00h, with two other yachts for company, passing Richard Branson’s pad (Necker Island) on the way out, and ended up motor sailing in 10 knots at 30-40degs to the wind. All three of us caught a fish along the way, and we were thrilled to boat a decent sized Dorado. When cleaned and filleted, it made up 16 lovely portions, and we calculated that at the prevailing BVI restaurant prices ($15), that the fish was worth R1680 to us!
We anchored in Marigot Bay at midnight, ending our BVI trip on a high!

Taking a fancy to the Virgins!

16/4/2011

$30 per night mooring buoys do not appeal to us, so we headed over to Sopers Hole on Tortola, to stock up and provision for the next week around Jost Van Dyke and Cane Gardens. Mastercard systems problems struck yet again, and once again we found ourselves holding up supermarket queues, scrambling for cash because the bloody card won’t work! Thanks to our secret weapon, Katiloo, who has been on Standard Banks case so often in this regard, we now have after hours hotline numbers . $40 of cell phone call time to the bank revealed that there was nothing wrong with the card, but there seemed to be a connection problem reading the magnetic strip on Standard Bank cards in America……”But I’m not in America!” , …”Our systems regard BVI as America! Tell the cashier to manually input the details, and not to “swipe” the card.” This we did, and it worked! Great, but it still wouldn’t let me draw cash from the only ATM in Sopers Hole! The delay meant paying another $25 to stay overnight on the buoy. It struck me that for the $65 Standard Bank cost me, through no fault of ours, we could have spent another night at the Willy T, drinking plenty of beers, getting tattoos , and watching topless ladies jumping around! The upside was that we were able to have a farewell drink at the Sopers Hole Pub with Walter and Jackie ( Jean Marie), and Mike and Lesley ( Extasea), as we are all setting off in different directions from here. A big black squall messed up our plans to negotiate the tricky reef entry to White Bay, so we diverted to Great Harbour ( Jost Van Dyke), and dropped anchor in 12mts, just as the heavens opened. We caught 200lts of water in the two hours it rained, filling our tanks to the brim (all 650lts). The sun came out, and we headed ashore to explore, and to sample conch fritters ($10), and Jamaican Jerk Wings ($10) with our sundowners at the legendary “Foxy’s”! Gadzooks! R14 for each golf ball size fritter, or a single chicken wing, and R28 for a beer! Been there, done that, and bought the T shirt to prove it! The next morning, we moved on round to White Bay, with Mary playing every trick in the book to persuade me not to go through the reef pass into the beautiful palm tree lined beach beyond! In vain, I might add, as we are now safely anchored in this lovely bay, with at least a metre below the keel….now! At one stage it registered 0 mts! Later it was off to the Soggy Dollar Beach Bar, to sample their world famous “Pain Killer” rum punch, which is basically a Dark Rum over lots of ice, mixed with pineapple juice, a little orange juice, coconut milk, Angostura, with grated nutmeg on top! $6 a go, and very more –ish! Cheapskates that we are, we had one, and made the refills on the boat ourselves! We watched a shoal of Spanish Mackerel and Rainbow Runners in a feeding frenzy around the boat, as the charter boats headed home at sundown. Saturday. Welcome to the circus! The charter boats from the US Virgins packed in, taking up every square inch of anchor room, and then some! We watched in awe as one idiot dropped an anchor between two other cats, where clearly there was not enough space……. panic, go full astern over his dinghy tender’s tether, foul the prop, dive over the side to untangle the mess, while the boat is being fended off by those on either side! The name of his boat? I kid you not…”Paw Paw of Wight” !!! Despite all the drama’s it is still a very beautiful bay, and the entertainment has been non stop. We have just been too scared to leave the boat unattended to go ashore, with all these monkeys around! We understand that the US skippers ticket of competence is called a “Six Pack”, which has something to do with the 6 disciplines they need to have mastered. We think the ticket means something entirely different, given our observations!! The professional skippers’ in these parts reckon that their ticket is a credit card!

BVI – A second glance!

15/4/2011

We tore ourselves away from the North Sound, and enjoyed a leisurely 17 mile broad reach sail down the Francis Drake Channel, towards Cooper Island. Had a quick look around the crowded buoy filled anchorage at this resort bay, and then continued to Great Harbour, Peter Island, past Dead Man’s Chest. We anchored in 16mts, and chatted to Ti Bay over in Little Harbour, which sounded great. So we moved round to this beautiful little stern line to shore anchorage. What a gem!! It was our first experience of this type of anchoring arrangement, which is required because of the catabatic back winding. Only about a handful of boats can fit in, and there are no facilities, apart from a beach braai area made by cruisers out of flotsam and jetsam! No “boat boys”, no Ba Ba Boom music, and no one lives on the island apart from a flock of goats! No question about it…the nicest little anchorage we have experienced yet. Nature at its best. From the boat, we swam over to coral reefs, and observed big Spotted Eagle Rays feeding, and a pair of mating Dolphins slowly circling the anchorage, oblivious to the curious snorklers just a respectful few metres back. Mike and Lesley,( Extasea), whom we had met down in Ilha Grande Brazil, joined us for a couple of days before they head west. Another interesting cruising boat was a 21ft plywood homebuild painted in Rastafarian colours of red, yellow and green, which had sailed over from Belgium. The young skipper, who always wore his Rasta beanie, was accompanied by two girls who spent most of their time topless. We christened them Bob, Boobs and Bee Sting for obvious reasons! “Tenacious”, and “Bolero”, two other 80ft plus yachts we had previously seen in St Martin, were also in the anchorage. The skipper of Bolero, which was built 25years ago in South Africa, was also a South African. He and his wife had just bought a house in Baviaanskloof, Hout bay. They left to rush up to Antigua, to take part in the “Spirit of Tradition” classic races. After an idyllic week, we headed for Norman Island, in the “Bight”, picking up one of the hundreds of buoys, which make anchoring almost impossible! It is a big protected bay, with some nice dive sights, and a couple of well frequented places…..Pirates, a pub restaurant ashore, and the William Thornton, (Willy T), a ship restaurant pub. We managed a beer at Pirates, but the combination of $30 per night mooring buoys, and sudden runaway tummy bugs, forced us to cancel our trip to the notorious Willy T, of the stick-on tattoo barman, and the free drinks to all the ladies who jump topless from the bridge……perhaps it was a blessing in disguise!

Our first feel of the Virgins

01.04.2011

Mary and I have been looking forward to the BVI with great expectations! Yet the closer we got to being here, the more the Doom Sayers had to say about the overcrowding, the Bareboat charters, limited anchoring choices, expensive mooring buoys, and prices in general! So we left Anguila at 5pm for the 80mile overnight sail to Virgin Gorda, with mixed feelings…. Would it be a highlight of our cruising, or a bit of a disappointment? The trip up was a dead downwind, rolly motor sail with only 10knots of breeze…..just enough to keep the diesel fumes in the cockpit all night! Not Mary’s best! We arrived at Round Rock at first light, and headed up to Spanish Town to check in. Contrary to what we had been led to believe, anchoring was easy and available, and we dinghied over to the Yacht club and walked over to Customs and Immigration. The paperwork was a bit more extensive than usual, (and a lot more tedious than either the French, or Eseaclear signatory islands), but not too bad. The cruising permit for the two of us for 4 weeks was $17.50, which was also a lot less than we had been led to believe. After checking in, we headed up the Fat Virgin coastline to the North Sound, making our way through the well marked channel, into this protected stretch of water. We were too tired to spot any virgins, (rumour has it that there aren’t any), but we did find a very nice anchorage off Vixen point. There are buoys at $30 per night, but there is still plenty of room to swing off your own hook, which we chose to do. (must drop the hook in sand……anchoring on coral is prohibited) The next day we watched a huge fleet of racing yachts(+/- 100) fighting to the finish line, inside the Sound. We chilled, rested and swam in the crystal clear waters, taking the opportunity to dive and clean off the last of the weed and barnacles that we acquired in St Martin. Later we watched the start of the next leg of the race…. A downwind start under kites and bags, led by Richard Branson in his150ft + catamaran “Necker Belle”. He organizes a number of BVI racing events. It was quite a spectacle! The big man himself arrived by seaplane, landing somehow amongst this field of yachts, 30minutes before the race got underway. Recognize the Cat at anchor in the foreground? Yes, Klaus and Beryl , on “Ti Bay”, are en route to the Bahamas, and we have spent good times together, whenever we have met up along the way since Grenada. We all went the Bitter End Yacht Club for sundowners and a light meal that evening. When we returned to the yachts at Vixen Point, we found Sheer Tenacity surrounded by huge (3ft to 5ft) Tarpon, swirling around, hunting down jacks attracted by the cockpit lights. At first I thought they were sharks, with their bright orange eyes, but their profiles and silver shining bodies soon revealed their ID! Earlier in the day, we had been watching big Green Turtles surfacing around the boat. So although the fishing on the route up had been quiet, the sea life seems alive and well here! On Friday we left the Sound, and anchored between Prickly Pear Island and Eustatia, alongside a snorkeling reef. The islands themselves appear quite scrubby, reminiscent of Pilanesberg by the sea, but he beaches are white, and the water a beautiful clear turquoise! Yes, we like our first look at the Virgins, and look forward to using up our full 4 week permit, as we explore the islands and anchorages that we have dreamed about for years.