Susan
June finds us sailing down the chain of Caribbean islands. We are finally on the move! Since our last update, there have been a lot of changes in our lives. In late April we moved ourselves and our giant heap of boxes (almost a thousand pounds of stuff that we had shipped here from Canada) aboard the boat. Needless to say it took more than a few days to find a home for it all but we finally made it and discovered that we still had plenty of spaces to fill. Thank goodness we bought a big boat.
It felt great to be living aboard our new home even though life on a dock isn’t our favourite thing. One problem is that we still hadn’t finished all of the carpentry work on the interior of the boat so we learned to live with sawdust as a side dish to every meal. We love the boat. The design of the saloon and galley that we worked out makes it a very comfy place to live. We continued to work hard on the interior of the boat as well as finally getting around to some of the mechanical, rigging and electrical work that we wanted to do before leaving. Click here to see the most recent renovation pictures.
We had hoped to be leaving St. Maarten in mid-May before the official hurricane season began on June 1st but you know how things go. The list of jobs was long and we had been on the island so long that we knew where to get everything done. We also had a good relationship with a number of local businesses not to mention our carpenter, Bernhard. It was hard to call a halt to the upgrades and endless boat shopping. Our credit card glowed with the heat of extensive use in stores with the word “marine” in the name. Not to mention the three trips in a rental car one day to stock up with groceries. It took almost 3 days to put it all away. Once again, it all disappeared into the cupboards with some room to spare. It wasn’t our intention but my guess is we could now survive for perhaps a year with all the provisions on the boat.
On June 1st it was finally time to cut the ties (or at least untie the lines) as we called a halt to the carpentry work and moved off the dock to a nearby anchorage in Simpson Bay Lagoon. It was a wonderful feeling to be at anchor again. There was much more privacy to be had with your closest neighbours hundreds of feet away and it was soooo much cooler with the wind always coming from the bow of the boat and getting scooped up by the hatches. Not to mention the feeling of moving silently at anchor with the wind.
Within a week we had tackled the final list of jobs including testing the water maker and generator and hiring some unlucky soul to clean 8 months of heavy growth off the bottom of our boat. He joked that he’d destroyed an entire reef down there. It was finally time to leave. Hurricane season was officially underway and we were anxious to get some distance closer to the edge of the zone.
During April and May we had almost no time to spare for fun. We did get to know some of our neighbours on the dock and enjoyed some great happy hour conversations with these new friends. We look forward to meeting up with some of them further South.
At the end of the first week in June, we were finally ready to get going. The morning that we passed under the open bridge to leave Simpson Bay Lagoon was a red-letter day for us. Wayne referred to it as leaving ‘boat jail’. I can’t say we’ll have the fondest memories of St. Maarten. It was a place of heat and really hard work for us. Perhaps if we had just been visiting for a week or two, we would have a different lasting impression. Regardless, it is one of the best places in the Caribbean to have boat work done so we were lucky to have purchased Daydream here.
Our first stop upon leaving Simpson Bay was only 5 miles away in Great Bay where the town of Philipsburg is. This is still on the island of St. Maarten and gave us a chance to go for a test sail on our way there. Our true shakedown cruise began the following morning when we set sail for the island of St. Eustatius more commonly known as Statia. It is part of the Netherlands Antilles and is about 30 miles away from St. Maarten. An interesting thing about sailing here in the Caribbean is that the next island/country is usually visible from your last port of call. We enjoyed the day of sailing with favourable winds and were able to work out a few more kinks and learn even more about our new boat. The most important being that she is FAST compared to our last boat. On a close reach with reduced sail, we saw speeds on the GPS of over 7.5 knots. This makes her a rocket in our eyes. We’re loving the cutter rig and are so happy that we added a roller furler to the staysail because we are, after all, lazy at heart. I also love the electric roller furling on the yankee (see note on laziness above). Wayne won’t admit to liking it yet although I think he secretly does. The brand new, full battened main sail is an absolute wonder to sail with too. The boat definitely has a much more solid feel especially going upwind. Not that we’ve had any downwind sailing yet to compare with. Upwind she sails close to the wind and fairly flat and very stable. It feels much more in control in wind over 20 knots on the nose. Our hydraulic autopilot is also a champ and so much quieter below decks than our noisy old Autohelm. We can’t wait to get some photos from the dinghy of the boat going upwind with full main, yankee and staysail up.
The anchorage at Statia was just off the historic town of Oranjestad, which was the trade capital of the Indies in the late 1700’s. At that time you could see a couple hundred trading ships at anchor off this tiny island. Much of the ruins of the original sea wall and old buildings can still be seen. We didn’t go ashore but enjoyed a wonderful swim in the first crystal clear water that we’ve seen and then a lovely sunset.
Early the next day we were off to the small island of Nevis. We had a great day of sailing mostly in the lee of St. Kitts that kept the seas to a more comfortable size. We were also able to sightsee along the coast of St. Kitts as we sailed by just offshore. We anchored off of a beautiful white sand beach with tons of palm trees just North of the main town of Charleston on Nevis. The water was again perfectly clear and we enjoyed another Caribbean sunset.
Early the next morning we headed off to the island of Montserrat. The island is currently experiencing an active volcano at the South end. In fact the island is now at least a mile longer because of it. Soufriere Hills has been erupting on and off since 1995 and apparently almost half of the already small population has left the island. The main town and port of Plymouth has been completely evacuated and it is now a ghost town. We anchored up near the new port at the North end of the island after a rather unpleasant day of sailing hard into the wind, making very little progress each hour. The seas were large and confused with multiple trains coming from different directions and the wind was up and down as we were passed on either side by sizable squalls. We got lucky with the squalls until we were within a few miles of the island and then we got hammered with lots of rain and wind and seas. We finally motored into port just before dark. Both of us were rather tired from a hard day. Even a day at the office started to look good to me at the end of that day. We stayed at Montserrat the next day as well as the weather forecast wasn’t promising. Also we had a broken impeller on the generator and our spare didn’t fit properly so Wayne went ashore to see if he could find one. No luck in such a small place. We need the generator in order to make water as well as to provide power for our batteries in addition to solar power. We would need to get a new impeller within a few days or find somewhere to take on water. If we continued South to Guadeloupe, we were uncertain of the what we would find there in terms of boat parts and our French isn’t necessarily up to the task either. We decided to head East to Antigua which we had planned to skip as we had seen the island last year while boat hunting. We knew that we could get anything that might be needed for the boat as well as enjoy the protection of a great harbour there until this unpleasant weather system blew through.
So we left early for Antigua the next day prepared for a wet, uncomfortable upwind passage. However the rain quit almost as soon as we had the anchor up and the wind was such that we were able to reach the island with only a couple of tacks. The seas were quite large and very confused but luckily the wind stayed strong enough to give us the speed and power to move through them with relative ease.
We arrived at the mouth of Falmouth Harbour in Antigua late in the afternoon. Having read all of the guide books and charts we prepared to enter the complex harbour with care following the leading lights as recommended to avoid the huge reef on one side of the entrance. As we were lining up to enter having slowed down to a safe speed, a large motor yacht screamed up behind us and then passed us by to hurry into the harbour. At first we thought they must know something that we didn’t as they charged through heading in on a course that would take them right over the just barely covered reef. In a few seconds we watched them make a very abrupt turn, as they no doubt discovered that there was no water there. I was prepared to hear the large crunch of a million dollar yacht driving up on a reef at full speed but luckily they were able to get turned just in time. We, feeling quite justified, continued with our careful, slow approach into the bay.
So here we are in Falmouth Harbour in Antigua. We will likely stay a few days to get our parts, fix a few things, catch up on laundry and hopefully see the last of this unpleasant weather blow through. From here we’ll continue south with the next stops being in Guadeloupe and then on to Dominica. Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) is the last of the Leeward Islands and then we tackle the Windward Islands starting with Martinique. We’ll continue to move along quickly until we reach St. Vincent and the Grenadines where we hope to spend a little time enjoying the area. Click here to see a few photos of the Leeward Islands that we’ve visited so far
Daydream is a very different boat from our last one and we still have a lot to learn about how she sails but with every mile we cover, we become more comfortable. We are very happy with our choice of boat in every way and expect to enjoy many miles, many years and many interesting places aboard her.
