by Judy Handley | Jan 6, 2006 | Caribbean - Windwards, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 81, Day 1: Textbook Snorkeling Day
Date: Friday, January 6, 2006
Weather: More Beautiful
Latitude: N 12 degrees 37.94 minutes
Longitude: W 61 degrees 21.39 minutes
Location: Anchored Behind Horseshoe Reef, Tobago Cays, The Grenadines
We spent our morning cleaning house (yes, you do still have to do that once in a while) and researching our next ports of call. After an early lunch, we set out in the dinghy for the reef. We have this perfect little white sand beach right in front of us and as we rode out toward the reef, the colors were spectacular. I have no words to describe the almost neon green water we could see just before the reef and the shades of darker blue and white-capped breaking waves beyond. We found the pass that takes you outside the reed into the ocean, but it looked a little rough out there and there were no other dinghies on the outside. We decided to tie to one of the dinghy mooring balls on the inside and check things out before going to the outside. The water was as clear as it can be and although the inside of the reef is shallow and pretty well worn, the fish are spectacular. We wove in between coral heads and sandy paths. We recently bought a book called, “The Nature of the Islands: Plants and Animals of the Eastern Caribbean” and today we saw almost every coral and fish featured in the coral reef section of the book. We saw elkhorn coral, sea fans, finger coral, and brain coral. We saw yellow and lilac-colored tube sponges. And we saw lots of blueheaded wrasse, yellow damselfish, squirrelfish with their big eyes, goatfish with there funny little goatees, stoplight parrotfish (females only), beautiful redbanded parrotfish, smooth trunkfish, and one lone trumpetfish. Then there was the school of at least a hundred blue tangs that we swam into dividing their school in half. We ended up snorkeling to the outer edge of the pass through which we could have taken the dinghy, and decided that we had seen such a spectacular show that we didn’t need to risk taking the dinghy outside. Later in the day, we did a sundowner snorkel in another location, and this time we swam with thousands of tiny, tiny blue fish, hundreds of yellow French grunts, a few blue tang and ocean surgeons, lots of sergeant majors, and Mark spotted a lone sand diver. All in all, it was truly a textbook day of snorkeling—a very good day. And that reminds me. Martha’s boat is back. I guess she can’t get enough of a good thing either!
We could stay here for days, but we are going to push on tomorrow morning to Union Island. There is a reef there with some snorkeling possibilities and promises of wonderful hiking trails and even a bike path. We will do some land exploring this weekend and depending on the weather, we will either head to the northern coast of Venezuela and the ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao early next week, or if the weather is not right for that 400 mile passage (about 4 days and nights, maybe less), we will spend time in Grenada and Carriacou and then go when we have a weather window. We know we are moving way too quickly through these beautiful islands, but we will be back here. The Pacific awaits us and we don’t want to cut our time there short. So on we go.
by Judy Handley | Jan 5, 2006 | Caribbean - Windwards, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 80, Year 1: Tobago Cays, The Grenadines
Date: Thursday, January 5, 2006
Weather: Continued Beautiful Weather
Latitude: N 12 degrees 37.94 minutes
Longitude: W 61 degrees 21.39 minutes
Location: Anchored Behind Horseshoe Reef, Tobago Cays
After spending seven full days in Bequia, we finally moved on today. As we left Admiralty Harbor and headed out to round West Cay, we stayed close to shore so we could get a glimpse of the houses in Moonhole. An American architect named Tom Johnson designed the homes here that grow out of the rocks. The homes are said to have huge arches, fantastic views, and lovely patios. From the water, it looked like the dwellings of Native Americans that carved homes out of the cliffs in the Southwest. In Moonhole, as in all of Bequia, there is seldom glass in the windows as the breeze is constant and the insects are few.
The sun is sinking behind Mayreau as we sit here in the Tobago Cays. I am like a kid in a candy shop. Every island is more beautiful than the last, but this place really is magical. We sit here with only an underwater reef protecting us from the ocean. And the next stop to the east is Africa. It is calm here tonight and the water is that beautiful turquoise-green color. We had a delightful sail today with light winds and when we arrived at 1500, we immediately hit the water. We snorkeled over to the tip of Baradel, the island closest to us. We are anchored in about 12 feet of water and it gets progressively shallower as you approach the island. On the sandy bottom, we saw one little, lone cowfish, and some other fish that we have yet to identify. Not much, but for us, it was beautiful. Tomorrow we will take the dinghy to the outer reef where the underwater show is guaranteed to be a sellout. The water here is crystal clear. Some say you can see 100 feet down clearly. I’ll have to see that to believe it.
We will stay here until Saturday morning and then move on to Union Island. There are lots of boats here, but everyone seems to be mindful of everyone else’s privacy. By the way, Martha’s tiny ship was here when we arrived, but at sunset her ship sailed northward. Since we are headed south, I don’t think we will see them again. We are thinking of our friends Heather and John Turgeon back at Shipyard Quarters Marina in Boston and Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg back in Concord, New Hampshire tonight. We know that they have anchored here while sailing the Caribbean and we are wondering what wondrous things they saw while they were here.
by Judy Handley | Jan 4, 2006 | Caribbean - Windwards, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 79, Year 1: Friendship Bay, Bequia ( The Lazy Man’s Way)
Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Weather: Beautiful Day in Paradise
Location: Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth, Bequia
I know this is beginning to sound repetitive, but it was another beautiful day here in paradise. We had planned to pull up anchor and move around to the other side of the island to Friendship Bay this morning. But somehow, we ended up going to town to do the last minute chores, staying longer than we had planned, and deciding that it would just be easier to walk to Friendship Bay. So that is what we did.
We made a couple of trips into town today to get provisions for the next leg of our voyage. On our last trip out, a young man from Customs asked us is he could have a ride to his tender just off the dinghy dock. We took him to his boat and then headed back to Windbird. When we came back to a different dock to leave our dinghy for the evening, the same young man was there on duty. We ask him for more specific directions for our walk to Friendship Bay, and all he could say is that it was a VERY long walk and that we might want to take a taxi. We assured him we wanted to walk and he gave us directions. As we walked away, he called us back telling us that we could get a bus for $1 US rather than walk or pay the higher taxi fees, but again, we assured him that we really wanted to walk. It was a mile and half up and down hill, but a lovely walk. Not too long at all. When we reached the other side of the island, we realized that it is truly like another world. The waves lap on the shore constantly and there is virtually no commerce, just homes. Only five boats were in the anchorage versus the 75-100 in our neck of the woods.
We found the Friendship Bay Resort with its infamous Mosquito Beach Bar. Each bar chair is an individual swing with the ocean as your view. While sitting at the bar, we met Melanie and Kevin, a young couple from San Francisco. Melanie is an IT and Kevin a CPA. They are on one of the cruise ships docked in Admiralty Bay, but had done their research and knew that Wednesday night is lobster bake night in Friendship Bay. Dinner was phenomenal. We had the 3 X lobster special—Lobster Cappuccino Soup, Lobster Bruchetta, and Broiled Lobster Tail. It was very, very good, and the service and atmosphere were fantastic. There was live music provided by a local group—eclectic group with eclectic music. Everything from middle aged white guy to young black guy playing djembe, mandolin, some sort of cross between a guitar and a ukulele, bass guitar, and lead guitar. After dinner, Kevin, Melanie, Mark, and I shared a cab ride back to town. We learned that Kevin and Melanie got engaged on New Year’s Day in Barbados. When we parted in Port Elizabeth, we gave them our most sincere wishes for a wonderful future together. They promised to check in with the website and send us an e-mail at some point. Hopefully we will hear more from them.
Tomorrow morning we are off to Tobago Cays. We could spend forever here exploring each and every island, but if we are going to get to the South Pacific this year, we must move on. Everyplace we have been here in the Caribbean is magical, so we know we will return here. But we don’t want to cut our stay in the Pacific short. It will not be easy to get back there, and we need to give ourselves plenty of time to enjoy it. So on we push.
by Judy Handley | Jan 3, 2006 | Caribbean - Windwards, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 78, Year 1: Trek Across the Island
Date: Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Weather: Back to Sunshine
Location: Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth, Bequia
Latitude: N 13 degrees 00.62 minutes
Longitude: W 61 degrees 14.52 minutes
Location: Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth, Bequia
We awoke to a beautiful morning. I always go up into the cockpit to comb my hair and when I went up this morning, I saw Martha’s boat pulling up anchor. It certainly was gray as the young men in the tender had told us last night and it looked like a small US Navy ship—except that it was flying a Grand Cayman flag. I took a picture and will include that when the photos from today are logged.
Shortly after 1000, we got ready to head to town. I just realized this morning that this town has a name—Port Elizabeth. How I missed that I have no idea. I donned my turtle earrings for the day’s two mile trek to the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary. For those of you who know me as “Judy, the first grade teacher”, you know my love of turtles. I always looked forward to having New Hampshire naturalist David Carroll visit with my first graders helping them to understand the importance of treating turtles with care. It takes most species of turtles 20 to 25 years to lay their first eggs, and of the eggs that hatch, very few of the hatchlings survive. Bequian Ortin G. King, known as Brother King, knows this very well, and has dedicated the last 10 years of his life to establishing the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary. He searches out the nesting sites of endangered Hawksbill and Greenback turtles. He then watches the sites carefully, and when the hatchlings emerge, he captures them and brings them to the sanctuary where he raises them in tanks until they are 4 to 5 years old. At this age, they are a good 12 to 16 inches in width and at least 18 to 22 inches long. He then reintroduces them to the wild, but he does so knowing that they have a much better chance of survival than when they were hatchlings the size of a quarter. Brother King was the son of a Bequia fisherman that captained his own boat that he built himself. Brother King was a professional skin diving fisherman, and learned the hard way the impact he was having on the environment. He told us that as a young man in Bequia, sea life was plentiful. No one needed to worry about conservation. But as he continued his career as a diving fisherman, the kind of fisherman that he says does the most damage to the environment, he began to realize that his children and grandchildren were not going to enjoy the same abundance. That’s when he decided to retire and establish the sanctuary. We learned some of this during the tour of the turtle tanks at the Sanctuary, but as we walked back to town, Brother King picked us up on his way to his home in Port Elizabeth for lunch. It was during the truck ride that we learned most of the personal information. He also shared the history of the surrounding countryside.
As we walked out of Port Elizabeth headed to Park Bay and the Sanctuary, we passed the temporary elementary school in town, the secondary school with a football (soccer) stadium next to it and goats grazing in the school yard, the houses on the fringes of town, and then we were out in the country. It looked very much like southern West Virginia as we passed the 200 year-old Spring Plantation, except that when we looked to the right through the trees, we could see the Atlantic Ocean splashing against a rocky shore. Brother King told us later in the day that the Spring Plantation had once been owned by a man named MacIntosh from Trinidad who married a Bequian woman named Wallace. One was of Scottish descent and the other African. They owned the whole end of the island, but when they died, their children slowly sold off parts of the land. There is still the working plantation, but I didn’t get whether or not it is still owned by the same family. As we traveled on, we passed Industry Bay where I found my dream home. The estate was on the left side of the road and to the right side there were coconut trees and the ocean. Again Brother King was able to give us the history of this place. If we remember correctly, a very wealthy man from England married a woman from St. Vincent and built the house—probably not many years ago. The man died and now the woman and her 3 daughters own the place. They have to rent it out from time to time in order to afford keeping it. Believe me, if I were a wealthy person, I would find the woman and make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. What a perfect place!
But it goes on. We next came to the Crescent Beach Inn which was literally hidden from us until we saw a taxi stop and drop someone off. We followed and found ourselves in the bar/dining area, so we stopped for lunch. Just outside was the beach. What a nice place for a “family retreat” and the prices weren’t bad. On up the road there were villas on the hillside above the road and the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the rocks below the road. These villas are called Allawash and I saw a sign saying to contact Allawash.co.uk to rent. We were now on top of the world and as we looked down we saw the ocean and the Hegg Turtle Sanctuary. It is in a truly magical location.
We are thinking of moving Windbird around to Friendship Bay tomorrow, but there is still so much to see on this side of the island that we’ll just have to see what tomorrow brings.
by Judy Handley | Jan 2, 2006 | Caribbean - Windwards, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 77, Year 1: Martha’s Here
Date: Monday, January 2, 2005
Weather: Cloudy and Drizzly
Latitude: N 13 degrees 00.62 minutes
Longitude: W 61 degrees 14.52 minutes
Location: Admiralty Bay, Bequia, The Grenadines
We spent most of the day on the boat again. We ran the engine for about 5 hours in order to equalize the batteries. Evidently this is something we need to do since we are never plugged into power these days. We are our own power plant and today was dedicated to making sure everything is working smoothly. Daffodil Marine also came to fill up our fuel tanks. When they came on New Year’s Eve to fill up the water and fuel tanks, they were having trouble with the fuel. Since about every boat in the harbor was demanding fuel that day, we told them to come back today when things settled down a bit. While Mark was busy dealing with all of this, I spent the day researching and setting our itinerary from here to Bonaire. I’ll report my findings tomorrow once we have made some final decisions on where to from here.
So around 1600 we headed to town and walked around just for the exercise. We then went to Maria’s Internet Café to check our g-mail account and to send a load of e-mails I had written yesterday. We also checked out the Naugala website. This is an agency that helps cruisers deal with getting an autografo permit for visiting the Galapagos. If we can get this permit, it is good for 3 months and would allow us to stay in 4 different ports. Without the permit, we will only be able to stay in 1 port for 20 days. We really don’t plan to spend more than 20 days there, but you never know. And it would be really nice to be able to move from port to port. Heather and Jed plan to meet us there and we also need help figuring out how we can meet them and check them in as crew for a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know what I find out from the Naugala Agency.
It is still cloudy and drizzly here today, so we watched what there was of a sunset from the second floor balcony of the internet cafe. I don’t think I mentioned that the young man who helps us there looks like Tony Banderas with short hair. But that’s just a little side note. We headed down the stairs and remembered that we needed to buy a little local brew. We went to the store that has SELECT written in front and as we were checking out, who but Martha Stewart would walk through the front door. She had a young man with her, maybe a son. Does she have children? Mark thought I was crazy when I told him the woman was Martha. He thought she looked a little ragged around the edges, but I was dead certain it was her. Now you have to understand that I have the reputation for having absolutely no knowledge of pop culture. I don’t know the names of many famous people, but somehow the images of Martha’s trial and her stint in prison had stuck in my mind from looking at the tabloids in the grocery store lines over that last few of years. Martha was buying some of the exotic offerings on the shelves at the “select” shop. They sell soft drinks, beer, liquor, escargot with the snail shells, chutneys of all kinds, and all sorts of exotic canned foods. Mark still didn’t believe me, but when we got to the dinghy dock there was a VERY fancy tender with two young men aboard. The name on the very fancy dinghy was “Very Good” and I decided that this was a good thing. This had to be Martha’s boat. Mark asked and the young men admitted that Martha was not the sole owner of the very large, gray yacht in the harbor, but she was one of a few who use it. I was exonerated. It was Martha in sandals, khaki pants, a wrinkled blue blouse, and hair that looked in need of a hair dresser—no tan and no make-up. I have more pop culture knowledge that I have been credited with! The island of Mustique is just south of here and it where many of the rich and famous live. Maybe “Very Good” is just visiting here for a little shopping trip at SELECT.
by Judy Handley | Jan 1, 2006 | Caribbean - Windwards, Sailing Logs Year 1 |
Day 76, Year 1: The Hayes Martin New Year’s Day Law
Date: Sunday, January 1, 2006
Weather: Cloudy and Drizzly
Location: Admiralty Bay, Bequia, The Grenadines
My dad was Hayes Martin and he had very definite ideas about most everything, but especially about New Year’s Day. He insisted that the way you lived your life on this day would determine the way you would live throughout the year. His prescription was to get up early, work hard all day, and then go to bed early. If two out of three gets approval, then we have done well today. We didn’t get up early, but we did work hard and I promise to go to bed early!
We celebrated the New Year’s Eve here on the boat. We decided not to go into town, but to stay here and watch South Pacific. We actually stayed up until midnight and watched the fireworks and flares display. The fireworks were planned, but at the magic hour, many boaters got out their old flares and shot them off over the anchorage. The noise in the harbor was what you would expect in Times Square, but things settled down again around 0030 and we tucked in for the night.
Mark’s morning was spent further investigating the vibration problem. Sometime around 1100, I heard him exclaim, “I found it!” He found loose bolts in the flexible coupling connecting the prop shaft to the transmission. Of course, tightening those bolts required removing something else first, but my mid-afternoon he declared success. We will have to test this when we leave the anchorage here, but for now, we think we have that problem solved. I spent the day researching the Galapagos Islands. The islands are 95 per cent national park and heavily regulated, so I read as much as I could find about possibilities. I am also in the process of researching our next few stops and tomorrow we will do some serious planning on where to from here.
Here’s a little report on our progress over the past 75 days.
Day 1—Shipyard Quarters, Boston Harbor
Air Temperature: 40 degrees F
N 42 degrees 22 minutes; W 71 degrees 3 minutes
Day 39—Morning After Thanksgiving Day, Solomons, MD
FREEZING!
Day 40—Heading Into the Gulf Stream
Air Temperature: 50-60 degrees F
N 35 degrees 53.8 minutes; W 74 degrees 28.6 minutes
Day 53—St. Martin
Air Temperature: 84 degrees F
N 18 degrees 04.08 minutes; W 63 degrees 05.58 minutes
Day 75—Bequia, The Grenadines
Air Temperature: 83 degrees F
N 13 degrees 00.62 minutes; W 61 degrees 14.52 minutes
In 75 days, we have increased the daily temperature by about 43 degrees by changing our latitude from 42 degrees N to 13 degrees N. Only 13 more degrees and we will be on the equator, but that doesn’t happen until we go through the Panama Canal and head south of the Galapagos Islands—sometime in April.
We have actually had a rainy day today. Normally, it rains once or twice during the night and then clears up in the early morning. Today the winds have increased throughout the day and the rain comes and goes. This is our first really rainy day since reaching the Caribbean. Our first day in Soufriere was a little rainy, but we were diving, so we didn’t even know it. But today was different. It really has rained most of the day. There were periods of sun, but no rainbows—just more rain. But we can’t complain. We have had day after day of gorgeous weather. Maybe there was enough rain today to wash some of the salt off the deck. That would be a nice gift.
The Hayes Martin New Year’s Day Law didn’t mention anything about reflection and thanks, but I think that is what this day is really all about. I looked through all of our photographs from the year reminding me of the events. For us, it was a year filled with a frenzy of activity getting ready for this voyage. It was also a year filled with wonderful times with friends and family—last Christmas in Maine with Jed’s family, a trip to West Virginia to celebrate the new year with my family, a Superbowl Sunday celebration aboard boats in Shipyard Quarters, a summer sailing vacation to Maine with our friends Kevin and Claire, a phenomenal NHPR farewell for Mark at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, a surprise visit by all of Mark’s family, a fantastic farewell cruise on Lake Sunapee with my Concord School District friends, and final farewell visits from more family and friends. And since we left Boston in October, we had a full-fledged Martin gathering in Maryland and have met with many old and many new friends along the way.
We have certainly had some challenges along the way, but we feel really lucky to be doing what we are doing and to have such great family and friends back home who have supported us along the way.
