April 13 - Ponce, Puerto Rico
Kevin fixed the prop problem - we hit the crab pot on the way, but we discovered another problem - little amount of diesel in the oil pan in the engine. We took all of our injectors to the diesel shop in Ponce - to check if they are licking, and sure enough the mechanic found 4 licking injectors in our collection, luckily, he is going to fix them before we move on. But the suspicion is that the main problem is in the injection pump not the injectors. On Friday, 04/18 Kevin
April 14 - May 4
Still in Puerto Rico! We had an amazing day trip into the jungle with a guide - did a lot of hiking, walking in the waterfalls, repelling the water fall, ziplining. It was fun. We spent a weekend with our friend Juan at his parent's house on the north shore. Finally had to use spanish to talk with parents. The food Norma (Juan's mom) made was very delisious and filling, and coffee is the best - the same way my mom prepares the coffee in the small pot with hot milk. Juan showed us his favorite places from the childhood and we met with his best friend - Karlos. Checked out beatiful beaches on the west-north shore of PR - beatiful beaches on the Atlantic side. May 1 - we made it to Salinas, staying on the anchorage - finally saving some money! The bay is very nice and quite, but the wind blows all the day staring 8:30am, and this is every day!
May 5 - May 12
One afternoon we were so surprised to see one of our "buddy boat" from Bahamas - Fidelis! Jenn and Eric finally caught up with us from the south part of Puerto Rico. The last time we saw them in Dominican Republic at Boca Chica. We spent some very nice time together sharing out recent stories and it felt so wonderfull to have somebody else to share a "sunset" drinks. We rented a car for our trip to the El Yunkey jungle in the mountains. It was fun to swimm in the huge waterfalls and hike up and down in the jungle. In Salinas we hanged out every day at the Sal Pa Dentro cruisers bar, the owners, John and Ana, are former sailors and he gave us very valuable advices on the weather and sailing on the south-east coast of Puerto Rico. Soon we left this beautiful peaceful and following his advices were sailing "hugging the coast" to get through these crasy winds and waves near puerto rico. We made it relatively fast to Veaques island, spend a night in the secluded anchorage and next day SAILED!! (no motor finally!) to Culebra island. The island is very beatiful, we enjoyed all the beaches available around, snorkled, swam but, still did not see any turtles. Since most of the places are closed for vacation in May, we mostly hang out at the Dinghy Dock Restaurant. Oh boy, drinks are not cheap in paradise!
May 12 - May 14
Last time we visited Spanish Virgin Islands we skipped this little uninhabited island Culebrita, which is only 7 nm from Culebra, but.. of course, east direction - no sailing. We were so glad that we decided to stop at this beautiful place this time. There are a lot of fun things to do (even though the only inhabitans are wild goats! many of them!) here - we practically did not get out of the water which is very accessable just via jumping from the boat. Snorkled twice a day - saw a lot of fish, sting ray and finally, Marina's dream came true - saw a lot of turtels! They would just swim around your boat starting in the early morning until dark. Hiking is also amazing in Culebrita - up on the mountain top is very old lighthouse, half broken but still accessable to the very top. The view from the very top of this building is absolutelly stunning - you see near islands, like Culebra, Veaques, St. Thomas and St.John; also you can see every corral heads in the water near the shores - amazing. Finally we saw more cruisers vs. charters here - spanish and english couples which are on their way back home to Europe. Met with intersting couple (Andriana and Spencer on Adverse Conditions) who made it twice around the world sailing everywhere for 15 years. Very impressive! As the weather conditions got better we had to leave this enchanted place... how many of such places we could find again?
May 15 - May 16
At last we made it to St.Thomas - it was not so bad, even though we motored agains the wind. The island is beatiful but it's very very turisty... a lot of cruisers and charters, bays are packed with the boats. We got some provision for our trip to BVIs and left early morning next day for Tortola island.
May 17 - May 19
We made it to BVIs finally! ( by our plans we supposed to be here a month ago...) First stop is in Tortola, customs check in. Even thought we have been to this island before, both of us could not remember anything from the first visit. Probably because we were well guided by Alen - our capitan on charter catamaran, so we even forgot what islands in BVIs we visited with him. There are so many charter boats here! We barely could identify couple cruisers around. It's a meka for charters!
May 20 - June 25
Wooho! Have not updated my dairy for about month and a half! Time flies so crazy fast! We made it through BVIs... Spent there about 3 weeks. A lot of swimming, hiking, spearfishing lobsters (got 3 little once) and just relaxing. The islands are so close to each other that there is no any problems to get from one to another in short comfortable sail. The most we liked Virgin Gorda - Savana Bay and Bitter End. BVIs were VERY expensive - moorings $30, food twice than in US, drinks are outragious... and yes, we had to fix our engine multiple times. First it was engine mounts - fixed in Nanny Cay Marina - $1600 for fixing by specialiast mechanic (luckily they had the mounts in the stock). Then we stack for a weeks in the Village Cay Marina fixing our fresh water pump - again, luckily they had a pump in stock, that was unbelievable luck! Changed fuel ingectors, drained antifriz for indefinite times.... And, of course, missed all the opportunities of the good weather to travel sourth-east to Leeward islands - St.Martin and further down. We met a lot of interesting and nice people: Carrol and Patric on Songbird, Tom - 72 years old sailor, Mark and Noel on Cavu, Kathryn and Jorge on Picaro. But they all went ahead of us and we cought up with most of them later. I don't remember what date we finally left BVIs, but we finally made it to St.Martin sometime in June. We had to motorsail again - even though weather forcast called for NE winds, we did not get it. So.. it was exhausting long overnight motorsail. We were so surprised when, after we finally dropped our anchore in Samson Bay waiting for the swing bridge to open, we heard Patric's message on VHF "Lucky Seven, welcome to St.Martin"! So, we met with our Songbird friends and spent very good time together exploring (actually, we were exploring and Carrol and Patric were showing us everything around) this beautiful island. I liked the French side more than Dutch. I could not get enough of the french island city life in the little Marigold town. The fresh amazing pastries and bread every day, delishous coffee in the cafes with sitting outside, the most beatifuly and fashionable dressed women, oh, I enjoyed there every minute! There are so many cute botiques with last fashions - I could not resist to buy one short dress, and while trying it on, I commented to myself - ohh it's too short, on what the french owner answered - hey, it's not short at all! Ok, it's a bit short for my standards, but I really love it! And, oh, those french stinky cheeses and pates, how I miss civilization! The Sint Marteen - Dutch side - is not so upscale, but it's more useful for yachters and provision is much more cheaper there. But there is a time again to depart from my new favorite place to move on to the next islands. We sailed to St.Bart - it was very beatiful and comfortable sail. We anchored in Anse Colombier - that place is very very beautiful. To bad our friends Songbird did not make it with us on the same day... Next day we moved to Augusta - capital of St.Bart, it was very rolly mooring parking, but next early morning we left St.Kitts, tried to sail, but had to use engine again, and.. our engine decided to misbehave and overheat at the end of ths trip. Kevin had to park the boat in the marina with entering on the highest RPMs because slowing down ment to overheat the engine even more - it's the same as with the speed of the car 60 m/h try to make sharp corners and stop abruptly without using your breaks (the boats don't have breaks, so stopping the boat is actually hard and requires advance skills). But we made it to the dock and did not break anything on the way. St.Kitts, then new islans and, of course, we have to fix the engine again! Seems that we are busy with our old iron horse on each stop! This time Kevin changed impeller - because we thought it's the problem. While Kevin was working I sanded our wood outside and wewhile waiting for the NE wind again to go to Dominca, we varnished outside of our boat - this time we layed 7 coats, just 2 less than it should be, but, oh well, we hope to work on it somewhere later. St.Kitts is a nice island, very friendly people, everything is very cheap. We excessively used public busses for our excursions around the island. Very pretty mountanious island. Locals are good, but they like VERY loud music which starts at 9am untill at least 2am. I guess, we are in Caribbean, and have to get used to that.
June 26 - June 30
Had a very long exhausting 23 hours trip from St.Kitts to Dominca. We had to skip Guadalupe because we are late to get to Grenada already. Actually, the first 13 hours we sailed with 6-7 m/h speed, a bit uncomfortably healing, but still good. However, near Guadalupe we had to start engine and ran it to the end of the trip to the Portmouth in Dominica. When passing the islands, we noticed that the wind start doing weird things - either dying to 7 m/h, or pick up over 30 m/h, which makes it very hard to setup sails properly. The waves in the channel between Guadalupe and Dominica were not less than 8 feet, plus the high wind... cannot use the autopilot in these conditions, so had to steer the boat all the time.. I am so glad this trip is over! Dominican island so far my favorite - it's absolutely stunning nature, there is no a picture which can catch this beauty, have to see it for yourself. We hiked a lot, saw huge waterfalls, hot sulfur springs/baths, very cold lake - swam there too, it was so cold to swim! Took a trip in the Indian river, which fairy tell beauty was used for the screening Pirates of Caribbean 2 - episod with Calypso witch. Went throught the farm of the tropical plants: banans (all kinds), mangoes, avocados, papayas, bread fruits, gooseberries, different citrus plant, cashews, cocao and coffee trees. Dominica is called a "Bread Busket" of the Caribbes, and it's so true. Currently they are building the new power plant which will use the heat from the dormant vulcano - so cool! This island has the cleanest natural water of all caribbean islands - from the mountains. We finally met here with other boats who we met in BVIs: Picaro and Cavu. But again, they left two days earlier to Martinique. We hope to catch up with them again.
July 1 - July 24
Have not had to log our trip adventures for almost a month! Time is going soo fast! We liked Martinique island, first staed at St.Pierre bay which is very old nice french town which was totally covered by lava in 1902 while erruption of the vulcano. The town was rebuilt soon after and every building in the town is using at least one wall from the old constructions covered by lava. Very beuatiful and pieceful place. We took public busses to explore the island, spent one day in Fort de France - big industrial and not very pretty city. But it has nice backeries and restaurants serve very delicious french food. We rented a car to drive to Marin - the area of the big marina and all sailing needs. Interesting that we met there (in the disel shop) the french girl who delivered our charter boat to St.Lucia 5 years ago! That was interesting meeting. The last night we spent in Rosseau, where we met our new friends - Del Max - young family from Israel with three young children, leaving in Boston now. Next stop was St.Lucia! We stayed at St.Lucia for more than a week, first in Rodney Bay - on the mooring in marina because of the high winds, then we moved to Pitons bay. That anchorage between Pitons was very very rolly, but it worth suffering because of the stunning view of the island at this place. We climbed to the top of Pettite Piton (about 4600 feet) with the Lee (our tour guy). We made accent in 1.5 hours and descent in 40 min. We showed very good time, better than avarage. It was very hard climbing, using every muscle of your body to pull up on ropes and crawl in the "rabit holes", but we did it! Next day we went to see active vulcano, with boiling water in the multiple little craters and took a mud bath at the sulfur springs - that was a lot of fun! While staying in the Rodney Bay - the most civilized place on the island with nice shopping malls and great supermarkets - we took busses to ride to Castries (capital) and Marigold Bay (very pretty and quiet anchorage). In Castries we spent most of the time exploring huge city market: tried a lot of different fruits, bought locally made wooden sting ray, got the spices for making a spice rum, set of spices for the cocao tee, and watermellon! We had nice cheap and delisious lunch right at the market (hopefully, we did not get any parasites at those places, because everything seems very dirty and stinky). We did not like much town Soufriere - a lot of locals beg for money and don't leave you alone, very annoying. The town is dirty and food is not great. We decided to skip St.Vincent because lately there were reported some assaults on the cruisers and next stop was Bequia. It was such a disappointment for us in Bequia! We did not find it so much cute, clean, fun and friendly as we remembered it from our first caribbean trip. Everything seemed so rundown and gray this time... a lot of beggers at any place.. so we were glad to leave this place and sailed to Mustique island. Mustique could be called "Disney World" for the white rich people. It's a private island and of course, it's absolutely crazy expansive. The anchorage was very rolly as well, however, snorkling and water are amazing. On the first night we had barbeque at some local place and after that Kevin and I went bar hopping in this little village. Kevin even got chance to play pool (and he lost), and I finally danced a lot! We had a bit uncomfortable return home: I had to drive our dinghy and Kevin fall down in the water while trying to get on the boat from dinghy, and his phone was in his pocket. In the morning he found his wet phone in the pocket and even drying it in the bag of rice did not help to bring it alive. Oh well, it's just a phone. But we had very good time, met almost all the locals in the village, who were very kind to forgiving to us, and our introduction to Grenadines life was consume "Iron Jack" - very strong homemade rum, with a glass of water after a shot. That was very painful experience! Next stop was Canouan island, and again, the anchorage was VERY rolly! While walking around a village we discovered that we actually have been in this place 5 years ago! That was surprise to us. We still cannot find a place we ate before on one of the Grenadines islands with "One Love" writing on the wall. Hmmm, we are not dreaming about that, because we still have a picture of that! After two nights we left this rolly place (after we finally got water for our boat), and went to straight to Mayreau little island, while skipping Tobago Cays (the weather did not promisse anything good, so we had to find better protected and NOT rolly anchorage). First night was a disaster - very rolly again - at the Salt Whistle Bay. It was so packed that was very hard to find any anchorage, besides the moorings were all taken. We were only US boat there, the rest were French, Dutch, Swiden, etc. But the bay is very pretty, even though the bottom of the bay is full with the trash from the charter boats. Next day we moved to Saline Bay, that was much better anchorage, less rolling and very very clean and pretty, with white sand beach and starfish on the bottom. So far, this is my favorite stop in Grenadines. We spent there couple days swimming, snorkeling, hiking and then moved to the next - Union island. Not much excitement at the Union island - we anchored in the Clifton Bay, interesting place with huge reefs around. It seems like not much protection, but the reefs are breaking any waves and it was not much rolly. We had a tropical wave while staying there - a lot of heavy winds, and Kevin did not get much sleep, every though we dropped two anchores just in case. Clifton bay is a home of the Kitesurfing school and Kevin desperately wanted to get a class, which is pricy - $200 per person for 3 hours. Even though we were here in the low season, all the classes were completely booked, so, we did not have opportunity to try kitesurfing. After weather got better we sailed to Carrriacou, Grenada.
August 1, Carriacou, Grenada
We almost made it to Grenada! Amazing how fast time is passing while hopping islands. We are staying here, in Carriacou for couple nights already. It's a neet place. Local people are very friendly and not mailcious. No need to lock your boat, shut your hatches and pull up your dinghy overnight. So far, seems very safe. Locals seem like living in the lazy mood, not caring much about cruisers. We had hard time to find place to eat at night, because locals kind of even don't care if they get some customers. We explored the island on the local bus, went to Windward village where locals build their wooden sailboats from white cedar found planty in the woods. Spent some time in Hillsborough town, the provision is not the best at this place and kind of expencive. We got here in the right time, because this week is annual 49th Regatta in Carriacou. Kevin got a place on one of the boats to help a skipper in the race.
No comments:
Post a Comment