At last, after 15 days we left Las Palmas. It was a great interlude with a visit from Tom who came bearing spare parts for the generator and water maker. The Yankee UV strip was repaired, and the generator start problems eventually run down to a faulty earth connection on the start circuit. The water maker primary pump was replaced, and the system re-configured to two tubes pending more spares.
It has been fun here, not least because we were parked alongside ‘Calypso Flyer’ owned by a retired SIA captain (Mike) who left Singapore with his partner (Shiho) 5 years ago. He was full of good advice, not to mention being very amusing, and we have monitored his progress as he made his way back home to Trinidad. Having arrived, he advised that the best way to cross the Atlantic in a yacht was to do it only once, and to ship it! Maybe we will visit him in Trinidad in due course.
We had a lovely day with Tom driving around Gran Canaria although the west coast road was a nightmare of short hairpin bends with articulated HGVs coming the other way. We stopped off on the way home and bought 4 new batteries at 200 euros each – nothing is cheap in yachting or aviation!
We watched ‘Beebopalula’ depart as the final straggler to the 2006 ARC. They had a hammock of fruit that was turning into fruit salad as they continued to delay their departure. However subsequently, we saw that they were able to rescue the crew of another Bavaria that lost its rudder on the way. Needless to say, that this news caused the Moonbeam crew to demonstrate the fitment of the emergency tiller!
Armed with yet another set of Xmas lights and a climbing Father Christmas, we launched off for Lanzarote to await the arrival of the kids for Christmas. Our original plan was to have been in the Caribbean by then, but Gemma and Simon managed to get a few days off over Christmas and Annabel was able to fly out too. In addition, Simon’s parents decided to take a villa in Playa Blanca and spent a week here with Alex, their youngest daughter.
Meanwhile, Tom had completed a number of job interviews and returned with yet more spares. All-in-all this meant that we were able to spend a family Christmas together for the first time in a several years – Brilliant!
We oscillated between Marina Rubicon and Puerto Calero for nearly a month with only one night at anchor, but we had great fun and laughed a lot. We cooked the Christmas turkey in our oven because Simon’s parents’ villa did not have one and the following day tried our hand at a suckling pig.
We explored the island and really felt that it did not in any way deserve the slang ‘Lanzagrotty’ that it is so well known by. Most of the development seems to be controlled with no high rises and everything kept in a smart condition. The weather was generally fine with the temperature during the day rising to 21C+ and when the sun was out, which it was most of the time, it was very pleasant. David’s daughter, Jules, arrived on 28th December and stayed until 3rd January, so we loitered in Lanzarote a little longer. We did some research and acquired a fishing rod and lures. We have deluded ourselves that this would be a good investment when we caught fresh Tuna to augment our diet across the Atlantic. However, hope springs eternal!
Having returned to Las Palmas we were ready to go. We started the detailed planning of the provisioning that although had been occupying our thoughts almost continually, now needed to be turned into concrete purchases. We ran a virtual menu for seven days and multiplied the result by three and then added a contingency. I have every confidence that we will not starve!
The meat is to be vacuum packed and frozen, and the vegetables packed in special green vegetable bags. Our vacuum packer will be well used this trip.
As far as the boat is concerned, the ‘grab bag’ needed attention and the dinghy needed to be put to bed on its davits, but otherwise she was basically ship-shape. Gemma and Simon gave me an air-to-air radio for Christmas so I will be able to call up passing “Speedbirds” (BA aircraft) on the way. The weather forecast was monitored daily, sometimes hourly, but it looked as though the Trade Winds had settled in and so my plan was to set course for Antigua direct. A small (but no doubt expensive) repair to the spinnaker and the purchase of courtesy flags for the Caribbean was all that remained to be done for the vessel. We allowed four days for this. I gave notice that we will be leaving no later than Tuesday 9thJanuary, (weather permitting) regardless!
Our First Atlantic Crossing – Destination Antigua
I am informed by Sarah that it will not only be the first but also the last! However, we duly started in the late evening of the 9th in a good forecast of NE winds and smooth seas. We had a good start for the first two days averaging 6.5kts. Our weather forecasting was obtained by sending an automated email created on the computer, which is returned quickly with the required data from the US weather centre. We ask for wind, surface pressure and wave heights for an area approximately 200nms N and S of us and 600nms W of our position. This is done at least once per day given a successful connection to the Iridium network. As a result, we were aware that there was a forecast hole in the winds and duly experienced flat calms for a period on the third day. It has been frustrating but good for the soul.
Tom was ill but the rest of the crew quickly settled into the routine of keeping the boat moving and at the same time doing all the domestic chores. We (I) have been baking fresh bread every morning for our wake-up bacon rolls and have adopted our menu which we wrote down on the back of a ‘fag packet’. It was a distillation of all that we have read about blue water cruising, to give us an idea of how we should provision for the crossing. We decided that the mornings should start with a bacon roll; a light lunch should follow after the noon-day salute was observed (a can or two of beer) and an evening meal served at 2000 before the night watch started at 2100. The pressure is on as I write this because Friday is fish night and although we have had a strike at sunset on the last two evenings, I have failed to land a fish as yet so we might have to rely on the freezer.
We have run the generator for two hours in the morning and one at night for battery charging, water making, running the main fridge and freezers, and heating the domestic water. So far that seems adequate as the food in the freezers is rock hard as is most of the stuff in the domestic fridge!
We have a reasonable data link through the Iridium sat phone, although it usually takes several attempts for the computers to handshake. Given the cost of the calls, I shall be investing in the network as soon as we reach Antigua!
It is late afternoon at the moment and David and Sarah are asleep, Tom is reading, and I am writing – there is never enough time to get things done, especially when it takes us 45 minutes to fly the chute! I must get back to the grind.
890 miles up after 6 days and I write this whilst taking the first watch at 2100. We are now well into the tropics and the Trade Winds have set in at 15-20 kts as advertised for this time of year. We landed three fish today and lost the lure to a fourth. We had one for lunch – there is no better tasting fish than one you caught yourself. Maybe our investment in a rod and reel was not pie in the sky! Our book on marine life has left us with some uncertainty of what we have caught, but the general view is that they were female or young Dorado.
There is no time to get bored or even to read a book at the moment. Yesterday started with the need to fix the vang because the shackle had parted. This required heat and brute force to separate the sleeves. Once this was done, we flew the cruising chute whilst goose winged. Unfortunately, David accidentally let the sheet go and the consequent wrap around the forestay resulted in the sail being wrecked. At least we were eventually able to recover the remains without resort to me ascending the mast. All-in-all, this was not a good day.
Our other challenge is that the water maker high pressure pump motor decided to stop working overnight. It is heavy and awkward to get at (it is in a boat after all), and when tested it looks as though the start relay electronics have packed up. Everyone is on short rations for washing until I can sort this out one way or another. We have more than sufficient bottled water on board and 700/900 litres of potable water, but it will be disappointing not to be able to take a shower whenever we feel like it. However, my problem is that the last time I ‘did’ AC motors was at school, so I just hope that Nigel Calder’s book might help!
The days seem to melt into one another in that we seem to have been at sea for ever and yet only just left – it is very strange. Otherwise, we have been lucky that dolphins have come to play on several occasions and the odd shearwater has passed by. We saw a tanker pass a couple of miles away last evening but other than that we have been on our own. We have decided to run a sweepstake on our arrival time at a waypoint 100nms out of Antigua. It has got everybody concentrating on their navigation. Meanwhile, I continue to practice my skills with the sextant. The noon sight is relatively easy, but the star shots are more challenging from a constantly moving platform – not least because you have to identify the stars before you shoot them! Luckily, we have Starry Night on the computer and apart from being a source of wonder for everyone on board, it has been a planetary education. At night there needs to be some light to see the horizon – moonlight or twilight being the best source. That said, as ever, the more I practice the luckier I get! However, I wonder what we would do without GPS in this day and age. I hope the Americans don’t decide to turn it off!
Our first 1000 miles was achieved yesterday afternoon and we celebrated with some
bubbles in the evening whilst eating the fish that we caught the day before and that
David cooked. This was his first culinary adventure since he has been living with us since October. Our decision to run an arrival sweepstake at a point 100 miles out from Antigua has revealed that Tom and I think we will arrive on the 26th, Sarah and David on 27th, Gemma on the 28th and Annabel on the 30th. The ship’s clock was formally retarded one hour to mark 30W at noon on 17th January. Jet lag is not going to be a problem this trip! I managed to jury rig the HP water maker pump so that I could start it by turning the shaft by wrapping a cord around it like an outboard motor. It runs for about 30 minutes before getting too hot but that makes sufficient water (30ltrs x 3 x daily) to keep up with our domestic usage more or less. Showers are once again approved!
We are going to use the laptop to update our position on Yotreps/Shiptrak from now on to see if it works properly. We have been sending it regularly from the boat computer, but it does not seem to have been updating our position. However, we heard from Gemma today that we have had our first success and our dot has moved from the Canaries!
We are currently 1250 miles down track at 1820N 3135W and have taken the decision to go further S as there is a low forecast in the next 48 hours to the N of us. Tom advises that the hurricane season is over so there is nothing to worry about!
It seems that Murphy’s Law abounds in the high seas also. This year we arrived (intentionally) in Las Palmas just after the ARC had left. We then had planned to be in Lanzarote because all the children could be with us for Christmas and this would be the first time we would be all together for a number of years, albeit that they came and went when we were skiing in all of the previous years.
According to all the information we have on the Trade Winds, they should have settled in by December. However, this year’s ARC had record crossing times and I am still searching for wind! I do not want to go further south because, at least here we have the lift from the North Equatorial Current which is pushing us on at 1.5 kts. It would make more sense to change our destination to Barbados - but I promised Sarah many years ago when I took her on a trip to Antigua when I was flying B707s, that one day, I would bring her in a big yacht to English Harbour, and there is no time like the present! We are drifting along under main and poled out Yankee making just 6kts over the ground. It is 0230L as I write this with nothing other than the stars and phosphorescence to light our way. A wonderful lesson in patience!
Our ‘back-of the fag-packet’ menu calls for fish today but since our success with 3 Dorado ten days ago we have not managed to reel in any of the numerous strikes we have had. We seem to have left a trail of fish requiring restorative jaw surgery across this part of the Atlantic. So, once the sun comes up the pressure is on. I should have bought a book about fishing!
We have celebrated each 500 miles with a bottle of cava and each 1000 miles with a meal cooked by David or Tom and our track shows how we have tried to chase the winds. We alternately pole out and run, put ourselves on a broad reach, even set the spinnaker but nothing is going to stop Annabel from winning the sweepstake. Just occasionally Moonbeam picks up her skirts and shows us how she likes to cruise at 8kts, but this is going to be a slow crossing. Every cloud has a silver lining and of course, a slow crossing means slight seas. Given that this is our first long passage, I am more than happy with the result.
After spending a day repairing the ratchet on our reel, which had cost us a number of lures and many metres of line, we got a strike from a Dorado, which we fought close to the boat, only to lose it yet again. However, a little later we heard the reel screaming and Tom took the rod and fought a seriously large fish. When he got tired, I took over and fought it to the boat so that David could gaff it and bring it aboard. He was a magnificent Dorado measuring 1.30m, which we killed by pouring the ship’s best vodka into his gills. We cut him into steaks and some fillets and put the rest back into the sea to become ‘sea snow’ in due course.
We have seen shearwaters, frigate birds, tropicbirds countless flying fish, occasional visits by schools of dolphins and at last a yacht! Steinlager 2 appeared from our port quarter under spinnakers and overtook us en-route to Antigua. We took some great photos of her and perhaps we will meet up with them at some point - just 375nms to go.
Our last clock change took place on 31st January, having clocked up 3000 miles the night before. At last land ahoy!
We anchored in English Harbour at 1830L on 31stJanuary 2007 with 3184nms on the GPS clock. The trip from Las Palmas has taken us 22 days 4hours and 30 minutes. A well- deserved bottle of champagne was gratefully shared between the four of us. What a fantastic feeling – truly a dream come true. I think a rest is in order!
The First 2700 miles of Caribbean Cruising, February – August 2007
So much for a rest! Sitting here in Martinique a month after the official start of the hurricane season, it seems a very long time ago that we first arrived in Antigua. Before David left us to return to England, we were moored stern-to on English Harbour’s Dockyard Marina when we were hailed ‘Are you really from Dartmouth?’ It turned out to be neighbours of ours, Colin and Angie Campbell, who were visiting their daughter – a small world indeed!
Our plotter has a log on it and when it prints it looks like a child’s scribbling over the Lesser Antilles as we seem to have been up and down like a yo-yo. We set off initially towards Tortola via Nevis and St Kitts as we had never before visited the BVIs.
Both Nevis and St Kitts were laid back, friendly islands with high mountains dropping into the sea. On Nevis next to the up-market Four Seasons Hotel an enterprising guy called ‘Sunshine’ had set up a beach bar and his speciality rum drinks called ‘killer bees’ were just that! We didn’t linger long before setting off for Road Harbour and as we sailed into the Sir Francis Drake channel, Tom said “it looks like the Solent during Cowes week” – well true enough but at least 20C warmer! Our first impressions were that we had arrived in the Bahamas because everything was very American – especially the prices! I don’t think we had appreciated just how active the charter market was here but then Moorings alone had a base with over 200 yachts.
Inevitably this put pressure on good anchorages and moorings and contrasted significantly to what we had experienced previously in the Caribbean. It meant that in order to find special places it was necessary to ‘read between the lines’ of the cruising guide. This is something we will be better at next time around. A visit to the BVIs is apparently not complete without eating lobster at Anegada. This is an island that is first recognised by palm trees growing out of the sea, because it is so flat. The approach is quite shallow for us with a draft of 2.3m and we duly anchored in the bay showing less than 3m. Now it would be true to say that I have largely ignored tides since departing the Canaries because the tidal range is generally so small in the Caribbean. It was only after we touched bottom that I looked to find that the tidal range in Anegada was in excess of a metre. No harm done other than to the skipper’s pride! However, Sarah was most displeased when Tom told her that George Clooney was dining at a table behind her but didn’t do so until after we had left the restaurant.
After a few more days we set off for St Martin for some French cuisine. We had chartered previously from here and were delighted that it was much as we remembered. The contrast between the ex - English islands and the French Antilles is stark. As we were later to confirm in Guadaloupe and Martinique, to all intents and purposes you have arrived in France. The supermarkets are well stocked, the roads are covered with tarmac and for the most part it is like being home in Mougins.
We spent 3 pleasant days in Marigot bay before it was time to head back towards Antigua for Tom to fly home. It was a rough ride overnight into the teeth of the trade winds but in the morning, we were rewarded when Sarah spotted a pod of whales. We anchored in English Harbour so we could have a final meal together in ‘Abracadabra’, an Italian restaurant that is just outside the dockyard and which had survived there for 17 years.
Tom left us so that he could attend interviews and he subsequently accepted a position as a trainee accountant with a London firm starting the middle of August. Sarah and I were on the boat together by ourselves for the first time since June last year and although we missed Tom’s company, it was not going to be for long!
We set off for Guadeloupe and spent a couple of days in Deshaies where we hired a car and drove to Point à Pìtre via a magnificent coast road and then through the rain forest. As advertised in the cruising guide, Point à Pìtre has a huge marina with lots of facilities and, of course is the finishing point for the Route de Rhum transatlantic race. There were several big trimarans both on the hard and in the water, having stayed here after the last race. We decided it would be sensible to come here to affect some repairs, and so we booked ourselves in.
Anyway, we set off in the interim with the intention of visiting Basse-Terre, the capital, but we gave up after a number of unsuccessful attempts to anchor off the town on a ledge a few metres wide with a vertical drop-off to a depth of over 200 metres. This worked to our advantage because we sailed on to Les Saintes. These are an enchanting group of small islands just south of Guadeloupe with daily excursion boats from there just like the islands off Brittany. It was then a short run back to Point à Pìtre for repairs to sails, spray hood, dinghy, davits and 101 other small items.
After a week it was time to return to Antigua to pick up Sarah’s sister and brother-in-law, Joanna and Tony Ferguson. We had invited them to join us for a cruise to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. When Tony had been looking at flights out to the Caribbean, I had glanced at the chart and suggested they arrive in Antigua and depart from Tobago. After all it was only a couple of inches on the chart. However, when I started working on an itinery for the 15 days they were to be with us, it was destined to be a longer cruise than I thought!
Anyway, we moored stern-to in English Harbour and collected them from the airport, having got the journey down to a fine art. There is only one signpost on Antigua as far as we can make out, but the road map helpfully identifies the position of the two sets of traffic lights and all the gas stations. It being a Thursday, we took them up to Shirley Heights for a rum punch, steel band and the spectacular view of the harbour. We decided to make the most of the hire car and so the following day we drove through the rain forest to Jolly Harbour for supplies. Later in the evening we had a celebration meal in ‘Abracadabra’.
Our first sail was back to Deshaies in Guadeloupe so that Joanna, Sarah, and Tony could visit the lovely botanical gardens situated above the town. We lingered a day and then drifted on down to Dominica and anchored in Prince Rupert Bay. The choice of Portsmouth for our first visit to Dominica was not one of our best as the town is rather seedy and run down. So, after a quick look we decided to move on, but I needed to clear in and out. By now, of course, I was well used to the bureaucracy of checking the boat and crew into and out of each island. Without making fun of the formalities, there seemed to be a number of rules common to all the Caribbean islands:
You have to hit an opening time for customs and separately immigration, which were often not in the same offices, and which could be situated some distance apart.
You needed to plan not less than half a day for the exercise.
You had to keep a sense of humour at all times (for example: in Antigua the six copies of the form required for the boat inbound and outbound, and two each for every crew member had to be stamped by both customs and immigration. So, a visit to Antigua resulted in two passport stamps, 24 stamps for the boat and four each for the crew customs and immigration forms, all individually initialled).
The rules change from day to day depending on the whim of the customs and immigration officers on duty.
The rules are different port to port on the same island and completely different on each island.
I explain this because in Deshaies the customs window was open for about half an hour three days a week, and although I had a departure clearance from Antigua, on this occasion I had neither an arrival nor departure clearance from Guadeloupe. Whilst I was filling in the forms in customs in Portsmouth, a skipper from a French yacht who was ahead of me was asked for his departure clearance from Deshaies which, of course, like me he didn’t have. An unbelievable conflagration erupted with the customs chief shouting at him that if he came into his port, he must obey his rules. Failing to do so was going to result in a large fine and he was duly led away never to be seen again! I was very sad for his plight but extremely grateful that whilst all this was going on I had enough time to cross out Deshaies as the departure point on all of the forms and substitute English Harbour before it was my turn for interrogation.
We moved on to St Pierre in Martinique and as a contrast we were able to check-in in an internet café – but this is France! In Fort-de-France a couple of days later, we hired a car for a tour around the east coast and found a disused rum distillery. We had a pleasant lunch there amongst the farm animals that were free to roam around the open-air restaurant – very French! The drive back through the rain forest was spectacular.
Onward to Bequia which we would not have made if I had not altered course to avoid being run down by Sea Princess, who turned across us in open water. We were sailing and showing the correct lights and had right of way or in technical terms we were the stand-on vessel. Having asked on the radio if she could see us on her port quarter and ascertained that she could, I made my displeasure plain on channel 16, so I have no doubt that the officer-of-the-watch had some explaining to do to her Captain.
We stayed in Bequia for three days. The Yankee had torn on a seam and was repaired by Whitfield sails. He did such a good job that we left the cruising chute with him for an estimate and later, subsequent repair. But the nicest surprise was finding Jonathan Baker on Arabella, our sister Oyster 55, last seen in Ipswich. Apart from being a really nice guy, Jonathan had provided all sorts of sound advice having owned Arabella for nine years and made several Atlantic crossings. He used his diving gear and replaced our prop anodes, one of which was missing and the other loose. We enjoyed the first of several pleasant evenings together.
We left to spend a day in the Tobago Cays and then departed for Tobago as time was running out for Joanna and Tony. We arrived in Scarborough at 0145 and were disconcerted not to see any other yachts at anchor. This is because all the visiting yachts anchor in the beautiful adjacent bays. We didn’t know this because needless to say it was not until we had set out for Tobago that we discovered our cruising guide ran out at Grenada, and we needed another edition for Trinidad and Tobago. Actually, our paper charts didn’t cover it either although, of course our electronic ones did. The entry procedures were the most complex yet and in fact when Sarah and I checked much later and were standing in the queue, we were advised by a local to “be patient and send out for food and water”.
We moved around to Store Bay which is quite beautiful and had a lovely farewell meal in the prestigious Coco Reef Resort. We saw Jo and Tony off having had lots of fun and laughed a lot, hoping that they will be able to join us again someday.
Sarah and I were alone again and after another couple of days set off for Grenada. A trip to St Georges underlined the devastation caused by hurricane ‘Ivan’ in 2004. The three major churches which lost their roofs in the hurricane sadly had still not been repaired and were open to the elements.
We then returned to Bequia via Union Island and met up again with Arabella, and subsequently left on Easter day bound for Martinique. We stopped overnight in Marigot Bay having arrived after customs had shut and departed the following morning before they opened. However, we were sadly disappointed to see that the development around the bay that has occurred in the 15 years since we were last here has substantially destroyed the magnificence of this natural harbour.
Our destination was Le Marin yacht harbour. This is a place where you can buy an engine off the shelf – a worthy substitute for the skipper’s contentment to a Sears hardware department! We spent three days cleaning and polishing the stainless steel and topsides in preparation for the Oyster Antigua Regatta. By the time we left (exhausted) Moonbeam sparkled. She sported new mainsail and yankee sheets as well as fuel and oil filters for her machinery. It was now time to return to Antigua to pick up Chrissie and Rory Macleod.