Matthew Town, Great Inagua Island

12. Jan. 2015
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The Bahamas
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Left the open, desolate anchorage off the south tip of Acklins island in the late afternoon and headed southeast after passing the tall, white, empty lighthouse on Castle Island. Hugged the island to keep us out of shipping lanes in the Mira Por Vos passage. Our first overnight sail up ahead of us, we talked through our game plans should things go awry, and trimmed our sails as tight as possible to make it to Great Inagua without tacking or motoring.

The sun sank, fired a brilliant orange, and then all too quickly left us in darkness. My mom’s fancy solar lights lit up to keep us company. Those things are awesome! With no moon to speak of I was amazed at how much natural light was in the air even with no cloud cover and no other ambient light. You could still see clouds, the horizon, and wavelets. And let’s face it. When you’re offshore, that’s about all there is to see anyway!

Also saw lights of a few ships passing in the night. Reminded me of a melodic song by Brazilian Girls. The close ones popped up on our AIS display, though I couldn’t get a copy from them when I hailed them on the SSB and VHF. Maybe they were ignoring me like a big brother ignores a dorky little sibling. Story of my life.

With fifteen knots of wind we scooted right along at six knots, the motion a touch uncomfortable since we were heading into the wind and waves, but not altogether unpleasant. We had some dinner in the dark, trying to keep our eyes on the darkened horizon for the sake of our stomachs. Then it was time to start our watches. We kept three-hour stints, which sometimes turned into four. One went below and tried to sleep while the other read or looked out into the black, and studies the horizon every ten minutes to look for big, fast, scary freighters. The motion and noise of slapping waves below made falling asleep annoying, but not impossible. After a few shifts, some annoyingly erratic wind just before dawn, and lots of midnight snacks, the east horizon glowed orange, and the sun shot beams out of the cloud bank. We’d made our first overnight! And we were bushed. Pulled into the anchorage off the rocky shore of Mathew Town, Great Inagua, and slept until the afternoon.

The next few days we explored the town, picked up Liza from the airport, and made some Dutch friends along the way!

Martjin and Seeneka were in town to survey the construction of the new port, as the old one left something to be desired. Bahamas Air lost their GPS antennas, so they had a little time to do some depth measurement of the waters surrounding the island. Thus, we happily decided to postpone the boat projects we had in mind in favor of a sailing day up to the Man of War Bay with our new friends! They showed up with snacks, drinks, and a heavy bruce anchor Martjin found on the bottom of the quay! They were both experience sailors (more so than us!) and it was fabulous to have a full crew to work the sails. Made eight knots heading north and were shadowed for some time by a pod of dolphins playing in our bow wake. The island’s main revenue is from Morton Salt, which makes it’s sea salt here. Huge mounds of the precious stuff loomed tall on shore and a freighter loaded maneuvered in to load up.

Pulled into the bay and all jumped in the water to do some spearfishing! Only got one fish, but made a tasty fried snack for us. Sailed back in the dark under blazing stars and made dinner in our old anchorage. Really fun, impromptu day with some really interesting, storied, and fun people. That’s what we live for.

This morning, Chris Parker’s forecast sounded promising for the Windward Passage and the crossing to Colombia. We made haste, and got to work readying the boat for an afternoon departure tomorrow. I worked engines, Liza did decks and rigging, and Miranda worked galley. In six hours we had engine fluids and filters changed, running rigging checked, foreword lockers battened down, and lunches made for the days on passage. A little provisioning tomorrow and we’ll be off like and reaching south! Colombia here we come!

ps- Check out Liza’s take on Great Inagua here and here!

pps- Credit to Sanneke Reiche for the top-most image.

Bimini, the Bahamas- our first foreign port!

23. Nov. 2014
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The Bahamas
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1 Comment

Author: Miranda

So, here we are! In the Bahamas! After making a short, but tenacious, trip across the Gulf Stream to North Bimini Island. We have been anchored here for almost a week, as the winds are blowing like a banshee, socking us in.

Let’s start with the trip over- not exactly the smoothest of sailing, but we survived. It was fine. The obvious heroines (Wendy and Belinda, remember?) of the trip were our twin Volvo diesels which pushed us straight east the entirety of the trip- from anchor up to anchor down. Yes, we spent the entire day motoring straight into the wind. So, “why cross in those conditions?” you ask. Basically, it’s by far the least of two evils. Being that the Gulf Stream runs from south to north, you don’t want to be anywhere near it when the winds are coming from the opposite direction. This makes for nasty, confused seas. So, northerly winds and the Gulf Stream are one big, bad combination. And, once the northern winter winds in Florida start, they rarely ever stop. The winds were mild(ish), 10-15 knots, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely the weather window we were waiting for.

We pulled up anchor just as first light was peeking over the horizon, found our buddy boat, and headed east.

We were surprised at just how far our cell phone signal reached, so we both took turns calling family and friends from several miles offshore- to squeeze as much out of our U.S. cell phone while we had it, and it was just plain fun to share our excitement for the day ahead with loved ones.

There were two portions of the trip when the sea was at its worst- right at the beginning and then right, smack-dab in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Any trip made below decks during the day made us both feel a little woozy, but it was especially puke-y feeling around then. Per Casey Becker’s (I know, I know Casey Harrison’s) suggestion, as we headed through the worst waves, we blasted what I like to call “weight room jams” (some good ol’ Metalica, Def Leopard, Offspring- just think back to what they used to play in your high school weight room, and you’ll know what I mean).

It’s a somewhat anticlimactic moment to find yourself entering the Gulf Stream. People talk about it as a “raging river in the ocean.” As we were getting 5, 6, 7, 8 miles offshore, Pete and I kept looking and at each other and saying “so, are we in it yet? Are we in the Gulf Stream?” There’s no mistaking the odd feeling of being sloshed around in weird directions once you’re in the middle of this “river,” but the entrance… not so noticeable.

Here’s our new friends from Canada, Brian and Yvonne, in Options 3. They made the crossing with us and are now hanging out with us in Bimini. Really great folks. Lots of expertise, plenty of fun discussion, and great euchre players when the weather is especially yucky.

Headed out past Stiltsville. I was hoping we could get a closer look at these interesting homes, but we were too far away to poke around.

Some menacing, little waves.

Your first time noticing that there’s no land in sight is empowering… if a little scary.

Notice the lack of horizon in this picture- taken as we met a wave, head-on. Just a little spray.

And, finally, Land Ho!

Pete put up our first ever courtesy flag and later we toasted our first passage (of many, hopefully) with some champagne. Thanks Lily!

As far as life in Bimini goes, we generally see the sun pop out for an hour or two in the morning, then its grey clouds, constantly looking on the brink of rain for the rest of the day. But, it hasn’t been all that bad. We are itching to get a move on, of course, but Binimi World Resort (our neighbor here at the anchorage) has blessed with free wifi and access to THEIR SHOWERS! We haven’t been here in the Bahamas long, but you realize very quickly how fresh water is a very expensive and scarce commodity, so free (and HOT!) showers is as close to winning the lottery that you can get without actually buying a ticket.

We jumped in the beautiful, wickedly blue waters for a few hours one morning to do some snorkeling, but mostly we are using the time to do projects on the boat. Pete’s mostly working his way down a to-do list of repairs, while I’ve been focusing on getting our Pactor modem set up to send and receive email through our SSB radio. This will keep us connected wherever we happen to be. Other than the obvious social conveniences, this will allow us to receive important weather reports and maps on a daily basis from anywhere on the globe.

Getting this system all set up was no small feat. The technology has been around for a long time, but is still pretty darn cool if you think about it. Our Pactor modem will take our text emails, compress them into teeny, tiny bits of information, convert them to audio signals (something along the lines of Morse Code, but not really), then fire them to a shore station, where they will be converted back to text, and sent to all you wonderful folks. There’s both some special software on my end on my laptop and some special people working at the shore stations (thank you SailMail!) to make this all happen.

It took all of the “Idiot’s Guides to setting up your Pactor Modem… your SSB… your Airmail software… etc, etc” that I could get my hands on, but I figured the whole blessed system out! Several days of trolling through forums (because, of course, none of this software is written for a mac), I sent and received our first emails, weatherfax, and GRIB files by way of our Pactor radio. Oh, lordy, I have never been so excited to receive two-sentence email in my life!

Check out the shining moment for yourselves here:

With all the strong winds, we’ve also been very happy to get immediate gratification that shelling out the bucks for a new wind generator was a darn good idea. Most days, we have more energy than we know what to do with- and that’s on a completely cloud covered day. These days our poor solar panels are feeling like the uncoordinated, last-kid-picked-at-kickball to the new shining star at school- the wind genie, pumping out a consistent 10-15 amps and powering the entire boat on it’s own.

Here she is in all her glory:

We hope to push off within the next few days, although, to where we are still figuring out. We are looking forward to getting to the Exumas next, which are perfectly southeast of us. Guess where the wind is coming from for the foreseeable future… you guessed it… the southeast. And strong. We’d really like to do more sailing and less motoring, so we might need to get a little creative in our next float plan. Keep in touch for the juicy details.

On Hold in Naples

01. Oct. 2014
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Planning the Trip, USA
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Naples, Florida

We found the boat, the cogs are in motion. We just need time and energy to make all of the machinery work. It’s a arduous, thankless task, but on the bright side, we are staying in a beautiful house in Naples. My childhood neighbors serendipitously have a house here that they graciously offered to us while we’re boat hunting. Such nonchalant generosity is rare and humbling. We’ve been enjoying the gems of an easy, if bureaucratic life in Naples.

Waiting around on the paper chase of buying a boat requires patience. Documents are slow to be exchanged and fruitless insurance leads wind up dragging you down the rabbit hole before terminating. Between daily trips to the ‘office’ (library, see below) we enjoy our time in Naples. Citrus grows freely in the trees, fat and juicy from the daily thunderstorms that pummel down rain at some point every day. We plan, prep, fix, build, research, call, read. We make lunch, and do it again. And sometimes we even swim in the pool. Hard times kiddy.

We are getting our first taste of living off the connection grid. The Naples house doesn’t have internet, so when we need to be connected, which is daily with all this paper chase, we load up in Big Red and bounce on down to the Naples Public Library, conveniently located a few miles from us. It’s like going to the office, icy-cold air conditioning and strange ‘regulars’. We sure do get a lot of research done though.

Back at the ranch we generally make the phone calls that we couldn’t in the ‘Shhhhh! Keep your voices down, aside from all the crazy old people who feel free to talk really friggin’ loud because their hearing is going’. Sorry. Library. Then we get a little dinner going.

We usually unwind with some light reading, research, conjecture, notes, page flipping, text referencing, and highlighting. Have to get used to being off the grid. Our newest, fanciest equipment is an iPad mini with Navionics on it. The 4G iPad version that we got also has a GPS chip in it, so you don’t actually need cell signal, only clear skies. That’s what everyone says anyway! The Navionics is quite frankly magic. It loads maps of the entire Caribbean, Central and South America, and parts of the US. You can zoom down to see minute detail. We’ll check it out on the real water.

Let’s face it. We’ve been blessed with easy sailing so far and it should be expected that eventually (now) we’re getting some chop. It’s so beautiful in this little house with the canal right in the back yard, but we’re itching to get on our boat and make headway. It may be slow and frustrating at times. But one things for sure… even if it feels like w’ere on hold, we’re on our way in Naples.