In port, on time, on budget (LOL)
Having an expensive but very good cheeseburger at Chesterfield's part of the dockside complex where I came in on my dinghy. (Free wifi, though!)
Fun to catch up with the email (quite a few after 2 months). Actually took me a minute or 2 to come up with my password (after 2 months).
Lots of projects on the boat, but in a nice place to do them. St. M was actually the "next place" I never made it to in both of my trips to the Caribbean on BS. So far I like it a lot better than the Virgins. Friendly and sophisticated as well as, well, Caribbean.
Fred tells me my first article has appeared in Good Old Boat Magazine. He thinks I'm famous. Well, maybe if I get something in Cruising World!
Highlight of the last few days was seeing the glow on the horizon from the lights ofl Guadeloupe night before last. First sighting of land in what is it? fifty four days!
True to form the sea offered me a good-bye party last night with the most intense wind and rain squall since the day we left Opua. No biggy, I've been sailing this leg with very little canvas, but still--good for a few laughs.
Turned on the FM after I got anchored this morning (arrived just at dawn, as planned) and initially got a big kick out of the Island music. A few minutes later I thought, gee, this is a little monotonous. A few minutes after that I found myself boogying in front of BS's (unwise) full-length mirror. So I guess it's body music, not mind music. Duh.
I slept on brief patches last night working my way up from Antigua. So, I'm actually in pretty good shape. Have been to Immigration, lunch, wifi. Still, maybe a little nap this afternoon.
Thanks to everyone for all your support on this somewhat challenging part of the circumnavigation.
Speaking of which, I am now less than three hundred miles from the Mona Passage, so only that far from a technical completion of the circumnav. No reason to go there, of course, I'll probably "cross my wake" and finish the circumnavigation in Bermuda. But the real end of the voyage of course is at the yacht club dock in my home village on Cape Cod.
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Comments [3]
It's five days since my last post and it has been the fastest 5 days of the trip. I have covered half of the 1400 miles I had to go then. If that pace continues I will be into St. Martin on the 24th or 25th--5 or 6 more days, so I'm in the final 10% of the voyage now.
Nothing very interesting to say at this point: the weather has continued pleasant with mild favorable winds. Systems on the boat and my own personal systems all seem basically functional. One bad thing--the refrigerator is not working at all. I didn't have much left in it to throw out, so that's good. Hopefully I can get it up and running again in St. Martin, but only if it is a (financially) minor problem. But it's easy enough to provision assuming there will be no refrigeration. After all, it has only been available for a few decades and people have been crossing the oceans a lot longer than that. The key to it, is buying really small jars of mayonnaise! Have you read (or seen the movie) Mosquito Coast? About a slightly mad New Englander who decides that the key to civilization is refrigeration. He dedicates (sacrifices) his life to trying to develop large scale ice-making plants in the forests of Central America. Me, I don't know any slightly mad New Englanders. How about you?
Anyway, if you have been wishing me well, keep it up (and thanks). Almost there!
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Right now BS and I, continuing our run parallel to the South American coast, are just about 500 miles northeast of the mouth of the Amazon. That's pretty close to the border of French Guiana, so we're just about done with Brazil (not that we've had much to do with Brazil!)
The last several days, since crossing the equator actually, we have experienced very consistent and pleasant conditions: partly cloudy and warm with a steady wind more or less on the beam--the easiest kind of sailing. Sometimes it blows a little harder, sometimes a little more from the north, but basically dependable and easy on me and on BS. The sails are full all the time with a steady load on them--no shock loads which lead quickly to chafing and other kinds of sail damage, which I am really happy to avoid. Daily runs have gratifyingly gotten back into triple digits and there has been no engine use aside from battery charging, so no fuel worries.
If we are lucky enough to continue in this way, I expect landfall in St. Martin (actually Sint Maarten, since I will enter on the south, Dutch, side) about Monday the 27th of April--just about 8 weeks total from Cape Town. For perspective, where I am now is about as far from St. Martin as Cape May, New Jersey is.
I am settled into a routine of course, but I have noticed that some days time hangs a little heavy. I started on a little project I have been putting off--putting the parts together from two defunct alternators to see if I can make one funct(?) one. Been spending an hour or two a day on that. I am pretty much stumped by the current chapter in my physics book: conservation of angular momentum. It's not, like, Smokey the Bear conservation. But I have found in earlier rough patches that sometimes if I come back to it after a day or two of rest, it starts to make sense.
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