kurt flock / warm, sunny, slight breeze
12/19/2009, Red Hook, St. Thomas

[New photo gallery uploaded 12/19/09: Messing Around Red Hook]

We're still hanging out in Red Hook on St. Thomas. It's Saturday morning, and we've walked the dog, had our omelette, and are now sitting at Lattes In Paradise, a funky, open air coffee joint on the second level of Red Hook Plaza. You can look out over the harbor and see St. John in the distance. The view's not half bad. Kate's new favorite drink here is a vanilla soy chai.

We're recovering from our date last night with margaritas and burgers at Duffy's Love Shack. I don't think Duffy's has a Zagat rating, but they serve some pretty awesome drinks and reasonably good food from a ramshackle building in the middle of a parking lot. They drag tables and chairs out onto the lot, and have at it. It seems to attract a combination of locals and tourists. We've been there several times before, so I guess we're somewhere in between.

We spent one New Year's Eve at the Love Shack with Kate's brother, Scott Davis. I vaguely remember drinking shots of Stoli by placing my open mouth at the bottom of this huge block of ice with sort of a luge course carved in it. The Stoli sluiced down the luge course picking up speed and a good chill before hitting the back of your throat. Only body shots can compete with this as drinking theatre, but I digress..

We've been dealing with typical boat stuff. I've gotten to know my Panda generator intimately over the last several days. The generator charges our batteries when we're not running the engine or hooked up to shore power. It's nice having 120 volts to power our two zone reverse cycle AC system, water heater, and trash compactor. These things don't run off the inverter. We don't have to have the engine or generator running to run other 120 volts stuff like computers, stereo, microwave, etc.. These run nicely off our new Outback inverter/charger which is hooked into our "house" batter bank. The house bank consists of four huge AGM batteries tied together to give us about 800 amps, of which you can only use about 50%. If you take amps out, you need to put 'em back, and most cruisers do this with some combination of running an engine, running a generator, or better yet, from a wind generator or solar panels. We don't have either wind or solar power generating capacity yet, so the generator is important. It's been quitting intermittently lately, and after standing on my head, messing with wires and OHM meters, and spending a lot of time on the phone with Fischer Panda folks in Florida, I've concluded the control panel is shot. That's today's project, once the FedEx guy who was supposed to get here yesterday gets here today with a replacement.

Yesterday, our dinghy motor gave it up on my way to the dock. After checking the fuel, filters, changing the spark plugs, and heating up the plugs with a torch, the damned thing still wouldn't start, so I gave up and loaded the 15 HP Yamaha into some guy's truck who agreed to haul it to some guy named Fred who could look at it "maybe on Monday". I'm still getting used to this "island time" thing that seems to downshift effectiveness and intentionality into some lower gear everywhere.

The dinghy motor gave out one day after a chafed area on tender blew out, affording me the opportunity to learn the fine art of executing a Hypalon patch. After roughing the tender up with 80 grit sandpaper and cleaning it with Toulene, I applied three coats of some adhesive to both the dinghy and the patch. So far I think it's holding. Now the dinghy is probably more important to Sophie than anyone, since she's gotten spoiled by her twice daily jaunts to shore where she can do her business. She's just not adapted well to the electric toilets on board Myananda.

So today we'll see if the Panda control panel comes, and if it does, whether that fixes our intermittent shut down issue. We'll see if the dinghy patch holds. We'll think about waxing the topsides and maybe polishing some stainless. Monday we may get our Yamaha back, and maybe the CMAP cartridge I ordered two weeks ago will arrive at Neptune's. And so it goes.

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kurt flock / breezy, cooler, mostly sunny
12/15/2009, Red Hook, St. Thomas

I'm waiting for Kate to get back to Red Hook with dinner. She went to St. John to do a yoga class this morning. Said she'd be back by 1:00 or so. She called and said she found a place that would do her hair, and did I mind. I was well into boat projects, so I said no. She called again and said she missed the 4:00 ferry, mentioning something about a pedicure. Oh well. She called again to let me know she was now waiting for the 5:00 ferry, and would I like some BBQ from my favorite BBQ stand on St. John. Since she didn't get back in time to polish any stainless or put a coat of varnish on the toe rails, I figure this was her way of buying me off! I sense the better part of valor tonight is to let it go and eat the BBQ. It is damned good.

We arrived in the islands with more "stuff" on the boat than we we really need, so we've shipped several boxes back home containing long underwear, sweaters, long pants, extra socks, extra under wear, etc. You don't really need ten pair of boxer shorts down here. In fact, I could get by without any, but Kate's not ready for us to "go native" yet.

At any rate, you find yourself calculating whether what you're sending home is worth the cost of shipping. I just paid $14 to have someone do a small bag of laundry at the laundromat. I'm not sure that's worth it either, but if it keeps the wife happy.... A bag of ice is $3.00 at the dock. A gallon of water is $0.14 (or about $16.00 to fill all our tanks). A good pain killer will run $6.00 to $9.00, so it's way cheaper to make our own aboard; that's why we bought a damn good blender. Rum is cheap, less than $8.00 a liter, so it ain't all bad.

Some things you gotta shop though. I went to buy a bilge pump switch on Tortolla in the BVI's and the switch along was over $80. I thought that was ludicrous, so I told them I'd double check to see if I really needed it. I found the same switch at a chandlery on St. Thomas for $32.00. Geesh! And if you order anything from anywhere, be prepared to play the waiting game. We mailed a post card home from the BVI's. It took three weeks to get home. We're still waiting for stuff from home that Jen sent priority mail to a week ago. I wonder whose priority our mail is?

It could be worse. One of the boats we sailed with in the 1500 is still waiting for their engine to be rebuilt. They blew out a valve and had to pull the whole engine out of their boat. After wrestling with surveyors, mechanics, and insurance adjusters, they opted to send part of their engine to Houston, TX and have it rebuilt. They're still in Nanny Cay, and our heart goes out to them. Good folks cruising with two kids. They're home schooling the kids. This month's module is likely diesel mechanics.

We've managed to stay in touch with a bunch of the folks through our daily 7:30 a.m. SSB chat. You get updates from buddies on where they are, what the weather's like, great places to snorkel, cheap places to provision, and we often arrange hook-ups for drinks, dinner, and what not. Our gypsy-like community will likely stay in touch as we wander hither down the island chain.

Kate just got back. Gotta go eat some BBQ!

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kurt Flock / warm, breezy, partly cloudy skies
12/11/2009, Red Hook, St. Thomas

I took the dinghy in early this morning hoping to get a jump on the gazillion other folks who seem to hit the coffee cart and log on with their laptops doing who knows what. I've concluded the American Yacht Harbor is in desperate need of a wifi upgrade. It's been maddening trying to upload photos to our sail blog. I'm sure we've travelled back in time and are hooked in to some sort of prehistoric AOL dial-up! Anyway, we rented a car yesterday and have been visiting stores around the island buying such interesting stuff as "Never Dull", a stainless polish, a Black & Decker 1300 watt polisher (for the Garry's Royal Satin wax I'm putting on the boat), a CMAP NT+ cartridge compatible with our Raymarine chart plotter with electronic charts of the Caribbean, and groceries that included a case of caffeine free Diet Coke for Kate and a case of caffeine loaded Red Bull for me. I'm now only about a week behind syncing our photo gallery additions with actual blog updates. We've been in daily contact with Jen Short who been handling all aspects of our business and personal lives. We couldn't be off cruising without her. She's terrific, although I understand she and her husband, Chris, moved into our house yesterday. Something about varnishing woodwork in their home, but I can't be certain. Maybe we'll return to "Short Realty, Inc." when we get back. Given the market, "Short Sales, Inc." might be a better name for the business anyway. Be sure to check the "Photo Gallery" in the side bar to the right for our latest photo postings. I have to get back to the boat to pick up Sophie and Kate.

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kurt flock / clear & starry night
12/08/2009, Trellis Bay, Tortolla, British Virgin Islands

I'm sitting at a table on the second level terrace outside a sushi joint at the American Yacht Harbor in Red Hook somewhere on the east end of St. Thomas. We cleared into the U.S. Virgin Islands last Saturday morning at Cruz Bay after hanging out in Francis Bay for three days. Before that, we were back in Nanny Cay to have a part installed to get our refrigeration up and running. That's another story. We also had to get new washboard fabricated for the cockpit coaming to replace the one that jumped overboard during a brisk sail several days before, and we opted to have Quantum Sails begin work on some new cockpit sun screens. I've been trying desperately to finish posting photos from our Caribbean trip, and I'm almost done. The newest photos are entered under "Half Way There!". The photo posted with this blog entry is really a teaser. I'll upload more photos of a beach party to beat all beach parties - in Trellis Bay on Tortolla. And so it goes.....

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kurtfFlock / clear & beautiful skies
11/29/2009, Bitter End Yacht Club, British Virgin Islands

Okay, this is a short entry, because there is really so much to cover. On November 2nd, Kate, Sophie, and I sailed out of the Chesapeake with Dennis Ryerson and Tom Spencer along as crew. We joined the Caribbean 1500 rally and headed south to Nanny Cay in the British Virgin Islands. We had one amazing offshore adventure that I'll detail in a subsequent post. The cliff notes version is that we made it to the BVI's in nine days. We opted to bypass Bermuda, as did virtually every other boat in the fleet, and head directly to the BVI's. We followed a cold front as we left the Chesapeake on a cold, blustery, and drizzly November morning. We crossed the Gulf Stream with no problems and enjoyed frisky sailing running before northerly winds that hung above 20 knots most of the time and seas that ranged from 5' to over 10'. The highest wind gust we experienced was 38 knots and the fastest boat speed was 10.2 knots. We've spent the last couple of weeks getting the boat put back together, installing some new systems, and adapting to the slower pace of all things Caribbean. We're presently at the Bitter End in the North Sound of Virgin Gorda. It's a beautiful Sunday morning, and we expect to have a very relaxing afternoon. More later!

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kurt flock / drizzly, cool, cloudy
10/16/2009, Indianapolis, IN

Our journey aboard Myananda really began December 24, 1986 when for Christmas I gave Kate a a copy of Baedeker's "CARIBBEAN including BERMUDA" with the following inscription: "To my favorite pooh bear who will be my companion in the Caribbean in 1987. Let's start planning. Love - Kurt."

Okay, so it's only 23 years later, who cares! Actually, during that 23 years we bought & sailed a Catalina 30 which we kept in Chicago. Great boat & loads of fun sailing off Windy City. After three years of knocking about on Lake Michigan, we sold our Catalina & bought an Island Packet 38 which we kept for nearly eight years in the Caribbean. Now that was some great sailing! Our longest stay aboard was about two and a half months in 2001, so we have some idea of what we're getting into with our new Passport 456.

Our search for a new boat came at a point in our lives when we both realized we aren't getting any younger. We sold the IP five or six years ago, and we've only chartered occasionally since - mainly due to the demands of our real estate business. Perhaps because we're now in our early & mid 50's, we figure if we don't do this now, the chance will likely pass us by. French philosopher Charles DuBois said, "The important thing is this, to be able at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you can become." While it's not clear where the winds of change will take us, sailing toward new horizons is embracing change & living life for the journey. Join us as explore new horizons of life away from home in our new home - Myananda.

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