05/18/2009

We did not go straight to Guadeloupe. We left the marina in St. Maarten via the Simpson Bay Bridge (fixed opening times) at 9:30 Sunday morning. As soon as we were out in the open, we got the main and mizzen sails set, and when we let the jib out, it heeled us so much that it put our rail in the water. That's what the racing boats want, but we're not racing! In came the jib. About 3 PM, having traveled maybe thirty miles on the Atlantic side in water that was still quite rough, Michelle decided that twenty more hours of that were just not happening. We were some ten to twelve miles northeast of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the next island after that could only be Montserrat, another 60 miles away (ten to twelve hours - middle of the night), so we changed course and headed for the north side of St. Kitts, then passed between St. Eustatius and St. Kitts and followed the western (lee) shore of St. Kitts down to Basseterre, the capital of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. We made it into the anchorage about 8 PM.

After reading more about the island in our cruising guide, we decided we were not going to leave Monday morning, since it has several historic sites (unlike St. Maarten). We moved into the Port Zante Marina Monday morning, cleared customs, and took a taxi tour around the whole island, stopping at the botanical gardens in the tropical rain forest, a huge and recently renovated fort at the top of 800-foot Brimstone Hill, and several other scenic views along the coast road. One of the not-so-nice stops was Bloody Point, site of the massacre of some 2000 native Carib people in 1626, a joint venture between the French and British colonists sharing the island, after they were informed by a recently-arrived Arawak slave-wife that the natives were becoming uncomfortable with the ever increasing number of foreigners and were plotting with tribes from neighboring islands to ambush them. A very familiar story all over, including the good old USA. The fact that somebody else was there first doesn't mean a thing. People take what they want. Anyway, Britain owned St. Kitts and Nevis until 1983, when they were granted independence.

Our cruising guide has broken the Leeward Islands into three different classifications. This one is part of the "islands that brush the clouds." The tops of the mountains stay shrouded in clouds. We're very glad we stopped here.

It looks like we will stay through Tuesday and resume our journey Wednesday. We probably will not try to go straight to Guadeloupe then either, but stop at Montserrat at least for the night to break it up.

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05/16/2009

The refrigeration has been running since Monday, requiring some adjustment to the motor and compressor alignment Tuesday. The temperatures are fine, but both boxes are taking significantly longer to run than they used to. We're hoping that will gradually work itself out, since it would more than double the time we have to run the generator to keep them happy. James has recovered nicely from his bug bites, with just a little bit of itching remaining.

We learned from the man who worked on our refrigeration system about a butterfly farm on the island. Friday afternoon we rented a car, finished up our provisioning, then spent some time Saturday visiting the butterfly farm and driving around the island to see some of the other areas mentioned in our cruising guide.

We are leaving St. Maarten Sunday morning (5/17), planning to go straight through to Guadeloupe and try to meet our friends on L'Aventura. There's some discussion about a tropical wave kicking up more squall activity and a north swell coming down from a storm somewhere near Bermuda, but that covers a broad area, and the general forecast still looks best for the next couple days. If we don't like what we find, we'll stop somewhere else along the way.

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05/09/2009, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles

Long time, no update. I've been obeying the lesson drilled into us all from a very early age by parents and teachers alike...the one that goes if you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut.

Easter weekend turned out to be a bottom cleaning experience like never before. We met an Australian couple earlier that week and had them over for drinks. The captain talked to James about looking for additional income, and they came up with the idea of him hiring out to do bottom cleaning. He wanted to learn how to use our hookah equipment (electric compressor and diving attachments), so they agreed he would work with James on cleaning Pegasus, then take the equipment to do his boat. We spent several hours with them on Sunday, showing them how to set it up, and cleaning Pegasus. On Monday morning they took the equipment over to their boat, only to find that their engine could not generate enough power to run the compressor (they had no generator). So, they moved their boat to raft up with us and used our generator power to do their bottom. It was quite a bit more complicated than anyone had bargained for, but all turned out well.

James' friend from law school was in town with her husband, so we spent a couple days during the following week having dinner and visiting with them. Then we got back to business on our chart plotter and the strut for the dinghy. Each project took a bit longer than hoped, but they were ultimately successful.

On April 27, the laptop crashed, followed the next morning by the "supercomputer" James has had aboard for many years. He finally decided that his big computer was having too many problems with this lifestyle (and taking too much power), so he replaced it with something smaller and simpler, and began several days of installing software and updates. We were without the laptop for a full week, followed by the same ordeal of software installation and updates.

We have been sitting out a couple weeks of "disturbed" weather with frequent squalls and high winds, and finally had a plan together for leaving here this weekend with our British friends on L'Aventura, heading for Guadeloupe, then Martinique. We had planned to do our big provisioning this past Tuesday, but the weather was not very friendly, so we decided to wait a couple days. Good thing...Wednesday morning James was adding Freon to the refrigeration system, and it shut down! We found someone to come out and take a look at it, but they needed us in a marina, with electricity and convenient access to their shop, and had a prior commitment for Thursday, so they couldn't get to us until Friday.

Before we raised anchor on Thursday afternoon to move into the marina, James dove on the chain to clean the worst of the growth off. Since it was going to be a quick job (he was only in the water less than fifteen minutes), he just wore a tee shirt and trunks, instead of putting on the big wetsuit. He came up with HUNDREDS of bugs stuck to the shirt and eating him alive. By Friday morning, he was full of bites all over his arms, neck, chest, back and thighs. We have been treating him with Benadryl and hydrocortisone, and the swelling has gone down. The itching will probably take quite a while...no more skipping the wetsuit.

The refrigeration work began on Friday, continued part of Saturday (half day), and will not be completed until Monday (we hope). The company is owned by a man who has been in the business for over 50 years (started in the Navy), and he is making some very important changes to correct the problem we have always had with the Freon leak, among other things. James is pleased with the whole plan, but we would be more pleased if we didn't have the weekend right in the middle of it.

So, L'Aventura is leaving Sunday morning, but Pegasus is not. On a recent post to their website, Andy (the captain) closed with a statement that is the best description of this cruising life I have seen yet. After commenting on his plans for the next week or so, he wrote, "Funny how often heroes sail off in boats as an act of freedom at the end of some movie or other... but you never get to see them slaving away keeping their little floating kingdom functional!" PERFECT!!!

If the refrigeration is up and running Monday, we will do our provisioning on Tuesday and Wednesday. The travel forecast (ideal for Sunday and Monday) is not good again until later in the week, so we hope to leave Friday or Saturday and meet up with our friends again further south.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms.

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