Sea Angel

We finally got a break in our hectic and demanding work schedules (not) and got out sailing again. This time we sailed all the way over to the British Virgin Island of Jost Van Dike which is about 15 miles away. It's funny how we didn't really do our homework before we came to the Virgin Islands, we had no idea that all these islands were so close to each other. We thought that from one island to the next was generally an all day sail (40 - 50 miles for us) but it is more like 5 miles or less from one island to another so we sailed right past St John and into Jost. We spent 2 nights there playing on the beach and hanging out in the local beach bars including the infamous Foxy's. Foxy's was fun but it was just another beach bar to us. Apparently Foxy is an excellent entertainer and that's how the bar got famous but he is getting old and rarely performs, hopefully we can see him sometime.

A few weeks ago we got to see our very dear cruising friends Al and Brenda from "Haven" and Phil and Krista from "Harmonium" as they were passing through St Thomas. We met Al and Brenda on the C and D canal up on the Chesapeake way back in October of 2013 and cruised with them on and off all the way down to Miami where we went separate ways, them to Bahamas and us to Marathon. We are sure you remember all of this since we assume you hang on every word of our blog and review old posts weekly when there are no new ones to read. It was great to see them since it had been over a year and they plan on spending next winter sailing around the Virgin Islands so we look forward to hanging out with them more next winter.

We had began our long journey back to Minnesota where we will spend the summer working and replenishing our cruising kitty. We sailed from St Thomas to Puerto Rico where we spent 3 nights in the marina then hauled the boat out. It was a lot of work getting packed to go back for 5 months and getting Sea Angel ready to come out of the water and stored on the hard for that time. The haul out went smooth and we spent a couple of nights in a hotel while we finished closing up Sea Angel and assessing some of the projects that will need to be done before she is splashed next fall. The list of projects include: bottom paint, new cutlass bearing (for you non boaters, we would explain what the cutlass bearing is and what it does but that's too much work, let's just say its under the water), repair our loose rudder (yeah, it wobbles around a little and that doesn't seem good), and install 2 new through hulls for our new air conditioner.

Its the last project that we are most excited about. We scored a nice marine A/C unit from Brian's work for $100! They replaced all of the A/C units in one of the boats (these big boats have as many as 5 units in them) and this unit had very little use on it so is still in good shape. We have a portable A/C unit now that works OK but doesn't cool the boat well on hot days but this is a more powerful and "central air" type unit that will do much better.

From Puerto Rico we flew to Ft Lauderdale where we left our car about 6 months ago (don't worry, we knew better than to park it in short term parking at the airport) then drive down to Marathon to spend a week visiting our many friends there. Its funny how what took us 3 months to sail takes less than 3 hours to fly. After a taxi ride to the car and call to AAA to give us a jump start, we were on the road driving to Marathon.

We met our many friends at the Tiki bar that evening at what was kind of a "welcome home" party (which will be followed up by a "going away" party just a week later) and we all got caught up with what was going on in everybody's lives along with all the gossip about the resort and marina where we used to live and work.

The next night, again at the Tiki bar, we saw more friends including John (also known as "Pilot John" because he was a pilot - duh) and with all the people around only had a short conversation with him. Since he lives on a boat at the marina we knew we would see him around later in the week and catch up with him more later. John died of a massive heart attack later that night, he was only 59 years old :-(

John was one of the funniest and most intelligent people we have ever met in our lives. Even though we were at opposite ends of the political spectrum, we enjoyed long conversations with him as he was well informed and passionate about his views and our conversations usually ended in agreeing to disagree. His quick and witty sense of humour kept us all laughing on many occasions. He used to do stand up comedy from time to time so when it came to telling a joke or throwing in a funny comment he was always spot on with perfect timing. He was great with accents whether it be a Cuban, Italian, Mexican or somewhere from the Middle East he would be right there saying something in some accent that would have us all in stitches. He always claimed that he spoke one language and 27 accents. We all miss you John!










We spent a wonderful week in Marathon with friends then started our long trek back to Minnesota that we like to call our "Northbound Land Cruise. We are sure that by now you all understand that a sailboat moves very slow so traveling from point A to Point B takes much longer than, say, and airplane or a bus or a brisk walk for that matter, so in keeping with that theme, we took a week to drive from Florida to Minnesota. Our first leg was from Marathon to Ft Lauderdale where we went out and celebrated Brians birthday ("best birthday ever! Brian said) then the next day up to Daytona to visit friends Dave and Kirsten from St Thomas. Kirsten does all the reservations for CYOA (the yacht charter company that Brian works for) from their home near Daytona and Dave comes down from time to time to help out keeping the company going. We arrived at their house early afternoon then headed out on their pontoon boat with several of their friends to hang out on the Intercoastal Waterway. It was fun to see this stretch of the ICW that we sailed down through about a year and a half ago but we didn't recognize any of it. They then fed us an awesome dinner and put us up for the night.

After that we headed over to the Tampa area to visit more friends, spent the night there and made our longest leg up to Nashville TN. Nashville was a lot of fun, we went to listen to some music at The Bluebird Cafe from some up and coming artists and they sounded amazing. Then we went downtown to bar hop and wondered in and out of some of Nashville's famous bars and caught several more great acts.

We spent two nights in Nashville then up to Chicago area to visit Anne's brother and his wife then finally back to Minneapolis. We will be spending the whole summer in Minneapolis so if you happen to be in the area look us up and we'll do happy hour and talk about sailing!

It's amazing how quickly we get busy as soon as we settle down in a place. We have been here in St Thomas for about 6 weeks now and we have only gone sailing once. I know what you are thinking, something like "what the hell Anne & Brian, you are in one of the most beautiful cruising grounds in the world and you have only been out once! You USED to be my heroes". Well, hopefully not that last part.

In our defense (and we really don't expect any sympathy here or understanding from our northern friends) we have been sailing in and around many of the worlds most beautiful areas for nearly 2 years now including Lake Superior's Apostle Islands, Chesapeake Bay, Florida Keys, Bahamas and now the Virgin Islands to name a few, so for us it's just another day in paradise. Don't worry though, we have not lost sight of the fact we are in paradise and we still appreciate it every day.

Another reason for Sea Angel not leaving her slip is we have been working.....yes, you read right, working. We may live in paradise but we still need to eat....and drink (well, maybe we shouldn't say NEED to drink). And, as you all know, working really puts a dent in your playtime schedule.

Brian got a job at a sailboat charter company right here in our marina because you all know how much he hates a long commute so he rarely complains about the 100 yard walk to work. The company does bareboat charters (for you non sailors, that is renting a boat for a week or so without a captain or crew) and runs a fleet of about 20 36' to 48' sailboats, mostly catamarans. Brian does 2 things there, 1) maintenance and repairs of the boats and even though all the boats in the fleet are less that 5 years old, they are boats and therefore constantly break and he 2) does briefings. A briefing is this, when a charter guest arrives Brian will spend a few hours with them going through the boat telling them about all the systems (a/c units, generators, watermakers, battery chargers, you get the idea) and how to work them, then take them out for a sail check which is getting them on the water and make sure they know how to sail and handle the boat. The really funny part about this is that Brian's employer seems to think he knows what the hell he is doing. He has never sailed a catamaran before and now he is checking people out on them! Oh well, sailing is sailing to an extent.

Meanwhile, Anne got a job at a local restaurant (and by local we mean 1 block away) as a bartender and server. It is a fine dining place which means it is an expensive place so the tips are very good. She gets to sample and serve lots of fancy food that Brian has never heard of and suggest expensive...er, FINE wine to pair with their meal to enhance their dining experience (and run up her tip).

Despite all of the long hours of our high stress and demanding jobs (can you hear the sarcasm in our words) we were able to get out sailing a couple weeks ago. We departed our home marina and sailed a whole 10 miles to the far east side of the island to a town called Red Hook. It was really more of a staycation but it was fun any ways. We were able to check out another part of the island, meet new people and we really liked it there. In fact we liked it so much we are considering getting a slip there when/if we come back in the fall.

Several weeks ago we went to a great beach called Honeymoon Beach with a group of people we just met. There is a really sweet couple here named Allen and Lori who own the local Sea Tow operation (again for you non boaters, Sea Tow is kind of like the AAA for boaters) and they invited us to go with this group to the nearby Water Island and hang out on the beach for a day. They took us and about 10 other people over there in one of their Sea Tow boats and we had a great time hanging on the beach and playing in the water with our new friends.

Next time we get a few days off we plan on sailing to St Johns because we feel like we really need to visit some of these other wonderful places around here that everybody keeps telling us about.

We left Salinas PR bound for the east coast of PR and a marina called Puerto Del Ray where we visited by car earlier that week. Part of the reason for renting a car was to check out some marinas where we could haul out the boat for the summer hurricane season while we go back to Minnesota. We found a marina that we really liked, it is a very well equipped facility, seems to be well run and the people are very nice and helpful. The boat yard manager told us that if we agree to haul out there for the summer he would give us a free slip for a few days as we are on our way to the Virgin Islands. Well, we are not ones to pass up a free slip and it was right on the way so....

From Salinas to Puerto Del Ray is about 60 miles so we decided to do it in two days stopping for the night along the way. The anchorage we chose was a small island just off the coast that is known as Monkey Island. According to the information we had, you anchor close to the island and in the early evening before it gets dark you can watch the wild monkeys play on the beach. Brian was very excited about this since he has never seen a wild monkey play wildly. That is, he has never seen a monkey in the wild much less a wild monkey in the wild....never mind, you get the idea.

Sometimes (often times) when you are sailing, things just don't go as planned. We spent the day beating into the wind and waves (what else is new) and the waves were bigger than forecasted (again, what else is new) and we decided that this small island would not give us much protection from the waves and if we anchor there it would be a very bouncy and sleepless night so we decided to wimp out and spend the night at a nearby (well protected) marina. No monkeys for Brian.

Puerto Del Ray was nice but since there was some bad weather coming in we only spent one free night there and pushed on to St Thomas. Believe us, it is hard to leave a free slip in a nice marina but we sucked it up and moved on to beat the weather.

We arrived in St Thomas and dropped anchor in the Charlotte Amalie harbor and planned on spending a few days there before going on to our final destination of St Croix which is just 40 miles to the south, and easy day sail that is not into the wind (for a change). Well, remember what we said about when you are sailing sometimes things just don't go as planned, this was one of those times. We instantly got a good feeling about St Thomas so once the anchor was set we were in our dinghy to go check out the area. It didn't take us long to decide that we like it here and to forget St Croix and stay in St Thomas (no we weren't drunk.....yet) and first thing the next morning we were looking for a marina to call our new home.

After a few discouraging phone calls to local marinas (one wanted over $3000 a month for a slip and another one outside of town wanted over $2000 a month) we were able to find a great marina for $700 a month (still a little spendy but its what we expected) in a really fun part of town called Frenchtown. It is a little area in Charlotte Amalie that is away from the cruise ship tourist traffic and has several bars and restaurants where the locals hang out and live.

Here are a few fun facts about St Thomas. There are about 50,000 people on the whole island. There are about 18,000 people in Charlotte Amalie. It is not uncommon for there to be 6 or 7 big cruise ships visiting this town on any given day bringing in over 20,000 people. Obviously it gets very crowded in town on those days. Few of the cruise ship people find their way to Frenchtown and (not to sound like a local but now we like to think we are - sort of - locals) we like that.

We have been looking for jobs now and networking (read, hanging out in bars and asking locals where to get a job) and the prospects a looking very good. We have already met some great people and we feel like we are blending in. We will stay here until sometime in May when we will sail back to Puerto Rico, haul out Sea Angel and go back to Minnesota for the summer. So, please give us a call if you are in the area...Valerie, Amy & Paul....anyone else?
Brian 612-940-3796
Anne 360-301-4955

Disclosure statement: the picture on this blog post is of Marisa and her boyfriend Karl. Karl was not with Marisa on this trip, that was not on our boat and yes, that is the Golden Gate Bridge. We never got around to taking a picture for this post (we have been soooooo busy) so we just used an old picture that Brian had on his phone. We promise to do better on the next post.....maybe.

Brian's daughter, Marisa (who is on Christmas break from college) was able to fly into Dominican Republic and spend some time with us. She flew into Santo Domingo which is about a 3 hour bus ride from Samana where we were staying and Brian took the bus to go meet her at the airport. Fortunately the busses in DR are very nice...and cheap. They are not what you may think, modern Greyhound type busses, not old run down school busses where you sit next to someone holding a chicken with goats standing in the isles, and it only cost $7.00 each way for the 125 mile or so trip. Her flight got delayed so they ended up staying in a hotel by the airport for the night and going back to Samana the next day but it was fun to see more of the country and countryside.

After Marisa was in Samana for just one day we decided that the weather gods are in fact cooperating and it was time to leave bound for Puerto Rico. The best way to make this passage is to sail at night as much as possible so we left Samana on a Thursday afternoon at about 2:00 and sailed through the night and part of the next day to Mona Island half way across the Mona Passage. The Mona Passage is about 80 miles of open water between DR and PR with a little island in the middle. It can be a very rough in the passage if you don't do it right or pick you weather window right but it all went well for us. We arrived at Mona Island at about 1:00 PM on Friday and grabbed a mooring ball.

The water at the island was crystal clear and warm so instead of launching the dinghy, Brian and Marisa just jumped in and swam to shore to check things out. The whole island is owned by Puerto Rico and it is a nature preserve so there is not much there except a ranger station and some camp sites. There is supposed to be some great hiking trails on the island but every year during the month of January they open up the island to hunters and hiking isn't advised. We are not sure what they hunt other than wild bore but since we didn't want to end up on a spit roasting over a fire we decided not to venture too far from the camp sites and ranger station.

We left Mona Island at 10:00 PM that Friday night and sailed to Puerto Rico and arrived at a great marina in Puerto Real on the west side of the island at about 7:30 AM Saturday Morning. We were very glad to be back in the (sort of) US.

Marisa was anxious to get back to Minnesota since she is leaving soon to go study for a semester in Switzerland and she still had a lot of things to take care of before she left, so on Sunday she caught a flight out of San Juan back to Minnesota. She said she had a lot to take care of but she was probably just bored of us already.

We stayed at that marina for a few days then took a couple of days to sail to Salinas which is in the middle of the south coast. We rented a car for a couple of days and went and toured PR a little bit and we decided we like it here. This is a possible place for us to settle down when we are finally ready to settle down and live a regular life again. There is a little bit of a language barrier here since they speak Spanish but most of the people also speak English so its not to hard to get by. We kind of feel like ugly Americans here not knowing any Spanish but we have a book and we are picking up a little here and there. We would probably spend more time here but we need to get to St Croix and get jobs since our cruising kitty is getting kind of low so we will be off tomorrow for the east coast of PR then St Thomas and St Croix.

Well, apparently we still need to work on picking our weather windows better. We were anxious to get out of Luperon so when our first good weather window came we took it and set sail. We left early Tuesday morning and decided to do a long (VERY long for us) run all the way to Puerto Rico. We figured the passage would take us 2 1/2 to 3 full days which would get us into PR sometime Thursday night or Friday morning.

When we left Luperon the conditions were a little rougher than predicted but we figured the seas were just taking a little longer to calm down than expected and it would get better. It didn't. We just kept beating into the wind and the waves and after about 12 hours it became apparent that we were burning too much fuel and we would not make it to PR without a fuel stop along the way. No big deal, we were going to be passing two major ports along the way, either of which we could stop in and refuel. As we pressed on through the night and got the early morning weather report things weren't looking any better so we decided to just go to Samana DR and stop there.

After 36 hours of getting knocked around (remember that our boat can take a lot more than we can) we were glad to pull into a marina and set foot on land. We only made it 1/2 way to PR. In our defense, the calmer weather that was forecasted did not happen and the Wednesday morning forecast was completely different than the Tuesday mornings forecast so we did pick a good weather window based on the forecast, the forecast was just wrong. Oh well, we always know that predicting weather is less than an exact science.

The marina we are at is great. It is a very nice resort/marina so we get to hang out in their two infinity pools, their 3 bars, 3 restaurants, and we even arrived in time for their new years eve party. It seems to be a place where a lot of upper class Dominicans come to vacation but there are some gringos here too. We found that although the marina is cheap the resort isn't (at least the rooms aren't) but the bars and restaurants somewhat reasonably priced.

The weather forecast isn't looking good for quite a while (seems to be the story of our lives lately) so we are settling in and enjoying the nice amenities. We have been hanging out at the pools a lot but it seems to rain a few times every day here for a few minutes, just enough to get everything wet. It's the tropics we guess. When it does rain and we decide not to tough it out we will often retreat inside and play a game of pool (the billiards kind, not the swimming kind) or ping pong.

We ventured into the town of Samana a couple of times to check it out. There didn't seem to be a lot there for us. We bought a few groceries, some produce from the farmers market and a new beach bag and wandered in and out of several shops but since we are not the shopping types that got kind of old fast. Samana is a stop for some cruise ships and there was one in town when we were there so all the tourist shops were open and trying to get people in. If fact we were amused at one shop we passed by where the shopkeeper out front tried to entice us to stop in by promising "no pushy pushy".

It looks like we have another weather window the middle of next week and it is predicted to be a longer and calmer window so we have high hopes of making Puerto Rico this time (of course, that's what we said last time). We have met another cruising couple here at the marina and they are also going to Puerto Rico next and their boat is about as fast (or slow, depending on how you look at it) as ours so we will make the passage with them. It's always nice to have a buddy boat with you, a luxury we have seldom had on this trip.

Once we get to Puerto Rico we will not have to make anymore long overnight or off shore passages for a while so we are really looking forward to that. Everyone wish us luck that the weather and that everything else holds up so we can make it. If you are feeling energetic it may not hurt to do a little "fair weather" dance to the weather gods for us and besides, for our friends in the north, it may help keep you warm.

First of all Merry Christmas everyone, or as they say in the Dominican Republic, Felice Navidad, but we are already getting ahead of ourselves.

We enjoyed the civilization in Turks and Cacios by going to the island fish fry that happens every Thursday night on Provo. It is held in a park by the beach where both tourists and locals come and venders set up little booths and sell their crafts and their food. Brian ordered fried snapper and was surprised to find that it was a whole snapper, head, tail and all. He had to kind of clean it as he ate it being careful not to eat bones or eyeballs! It was good but it was a lot of work to eat standing in a crowd in the dim light. There was also music and dancing and a great party atmosphere.

We also bought a conch shell there because we always felt that every serious sailor has a conch on their boat and we feel like we now qualify as serious sailors. Let us explain a little bit about conch. First of all it is pronounced "konk" and they are all over these southern waters. If you retrieve a good shell it can be cleaned and a small part of the end can be cut off to make a horn like instrument. We don't really know how to clean them or how to cut the shell so we naturally assume it takes a fair amount of skill so we just bought one for $15 at the fish fry. Fortunately it also came with a lesson because (much to our surprise) you don't just blow into it, its more like a spit like when you play the trumpet or something, and the sound that comes out is a loud trumpet like sound.

We left T&C early in the morning for our long passage to the DR. We sailed east across the Cacios Banks and anchored at sunset on the edge of the banks to spend the night. The next morning we slept in then set sail at 10 AM for a 24 (or so) hour offshore run to the DR. Well, the wind was stronger and more on the nose than the predictions said and the waves were quite a bit bigger. It was a long, rough and wet passage sailing through a few squalls and getting knocked around and splashed by waves hitting the hull but Sea Angel kept pushing on for us while we mostly just hung on. We were treated to a couple of beautiful rainbows at sea where we could see the whole arch, if only we had a wide angle lens. Other than some stuff getting knocked off of shelves down below (OK, it looked like a tornado had gone through down there) everything was fine and we were never in any danger but it did confirm one thing we always say, our boat can take more than we can. Note to self, pick better weather windows.

Since the wind was on our nose and we were motor sailing into the waves all day and night we were running low on fuel so instead of going to our original destination of a marina in Puerto Plata we diverted to Luperon which was 15 miles closer and a little more down wind. We arrived early Sunday afternoon took a mooring ball and just hung out on the boat since we would not be able to check in until Monday.

One of the reasons we wanted to go to the marina is because they would help us through customs and make sure we only pay what we are supposed to. From everything we read it should have cost us about $75 to check in, instead it cost us $140! As we learned later the officials are corrupt and they see us gringos coming so they charge us more. We politely tried to argue with them but to no avail and finally paid the inflated fees. Later some locals told us that since it just before Christmas they are all looking for extra money and inflating everything even more. Lucky us. Although Luperon is a nice place we are so turned off by the officials that we will likely never be back. We expect more of the same throughout the rest of the DR.

One day Brian and a couple of guys we met there rented motorcycles and rode to the town of Puerto Plata about an hour away In hind sight he is not so sure that was a good idea, the roads are narrow and ridden with potholes and the other drivers are....how you say, loco! It was fun and interesting to see more of the DR but the whole thing had a little more of a danger element to it than he was comfortable with.

It is Christmas day now and we are anxious to move on but the weather forecast looks like we will be here for another week or more, especially since we are picking our weather windows better now. We are just going to enjoy this town for a while as there are a lot of cruisers and ex pats here and most things are cheap so at least this stop won't damage our cruising kitty too bad.

Merry Christmas everyone!