As you can see by the picture we are at home on our mooring ball and that is a view out our "Back Door" looking into some storm clouds that are dumping on the US virgin Islands and probably the Bristish as well.
It was very emotional coming back and going into harbour this early a.m. We have been through so much and almost 600 miles that it is kind of sad to end it. We have learned so much and have benefited from the pain but also were able to relax, enjoy one and others and really take in the diversity of the the Caribbean. Each island was so totally different from the previous which is strange due to their close proximity to each other. Probably the differnet ownerships of the islands over the last few centuries controlled their destinities!
To do it all again - yes. If you would have asked me in mid Ffebruary with one engine, a dinghy motor that ran 35 % of the time, and no freezer I would have said no. But in learning from mistakes and moving on Jackie and I and the other couples worked thru problems and had a great time.
Wanting to find a better British Virgin Island stomping ground was kind of our goal. We did not find that and that was a little frustrating due to the miles and problems to get here in the Leewards. Kind of a twist of several fates.
Well, just wanted to let everyone know that we are safe, at our second home in 8 feet of water that we could not have any more problems in and that you can all breatha sigh of relief. Alex, Bryce and Nick you can stop planning what to do with the insurance money.
Will be in contact later with any other points of interest.
Take Care Everyone.

Dan & Jackie

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The morning of our crossing back to St. Croix started off bizarre. I put out two anchors on the same chain. One is on a 6 foot lead off the secondary so if one type of anchor does not hold then the other one does. That is the plan. So I pull up the anchor and only one is on the chain! I guess I made a contribution to Marigot Bay. I hate that so bad. All I can think is that in the rollers that we were in for a little yesterday that the carbineer that holds the 6 foot chain to the other anchor snapped. I was wondering if that was kind of a weak point.
Funny Story For The Day:
Jackie is not feeling good so she has been asleep since she helped me with the anchor at 6 a.m. I don't have anybody to talk to and am going a little crazy trying to keep busy which is hard to do considering this home is rolling over waves and stuff. So I decide to change the fuel pre filter and filter on the port motor. An hour job and it will kill some time so I go down into the port motor compartment which you kind of climb down into. I was thinking that I don't have any work clothes and I am not getting any of my Caribbean clothes greasy so I thought it would be smart to change these diesel filters down in this grimy engine compartment in the buff. Why not!. It is a lot easier to clean grease off my skin then out of a tee shirt and shorts. Jackie is asleep up top and I am not getting in trouble for getting grease on my clothes. So to sum up, I needed a tool up top so I grab this socket wrench, in the nude of course and turn around and Jackie is staring at me. So here I am with a tool in one hand and grease across my stomach and butt. I felt like when my Mom caught mestealing those cool little sugar cubes people used to put in their tea. She didn't say a word, just looked at me with furrowed eyebrows and turned over. I was going to explain but she was already all covered up and I guess she is just used to me doing weird things.
Had good strong winds in the morning which is not normal. Usually winds are light in the a.m. then as convection from the sun gets going then the winds pick up. Well they did the opposite. Who would have thought on this vacation that things could be normal. I was sitting in 2 knots of wind and now that the sun has set I am back to 8-10 knots. I'll take it. I am in no hurry to get into port until it is light.
I want to give you an idea of what it is like to be on a sailboat, sailing at night. It is a very odd thing to do because your normal daily life on a boat takes a drastic change in activity due to the lack of light. The first thing I do is get all my sheets and lines in place because you will trip over them and that is not good on a moving boat that has autopilot on it and the wife is asleep! Get dinner done is a priority before sunset, charging up all the batteries for the night, turning on the navigational lights and my tricolor lights on the mast, securing the dinghy on it's davits. Then there is the hatch closing routine for rains that you get ambushed by at night. Getting out my foul weather gear, finding my flashlight and getting the last daylight reading on our position rounds out the pre dark.
Sailing at night is so different because of how the light is just absorbed like a sponge into the water. You are so used to seeing maybe 50 miles and presently I can't see the bow of the boat some 30' away! Sounds become louder at night it seems. You never hit something in the day it seems it is only at night because you are just driving blind. You also hear voices sometimes. The sails and rigging and pulleys make constant noises and sometimes they sound like voices in the darkness.
We do have lights on Son Spirit for all sorts of stuff but lights on inside blind you from seeing ships off in the darkness that you could hit or be run down by. You have to do an every 15 minute look around to find these guys with either a green, red or clear light showing or combinations of the three. A tanker or a cruise ship will run at over 20 knots per hour so the sailing Gods say that a tanker could over run you in 15 minutes based on you not seeing them the prior 15 minutes due to the curvature of the earth! So every 15 minutes you look to the right of the jib, the left of the jib, under the main and behind you for lights.
Right now we are doing 4.5 knots with a 9 knot breeze and have 40 miles to go but the whole night ahead of me. The ¾ moon will be up at 11:30 pm tonight so that will help visibility. I will set my alarm for every 15 minutes starting somewhere near midnight and do about 5 hours of that. Jackie is not feeling well and usually will take over for about 2 hours and let me get some form of rest but tonight that is probably not going to occur.
It's 9 pm now with the stars just jumping out of the indigo black sky. Saw a shooting star but the neatest thing is this. There is a little plankton that has a bioluminescence inside of it and when you hit it with like the hull of a ship it will crack open and it will fluoresce. Tales of ships hitting this plankton are kind of rare and I have only seen a few situations where you see a fleck here or there. The bow of the boat is causing this plankton to burst and it looks like July 4th sparklers are coming of the waves. A trail of these are also coming off the end of each hull and leaving a trail for a few seconds behind the boat. We are really moving with speed and I guess that really helps. Even the waves that are breaking around me that I can't see are lit up by the bioluminescence! Way cool.


Dan & Jackie

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Out to Open Waters

We have a 93 mile overnight crossing coming up tomorrow starting at 5 am and will probably be getting into St. Croix around mid morning on the 6th. The weather sounds good except that the winds are kind of low in the forecast at 8-12 knots. If we could just average the two from the crossing we made 6 weeks ago when we were in the 30 knot range we would be fine! Jackie and I are looking forward to this crossing as the West direction is tons easier to work with then gaining East direction like we did in January.
So I will not be in communication till we get back into Christiansted, St. Croix. We got two good engines now and a ton of experience behind us . A few books I have read about sailors that have put on several thousand miles is they get the attitude that land is bad because there are so many hazards that can damage or sink you boat like rocks, slipping off your anchor, running into shallows, etc. They like the open ocean cuz life is more simple out there. After this trip I can relate about land hazards and how complex land can be.
Catch up with you all in St. Croix.

Dan & Jackie

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Last Day in St. Martin- Last Day With James & Angie


For the first time we had a language problem in these islands. St. Martin is very French in which I first had the problem of clearing in yesterday when I had to enter all the ship's data into computer. I typed in Son Spirit and it looked like Sqn Sopirt. I tried it again after thinking that I am still a little sleepy and it came out Sqn Sopirit. Did you know the keyboard in St. Martin is a little different then USA's. Weird and hard to get used to.
My second problem with language was with the poor old dinghy. I went to get fuel for it and pulled up to the pump. I was trying to figure which pump was diesel and which was gas. I found a green hose and it was diesel so the yellow hose had to be gas. Filled up the tank, mixed the proper amount of oil into the tank and I was off to pick up the other three from getting groceries. Well we broke down near the rocks of the bridge opening and the engine would just smoke but not run for any time. A dinghy saw our problem and towed us back to Son Spirit which we are getting so used to. The guy with a heavy French accent mentioned that I probably got the gas /oil mix pump then proceeded to double the quantity of oil in the tank! Just one more stupid thing I have done on this trip that I can learn from in the future. So we have been trying to dilute out the gas in every possible way and we are just about there. What a nightmare. It has been at least 15 years since I have seen gas/oil mix at a marina in the US. I wish they labeled their pumps in some form of label for us foreigners.
Went to a beach and collected glassies with Jackie and Angie and James got in their last snorkeling/swimming in the blue Caribbean waters. They are off today for the "cooler" temperatures of Utah. James got a good suntan on his face yesterday to make him look very native. We have had fun with them and enjoyed a fish market lobster purchase for the last night.
So off with them by way of a mile and a half dinghy ride to the airport and Jackie and I will be preparing for our last crossing back to St. Croix, scheduled for the 5th.


Dan & Jackie

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Just What I Needed-

A good sail can make any captain just smile for days!
We left Saba behind in her cloud draped volcanic peak at 3am to get a jump on the day in French St. Martin. You know how on a cruise boat the captain gets you to the next port like magic the next morning. Well, I am trying to upgrade my services to a similar type. I do not do towel animals! To tell the truth I wanted to have a peaceful, relaxing sail with the full moon then the sun rise to kind of wrap up this trip of 7 weeks in the Leeward Islands. James got up with me to get the boat off the mooring and that is as far as we got. The huge cliffs of Saba backwinded our sails and we just drifted. On come the engines to get out into the wind and we were gone in no time. 10 to 13 knots of wind just barely in line to get us to St. Martin. James and Angie went back to bed and it was just me and the moonlight and the ocean that Jackie and I have known to be our home for almost two months. You reflect on a lot of things in those early hours (mainly cuz there is nothing else to do) and I am just so thankful of my wife, Jackie and all the headaches she has put up with and kept me on a very even but precarious plain. She is the reason that I can do this type of adventure in our later years and I just want her to know how much I love her and thank her for making this trip a dream come true.
Boy, is she going to be mad when she reads that! The cruise over to St. Martin was special for me and the moon, the sun rise and the nice 4-6 knots we did with no engines was fantastic. Saw some flying fish, jumping fish and sailboats coming in for the Heineken Regatta at St. Martin in a few days.
Margot Bay in St. Martin is where we ended up. It is on the French side of the island that the Dutch and French have shared for some 360 years! Iran and Israel should take some lessons here. It is a strange town with a lot of pushing salespeople that talk kind of like they have a clothes pin on their noses. The French are weird and everyone smokes. I have my opinions I guess but this is my blog so you have to listen to them.
Well, we walked around and tried to clear customs but their 4 hours of being open are cut down to 2 based on their sign on the door. We are still in quarantine with our yellow flag up on Son Spirit and it's not our fault. We are trying to end this trip on high notes by going out to a nice dinner tonight and hopefully getting fresh lobster for dinner tomorrow night on the boat from the Wednesday Fish Market!
Our weather window for the crossing back to St. Croix looks good for the 5th and 6th . So closing the loop on our 7 week 500 mile + sail should start at sunrise Friday the 5th of March. We will keep you posted as that is a huge crossing of 120 miles that is not a lot of fun if the weather messes with ya.
Catch ya later.

Dan & Jackie

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Last day on Saba.
Had to show you one more picture before we leave!
Took that tour around the island and it was way cool to hear all the history. It is a Law that you have to have an orange roof and white walls! Got some tee shirts and a 12 pack of Coke. Missed the lobster fisherman to buy lobster from them by a half an hour. $9 / pound right out of the boat. Got to get going. 3 am comes early.

Talk to ya in French St. Martin, Margot Bay as soon as I find internet service.

Dan & Jackie

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