08/05/2009, Scottland Bay
Happy Birthday to me! Ellie & I are having quit the adventure on wandering dolphin. Today I got a real shower at the marina opposed to showering in the rain on the deck. What a treat! Rebecca took me out for lunch too...I think she just wanted off the boat and used my B'day as a good reason.
All is well here. It is a true joy to spend time with our family again.
Miss you at home; see you soon.
Amy
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Comments [6]
07/30/2009, Scotland Bay, Trinidad
We had a successful, if somewhat bumpy sail over from Grenada to Trinidad. We left St Georges inner harbor around 2:00pm and anchored again outside where the water was clear but the current was fierce. The bottom of Wandering Dolphin was covered in long red and green hair. She must have looked like a clown to the fish she sailed over. Jimmy and I fired up our little homemade $70.00 hookah (for breathing air underwater not smoking pot) and cleaned the bottom and the prop. With the current rushing by it was a real workout but we finished in record time. While we scraped the bottom Becky made us all a great dinner of Chicken Alfredo. After rinsing off in fresh water we stuffed ourselves and weighed anchor at 6:00pm setting a double reefed main and full jib for a night passage to Trinidad.
The wind was blowing around 18 knots from the east and we were sailing almost due south magnetic so we had a nice beam reach. The boat kicked up her keel and was cruising along at 7 to 8 knots. The ocean opens up after Grenada to a wide open path with big Atlantic Rollers swelling by having had nothing to block their path since Africa. This makes for an uncomfortable ride as the size and direction of those swells coming across from just aft of the beam give the boat an uncomfortable bump with every passing. Rebecca especially hates this point of sail, but, I am proud to say, she didn't get sick on this passage. Her calculations were exact and we arrived offshore of Trinidad at daybreak. There are a couple of passages through the outer islands into Chaguaramas harbor the shortest is also the narrowest and I had previously entered here on my delivery with Morton on Saga Tiba so we did it again on Wandering Dolphin. It is quite a ride as the big waves from the ocean squeeze themselves through that small opening they grow and grow and grow and toss a small boat about. We surfed the waves and our speed on the ride down the waves would be 9 knots while the next moment we would slow down to 1.5 knots. We made it into the anchorage before 11:00am and got ourselves all tied up to the customs dock.
The customs and immigration officials were VERY thorough and after over two hours we were free to visit Trinidad. When we arrived back at the boat we found that Wandering Dolphin had been rubbing herself up and down against a piling, the fender having slipped with the high speed passage of some boat, and right where she was rubbing was a BOLT which had rubbed off a 1 foot area of paint and undercoating... once again I was happy that we have a metal boat, a fiberglass one would have had a hole in that spot.
With a sick feeling in my gut because of my wounded vessel we made our way back around the corner to a Bay. Scotland Bay looks like a picture from the South Pacific. It has rain forest covered steep hills rising from the deep green water. The hills rise in levels from the bottom and if you look closely you can see a multitude of birds. Riding the thermals highest up are the hawks and buzzards and flitting between the trees are a bird watchers cornucopia of little colorful birds. There are even parrots, this is the home to the Blue and Yellow Macaws and the Scarlet Macaw! No one in the family was happy to find out that both Boa Constrictors and Anacondas make their homes here though.
We have stayed here for a couple of days now and EmilyAnne has gone wakeboarding and we went for a little excursion into the rain forest as a family. Our boat clothing is not cut out for jungle travels, crocs are great on a boat but not so great climbing over fallen logs and scrambling down muddy leaf covered slopes. While we wore bug spray we had no long pants to keep off all of the creatures that crawl under the canopy. Let me suffice it to say that our expedition was a lot more like a swat fest than a happy hike. My children can climb on the boom of our boat, up the arch, swing from the halyards but give them a fallen branch with webs and crawly things on it and they break down into a weeping mass of humanity, Mom included.
Yesterday we woke up to a strange and eerie sound. Some thought it was wild pigs in the trees, others thought it was a fight between bears, I thought it was the waves from the other side swelling into a cave and pushing all of the air out a blow hole. Rebecca said it was Howler Monkeys... she was right! There was a troop of red howler monkeys swinging from the trees. The kids have been telling us that we were going to see BEAVER MONKEYS down here! Apparently they misheard our friend Beth Leonard from sailing vessel "Hawk" as she told them tales of one of her and Evans Starzinger's trips around the world. Our kids swear she told them about monkeys that eat trees like beavers... the pictures posted are our kids' interpretation of a Beaver Monkey. (We thought you'd get a kick out of that Beth.)
Last night Kaleb came running down to get me, "Dad! Dad! Emily just showed me, and this bay if FULL of fox crescents! Come see!" He pulled me out of my bed and I made my way up to the deck where EmilyAnne was pulling up buckets of water from over the side and pouring them back in with a shower of phosphorescence. The bright green fireworks in the water were the brightest we have ever seen. When a fish would swim by they would leave a green trail.
Jimmy went into the head in the middle of the night and was a little concerned as the whole head was full of little green floating lights. It seems the screen had fallen off and the fireflies had come in. Benny calls them firefries.
Well only a couple more days until Amy and Ellie get here. We are looking forward to seeing them and sharing this beautiful place with them on board Wandering Dolphin.
God Bless,
Captain Tofer and the Crew
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07/21/2009, St George's, Grenada
St George's is a great stop for cruisers. We are on a mooring owned by the new Camper Nicholson Marina. The holding in the little lagoon here is terrible so we decided to grab the mooring and pay the $17 which also includes all of the amenities at the marina. It's nice to have showers and a place to take the trash and fill the water. It's funny that kids who live on a boat and spend a GREAT deal of time swimming in the ocean LOVE having access to a pool. The pool here at the marina is small but very nice and the kids spent almost all day in it yesterday. It must be the fresh water they like for a change... They also spend a lot of time under water and in the fresh water pool it is a lot easier for them to dive deeper.
We were happy to see our friends on SV Altair here as well. We met Becky and Duddley back in Puerto Rico and it was great to catch up with them again. Rebecca went with Becky yesterday morning and walked to the IGA supermarket. It was a little more walking than Rebecca was used to but they had a great time.
If you are watching the weather you will see that there is, what our buddy Christian would call, a BLOB OF DOOM... the National Hurricane Center is only giving it 30% chance of developing but Jeff Masters on Wunderground is saying it might be 50/50. Either way it is no longer a threat to Grenada. It is the reason we are sitting tight for a couple of extra days though.
As we sailed down from Carriacou on Sunday we looked behind us and there was a HUGE BLACK cloud following us and swallowing the islands as 8 year old Kaleb said, "like and evil death fog!" We are used to squalls offshore. They are generally not a big deal, if we can't dodge them (which we usually can) we reef the sails and hold on. This cloud was something more than just a squall though. It was so big we couldn't see the end of it. Because I had watched the weather closely I knew it was not an actual system though so we prepared the boat for a squall. We were already running downwind so we actually dropped the main all the way and just reefed in the Jib. Beck battened down the hatches, including the companion way and left Jimmy and I out in the cockpit to get drenched by the rain and spray. It lasted about an hour and after it passed it took all of the energy with it and left us with no wind motoring the final 10 miles to St Georges.
Since I have pretty good internet here I will try to upload a new little offshore video I made on our passage from Martinique to Carriacou.
Dodging Blobs of Doom and BIG Dark Death Fogs,
Captain Tofer and the Crew of Wandering Dolphin
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