Yacht Larus

Having just reread our last blog, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that it was pretty much spot on.

We finished our time in Antigua, sailed Dreamer to Gwada (Guadeloupe), flew back to Antigua, sailed Larus to Gwada, settled Larus into Pointe a Pitre, moved on to our charter yacht, completed the Gwada to Bequia voyage, chartered in the Grenadines for 6 week and completed our final 2 Voyage charters from Bequia to Gwada and Gwada to St Martin thereby ending our 6 month foray into permanent employment.

We enjoyed it but have stepped back into our role of Standby Crew and are planning on working an average of 1 week a month. Not only did we miss time with our cruising friends, but poor ole 'Larus' was sadly neglected. Boats don't like being unused. Her 4 months in Guadeloupe while we were in the Grenadines and then in our respective home countries made an awful lot of work for Tim.

In the first couple of weeks back, Tim redid all the things we had done to make her safe for sitting out the hurricane season. In subsequent weeks, he found himself fixing one problem after another.

She's in good form again, and the remaining jobs (re-stitching the sprayhood, replacing zips on the sail covers, installing an extra membrane for the water maker, refitting the galley, etc) will wait until we head down to Trinidad in the spring.

We are currently in the British Virgin Islands while we get work permits organized. If all your paperwork is complete and your medicals are up to date, the process takes a minimum of 2 weeks. It is very red tape heavy.

We've spent some time in Antigua and St Martin and will be mooching around in the Virgin Islands until the January.

Now for some photos :



A very frazzled cook prepping Caribbean Spiny Lobster for the first time. Tools needed: a big knife that you don't love, rubber mallet and, not shown, some heavy duty wire cutters. Cloth gloves would have been a good addition, they are spiny after all. Lobster season started in time our last charter in the Grenadines.



Deshaies, Guadeloupe to Antigua Dolphin escort. Lots of little ones in the mix. It was quite exciting seeing them appear from the face of the large waves we had that day, but impossible to photograph. We've also seen quite a number of whales in past year, but they are even harder to photograph.



After time visiting and many meals with Skipper Tim in Antigua, we made an early start to St Bart's. Wind was forecast but we didn't see any until a couple of miles off the isalnd. I don't remember ever seeing the clouds reflected so perfectly in the dead calm.



Shortly after the previous photo, wind coming before a squall darkened up the sea and as it passed gave us the clearest brightest rainbow we've seen for a while. Visibility had been really good for the whole of the journey and all the distant islands and cloud-scapes seemed bigger, brighter and much sharper.



Just to finish off the local weather report on the 11th of November, there were isolated rain squalls to the north of Gustavia, St Barts. I love they way they look like giant animals on tiny legs moving across the sky in a stately fashion. They can of course be larger and darker and that sort we like to see passing us in the distance.



This is Gustavia Anchorage and, though you can't really see them, thousands of white butterflies. We arrived in St Martin and the BVI around the same time last year. I knew this without checking because there were butterflies then as well. They swarm over flowering trees on land and flutter no more than a metre above the waves, going this way and that like confetti across the water. They didn't photograph very well; they never stop moving. I expect they had a lot to accomplish in a short period of time.

We walked to Gustavia's infamous airport and this view of Gustavia and the following photos were taken en route.



View of Gustavia.



A very handsome captain and equally handsome lighthouse



The airport and approach.



This is as much flying as I want to do in St Bart's. The runway is in a very awkward location, snuggled up to a cliff as it is.



This was taken from the anchorage, the approach side of the ridge. No plane had obliged us by landing while we were up there.



After our walk, we upped anchor and headed for Colombier, an anchorage on the north west coast of the island. We passed a number of super yachts but this one had the best display of toys. Dinghy's, jet skis, RIB (rigid inflatable boat), two towing toys and on the starboard side of the yacht an inflatable diving platform and on the port side and huge inflatable slide. The other contender had a 20+ foot sail boat that would be craned back on deck when they were finished with it.

The slides might look like fun, but all I could think of was how grateful I was not to have to put them up and take them down.



I love this photo of Tim freediving at Colombier. He is a very good at it and can hold his breath an impressive amount of time. This is quite useful when you need someone to retrieve items dropped overboard at anchor.



I take a more sedate view to snorkeling.

Our work permits are now completed and we're not needed to work until the middle of December, so we're going sailing.



This is the link to an interactive Virgin Island map - http://www.virginislandsmap.com/

We're quite excited about it because we're heading a little further west to the US Virgin Islands. Shortly, will leave the dock and head around to Jost Van Dyck, where we will check out of the BVI and tomorrow we will had down to St John's, USVI. We'll keep you posted.