Sailing the Caribbees

Vessel Name: MERIDIAN
Vessel Make/Model: Concordia Custom Yachts/Chuck Paine 45
Hailing Port: Boston
26 April 2014 | Charleston, SC
31 March 2014 | Fajarda, Puerto Rico
27 March 2014 | Virgin Gorda
10 March 2014
01 March 2014
05 February 2014
27 January 2014 | St. Barth's
02 January 2014 | Anguilla
26 December 2013 | St. Barth's
19 December 2013 | Gustavia, St. Barths
15 December 2013 | St. Martin
08 December 2013 | Gorda Sound, Virgin Gorda
Recent Blog Posts
25 May 2014

Bahamas and the rest...

May 3, 2014

26 April 2014 | Charleston, SC

on our way!!

Sorry for the lack of updates. We had a funtastic, if brief, stint in the Bahamas and I will be sure to post a write up of that time as soon as I can.

31 March 2014 | Fajarda, Puerto Rico

The Spanish Virgins

March 31, 2014

27 March 2014 | Virgin Gorda

The Bitter End

March 21, 2014

10 March 2014

Antigua

March 9, 2014

January update

27 January 2014 | St. Barth's
Jeff
1.27.2014

We ended our visit to Anguilla on the 2nd with a fun afternoon sail with all 3 families hosted onboard the Zani’s boat, FABULOSO. We sailed a few miles up the coast from Road Bay to Crocus Bay and Little Bay. Little Bay is a magical spot with multi-hued cliffs pocked full of grottos and caves dropping into crystal clear blue water with a tiny white sand beach tucked into a well protected corner. We all donned our snorkel gear but the highlight was climbing up a monolith and jumping or diving from up high into the clear water. Jesse and I were coaxed into joining the kids who somewhat fearlessly led the charge. It was easy to see the advantages of a catamaran on the return sail to Road Bay – the boat easily digested 6 kids and 6 adults with the kids all bouncing from the trampoline on the bow to scampering into the stackpack of the mainsail. Fun stuff!

We left early the next morning for St. Martin and some familiar feeling work over the next two days to reorganize, provision and ready the boat for the Taylors. We moved onto REBECCA on the afternoon of the 4th (Orly’s 12th birthday) in Marigot and left around mid-day on Sunday the 5th for St. Barth’s. Unfortunately, due to the full day of work readying MERIDIAN for the swap, we were not able to do much of anything special for sweet Orly on her birthday. We ended up meeting up with the Smith’s ashore in Marigot and going out for dinner treating Orly to a crème brule with a sparkling candle for her birthday cake! Orly was able to ride an extended birthday wave meted out over the next few days with the Smith’s.

Our sail from Marigot to St. Barth’s was an exhilarating sail to windward under double reefed main, foresail and staysail in 25-30 knots apparent wind with big seas. Jesse, Mege and Annice handled the sails while I had the easy job of driving taking just 2 tacks to lay Columbier, arriving in time to be comfortably moored before sunset. REBECCA gave us a smooth ride considering the conditions only soaking us once with a single ill-tempered wave that soaked all of us including Jesse holding his camera (check out the photos)!

Once again, we had a great time in Columbier swimming and playing on the beach. We took a great hike from the beach down a path hugging the steep shoreline past cactus, cliffs, and caves to Anse Flammands – a long crescent of white sand backed by some posh hotels. We stopped for some incredibly fantastic ice cream in the Taiwana hotel restaurant at the end of the beach, very chic euro décor with beautiful white orchids throughout the dining area and lounge and a live flowering wall outside. On the hike back we were distracted on the path by several tortoises meandering slowly down the path eating ferns and greens along the way – one was making quick work of an orange peel.
Our last day in St. Barth’s we motored over in the morning and anchored in town to clear out and do some shopping and errands around town before heading out to St. Kitts. We briefly caught up with the crew onboard ROVH’s sister ship, JUNO, based out of Gustavia for the winter.
We had a fantastic beam reach across to St. Kitts and were greeted by a tremendous squall just as we approached the north tip of the island passing between St. Eustatius and St. Kitts. The wind preceding and in the squall was over 35 kts sustained with a brief period over 40! Heavy rain swept through and we just bore off to a broad reach where, with staysail, foresail and double reefed main, Rebecca just dug in and was pegged at 10.6 kts of boat speed building a huge quarter wake as she squatted down unable to go any faster! So smooth and safe feeling!
After the squall cleared and St. Kitts and St. Eustatius again appeared from the clouds, Jesse spotted it– waves peeling around in the lee with the wind blowing offshore on a deserted stretch of coastline. Alas, with 4 kids in tow and other competing interests, we did not get a chance to pull out the surfboards. My lesson in getting crushed by the ocean will have to wait.

We anchored in the main town, Basse Terre for the night and pulled into the deserted (with the exception of the day charter catamarans) concrete marina in the morning to escape the swell. We spent the afternoon with a taxi tour guide visiting some of the usual sites – some old sugar plantation manors and ancient sugar mill and rum distillery. We spent most of the afternoon roaming around Brimstone Hill – an incredibly well preserved British fort and Unesco world heritage site. The vista was breathtaking and the absence of safety parameters was intoxicating to the kids! It was like being in a scene from a movie for them.
The tour guide informed us that St. Kitts closed down its last sugar cane plantation just 7 years ago and was refocusing all its energy away from agriculture and into tourism. With all that sugar cane land suddenly opening up for development, it may be just a matter of time before St. Kitts verdant lush mountainsides get transformed into golf courses and resorts. Not too much of this has taken hold yet on most of the island except on the windward coast near the south end in Frigate Bay where an enormous hotel has dwarfed the coastline, “luxury” homes and villas are stacked up the hillsides peering over one another and suddenly most of the people you see on the side of the road are predominately white. I sat next to a U.N. worker stationed in Barbados on the plane back from the Grenadines who said that St. Kitts just could not compete successfully in the sugar cane or banana market and their best option is tourism – he quipped, “We can always use more golf courses”. It’s sad to see and I can’t help feel there’s got to be a more creative solution.

We left St. Kitts in the evening from White House Bay in the south, cut through the narrows between St. Kitts and Nevis, and headed south/southeast bound for Dominica. We had a relatively good close haul/close reach sail overnight past Montserrat and Guadeloupe reaching the south point of Guadeloupe and Iles des Saintes by sunrise. As we sailed in the lee of Montserrat around 11pm we had about ½ an hour of “rotten egg” breeze as we got in the shadow of the Montserrat volcano. Dominica welcomed us with a rip-snorting squall with heavy heavy rain and winds gusting in the mid 30s all the way into the anchorage of Prince Rupert Bay in the town of Portsmouth. Still over 2 miles from the anchorage, one of the local boat guys approached us in his small outboard powered skiff amid the steep chop and wind whipped spray to offer his services. We had been advised to use Martin from Providence guides and politely waved the others off by letting them know we would be using Providence. One guide quipped: “the sun doesn’t only shine on Martin you know”, so we bought some bananas and grapefruit from him and declared that the sun was now shining on him as well! Shortly after anchoring the word had reached Martin that he had a client in the anchorage and he pulled up in his colorful skiff with flags from many different countries stacked on several flagstaffs mounted along the gunnels and flying in the breeze. Martin was friendly and charismatic, full of businesslike energy, trying to coax us out of our semi comatose haze from sailing an all-nighter. He gave us a “Dominica welcome” by opening several super sweet juicy grapefruits, showing us “the way we do it here” spiraling the skin off with his pocketknife and quickly slicing up the fruit for us to share. While Jesse, Annice and I attempted to put the sails and deck in some order, Mege was down below cooking up bacon, toast and eggs for all. After absorbing some much needed energy from our mid-day breakfast, we were ushered in to the center of town onboard the Providence to try to catch the tail end of the Saturday open market in Portsmouth. Fresh coconut water followed by sucking on just-husked sugar cane, we walked the town and got the lay of the land and took in the sites while Jesse cleared customs. Later in the afternoon, we boarded Martin’s craft again and were rowed up the Indian River for a tour hoping to catch the late afternoon return of the local parrots and other birdlife. The river was beautiful and so different than most other experiences in the Caribbean so far – narrow and covered with a canopy of green with snaking ropey tree roots lining the banks, this river played a role in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. We did catch a brief glimpse of a parrot and heard some squawking but no sound of “pieces of eight”. Martin enthusiastically educated us on the local flora, fauna and wildlife and was great at engaging the kids. We had a “coconut moment” at the head of the river before a quick dip in the cool water and a lesson about the blood swamp trees lining the river and the role they played as a communication tool for the ancient Kubuli or Carib islanders who would whack the trees in different ways to convey messages across the valleys.
The next couple of days we were guided around the North end of the island by Martin and another of the Providence guides, Paul who took us to a beautiful windward side beach, Number 1 beach in Hempstead Bay (also used in the Pirates movies) with a fresh water river flowing out into the ocean backed by a dense coconut grove. We swam in the cool fresh river water and all played native for a while including a game of tropical boule/bocci/pentanque on the beach using coconuts. Paul opened some mature coconuts for us by expertly smashing it with a large rock to strip off the husk, then using a small rock to carefully crack off the top without spilling any of the water. After we finished the water he popped out the sweet hard meat with a pocketknife and produced a large hand of bananas to eat with the coco meat – a fantastic combo. We also found a sprouted coconut (one that has just shot out its first roots and is about to shoot out its first fronds, the inside of which is filled with a light solid foam – sweet, very light, juicy and very healthy as it contains all the nutrients for the coconut to start growing into a tree!) To finish off our coconut experience, we plucked a few super tender hearts of palm from some newly rooted coconuts.
Our next adventure was hiking to Syndicate falls, plucking some super juicy grapefruits along the way. Paul is a self-proclaimed botanist and was educating us on all the local plant life and their uses wherever we went. We gathered some bark from the cinnamon tree as well as some leaves, some bay leaves, lemongrass from the side of the road, watercress, coffee beans, vanilla, as well as grapefruit. Syndicate falls was big and loud and beautiful and green.
The next day we got off the boat by lunch and picked up some local street food (fish cakes, fried chicken!, and rotis) before heading off on a hike to Chaudriere pools. Chaudriere pool has about a 10 -15 foot waterfall plunging into a deep pool surrounded by rock cliffs perfect for jumping off of into the bubbling pool. The kids were fearless and took many turns leaping into the bubbles. There is nothing better than jumping into water clean enough to drink after spending so much time covered in salt on the ocean.
The next day we motored down to the main town of Roseau and spent a few hours walking the city streets and the open market finding the great street food spots. While getting refreshed and hydrated by the coconut man, we met a Canadian woman originally from Dominica who returns each winter to her home island and runs wellness programs for the local population. She directed us to some great street food spots to sample the local salt cod sandwiches. The first one was right next to the coco man – a homemade barbeque grill where plantains were roasting over charcoal and then slit like a hotdog bun and filled with a salt cod salad! Another had salt cod and smoked herring in small narrow bread loaves with some local sauces and others with a kind of fried pumpkin bread stuffed with salt cod salad. You can also always find good fried chicken and fish cakes – not the healthiest, but very tasty! The streets around the market are littered with tiny wooden snack shacks offering drinks and some variation on the menu mentioned above. Sometimes, it’s just some kind of main dish with rice and beans – a one-plate menu – home cooked.
After filling our bellies with local fare and over provisioning at the open market with fresh fruits and vegetables, we headed back to the boat to push off for Mustique – a 145 mile sail overnight past Martinique, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent to end opposite the island of Bequia in Brittania Bay, Mustique. Shortly after we raised the sails, while still in the lee of Scott’s Head at the south tip of Dominica we were entertained by a spirited pod of dolphins leaping towards us and then playing in the bow wake for 15 minutes or so! A great send off from a beautiful island.
Our overnight sail was uneventful and fairly comfortable and we picked up a mooring off Basil’s Bar in Mustique around 12:30.
Mustique is a small island, privately owned by the Mustique Company and filled with estates and villas scattered around the coast and the hillsides. The island was originally purchased from the Hazell family (a local family with deep roots from St. Vincent) by Colin Tennant (Lord Glennconner) as a place to create a utopian community for him and his well-healed friends. Eventually he sold the island to a group of homeowners and it is now owned in shares by most of the property owners. The estates and villas are mostly quite lavish, all are fully staffed and most of them are available for rent. Although we didn’t body surf with Mick Jagger (we did sample his nuts), lunch with Shania Twain, or have cocktails with Tommy Hilfiger, we did have a fantastic stay and feel grateful to have had the experience.

Upon arrival, after quickly getting the boat sorted on deck, we zoomed ashore for lunch up at Indigo – Jesse’s parents’ villa. What a treat to go ashore to lunch freshly prepared and laid out by the pool! Just the start of several days of being very well cared for by Jesse, family and the house of Indigo!
We spent 5 days enjoying Mustique at a leisurely pace. Mege and Annice took many hikes, the kids swam in the pool and in the waves at Macaroni beach, and we all relaxed a bit from the day-to-day chores, constant motion and salty environment onboard. Jesse and I drove around the island in the Mule looking for waves but found none, however, we did find some tasty golden coconuts on one of Mick Jagger’s trees. I climbed and harvested some sweet young golden jelly nuts from Mick and a bunch of green nuts from another tree at a villa nearby.
Every morning after, we enjoyed smoothies with coconut water or some fresh-juiced passion fruit and coconut water to start breakfast.

I should take a moment to describe the experience of our time living on REBECCA of Vineyard Haven. First of all, I should have explained initially, for those of you who aren’t familiar, what Rebecca is: Rebecca is a traditionally built wooden schooner, 6o feet on deck, 75 feet overall including the bowsprit and boomkin. She was built in a shed off the beach of Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard by Gannon and Benjamin of Angelique and Silver Bali – exotic tropical hardwood responsibly harvested in Suriname instead of the usual teak or mahogany and white oak. She’s 75,000 pounds with wooden masts and lots of varnish. An absolute stunner! She’s a bit of work but a ton of fun to sail – smooth and steady and powerful. Jesse bought her (after a thorough survey) from her initial owners last December and moved aboard with his family last summer. One of the beauties of a large schooner is the expansiveness of the deck and the breakup of the spaces. Even though there was 8 of us living aboard, we seldom felt cramped. At anchor the kids could be found playing games up around the forepeak hatch or on the bowsprit or spread out doing schoolwork in the main salon and the doghouse. Jesse puttered around with various projects and used either the doghouse or sometimes stood using his bed, built in at chest level, as a desk for writing emails and correspondence. Mege and Annice took turns in the galley keeping everyone well fed and happy. Space on boats has to be well organized and the spaces on Rebecca seemed to work well to support the 8 of us for almost two weeks. Mege and I slept in the forepeak, Orly and Asa were set up on the upper berths in the main salon, Jesse and Annice remained in the master stateroom, and Selah and Teal moved out of the forepeak and took up residence in the doghouse aft. Because we were moving a lot to cover the 300 or so miles to the Grenadines, schoolwork did not happen everyday but when we could, the kids spread out and did their work, practiced their instruments and it felt like we had a one-room schoolhouse afloat. Mege and I also made some strides learning a new song and new chords on the Ukulele! Thanks to Annice’s patience and persistence. It was great to be with good friends, to share our thoughts, dreams, and struggles.

We flew out of Mustique (out of it’s tiny airstrip nestled between two hills!) Monday morning the 20th and had most of the day free in St. Vincent before we resumed our island hopping flights – St. Vincent to Barbados to Antigua to St. Kitts to St. Maarten! Kenneth, one of the staff at Indigo, had thoughtfully arranged for the 19-year-old daughter of a friend to pick us up at the airport and give us a tour of some of St. Vincent during the day. We spent the day visiting Fort Charlotte, the town of Kingston and the botanical gardens. We asked our guide to recommend some good local food we could grab for lunch and her suggestions included Subway, Pizza Hut or KFC! We tried to explain that we don’t eat fast food and really want to sample the local street food or some good locals restaurant but she said that all she eats is Subway, Pizza Hut and KFC and that she hasn’t eaten any local food since she was young and her father made her. I realize why the Canadian woman we met in Dominica has put all her energy into teaching the locals how to eat local and stay healthy. Though they are surrounded by a bounty of fresh food, many shun it for much less healthy choices.

We arrived back on MERIDIAN around 10pm on Monday the 20th in Marigot, St. Martin. On the following morning’s radio net we heard an announcement from a boat named DAYDREAMER with 3 daughters aged 10, 12, and 14 looking for other kids to play with. We spent some time over the next two days getting the kids together and getting a window into another American cruising family. They were from Alaska and had been living aboard for 3 years, mostly traveling between the US east coast, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. The girls all got along well and spoke of running across other kids that were still “landy” meaning still holding on to the comforts and habits of living ashore in normal society where you don’t have to make due with what’s in front of you and who and what you can find to play with. We also reunited with the Zani’s in Marigot and made plans to cruise together towards St. Barth’s.

We missed out on celebrating Mege’s 44th birthday in grand style on the 24th. We spent that morning getting the final fit on a shade awning to give us some protection from the sun in the main salon and galley area – Yay! Much better now – come to think of it, I think that is the best gift I could give Mege right now! As soon as we finished with that and cleared customs we headed off for St. Barth’s, with a short swim stop at the beautiful beach on Tintamarre, to rendezvous with the Zani’s on Fabuloso in Anse de Columbier. The payoff for the day of travel was to be here in Columbier where Mege can go for a swim and a paddle on the SUP in the morning, some running on the beach and a hike in the afternoon and relaxing in the shade with a good book during the heat of the day – happy Mege! So, here we are, swimming, hiking and playing around the schedule of schoolwork and music lessons – back to our routine. The kids are doing fairly well with the schoolwork routine, though after two weeks of a more lax schedule, we need to implement the everyday 8am school schedule again so we have the rest of the day to play and explore. The newest development (better late than never) is Asa’s newfound thirst for learning French! I’ve downloaded 3 different ipad apps and he’s devoted to mastering the intro lessons. He’s gotten Orly and the rest of us into it as well. Hopefully we can make some strides. We plan to go into town for a proper birthday dinner soon and maybe a day with a rental car to tour St. Barth’s when we can practice our French in earnest. By the end of the week, we will most likely head off along with the Zani’s to Antigua or maybe island hop through St. Kitts, Nevis and Montserrat on the way to Guadaloupe and Dominica.

A bientot!

Jeff, Mege, Orly and Asa




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