Leaving St. Martin
05 July 2008 | St. Martin
Jane/ Warm and Sunny
Yes, at last we are on our way - we are excited to be heading out.
With Bertha on the horizon we felt it was prudent to leave as soon as possible and depart tomorrow (Sunday) morning after going through the Dutch bridge at 9.30am. We will probably leave by noon, hopefully we will have all items on our list ticked - can but hope. We plan an all night trip south to the Saintes (just south of Guadeloupe) where we will assess the weather (with the help of Eric, our ham weather guru in Trinidad, and Chris Parker who looks after numerous boats in the Caribbean). Bertha has turned west and her southern part at the moment may hit the northern Leeward Islands (where we are now) sometime Wednesday. This is why we are moving south. We hope that she will move north again and peter out so that we can pop back up to Guadeloupe for a few days to finish off our shopping list, however if necessary we will move on to Martinique and hole up there. We will let you know how it goes.
Our couple of boat projects in St. Martin extended into some major work, but although frustrating at times (parts, availability of trades, weather, etc..) we have managed to accomplish a lot. Whoever said to me that they thought Russ might get a bit bored with life afloat has no need to worry - there will always be projects.
What have we done? Worked hard (yes it is not all chill out) and played hard too with some great friends. We now have a new mainsail and cover with lazy jacks, we have an amazing new stainless steel bimini (covers the cockpit) with four solar panels at 150 watts each which should produce up to 50 amps per hour and sun screens at the back and sides (old one was hopeless and falling apart), new radar, two new anchors (a Rocna and Fortress, we also have two CQRs, so are set up very well), new Sea B Que (BBQ), set up computer for winlink (email using ham, needed external Bluetooth thingie - kept crashing before), have all items so we can put in new freezer and fridge (the old ones needed replacing and more insulation, we will do this job hopefully in Bonaire), moved the reef lines back to the cockpit (a major job, but an important safety factor we felt), tried to get the AC to work (need special gas from Europe so are now on the search), tried to get liferaft serviced (can only do in St. Thomas), tried to service Epirb (emergency beacon, looks like St. Thomas again), bought regulators (unable to obtain before), put in electric dumpload for excess amps from the wind generator so that we can get hot water (used to have to use the engine), put on new harness for the anchor, cleaned, cleaned and cleaned. Sounds a bit OTT and we are now broke, but we want to do stuff now so we can enjoy the benefits (yes we have learnt from 18 years of building works in Vancouver!). Still tons to do, but hey that is called boating and it is not so bad when you are in warm tropical islands.
Our time in the Lagoon her has been fun. It is a great place to spend some time and connect with the community, we look forward to coming back next year and seeing many of our friends again.
We have added a few pictures, however I think I need to start clicking a bit more. We will make sure we put a photo of the finished project on the next blog. Hope you enjoy and we look forward (as always) to your comments.
Bonaire here we come!!