Test Run in the Caribbean - Part III

Nov 21
We started our trip back to Martinique today, stopping one more time on Bequia, this time in Port Elizabeth. After all we've seen, and especially after Union Island, we really got to appreciate this little town in Admiralty Bay.

Nov 22
Rolf and I checked us out of St. Vincent in the morning. That's when we found out that we had actually been illegal aliens the last few days as Wallilabou (where we had checked in)  only has customs but not immigrations. No big deal, but next time, we do have to check in in Kingstown. That's where we have to go for our dog Chester anyway.
We headed for Cumberland Bay on St. Vincent (we have 24hrs to leave the country) and arrived very early in a nearly empty bay. Gosh, did the bay fill up quickly! A bed sheet canvas protected us from the worst of the excruciating heat during the day.
In that little bay, in a restaurant that looked almost abandoned, Rolf and I met this really nice, young guy who was running the place and we decided that he would deserve our patronage over the other restaurants in the bay. What a good choice! We had an amazing evening with a surprisingly good dinner, better than anything we've had so far. Starting with a Calalou soup about 1 1/2 hrs after we placed our order (and 2-3 rum punches) and an amazing tuna with rice and vegetables we finished with banana flambé. All in all, we sat on the beach patio under palm trees for about 3 hours, enjoying island time. JoAnne and Kevin even danced and I got my dog fix. So, should you ever get to Cumberland Bay, talk to Julian at the Mojito's Bar and Restaurant! It'll be worth it!

Nov 23
Kevin is always up early and decided this morning that we had to leave first thing to make the long trip back to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia. Consequently, the rest of the still sleeping crew woke up thinking that something was really, really wrong when he started the engines. Rolf almost ran on deck in his underwear, thinking we might be heading for the rocks (we had stern-tied to a palm tree the night before). But all was good, Kevin just wanted to make sure we arrived in time.
What a day this was again! Wind on the nose up to 25 knots, the catamaran bouncing up and down over the waves. It really feels like a little nut shell in those conditions, but I feel so much safer than on a monohull regardless! This time, we had some real dolphins (with noses ;-)...) play in our bow wave for a short while. Those were the Flipper-kind of dolphins, quite large actually. A beautiful sight!

Sailing along the St. Lucia shoreline

Nov 24
We spend the day in Rodney Bay, having a shower on shore, enjoying the restaurants. It was a relatively rainy day, but soo hot again! JoAnne and I went to the two rather disappointing malls and the luxurious residential area until JoAnne almost had a heat stroke. During the worst (=hottest) time of the day, which starts at 10am and lasts until about 4pm, we rested on the boat - except for our trip into town. At the end of the day (before it got dark at 6pm) we visited Rodney Bay's Fort and Grounds. Nice view from the top of the hill.
Tomorrow will be our last day. We will return to Le Marin on Martinique to return the boat in the afternoon as we will have to be at the airport first thing the next day. So, only two more nights on the boat left.

All in all a great trip. Rolf and I are still pretty happy with our decision to buy a Lagoon 450. There are things we will improve over time, but we really enjoyed all the space we have to hang out and the whole catamaran experience in general. I'm positive it will be an exciting time to live on board Next Life for a year in 2012!

Test Run in the Caribbean - Part II

Nov 16 - Part 2
After putsing around the boat for a while we went ashore and called a taxi. Elson, the taxi driver, dropped Rolf and Kevin off at Port Elizabeth and JoAnne and I continued on to the local turtle sanctuary. It was started by a retired fisherman who didn't know what to do with his time and by accident came across some recently hatched turtles he decided to take care of. JoAnne and I talked to him and he was inspiring! He loves animals and feels that, after fishing and killing hundreds of those turtles during his life, he can now give back to nature. This he is doing literally, having hatched, cared for and freed well over 800 turtles so far.
At the sanctuary, we had a fun and funny encounter with an albino turtle, which really seemed to enjoy being scratched on his back shell - it made him wriggle ecstatically :-), really! It was also funny to see one of the six month old puppies respectfully and skeptically approach a land turtle about 1/3 of his size. On the way to and from the sanctuary, Elson commented on the scenery, pointing out all the houses owned by the British and Canadians, apparently a must-know.

Back in town, Elson dropped us off to join Kevin and Rolf in a restaurant for lunch. When we told him that we would have lunch first and then do some grocery shopping (again) he left us with his phone number without having been paid yet. We should call him when we need him again - wow, how trustful! We shopped for groceries in a very weird place: some kind of abandoned store that used to sell boat paint but was now partially used to sell groceries. An elderly lady with graying hair and bad teeth served us. Now, you should know that we already had quite a laugh out of Rolf answering to Kevin when Kevin pointed out (to JoAnne) "Beautiful mountains, Love!" and Rolf answered with "yes". In the store, when Kevin addressed JoAnne with "Love" again, the elderly lady answered him and that was just priceless! Since then, JoAnne has requested a change of Kevin's terms of endearments.

More laughs erupted back on the boat during our Happy Hour when Rolf had "spread some love"* or this evening over dinner when we had "bulgur burgers" (try to pronounce that!) which "could also be put on a bun"... Actually, we are laughing so much, it is hard to keep track (and hard to explain to others what's so funny...).

*referring to an encounter with a boat boy when we didn't want his help with a buoy (for payment) which led the boat boy to instruct Kevin to "Spread the love, mon!"

Some more things I have noticed:
Every night, the tree frogs on shore start making a very loud and strange noise. It almost sounds metallic and it is hard to believe it's coming from frogs.
I never thought I would be grateful for clouds, but in the sun, it is so scorchingly hot, you immediately try to escape. Even with all the wind here, and there is a lot!, I feel most comfortable with my shorts and bikini top. And rain showers are always welcome, you just need to close the hatches in time...

Rainbow over the Tobago Cays

Nov 20
Today is the first day it's raining buckets. The others are having a snooze. We are anchored at Petit St. Vincent Island after having replenished our supplies in Ashton on Union Island. Ashton was a rather disappointing little town with an open sewer (plus smell) right by the market stalls, but we did get the best fruit so far. Sweet pineapple, fragrant mango, amazing bananas, fresh coconut, and a huge papaya - what a fruit salad!

The two nights before we stayed in the Tobago Cays, a Marine Park, slightly North East of Union Island. Caribbean pure! - turquoise water, small islands with sandy beaches, snorkeling with fish and turtles. The first evening, we took Romeo (one of the boat boys) up on his offer to have grilled lobster, rice, fried banana, garlic potato, vegetables and fruit on the beach, all prepared by him and his family. I liked it, this having been my first lobster, but the others said it was overdone. Anyway, it was a nice setting - until the mosquitos came out and we fled back to the boat after having been eaten alive.

Romeo's Lobster BBQ

We did some more snorkeling the next day, but otherwise were just lazy, having a snooze - except for JoAnne, who prepared a marvelous lunch of mushroom in pancakes baked with cheese. All day, we watched big, dark rain clouds pop up at the horizon, but the Tobago Cays (not part of Tobago Island further South!) seem to be part of the "Banana Belt", where the weather stays really nice. So we watched the dark clouds pass us to the left and right, with the places around us getting all the rain.

In the evening, JoAnne prepared the leftover fresh, frozen and defrosted tuna for dinner, throwing the unedible pieces off the boat, which made the little fish around our boat really happy! About seven minutes into the procedure, a shark showed up, lurking just above the sand! We believe, it was a nurse shark, something we hadn't expected. And then a sting ray, majestically "flying" through the water. Well, that will keep me out of the water for some time... We watched the fishes some more when it was dark (around 7pm) by shining a bright light into the water. The sting ray was still there, but the shark had left. After some rounds of Rummicub, the first ones we played on this trip (being too tired most of the time), we watched the amazing, clear night sky, including shooting stars. I was hoping to see something like this on our trip to Alaska, but back then, it always got dark so late, it was mostly overcast, and it was simply too cold to hang around watching stars for long. So last night was a real treat, being far away from any settlement with only the anchor lights around.

Test Run in the Caribbean

We decided, a test run of the type boat we are picking up next year, a Lagoon 450, would be a good idea. And here we are, Rolf, Kevin, JoAnne and myself, on a chartered catamaran in the Caribbean.

Nov 10
Rolf and I had to leave Victoria late on Thursday for Seattle.

Nov 11
Early flight out of Seattle to Dallas, then to San Juan (Puerto Rico), and finally we arrived in
Fort de France, Martinique. It was pretty late and we took a taxi to our hotel, Le Dock, in Le Marin. Unfortunately, we couldn't get onto the boat that night as it was just returned by the owners and still needed to be cleaned.
Arriving at Le Dock at some time before midnight, there was a big party going on. Not quite what we were hoping for. The next shock were the tiny, stuffy rooms with a tiny double bed. We were told that the party would be over at 2 am and thought "okay, we can take that", left the stuffy room and had our first Caribbean rum downstairs on the porch. Big mistake, we should have left right away! But, as this was the only hotel in Le Marin, we didn't really have a choice. Long story short, the party, which happened right under our windows, didn't end until 4:15am... I guess, after that we slept until 10am from sheer exhaustion.

Nov 12
After having missed our 8am breakfast to the annoyance of the lady running the place, we left our bags with the charter company Star Voyage, had lunch in a restaurant (finally something to eat!), organized our groceries and got onto the boat in the afternoon to stay overnight.

We girls had a great time with the shopping, cracking up about all kinds of things, especially when I tried to call Rolf on the Walkie Talkie while the supermarket's driver drove us back to the marina.
It's clear now, we are on island time where 5 min could be anything between 5 min and half an hour.

Nov 13
After another night of loud music coming from the shore, the girls spent more time grocery shopping while the guys went through the instructions. Luckily, they were not "ronned" this time (referring to the hours of instructions Ron took them through in The Bahamas two years ago).
After breakfast at the restaurant, we headed off to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, 22 miles South.

Once out of the marina, the failure reports started to come in. Over the next few hours, we realized the generator and the inverter not working properly (we already knew that the owner had pretty much depleted the batteries before returning the boat...), the propane in the lighter for the stove was out, the oven was crap, the watermaker not working and so on. Mind you, this boat is only 7 months old!!! Apparently, not only were things not working, the owner also seems to have no idea of sailing. But our guys took care of that as much as they could (referring to furler, blocks, automatic winch on the wrong side, no radio on the fly-bridge, wrong set up of the track - admittedly a mistake by the designer just as the design of the roof which made sure that all cushions would get wet when it rains...). Anyway, it's a beautiful boat with soo much space! I just love it!

On this first day of our trip, we couldn't believe our luck with regard to the wildlife viewings. After getting all excited about the first flying fishes we saw (which would in the days to come be downgraded to plain boring), we had "dolphins without noses" join us for some time, riding our bow wave. After that, we passed a sleeping sperm whale (for the Germans: ein Potwal wie Moby Dick) at close distance, which was quite a sight. What a day!

Once arrived in Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, Rolf missed the opening hours of customs by ten minutes due to a wrong turn. He was recognized by the office ladies the next day as "the guy with the life jacket" (nobody else wears one ina dinghy and we stopped doing it also).

Nov 14
After yet another night of troubled sleeping due to loud party music from the Sandals (does that ever end?), Rolf covered customs and afterwards, we went into town for, guess what, more grocery shopping. On the way back we talked to some Australians about their interesting set up of solar panels with four wind generators and a couple from Cologne (we greeted them with "Kölle Alaaf") about the dog they had on board. Lots of Germans and Canadians on those boats around us!

We left Saint Lucia to head for Saint Vincent and The Grenadines. Apparently, snorkeling is nicest in The Grenadines, and we wanted to spend a few days there before heading back North. The crossing was mostly uneventful, just bumpier than I had expected it to be on a cat... After all the wildlife we saw on our first day, we were quite disappointed to be left with flying fish only. We stayed overnight in a beautiful spot, between the two Piton mountains, with shallow, turquoise water around us. When approaching the island, we were greeted by the most amazing, flowery smell, like honeysuckle or yasmin. It was wonderful! A little bit of sulfur smell was coming up once in a while, too, though, because of the volcanoes.

The big Piton mountain in the morning

Nov 15
Leaving the next morning, we saw a turtle floating on the surface, but otherwise, that was it for that day.
We arrived to the wonderful honeysuckle smell again in Wallilabou Bay, St. Vincent. Looking for the restaurant we had red about, we were a little taking aback by the rundown appearance of the bay. That feeling changed 180 degrees once we were tied up and beyond the boat boys. We did get bombarded by those and made a big tactical mistake: all four of us were talking to all of them at the same time, thus unnecessarily complicating the barter. We were mostly looking for fish, not having gotten any yet. In the end, Rolf made some arrangements. See the next paragraph for more on those.
After an unsuccessful trip to the shore to cover customs and immigrations - again -, we decided to all go on shore at the same time, go to the "real" restaurant, and order food while Rolf covered the formalities. This is when we found out that Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed in that bay in 2003 and 2005. I made sure to take lots of pictures, including the rock-arch at the entrance of the bay, which featured three hanged men in "Dead Man's Chest". The dock we docked our dinghy on was the one that Captain Sparrow stepped on from the top of his mast while his ship was sinking. Everybody probably remembers that sequence.

                                             Wallilabou - Captain Sparrow's dock

After an unexpectedly good dinner with more rum punch (we had had our "arrival" rum punch much earlier already, of course), beer and white wine, I crashed into bed at 7:30pm with the rest of the crew, including the skipper, following not long after.

Nov 16
Had a good night's sleep in Wallilabou Bay regardless of the private party in the beach hut. Our provider Ronald, or was it Rudolf (red nosed)? Oh no, it was Randolf, provided us with tuna at 7:30am caught that very morning. Rolf had arranged for this delivery the previous night. He also promised to return for the home-baked buns, baked by his mom, later. In the meantime, we had more fishermen approach our boat and we decided to buy even more tuna. Some we froze for sashimi, the rest will be fried tonight. While hanging around, Rolf decided to build a preventer for the boom and floated his cabin in the process... It had rained substantially during the night and a lot of water had collected in the sails - and his hatch was open... Randolf came back with the "homemade" buns, baked by his mother, which turned out to be store-bought hot dog buns with dried-up ends....he promised to be back to have "the ladies" look at some of his stuff... After having sold us some beads that Randolf claimed to have made himself - and which looked exactly like the ones that were offered to us on St. Lucia (I "booked" this expense under "donations") - he promised us to return and help with filling up our water tanks at the local restaurant as our water maker doesn't seem to be working. In the meantime, we watched kids bath in the water, a guy pee into the same water, and talked to more fishermen. Everybody was really nice and friendly, not like the St. Lucians at all. Also, they all only had ores, only one fisher boat had a motor! What a work-out!!!
*****
Well, the water refill was quite an act, but we got it done. Helps to be on "island time", too. Bought a fishing line and hootchie to be self-sufficient from now on ;-)
Today, the guys forgot to tell the girls that it would be the windiest day of the week and that the ride would be quite bumpy. So we ended up having to close the hatches while being thrown around, or up, depending on the waves. "Great" experience! We ended up in an average of 3.3 feet (1,25m) waves with the highest wave being 5.5 feet (2m). As those were only 6 seconds apart and very steep*, we expected to feel either squeezy (= sick + queezy) or perrified (= petrified + terrified), but on the fly-bridge, we all were actually alright. It's the best place to be on the boat in such conditions and all I could think of was "I'm getting hungry"...
*precise wave measurements thanks to an iPhone app

It got even bumpier (2,5-3m waves) just before turning into Friendship Bay on Baquia and we all got a little bit showered in salt water. Now we are sitting in our forward "bathtub", pointing into the wind, enjoying the shade and the breeze, while looking towards the aft of a sunsail charter cat where the cruisers are sitting in the stifling hot sun completely protected from the wind by the salon, a place where you really wouldn't want to be on a day like this.
If you want to, check out the Lagoon video on You Tube, to see what our boat looks like. Search for "Lagoon 450".

Nov 16 Friendship Bay, Bequia, Grenadines
Again, we turned in very early. Must be all the fresh air, the sun and the wind. The tuna JoAnne fried was amazing! It remained very stormy over night and all the different sounds of the boat kept some of us awake for a while.
Our plan for today is to stock up on groceries (going there by taxi) and visiting a turtle sanctuary. After that, we don't know yet, maybe we stay another night in Friendship Bay.
Now that I caught up to my report writing, I hope we find a wireless spot in town so that I can post it.