This cruising season has felt like a lot of waiting. We’re used to waiting for weather windows, of which we fortunately don’t need many this year, but this season has been about a different kind of waiting. While we waited for a weather window to get from St. Kitt’s to the USVI, we were simultaneously waiting for our new battery cells to arrive in St. Thomas. Once they were in the USVI, we waited for winds and waves in the harbor to die down enough to be able to get the batteries onboard safely. Then we waited for my folks to arrive. We waited for our new freezer to arrive. We waited for the Salty Dawgs meetup in the BVI to start. Just as the meetup was starting, we learned that our current boat insurance provider would be dropping Caribbean coverage. That launched us into four weeks of waiting for a new policy to pan out, which included waiting for various responses to our numerous emails requesting policy and survey quotes, waiting for the day of the insurance survey we eventually booked, and waiting for the survey report to be finished (the latter happened quickly). Then we waited for the final insurance approval, which, thankfully, also arrived quickly. Yes, we have a new insurance policy that will commence as soon as our current one expires. Yay! Now we’re just waiting for wire transfer information to pay them, but that’s the icing on the insurance cake at this point.
While we were waiting for insurance to pan out, it also meant waiting to determine the rest of our cruising plan before heading to wherever we would haul out the boat for hurricane season. This also meant waiting to book said haul out facility, as well as the lodging we’ll need during the boat closeup process. We are extremely lucky that our new policy allows us to keep our boat in St. Kitt’s again for hurricane season, so we don’t have to alter our original cruising plan. Hooray! This isn’t a cruising season where we’ve had to make a lot of miles, so we have had the luxury of being able to wait comfortably, and we have been enjoying ourselves. There are far worse places to be waiting.
There are some advantages to all this waiting. Since we’ve been staying close to good cell coverage areas in order to deal with insurance, we’ve been near easily accessible on shore WiFi where I’ve been able to do some data-intensive online stuff over WiFi rather than using our data. We’ve done a lot of snorkeling. We reconnected with cruising friends we made last year. A little over a week ago, we spent several lovely days in Brewer’s Bay where we made some new cruising friends, including Connor, Blake (@captain_blake_sparrow on IG) and Dan (Adventureman Dan on FB and IG). We’ve also had some of the best diving since Puerto Rico last April; three awesome dives in two days!
With the insurance monkey off our backs, we will continue our explorations, hopefully only with the typical waiting for the right weather conditions 🤞. Our current plan is to head to the BVIs for a few weeks, and from there to St. Martin for a few weeks before returning to St. Kitt’s. As always while cruising, we’ll see how that goes.
It will take me a while to sort through the dive pictures, but I’ll get to them eventually. For now, enjoy this slideshow compilation of our various snorkel excursions thus far. Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!
I never got around to writing a blog for this past weekend, and I’m not big into April fools jokes. Instead, I give you a handful of light-hearted pictures to enjoy today.
Last week, I promised you something fun. Here it is.
The William Thornton Floating Bar & Restaurant has been an attraction in the BVIs since 1989, reachable only by boat. It is anchored in The Bight of Norman Island and serves lunch and dinner daily. It’s reputed to be quite the party spot at night, where many a cruiser and charterer jumps into the water from the top deck and drinks (sometimes simultaneously) until they peter out. The original “Willy T,” as it is affectionately known, was a wooden schooner named for the Jost Van Dyke-born architect, William Thornton, who designed the original U.S. Capitol. Sadly, it sank on its mooring sometime in 1996 when it sprung a leak in the night. An attempt was made to move it to become a reef, but the currents tore it apart. Its steel-hulled replacement, the Willy T2, was a decommissioned tanker that the owners fitted out for their needs. Alas, Willy T 2 was destroyed by hurricane Irma in 2017. The owners purchased a replacement in 2018 and had it renovated to look much like the Willie T2, and after a brief stint anchored in Great Harbor at Peter Island next door to Norman, it returned to its home in The Bight. Yes, we had lunch there with my folks one day, but that’s not the fun part. Keep reading.
What does one do with the wreck of a floating restaurant that is languishing on the shores of Norman Island? If you’re the non-profit organization Beyond the Reef, you dress it up with some pirates, sink it, and install dive moorings so people can tie up their boats and enjoy a dive on this piece of art. (Dave says that now makes it a Wet Willy 😁.) Beyond the Reef successfully sank the Willy T2 in August of 2019 between two reef heads in Key Bay on the south side of Peter Island. All they ask is a $5 donation/person (honor system), which they donate to a local children’s swim program. You can learn more about Beyond the Reef and its other underwater artistic installations here.
We anchored in the lovely Key Bay anchorage area, donned our dive gear, and towed our hookah out by dinghy to one of the dive moorings. In the water we went, about 55’-60’ down, the extent of our hoses. Due to our hose limitations, we could only enjoy the exterior of the vessel and the surrounding seabed, but enjoy it we did. It was a hoot! If you have the time, check out Beyond the Reef’s photos of the Willy T 2 build and sinking so you can compare those to the pictures I took for the slide show below. Which is where I am leaving you today.
Enjoy the slides of the Wreck of the Willy TB2. Until next time, stay safe, and take care of each other!
Wow, it’s been just over 3 weeks since I’ve posted! You could infer that it’s because I’ve been busy enjoying myself, and I have been. The truth, however, is that I haven’t been “feeling the blog.” I promise a blog focused on the fun we’ve been having, but right now I need to vent.
Our insurance company, Geico/BoatUS, is dropping Caribbean coverage. I get it; it’s becoming a more risky market during hurricane season, which is 6 months of the year. They came into that market late and it’s not really their gig. What I don’t like is how they essentially left us in the lurch.
Our policy cycle is April 13 of one year through April 12 of the next year. We get our renewal notice via email during the first week of March, and each year since we started in 2019, the policy with the rider has automatically renewed. I suppose we should have seen the writing on the wall since they’ve been dropping boats over the past year, especially sailboats, which they seem to consider more problematic. Maybe it’s that big stick they have sticking up out of their middles (that would be the mast). At any rate, we got our renewal notice on Thursday, March 7. Only this time, it stated that they would be dropping Caribbean coverage. We could use the boat in mainland US and Canadian waters, and could call and request a “visitation extension” for the Bahamas and Caribbean for up to 120 days, but not for the period of June 1-November 30 (the entirety of hurricane season, for their purposes). For that, we had to call. Okay, Dave called. He told them we were in the BVI and asked for the visitation extension and told them we would seek an alternate plan for hurricane season. The following day, Dave had an email response. Not only would they not grant the visitation extension, they also told us that we weren’t even covered for the final month of our policy because we had left US waters without permission. Say what?!
I’ll cover that last point first. According to the NH Amendments page of our current policy, which is good through April 12 of this year, they can’t just cut us off like that, except for nonpayment. It took a couple of phone calls and emails to get them to admit that, but they finally did. So we are covered through that date. That gave us just over a month to find a new policy.
Now for the part about not granting us the visitation extension. First, I should tell you that we started this policy in 2019 or 2020 and even purchased the rider that allows us to be in the Bahamas or Caribbean at any time of the year, without prior notification and with no restrictions other than excluding a few locations we’ve never visited. Each year since we started the policy it has renewed in its entirety, rider included, without our having to do anything except make sure they had the correct payment information for our automatic renewal payment. Now back to their refusal to grant the visitation extension.
They said they wouldn’t grant said extension because we’d left mainland US waters without notifying them ahead of time. Hmmm…..that little gem isn’t in our current policy document, not on any of the 20+ pages, which, I assure you, we reread thoroughly. More emails and phone calls. They were reading from the renewal policy, which wouldn’t go into effect until April 13. So….you won’t grant the visitation extension because we didn’t do something our current policy doesn’t require us to do? Starting to see the catch-22 here? They even gave examples of how “prior notice” might occur. We could have notified them prior to departing for the Caribbean, or when Caribbean coverage was added to the prior term and with a request to extend into the renewal. Hello, Geico/BoatUS, neither of those are part of our current policy and we’re not mind readers. Perhaps you should have told us about this after we renewed last year. On top of that, in a way we actually did notify them of our intent to remain in the Caribbean when, last spring, we asked for and were granted the relevant paperwork to store our boat in Puerto Rico for hurricane season. You know, an island in the Caribbean.
Then there was this little tidbit at the end of the same email. They could grant an extension in the event of “extenuating circumstances beyond our control.” Really, Geico/BoatUS, you don’t see this? You CREATED an extenuating circumstance beyond our control. We know you won’t cover us past May 31, but at least give us until then so we have enough time to find a replacement policy! This is what happens when bean counters make decisions. 🙄
The griping part is over. We clearly are not going to get anywhere by appealing to Geico/BoatUS’s better nature. We will bring this to the attention of whichever entity monitors and regulates what insurance companies can and can’t do. Based on our interpretation of the NH Amendments to our policy, we think they’re in the wrong, but we’re not experts.
Where does this leave us? We have asked our boating friends for referrals to the insurance companies they use and have sent out several requests for quotes. We’ve received some ballpark quotes, but before any quote can be finalized, we need to schedule a survey of our boat. The survey requires that our boat be hauled out of the water, so we have to coordinate a surveyor’s schedule with a boat yard’s schedule. We’re working on that. Hopefully we have it all taken care of before our current policy expires.
Like I said at the beginning of this post, next time I’ll write about something fun that we’ve done. Maybe it will have something to do with the picture at the top of this post. 😉 Until then, please keep your fingers crossed for us, stay safe, and take care of each other!
My folks arrive late on 2/13. We had rented a car for the day to reprovision for four people for a month, and to be able to pick up my folks at the airport so they didn’t have to get a taxi. We were all safely aboard Lady in St. Thomas Harbor by a little after 8pm.
We kept it low key the next day so my folks could recuperate from their prior long day of travel. Our big adventure was taking them on the Safari Bus from one end of the island to the other and back, something Dave and I had done the week before. We got off in Red Hook for lunch at Duffy’s Love Shack, because it was so yummy last time. This visit, we were treated to their metal shark in motion. Dave & I thought it was just decoration on our last visit, but it’s actually animatronic. When somebody orders a drink called The Shark Tank, Love Shack (by the B-52s) starts playing loudly, the shark’s mouth starts munching, fog and bubbles are spewed out from the other end of the bar, and everyone starts singing. Well, the customers start singing. We asked our waiter how many times a day he has to listen to that song- about 10 times a day. I bet that wears thin.
The following day, Friday, we left St. Thomas for St. John, but first we popped up to Mingo Cay for a snorkel. There is one mooring ball there, right over the reef. We snorkeled and dove there last year with our buddy boats, Caretta & Wild Horses. It’s a great snorkel for my folks because they can do it right off Lady’s sugar scoops. After our snorkel we had lunch, then headed over to Caneel Bay where we picked up a National Park Service (NPS) mooring ball in Caneel Bay on the west side of St. John, just north of the town of Cruz Bay. We and our buddy boats had spent a few days there last year. We dinghied into town so my folks could check it out, and we stopped for a drink at High Tide’s happy hour, right on the water. The right side of the ferry dock, facing it from the water, is being renovated, but the dinghy dock was still open. However, we had to wade ashore in knee deep water because access through the ferry terminal was closed. We didn’t realize it at the time, but there’s also a dinghy dock on the left side with dry access to land through the terminal. We used that the next day, much drier and no sandy feet.
Saturday morning we headed back ashore to visit the NPS Visitor Center. First of all, their dinghy docks are all gone! Looks like they’re being rebuilt. We dropped my folks off at the Customs dock so they could walk around to the Visitor Center, then Dave & I went around to the dingy dock to tie up, on the dry access side this time. Then we ran into my folks coming back from the Visitor Center. Closed! Our pamphlet and the sign on their door said open daily 8am-4pm. Nope. Bummer! I called later and got their message that says their current hours are M-F from 8:15am-1:15pm. We stopped there briefly last year with our boat buddies just for some information and a park map, but we didn’t look at the exhibits. Oh well. We’re in the area through April; I’ll get there at some point this year. Instead, we walked over to the Catholic Church so my folks could find it the next morning, then returned to Lady for a dip in the water and a relaxing afternoon.
Sunday morning we dinghied my folks into town for Mass. Dave & I found a little coffee shop just up from the water. I enjoyed a latte and used their WiFi to tend to some boat club stuff. Dave went for a walk. When my folks got out of church, they met us there and bought us pastries to enjoy later. They enjoyed a coffee each while I trotted up the hill to the Dolphin Market for some produce, then we returned to Lady for lunch rather than eating ashore again. It gets pricey.
On Monday of this week, we left Caneel Bay for the north shore of St. John to explore the bays up there. During the winter months, the north shore is often impacted by northerly swell from cold fronts moving south and east from the U.S. If the swell is sufficiently large or short period, it can be uncomfortably rolly in those bays and landing a dinghy ashore can be treacherous. There can also be rip currents along the beaches. The first half of this week, however, was perfect for the north shore. We spent one night in Hawksnest Bay and two in Francis Bay, all of about 2.5 nm apart. In between the two are Trunk, Cinnamon and Maho Bays. We all snorkeled in Hawksnest. It was disappointing. These reefs are in a sad state. Maybe I’ll write about that another time. Dave & I dinghied to a couple of the beaches to check them out. Gibney Beach on the east side of Hawksnest is the legacy of an old island family. On the east end of this beach is the ruin of Oppenheimer’s house. Yes, the a-bomb Oppenheimer. Dave & I dinghied to Cinnamon Bay from Francis Bay to snorkel (again, disappointing) and then explore the sugar mill ruins across the road from Cinnamon Bay Campground.
About 2/3 of St. John is National Park, including the coastal waters around it. There is no anchoring in park waters; you must use the mooring balls provided. Fortunately, between all the NPS bays, there are about 200 of them. They cost $26/night, but since Dave is old enough for the lifetime senior pass, which we purchased last year, we get them for $13/night. Sweet deal! They are well maintained, and that must be quite a task for the NPS, because not everyone uses them properly. Thus far we’ve been fortunate to find balls open in each bay we’ve chosen to stop at, despite this being peak charter/cruising season.
As I type, we are transiting the west side of St. John en route to Reef Bay on the south side. If we’re lucky, at least one of the two day-use moorings will be available so we can dinghy ashore to explore the sugar mill ruins there before moving on to one of the other nearby bays with overnight moorings. We plan to go up into Coral Bay on Friday so Dave and my Dad can help our friend Juan trouble shoot his engine. The ladies will do their own thing.
We’ll spend the next week and a half continuing to explore St. John before heading up to the BVI for a bit. More about that next week. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
We’ve been in the USVI since January 21st and all but one of those days has been spent at St. Thomas, mostly in St. Thomas Harbor. The first week and a half was all about provisioning, getting our new batteries to Indigo Lady, and then Dave installing them. In that timeframe we left the harbor just once to cruise offshore to empty our holding tanks, then we went to a little anchorage on the west side of Hassel Island to make water. Making water in St. Thomas Harbor would be ill advised; harbor water tends to be icky. The next day it was right back to St. Thomas Harbor.
For those who don’t know/remember why replacing our lithium-iron-phosphate batteries was important, here’s a quick synopsis. (If you know the story, skip to the next paragraph.) The original batteries were purchased with our entire solar-electric system when Dave did the original conversion in 2016-2017. By 2019 we started having issues with them and ended up replacing them, from the same company, in August of 2020 as a partial warranty. So yes, we paid for our batteries again, about half of the original cost. Within a year, the new batteries were giving us trouble! Despite the best efforts of a particularly helpful engineer at the company, and several upgrades later, at our expense, Dave was done with that company. Their batteries were never going to be capable of serving our needs. It was then that he started thinking about how to replace them. Go with another company or build them himself?
Back to the present. Dave ultimately determined that it was far more cost-effective to buy battery cells and build his own batteries than to buy premade batteries from another company. Purchased batteries cost about $28K, while the cells to get the same capacity as those cost about $7600, and that included the cells, shipping and all the parts to make the batteries come together. It took Dave four days to build the two battery banks, one in each hull. Even better, they work! We haven’t made any long trips on them yet, just a few 5-8 nm hops, but those were done entirely on battery & solar, and the batteries recovered beautifully. We were able to cruise at about 6 knots each time- woo hoo!
Dave finished the batteries on January 30th. Other than one day and night spent at Christmas Cove at Great St. James Island, we continue to stay at St. Thomas. We’re not straying too far because my folks are coming on the 13th, assuming the impending snow doesn’t delay them. Cold fronts come through regularly this time of year and we don’t want to get trapped someplace, unable to get back here in time to meet them. We also had to ride out three days of big winds and rain last week, and St. Thomas Harbor is a good spot to do that. Still, we’ve managed to enjoy ourselves enough. We met a local, Ralph, who stopped to inquire about Lady when he was dinghying by. He gave us lots of helpful local information and helped us get the new batteries onboard. We’ve visited with him a few times. We met up with friends we met cruising in the Bahamas last year for errands (thanks Juan & Alison) and lunch. We learned how to use the Safari bus, and even rode its entire route one day out to Red Hook on the east end of St. Thomas and then out to the University of the Virgin Islands on the west end. We’ve been in Brewer’s Bay for a few days. Yesterday we dinghied to shore, locked dinghy to a tree, and walked up to the UVI bus stop to catch a Safari into town for the weekly farmers market, where we also met up with our new friend, Ralph. We hung out for a bit and bought some great produce. I am now in possession of a breadfruit that I have to figure out how to work into a recipe. I’m thinking it’s going to end up in a curry. Yum!
It hasn’t been a show-stopping 3+ weeks, but it’s been enjoyable nonetheless. I enjoy getting to know an area and feeling comfortable in it. Did I mention that it’s comfortably warm? Temps are generally in the low-mid 80s during the day, and not humid yet. We’ve even had to put on long sleeves a few times at night when the sun sets, the winds are up, and temps dip into the mid 70s. It’s awesome!
Once my folks arrive, we will head to St. John as soon as we can to explore that island from land and water. In early March, we will all be heading to the BVIs. I’m going to try to post weekly from now on. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Here’s what the harbor looked like during those big winds.
We finally got our chance to leave St. Kitt’s, only not for St. Martin, as we’d originally planned. The conditions just weren’t conducive for that NNW course and wasn’t going to be for the foreseeable future, 1-2 more weeks. The conditions were good, however, for going straight to the USVI, so we took it.
It’s been a long time since we’ve made an overnight passage with following seas. I’d forgotten that winds 12-18 gusting to 23 with 4-6’ seas, even on a short period, are fine when they’re on your stern pushing you forward. For the past few years, conditions like that were a no-go because we were most likely going to be heading into them and getting slammed. It took my brain a while to embrace the reality. A phone call with Chris Parker (weather router we use) helped, because he confirmed the weather window and that it would hold more than long enough for us to get to St. Thomas, 141 nm away. We hauled anchor in Basseterre, St. Kitt’s at 5am on Saturday morning, 1/20 and arrived at the mouth of St. Thomas Harbor, USVI about 7am Sunday morning.
The passage was blissfully uneventful. Well, there were no bad events. There was one really wonderful event- a visit from a very large pod of dolphins just before sunset. There had to be at least 3 dozen of them playing in our bow waves, riding the surges that funneled between our bows from the stern, and jumping in the waves all around us. It was amazing! They stayed with us for about 15 minutes before the final stragglers peeled off. It was partly cloudy, but there was a brilliant half-moon and we could see a fair amount of stars. The light reflected off the clouds, lighting our horizon such that it was never pitch dark. I personally do not enjoy pitch dark night crossings, so I was quite happy being able to actually see all around us.
We were making 6 knots with our motors set at only about 4kW each. A fish hit one of Dave’s lines, so we had to slow down to reel it in. He cut back the power on the motors, but we were still moving too fast. We had to actually stop both motors to reel in the fish and we were still making 2 kts. That’s some push we were getting! We would repeat this one more time before Dave gave up on fishing, because both times it was just barracuda. When I came up for the 12-3am watch, I cut our speed down to 4.5 kts because we were going to arrive in the dark, which is not good for anchoring. Dave cut our speed even further when he came on at 3am, and by the time we were about 2-3 nm out from the harbor, the motors were set at about 1kW each because the sun still hadn’t risen.
The sun rose just before 7am, but a cruise ship was also arriving. The pilot boat waved us off from the harbor entrance. We could have entered and anchored before the cruise ship got there, but whatever. Instead of waiting out the cruise ship, we altered course to the western entrance to the harbor and went in that way. We were anchored in 15’ of water just east of the Coast Guard dock by 8am. I ran up our Q-flag and submitted our entry via the CBP Roam app. Then I started tidying up the boat from all our passage gear and snacks while Dave tried to catch a nap. I awaited the call from Customs. The call never came, but an email did, about an hour after I submitted our entry (it was Sunday, after all). Welcome to the USVI; enjoy your stay! We were officially cleared in, so I replaced the Q-flag with the USVI courtesy flag and had breakfast. We just relaxed the rest of Sunday and slept pretty hard that night.
As I write this on 1/24, we are still anchored in the same place. We’ve done some planning and reconnaissance for collecting our new lithium batteries and doing a big provisioning run. Hopefully tomorrow we will start acting on all that. Hopefully early next week our new batteries will be successfully installed and we can give them a good test run by heading to another anchorage. Please keep your fingers crossed for us.
Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!
We arrived in St. Kitt’s on January 4th to find that Indigo Lady survived hurricane season very nicely at St. Kitt’s Marine Works. She had been moved just that day from her hurricane storage spot to the work portion of the boat yard, and a hard-working boat yard employee had just that day started on the list of work that needed to be done to her. We had expected the work to be done before Christmas, but that’s island time for you. So much for being launched on the 8th as we’d hoped.
We had incurred a small hole, above the water line, on the outside of her port sugar scoop last year in the Bahamas, but Kyle had also noticed water dripping from the starboard bow, where he discovered a crack. Thank goodness Kyle is observant! He repaired both nicely. He also painted on a new boot stripe (that marks the water line of the boat), buffed her entire hull and cabin exteriors, sanded her bottom paint to expose the copper (though not as much as Dave had hoped), and gave her a thorough external wash. Then we just had to wait for the travel lift to be repaired (again) so they could put her in the water. That finally happened on January 11th. That’s only three days later than we’d hoped, so not too bad. What was bad was the bill for the work Kyle did. We obviously misunderstood the fee structure for work in the boatyard and the bill ended up being triple what we’d expected- yikes! Lesson learned, get estimates and yard rates in writing!
Other than a slight launch delay and a bigger than expected bill, that part went okay. Also, when we first opened her up, Lady had no mold. Amen to that! Being a dusty, dry boat yard, she did have a layer of grit over everything that I couldn’t even consider cleaning until she was back in the water and away from the source of the grit. That was a bit frustrating for me because it meant I couldn’t do much unpacking and setting up. Holding pattern. The cabins themselves seemed to have little to no gritty covering, so I was able to clean our cabin and unpack and stow our clothing properly. Otherwise, I spent my time inventorying the food and other personal items left onboard so I could create this season’s provisioning list, and I tended to our “tech stuff,” like activating our IridiumGo (satellite phone) and conducting an SOS test, and upgrading our weather routing package.
While I tended to that stuff, Dave tended to our frustrating battery systems. Our lithium batteries run the motors and charge our 12V battery system. They have been losing capacity since we installed them in 2020. In case you don’t know or recall, these batteries are replacements for the original set installed in 2017. We’re replacing them again this year, only Dave will be building the batteries himself this time from cells that are awaiting us in the USVI. For now, he had to get these to play nice, and they were resisting! It took five days of near constant monitoring, plus an independent battery charger to get all eight of the lithiums fully charged and balanced.
The 12V system runs our “house load” – fridge, freezer, lights, communications, etc. They’re kind of important. They appeared to be flat and not charging, but since Dave’s good multimeter had died, he was diagnosing blindly. Thinking the batteries needed replacing, Dave went into town (with Kyle driving) and bought replacements and a new multimeter (though not as good as its predecessor). Replacing the batteries did not solve the issue, although the act of replacing them seemed to have some positive effect, leaving Dave guessing that the issue might have to do with a specific wire or connection. At any rate, they worked well enough, but occasionally there’s a glitch.
Moving on from system woes…
St. Kitt’s Marine Works is not within walking distance of any food source. After checking into the guest house (that abuts the boat yard) and checking on Lady after our arrival, we needed to sort out dinner plus the next day’s breakfast and lunch. So we ventured to take the bus. The “buses” down her are 15-passenger vans with license plates that start with H or HA. There are a few bus stops, but mostly one stands on the side of the road and flags one down when it comes. Doing this for the first time in the dark of night is challenging, but we had at least learned about the license plate to look for. We got a bus fairly quickly on the way to the Ram’s Supermarket in Buckley, but getting one to come back took about 30 minutes and the kindness of a local man who flagged one for us successfully. Riding these buses, by the way, is like riding the Knight Bus in the third Harry Potter Movie. Yowza! Still, the fare up to Basseterre (the capital) is only $3 EC (Eastern Caribbean Dollar) or a smidge over $1 US each way per person, so it’s more economical than taxis. We feel like old pros taking the bus now.
Between the two of us, we made several trips into town over the week that we waited for Lady to be launched. Mostly it was running errands for things we needed, like the batteries, and a couple week’s worth of food (after that first night’s excursion to the market). One day, Dave and I went into Basseterre for lunch and a walk about (and a little reconnaissance before provisioning). That was a lovely afternoon.
We launched too late on the 11th to leave the boat yard’s little harbor, so we stayed tied up there for the night. The water in there was squirrely! Our six lines and four fenders creaked and groaned all night! There was not much sleeping. Next morning we set out around 9am to head the 8 nm south to the Basseterre anchorage. We went ashore for lunch, a few more groceries, and a SIM card for more data. It sure was nice to be at anchor again. There was a gentle roll to rock our tired minds and bodies to sleep that night. Even the music ashore couldn’t keep us awake.
The morning of Saturday, the 13th, we headed another 5 nm south to Ballast Bay, right next to White House Bay where we had anchored for several days at the end of last season before having Lady hauled out. The water is calm here despite the wind, and it’s peaceful. It’s a nice respite from all the frustration of the start of the trip. There are still gremlins in our systems that occasionally poke at us, but everything is working well enough, and when it doesn’t we know the work arounds. We are waiting for a good weather window to cross to St. Martin. Until then, we will bop around this little section of St. Kitt’s.
Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!
We’re back in NH. We rolled into our driveway around 2:30am last Saturday, the 17th. Our New England boat, Dumbledore, has been launched. We’re working on getting him ready for a 4-6 week cruise along the coast of Maine starting sometime in July. Until then, we’re visiting family and friends, and getting in a bunch of appointments.
Between January and mid-June, we put on a lot of miles and visited a lot of islands. Here’s a recap.
Miles traveled (nm): ~1300
Countries visited: 9
Nights at anchor: 89
Nights on mooring: 42
Nights in marinas: 16
Nights under way: 5
Nights ashore: 7
We started in the Berry Islands, Bahamas, on January 8th. After that we went to Turks & Caicos, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Martin (both the French and Danish sides), St. Bart’s, and ended at St. Kitt’s. We stayed in 46 different anchorages, 6 different mooring fields and 6 different marinas. We took road trips with friends to Santo Domingo, DR and Old San Juan, PR. We made overnight passages from Rum Cay to Mayaguana; from Turks & Caicos to Luperón; from Luperón to Rio San Juan; from Escondido to Puerto Real, PR; and from the USVI to St. Martin.
We did a lot more “making miles” than I would have liked, but we did finally get to the actual Caribbean Sea, which was our target this year. Next season we plan to confine our travels to the area between St. Kitt’s and the Spanish Virgin islands. It will be lovely to spend multiple weeks in each country next.
Thanks for following my adventures. I will post about our coast of Maine travels this summer, but perhaps not as frequently as I typically do.
St. Kitt’s is our final stop this cruising season. We arrived on Monday, June 5th after a long, slow, bumpy ride from St. Bart’s. We wanted to stop at St. Kitt’s Marine Works to arrange a haul out date for Indigo Lady and clear into the country. Fortunately, Customs & Immigration are right there. We’d arrived too late to clear in that night, which was fine by us. All we had energy for was slinging the hammocks and we had no need to go ashore; we could wait until morning.
Here’s a little information about St. Kitt’s Marine Works. Most importantly, they certainly seem to know what they’re doing with respect to long term storage and, from Dave’s perusal of the yard, with respect to repair work. That’s good. Indigo Lady is probably in good hands here for the next 6 months. Their approximately 200’ x 400’ “harbor” is human made with two retaining walls of large boulders separating it from the open ocean. It contains a cement slip from which their travel lift hauls boats weighing up to 150 tons. There is also a smaller, wooden dock with several small, local fishing boats tied up to it, and a handful of mooring balls near the smaller retaining wall, near the harbor entrance. They are not a marina and there are no real amenities, although the boat yard does have a toilet and a shower. Boat owners can do their own work without any fee charged, which is kind of rare, and they can live aboard their boat while on the hard. One can also hire the Marine Works to do work to one’s boat and their fees are very reasonable.
The Marine Works allowed us to tie up to the outside of their travel lift dock the night we arrived at St. Kitt’s, and the following one as well. The prevailing sea conditions would have made it incredibly uncomfortable to anchor in any of the nearby, open roadstead anchorages. (For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s merely a spot off land that is shallow enough to drop an anchor, but there is nothing between you and the open ocean, except more ocean.) We would have had to travel another 3+ bumpy hours to get to a protected anchorage, which would have had us anchoring after sunset. Then we would have had to backtrack the next day to clear in and talk to the Marine Works folks. So we stayed on the Marine Works dock. We spent most of our time in the hammocks reading and napping. Long, bumpy cruises are exhausting. We cleared in the next morning. Dave talked to the boat yard manager to arrange the haul out and some work we wanted done to the boat. We arranged to be hauled out on Monday, June 12th. So what to do with the interceding five days?
At the end of the past two cruising seasons, we’ve done as much cleanup and hurricane storage prep as possible while at anchor. This ensures we’re always nose into the wind to keep us cool while we work, and we can also swim and cool off. So, on Wednesday morning we cruised about 12 nm down to the southeast peninsula of St. Kitt’s to the White House anchorage. It’s a quiet, lovely spot and we’d read there was decent snorkeling along the rocky shore. Each day we were there we would work from mid-morning until about 3pm, then we’d go for a snorkel, then swing in the hammocks reading and napping until dinner, followed by a movie before going to bed. We gave the boat a deep clean- airing out the mattress toppers and mattresses, vacuuming every nook and cranny, washing the walls with a vinegar solution, cleaning out every food storage location and inventorying what we have left for non-perishables. Dave has his own separate list of boat stuff that needs doing and started on that as well. I prepped our final meals so that when we were working on Lady in the boat yard, all we’d have to do was microwave lunch and dinner. It was tiring but rewarding. Then on Sunday afternoon, we hauled anchor and went back to the Marine Works to tie up to their cement dock again in preparation for being hauled out the next morning.
The travel lift came for us at 11am Monday morning. We stayed onboard while they lifted us out of the water, which is a strange feeling, being suspended in the air. They paused near the diesel pump so we could top off our tank. Then they drove us up into the yard where they power washed our hulls of the accumulated sea life that had grown there. They did a marvelous job! Then they brought us over to our storage spot in the field, lined us up, brought over the backhoe to finalize the dug trenches in which Lady’s keels would sit atop old tires, then they finally set us down. All told, we were suspended in Lady about four hours. I got a lot of organizing and packing done during that time. We were finally able to check into the guest house we had rented for our final few days buttoning up Lady while on the hard. Thankfully it’s only 0.1 mile from our boat’s location, because it took us two trips to bring everything we needed to have up there. We were beat! We hadn’t done much work that day, but the prior five days of work, plus the underlying stress of knowing the boat was going to be hauled onto land got to us. We were a waste of space after we settled in at the guest house. We were in bed by 8:00pm and sound asleep by 8:05!
Over the next two days we spent long hours finishing our boat closeup tasks. For Dave, that was a lot of time working in the blazing heat and sun on, in, and under Indigo Lady. I spent a lot of time doing laundry up at the guest house, interspersed with stowing our clothes, bedding, etc., onboard. A big downside of St. Kitt’s is that they burn trash on the island. St. Kitt’s Marine Works is downwind of this. It also hasn’t rained much here, so everything is dry and brown, and the persistent trade winds blow dirt and dust around. This complicated the cleaning and closing process. It would have been impossible to do the necessary work without having the hatches and portholes open. Sadly, it didn’t take long for the dirt and dust to find its way inside, despite all our screens, and onto every surface. So much for all that deep cleaning we’d done earlier. We did what we could to rectify it. It was hot, sweaty work, but we made good time. By Thursday, we had only about an hour’s worth of stuff to do, mostly stowing final items, and retrieving others we needed to bring home with us. Friday morning required only a quick trip to Lady to return stuff we had used while at the guesthouse. Then we locked her up and bid her farewell until January.
Although we had almost all of Thursday to ourselves with no work to do, we lacked the energy to explore the island. It is horrendously hot and humid down here and it is horribly uncomfortable to be out of the breeze for more than 5 minutes. It takes less time than that to start sweating. I would sweat standing at the sink in front of the open window while washing dishes! Rather than exhaust ourselves tramping around the area in the heat, we holed up in the guest house with a fan pointing at each of us. I won’t lie, I was a bit bored, but that was preferable to being outside. Hopefully January will be a bit cooler, and we can take a few days to explore on land.
I’m writing this on Thursday from the guest house. Friday we should have flown from St. Kitt’s to San Juan, then from San Juan to Boston. From there taken the bus to the C&J Trailways station where we picked up our car, which my folks had delivered there for us, and driven home. We should have been in our own bed by 2:00am. That was the plan, at least. Next time, I’ll let you know how it went. Until then, stay safe and take care of each other!
Life on Lady 