Mar 2009

All Ways boat news, March ‘09’

It was hard to say goodbye to the cream cheese Quesitas we had become addicted to at Deli France, but our allotted 30 days in the BVI’s were up (the BVI’s didn’t want our money anymore) so we headed for St. John’s in USVI’s. Most of the shoreline of St. John’s is a national park with strict rules of what you can or can’t do. One of the rules is you can’t anchor (because of the coral reefs) and you have to use one of their provided mooring balls. We cruised into Maho Bay and found a large selection of balls to choose from. We decided on the one we wanted and headed up wind to snag it with Chuck at the helm and me out on deck with our trusty boat hook to snag the line of the ball to then hook up our line to it. I successfully snagged the mooring rope, but the boat hook refused to slide easily down the rope to where I could grab hold of it to attach our line as is the typical scenario. No matter how I tugged the boat hook wouldn’t slide and since our boat is continuing to move with the current and wind, I reach the critical point where it’s either me or the boat hook or the mooring ball, but one or more of us has to go. So before the point of getting yanked overboard I prudently decide to unhook the boat hook from the mooring line and let it go. Now ordinarily that should have been the end of it and we would just circle around and have another go at it. However – this particular mooring ball seemed to have it out for us. It apparently had been run over by some other boat and it’s line and float and ball were all a jumbled mess and no longer capable of staying in it’s assigned place and behaving normally. As we tried to back away from the ball it kept coming at us until it went under the keel and tried to attach itself to our rudder and turning propeller. We did an emergency stop and quickly killed the engine to thwart the attack. An overboard look at the situation revealed that in fact it was lightly tangled in our prop and we thought we might have to cut it loose (we didn’t think the park was much going to appreciate that and we could even incur a fine), but fortunately after a few moments it freed itself and floated off to entrap someone else. Needless to say we selected a different mooring ball for the night. The night turned out to be quite windy and rolley. Preparing dinner below deck I was mindful of the Charlie Chaplin film where he is being blown around and hopping on one foot first one direction and then the other direction. That’s exactly how I felt.
We spent another couple nights in St. John’s (different anchorage). We picked up our part that we had mailed to our friends there (no duty that way) so Chuck could now finish installing our new CD player with the IPod docking station (this is all space age stuff to us). We had a close encounter with the Westin ferry boat in Great Cruz Bay whose captain apparently felt we were anchored to close to the channel and decided to teach us a lesson. He throttled up his ferry to high speed, in a no wake zone, just before he got to us and threw a 3 foot wake broadside at our boat which had the effect of flinging our drinks off the table and all over us and throwing everything not battened down in the galley onto the floor and almost swamping our dinghy full of water. Chuck was immediately on this incident with the USCG and wrote emails with pictures to them, the Westin and the ferry boat company about the need for this dangerous captain to appear before the Captains Review Board for a refresher course in safety and etiquette training. After that, we decided to move on to Christmas cove at Great St. James just off St. Thomas. This is a beautiful little anchorage picture book right out of an island paradise advertisement. Nice and calm, no mooring balls and no ferries.
We spent a lovely week in St. Thomas in Charlotte Amalie. We met several new cruiser friends. All the amenities we needed were close at hand and reasonably priced and we enjoyed the area. One of our neighbors at home is living ashore there for the winter, so he picked us up in his car and gave us a grand tour of the island. We are now in Culebra, one of the Spanish virgin islands about 20 miles from Puerto Rico. This is a lovely little laid back island that seems to exude “ no worries mon “. We were going to share a rental car today with another boat we are cruising with, but the weather has turned rough and several boats have been breaking loose from their anchor holds and dragging (including our friends in the dark last night). Having to re-anchor at night in the dark, possibly in the wind and rain is something all cruisers strive to avoid. So we are all sticking close to our boats today to keep an eye on things instead. On days like this, one just hangs out and reads, or you work on boat projects, or write the next ‘AllWays’ boat news. I think we’ll do some of each.

All Ways

Hi there. Here we are. The flights down all went fine. Everybody did what they were supposed to do. TSA got a little over-zelous with inspecting our bags, and one of Chuck's bags really got the once over. They opened up every compartment on his dobbs kit which was FULL of items and they didn't even bother to rezip it, but rather dumped the insides out into his suitcase. They opened a container of liquid soap and didn't bother to tightly rescrew the top back on and it spilled all over his clothes and the inside of his bag. They even opened his zipper bag of bandaids and dumped them loose inside the bag. The whole thing was a mess and it took him a couple hours to clean it up, and rewash his clothes and wash out the suitcase. He was not well pleased.

We are here in the BVI's, currently enjoying a lovely warm day in Gorda Sound on Virgin Gorda and have anchored just off Levericks Bay in 17 ft of clear water. We are getting great internet in this spot on the boat - better here than what we had at Nanny Cay on the dock. Last night we went to a beach barbecue at Leverick's Bay complete with jumbie dancers and live island band. Moko jumbies are guys on 7 foot stilts and costumes who dance around do various antics like hopping on one stilt while holding onto the other stilt of the jumbie in front of them. The finale ends with a couple of them even diving into the swimming pool stilts and all. We have rendezvoused with a couple of boat buddies here, including Alesto who is one of the cruiser's we have known the longest - having met them in Nassau, Bahamas that first year as we were on our way to the Caribbean. They just left this morning to cross over to St. Martin. The weather conditions were optimal, but we aren't ready to head that way yet. We will stick around these parts awhile longer. We just had the required 4 year insurance survey, which included a thorough inspection of all the rigging with a fine tooth comb and magnifying glass. We seemed to have passed with flying colors.

It seems to be clear weather finally after 10 days of multiple showers every day. We stayed busy doing the " hatch dance " for those 10 days. Every time we would get all the ports and hatches open, and tools out of the cockpit lockers it would start to rain. We were constantly opening and closing everything. And you can never both walk away from the boat at the same time unless everything is all closed up because it's a surefire set up for it to instantly start raining. But it looks like clear skies now. We went to a "Blues Cruise" event last weekend in Cane Garden Bay and saw several blues acts including The Kinnsey Report. We were hoping Taj Mahal would stop in and jam (since he was one of the acts on the cruise), but he was there just as a spectator that day and didn't perform.

The charter companies are hurting as the economy has really affected the businesses here. The Moorings base has their dock full of boats and some even rafted together off the dock. Boat sales have had contracts stopped as financing is not available. But the cruise boats seem to be full as per the beach photos attached. We met a couple of single handed sailors (no, that doesn't mean they only had one hand) while in the marina at Nanny Cay. For any of you single women who have a hankering to go sailing I want you to know there seems to be plenty of lone guys out here in need of first mates. One of them was an older retired doctor. I asked him what had happened to his wife and if she had died. He said "No", and that that was conclusive proof to him that there was no God. The other one was a retired NY air controller and general contractor who had been married twice before. He said he was now ready for a possible third since he was now well trained by the others that " everything was his fault and he could just as well accept it". Seems reasonable to me. Hope all is well with you at home. It is beautiful day and we might go ashore for a walk around the area and take the free shuttle ferry over to the Bitter End Yacht Club Resort which is always nice shopping with its upscale clientele. That's all for now. More later,
All Ways
1st Mate and the Skipper