I Must Be Color Blind

I must be color blind. I have been looking for the green flash for two years now and still haven’t seen one.  For those of you who don’t know what a green flash is, its at the moment when the last bit of sunlight  goes under the horizon, there is supposed to be a green flash that I’m told goes up from where the sun goes down and proceeds across the sky very fast. That is why it is called a flash.  Oh, this only happens when the sun goes down on a clear night, no clouds near the sun.

I was at a restaurant on Friday watching the NCAA basketball tournament and we had such a sunset. I watched it very carefully. I didn’t blink or anything and I still didn’t see a green flash. Other people around me said they saw it but I didn’t. Some of me wants to believe that its like the emperors new clothes and they just say they saw it but really didn’t. Its either that or I’m color blind and can not see a shade of green.

Here are some resent sunsets.

Finally Learned how to sail

I haven't blogged in a while, We have been in the BVI's for about three weeks and we didn't really have internet access over there. At least not enough to do a blog. So please excuses my tardiness for not blogging.
During that time in the BVI's I think I finally learned how to sail. For most of the two years we have been on our boat we mostly motor sailed. You have the sails up but you also have the engines on. For the most part we would average about 5 knots. That was in most points of sail. Sometimes we would do a little more but never over 8 knots.
For the last two mouths I have been doing alot more pure sailing. Most of the time I'm on a beam or broad reach and  doing 6.5 to 7.5 knots with just the sails up. I don't really know what I'm doing different but I seem to be able to adjust the sails so much quicker. I have also found that just a half turn on the winch can make a huge difference in speed. I don't think my boat will ever sail fast on a close reach. Catamarans are known not to sail well into the wind and I think that is definitely the case for our cat. But I have also found some techniques to help with that. Pulling in the sail from the windward side sometimes, which I just learned how to do, and it really helps with speed. I can also get the head sail up alot closer to the wind.
I don't know if I ever will be a great sailor. I think I would have to crew on a race boat to really dial in the sails. But I do think I'm at the point were I can sail to most places and leave the engines off.

 

 

Finally got to Anegada

It’s been a pretty good week because we got to check a couple of things off our bucket list.  We made it over to the BVI’s on Friday and we anchored in Trellis Bay on Tortola Sunday and Monday night.  We planned it so we could finally get to the Full Moon Party on Monday night.  We have been to the BVI’s numerous times but we never made it to the Full Moon Party before.  It was a lot of fun with lot’s of food and music.  Then around eight they start lighting several of these metal balls on fire. 
The other thing that we we wanted to do is get to Anegada.  We always talked about doing it on the bareboats that we rented but there was always someone that got a little sea sick so we were never able to get there.  It’s about 15 miles north of Virgin Gorda and all open ocean so it can get a little rough.  We had really good wind on Monday and sailed (without engines) all the way over.  It was awesome.  We rented a motorbike and explored the island (all 11 miles)  It’s a very flat island with a salt pond in the middle where there are pink flamingos.  We couldn’t get close enough too them to take pictures though.  It’s a nice island and I’m glad we finally made it.

The steel drum band at the full moon party

The fireballs at the full moon party

Enjoying the USVI-Puerto Rico

I know we haven’t blogged in a while and sorry about that.  We have been sailing around a bit not just hibernating on the boat on some exotic island.   At the end of January we headed over to Puerto Rico by way of Culebra.  We stayed a couple of nights at some very nice anchorages on Culebra, which is well known for all of it’s awesome snorkeling and nice beaches.  Once you get out of the main bay, which is Encinada Honda there really aren’t many boats around.  We totally skipped Encinada Honda this time and went around to the northwest side of the island and stayed a couple of nights in some nice bays.  Then headed over to San Juan, Puerto Rico.  I actually flew out of San Juan to San Francisco on the 27th to surprise Amanda for her birthday.  She planned a birthday trip to San Francisco with some friends and family to celebrate her golden birthday (she turned 29 on the 29th).  It was great because she didn’t have any idea I was coming and was totally surprised.  We had four really fun days of running all over the city, going to Alcatraz, fisherman’s wharf, China Town, Little Italy and the super cross races in Oakland.  Then we all flew back to Loveland and I stayed there for 3 more days. 
Wes stayed on the boat with the dog’s but his sister flew out from Rochester to keep him company.  They rented a car and ran all over Puerto Rico.  Wes finally got back to the Bacardi factory to buy his 15 year old bottle of rum that he had been wanting since the first time we went there-haven’t cracked it open yet though. 
So now we are back in St. Thomas and we have been going around the island from Charlotte Amalie to Red Hook.  Getting a lot of things done on the boat and running into some friends.  Hopefully we will be heading over to the BVI’s in a couple of days because we still want to get to Anegada, which is the furthest north of all of the islands and the only island in the BVI’s that we haven’t been to. 

A tiny island we stopped at so Wes could walk the dogs on our way to Culebra

A lighthouse on Puerto Rico

The fort coming into San Juan harbor

The brightly painted buildings by old San Juan

Back in the US

  After 8 months we are finally back in the U.S.  Well, U.S. territory that is.  We made it into Red Hook, St. Thomas early Sunday morning.  It feels really good to be back in the U.S. though. 

When we left St. Martin we noticed that the starboard side starter was going out so when we got into Red Hook we ordered a new one, which is suppose to be here on Friday.  That’s the other good thing about being back in the U.S., you can get parts shipped down at a reasonable rate and time frame.  Wes is still dealing with a couple of other things that are needing his attention while we wait for the starter-the autopilot isn’t working so that made it for a long 99 knots over from St. Martin to St. Thomas being that you had to stay at the helm and steer the whole time.  We left St. Martin at around 9:30 am on Sunday and there was little to no wind so we had to motor the whole way.  It took right around 20 hours to cross over and we got into Red Hook while it was still dark (very dark since there was no moon) but luckily we were familiar with the anchorage and we were able to drop anchor without too much trouble.  We probably should have planned that a little better and left later in the day so we would get in when it was light, but we made it ok. 
We are now in Charlotte Amalie’s bay because Wes was craving Pizza Amore’s pizza since we haven’t had really good pizza in quite some time and boy was it good.  Charlotte Amalie is pretty nice and it is where most of the cruise boats come in so there is quite a bit of shopping and many other conveniences such as a Kmart, big grocery stores, home depot, Wendy’s, Subway and Hooter’s (which will come in handy for watching the Bronco’s on Sunday).  But we plan on hanging around here for a week or so.  

This guy takes his horse for a swim in the bay at Red Hook every morning

Red Hook

The Marina in Charlotte Amalie

Charlotte Amalie Bay

St Martin-2nd time around

We've spent the last couple of weeks in St Martin going back and forth from Grand Case to Marigot. The winds have been incredibly strong and one night when we were in Grand Case a huge gust came up at around 4:30 in the morning and actually flipped the dinghy over, which it's not a good thing to have the engine submerged in salt water. We were able to get it flipped upright and Wes spent two hours the next day trying to get it started. He finally got it running but in the process a throttle part fell in the water and he wasn't able to find it. So we have one on order and it should hopefully be here today. Wes was able to pull a Macgyver and was able to make a piece out of a coat hanger to work for the time being.

Also, the day we were in Deep Bay with Amanda snorkeling the wreck of the Andes we looked up and the boat was moving across the bay right towards some rocks. We raced to get back to the boat which is very difficult with a 6 hp dinghy engine, but we made it back in time. Come to find out the anchor rope broke lose and the anchor was at the bottom somewhere. We all tried to find it using the snorkeles but we couldn't see down very far because the water was so turned up from all the wind. We went back after Amanda left and Wes put on the dive tank and was able to retrieve the anchor. St Martin has some very good boating supplies so we able to purchase 50 ft of new chain and 99 feet of new rope (I know that sounds like a weird amount of rope but it was in meters which was 30 meters)

The winds are supposed to die down tomorrow so hopefully we will have a nice sail over to St Thomas. We decided to skip the Bvi's for now because we will probably go there in April and we need to make sure it is still ok to take the dogs in there without a lot of hassle because they are one of the more difficult islands to bring the dogs.      

We stopped for the night in Barbuda on the way to St. Martin.  Beautiful pink sand beaches there

 

 

Marigot Bay after a bit of rain.  I love how the rainbow ran across the bay

Christmas in Antigua

We got to Antigua on the 7th and Amanda flew down on the 17th which made my birthday extra special.  We have been sailing around the island and stayed in a different bay each night.  Supposedly there are 360 beaches on the island-I don’t know about that but there are certainly quite a few.  It’s been a little bit of a bummer because we have had the Christmas winds down here and it has stirred up all the water so the snorkeling hasn’t been great and there have been a couple of nights when it was really howling.  But it has been so nice to have her here with us.  We decorated a little bit for Christmas and one night we made and decorated Christmas chains and hung them in the galley.

Sunday night we hiked up to Shirley Heights which is in English Harbor and they had a steel drum band playing and a barbecue.  It was a lot of fun.

Then on Monday we sailed over to Green Island and we had a nice fire on the beach.  We decided they should change the name of this island to hermit crab island because it was full of hermit crabs.  

Today we sailed over to Deep Bay and snorkeled the wreck of the Andes and now we are sailing back to Jolly Harbor with the engines off, which is where we picked Amanda up and we will spend the night there so we can take her to the airport tomorrow.
She flies back home on Christmas Eve and then we will head to St. Martin. 

It was a wonderful week and I’m sure going to miss her when she leaves.    
MERRY CHRISTMAS to all and to all a good night

Sailing back to Jolly Harbor with just the wind cruising at around 6 knots

Amanda trying to relax on the trampoline but Max wasn't letting her

Goofing around at the fort in English Harbor

The view from Shirley Heights

The steel drum band at Shirley Heights

relaxing on the beach on Green Island

Amanda's first beach fire

Ready for Christmas

Les Saints

After 4 wonderful days in Les Saints, we decided to head over to Guadeloupe Thursday.  We really enjoyed Les Saints and the people there are very nice even though it's so hard to communicate with them because hardly any of them speak English and if they do, it’s very little.  We rented a scooter on Wednesday and rode all over Terre Den Haut, which is the biggest of the four islands.  It only took about 4 hours because it is pretty small.  We visited three different beaches and two were on the East side of the island so the waves there were fairly big.  I know Wes talked about the sights when we cruised around on the scooter but I though I would post some pictures.
It was nice visiting a place that we hadn't been to before. 
 
The sail to Guadeloupe was very nice.  The winds blowing around 12-15 knots and we cruised along nicely averaging 6-7 knots.  It is so much nicer going north up the island chain than south.  You usually have the wind coming out of the east / southeast pushing you along nicely on a broad reach.   

Today we moved down to the North end of the island to a town called Deshaies (Day-ay) and we will probably stay here for a few days before we head to Antigua.  We liked Deshaies when we were here on our way down island. 

A couple tall ships and cruise boats actually came into Les Saints while we were there

Not quite a Harley

You can see the fort on the top of the hill on the left

Fort Napoleon

There were some big iguanas on the island

Our Thanksgiving dinner

Enjoying dinner with our new friends Travis & Joanne