Tuesday 31 January 2017

Retracing our steps from St Lucia to Grenada



Pitons, St Lucia
Highbury Terrace at sea.  Some things are different: the scenery, the colour of the water, the temperature.  Other things are similar: the quantity of white wine consumed, the snoozing by the gentlemen from number 9 and 10, accompanied by the occasional sussuration; the golf shots that are so nearly there and accompanied by an intake of breath as though surprise the ball is actually not on the green is an accurate reaction.  We played St Lucia which was very good fun – Bazza won by keeping it low and short – and then the extraordinary course of Canouan where you play nine holes through palm-fringed fairways alongside white sand beaches, and then climb maybe 150m up a hill to play a series of undulating, nay precipitous, holes.  Very good fun and I am glad to say the skipper came out on top.
Bequia
Eating (and drinking) has been an important feature.  Cap Maison, on St Lucia, the Fig Tree and the Auberge on Bequia, the Cotton House on Mustique and an excellent BBQ of lobster and mahi mahi on Tobago Cays.  Lunch out has seemed best with delicious dinners aboard.  Bazza’s hand on the pepper sauce seems to be a bit shaky these days, so wehad very hot chicken.   John and Margaret are coming along very well as competent crew.
We cruised this way before en famille and have enjoyed some of the same and some new places.  Excellent anchorage between the Pitons with great snorkelling.  We didn’t anchor at Bat Cave Bay where the children spent hours on the stern line.  We tried unsuccessfully to make an afternoon visit to the waterfalls in St Vincent.  Margaret and I had two excellent dives in Bequia which remains the right mix of laid-back bustle and commercial opportunities.  Mustique is an airbrushed – beautifully so – bubble,
Forced to walk Mustique
Canouan’s resort well done but too juxtaposed with the village next door.  Now clearing customs in Union where the reef I “touched” those years ago is very visible.  
Boat boys in general seem to have got the message that aggressive sales techniques backfire, and polite asking with a smile wins, so in the last 24 hours we have bought the lobster BBQ on the beach, accompanied by rum punch, baguettes, T-shirts a-plenty.  So we have helped the local economy, particularly when John-tipper-Skerritt is in charge of the purser’s wallet.
In Bequia, Nicky found out without really asking that there is a volunteer reading programme for the local kids, so she, Sue, and Margaret all joined in reading, and Lucky the Pakeman bear was able to say hello and explain that some things are the same here as in London.
Sailing has been very good, F4/5 gusting 9 from the east, so fast reaching with some beating up to the islands east. Ms Too-Tippee being well behaved.
News of Alex completing his walk the length of Rwanda made us feel proud and glad that his feet has recovered to let him complete the last 83km out of 400km in 24 hours.  He is now in Malawi – follow amanby on tumblr for his entertaining blog.

Tuesday 24 January 2017

Doing the admin in St Lucia

So we waved goodbye to the Admiral Grogs and Commodore Keith,  Boat is shiny clean, and we have been trying to fix things like the anchor shackle pin that sticks sometimes on the stemhead, and then gives a bish to the bow.

I have been fighting Microsoft and Adobe.  Tim Ashley persuaded me to try Lightroom and to buy a Sony camera, which is very nice but my version of Lightroom doesn't read the Sony RAW files.  It worked fine on the JPEGs.  So I try to update LR which seems to work ok but takes an hour on the slow wifi in the marina.  Then when I open LR it won't because there is a file missing.  Can I get it to load that - of course not.  So then I decide to buy Adobe Creative Cloud which is a subscription of course.  But you can't buy that in St Lucia!!

So I can get the Sony pictures on to Photos by Microsoft if I shoot JPEGs which was the whole thing Tim wanted me not to do.  But I can't get back to my previous version of LR which did work for JPEGs!

And the only reason we have a PC is because Inmarsat won't talk to Apple.  Inmarsat charges you $600 per month for 25MB!

So it may well be that the best method for photos is Instagram uploaded when we get to land.  And then I can edit a year's supply of photos on the Sony and Olympus when I get back!

Quick swim this morning off Pigeon island and then a shop for a birthday pair of shorts - I now have 2 as I left most of them at home!

And just to show it can be done, here is a photo of Nicky with post-swim hair as she says.

Thanks for birthday wishes.




Dominica, dolphins and dough




Yams
The saloon is filled with the wonderful aroma of freshly-baked bread.  Charles made bread a couple of days ago with an old packet of yeast and the result, while delicious, was a little…flat.  Today’s two loaves have risen beautifully.  Guadeloupe had proper French baguettes, and I’m sure that if we went ashore in Martinique we’d find the same; but Dominica’s bread was woefully white, soft and sweetish - too much British influence.  Otherwise, Dominica was a delight, though the town of Portsmouth is very unprepossessing.  We arranged a minibus and driver, Shadow, who was very proud and knowledgeable about his island and its plants and birds.  Hiking with him, we identified cinnamon, grapefruits, nutmeg, ginger root, coffee, taro (with which they make a kind of porridge) and picked basil to go in our tomato salad. 
We heard, but didn’t see, the parrots which are their national symbol and feature on the flag.  When the island was devastated by Hurricane David in 1979, almost all the trees were knocked down and the parrots killed.  People responded to an appeal and released their pet parrots into the wild, where, thanks to strict controls, they now thrive.  We did see diminutive hummingbirds and a 500 year old tree.  Dominica is English-speaking but the local patois is French-based, so the tree names were fun: chatayn ti foy = chataigne avec petites feuilles, while one plant with long, split leaves was called zaile mouch = ailes de mouche.  We scrambled over rocks and across a stream (several times), finally reaching a tall, narrow waterfall with a chilly pool beneath it, where we all swam and cooled down.  We sucked on pieces of sugar cane on our way back.  A gentle sail - curiously this was on a beat even though heading south - brought us to Roseau, further down the Dominica coast, accompanied much of the way by four very playful dolphins. This is not meant to anthropomorphise them, but they did seem, when they rolled over and rubbed their bellies against our hull, to be saying “look at me!”   Keith took some great videos (rather a lot of them – editing will be needed!).  Sadly no whale sightings, though Nicky is researching them by reading Leviathan by Philip Gould (Moby-Dick next).  No luck with the fishing line either; Charles has just finished Kon-Tiki and reports they did better.

Other wildlife sightings: a barracuda, frightened by our dinghy, leaping from the sea and running, vertical, across the bay; a petrel (possibly; our bird identification skills are poor) skimming low alongside us this morning, scooping up flying fish, of which there were hundreds; and a lone, white, almost translucent-winged bird with a slender, elongated tail, which hung above our mast, checked us out, then disappeared.
We left at first light this morning and had a cracking passage under full sail including staysail at 9 knots of speed with wind at 90 degrees apparent at 12-16 knots.  Now motoring alongside Martinique.  Next stop will be Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, this evening – unless we make a brief stop to swim and have lunch – and a last supper with this great crew who have made the start of the Oyster World Rally such fun.  On Tuesday, the O’Briens and Skerritts will join us, bringing post from Highbury Terrace and various items unavailable in the Caribbean.

Monday 16 January 2017

We’re off! First day of the Oyster World Rally



Nicky and Keith at the start of the OWR
AYC leading the way
Sunday morning, we cleared out of Antigua - a complicated procedure involving four different queues for officials to stamp our papers and passports – and, to the strains of a steel band, left Nelson’s Dockyard. Thank you to Sarah, Regine, Jenn and all the Oyster team for such a splendid send-off!  After a quick dip in Galleon’s Bay, we were ready at 1300 local time for the big start.  It was an exhilarating sight as thirty Oysters surged across the line in 20 knots of wind and big waves.


Soon, groups began to disperse and it became clear that five of us were heading for Guadeloupe.  If boats are heading in the same direction, Charles assumes they are racing.   So Aldeburgh Yacht Club, James and Hilary Grogono, Keith and Caroline Martin and Charles and I were trimming away, full sail in 20 knots of wind at 120T.  Perfect trade wind sailing!  We were gratified to pull ahead of Lisanne, the victor of 575s at Palma Regatta and overall winner of the ARC, but couldn’t quite beat Dalliance, an Oyster 62.  Nicky was delighted, when helming, to achieve 10.4 knots of boat speed, our previous Mediterranean record, but shortly afterwards, Keith got Calliope up to 11 knots, surfing down a wave.


Charles, Nicky, James, Hillary, Keith, Caroline

We arrived in Guadeloupe just after a spectacular sunset, in the very brief time before it gets pitch dark here.  Was it the slightly rolly anchorage – much less bad than the one on Mallorca with David, Julie, Caroline and Jose in October? – no, I think it was the remains of adrenaline from the day which kept me awake all night. The rest of the crew slept soundly. Today we are heading for Les Saintes, a small group of islands off the South coast of Guadeloupe, via Pigeon Island, which lies in Jacques Cousteau’s marine reserve, where we hope to find good snorkelling.

Saturday 14 January 2017

Preparations in Antigua


We arrived in Antigua five days ago and have been busy getting Calliope ready to go. As usual, there were minor repairs and glitches to sort out – and one quite major one: the boom isn’t connected to the mast.  Today, only three days before the big departure, we hope the new gooseneck connection between the two will be fitted.  We’ve also done a lot of sorting, making sure things are stowed where we want them (and can find them – it’s amazing how many nooks and crannies there are, and items can get put away and forgotten).  I had a happy session with the labelling machine yesterday, carefully itemising our first aid kit.  Last time I was labelling, I got carried away and labelled the labelling machine itself; ah well, little things please little minds…  Meanwhile, the boat is sparkling clean, fully fuelled and berths made up for our first crew, Aldeburgh sailors Caroline and Keith Martin and Hilary and James Grogono, who arrive this afternoon.  I’m sure our beautiful Aldeburgh map cushion will make them feel right at home (thank you, Ann and Emma!)

Up till now, we’ve been in Catamaran Marina, in Falmouth Harbour, but once our boom is sorted we’re going to move round the corner to Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour, where all 30 of the Oyster World Rally yachts are berthed.  It’s an extraordinary place, built in the mid 1700s, with stables, a sailmaking loft, the Admiral’s house and the old slips where ships were launched.

Yesterday Charlie, who has been our skipper since last June, left us and moved a hundred metres down the pontoon to take up his new job aboard Miss Tiggy.  We had a send-off supper at Papa’s, with a very loud steel band, last night (best onion bhajis ever).  We’ll miss him! What else have we been up to?  We had our first kiteboarding lesson on Sunday.  I was sure I wouldn’t have enough upper body strength to do it, but was pleasantly surprised to find that’s not required.  We got as far as being pulled through the water by a kite, with more or less control over our direction, which was exhilarating.  Next time, we can try standing on a board. I anticipate lots of wipeouts.

A presentation was arranged by Oyster on tropical weather – basically, watch the clouds and avoid squalls – followed by a session with a charity called Sea Mercy.  We had signed up months ago to distribute glasses, both simple reading ones and more complicated “eyejusters”, at remote locations in the Pacific. We’d completely forgotten how many glasses we had ordered and were taken aback, after our training in eye tests, to be presented with 550 pairs!  Another exercise in stowage. I’m looking forward to giving them away; I know how lost I feel without my own reading glasses.

Wednesday 4 January 2017

Packing for ten months

"So how on earth do you pack for ten months afloat?" someone asked me last week.  The answer is... gradually.  Bit by bit, piles of 'stuff to go' have been accumulating around the house.  A couple of days ago, I brought it all into one room and started filling bags (soft ones, of course - no wheelie bags allowed on board!) Yesterday, Charles and I actually bit the bullet and decided which clothes to pack: not very many, as we're counting on mostly warm weather and anyway, all the clothes we need are already on board, as we didn't bring them home after the summer's sailing.

Categories of packing:
     - food: fruit cake, bara brith (the Hairy Bikers' recipe), Marmite, dried porcini
     - presents: colouring pencils, inflatable globes, lipsticks and perfume samples
     - a file called Destinations, with all the research we've done about the places we'll be visiting
     - books: a surprising number, given that we each have a Kindle.  Some were presents, including   Moby Dick, a gift from my Secret Santa at Pakeman, and Alice Oswald's Falling Awake, from Mia "to keep you amused on night watch"
     - numerous medicines and potions for the First Aid kit
     - dressing up clothes: well, you never know when you might need to be a pirate, do you?
     - embroidery threads and a guide to stitching, to help me make the best of Harriet's antique linen
     - inevitably, some spare parts
     - an entire bag of camera kit

What have we forgotten? I'm sure there'll be things we can ask our visiting crew to bring.  Life on board is simpler in many ways, so I hope we'll need fewer possessions.

Only a couple more days before we leave.  Lots of "lasts": last walk on Hampstead Heath, last theatre outing this evening (to Mary Stuart at the Almeida), last lunches, drinks, dinners and even breakfasts with friends, lots of goodbyes.  Enough preparing and packing!  I can't wait for our adventure to start.

Here we are ready to go: