May 16, 2007

Dan made it down here OK and we had a week of sailing. We went back to the Spanish Virgin Islands again. They weren't as crowded this time although there were still a bunch of boats rafted up in Culebrita. We did the hike to the lighthouse ruins and snorkeled the Jacuzzis on Culebrita. We stopped at Bahia Almodavar on the east end of Culebra and spent a night there. A couple of friends Dick and Liz, from VIERS were there also so we had a nice visit. This is a really great harbor. It is completely open to the wind but protected by a very shallow reef so you get a nice breeze but almost perfectly still water. The next day we went down to Vieques and stopped in Ensanada Honda, a mangrove hurricane hole on the south side. I had stayed there once before but had not gone all the way to the end. We even took the dinghy up the 'river' to the end of it, with just enough room to turn the dinghy around. When you go up into the end of the harbor it is extremely calm. The only problem is that it is a swampy area so the water is pretty murky and not nice to swim in. The next night was at Isla Chiva and then it was time to head back to St Thomas.

It was a nice trip although the winds weren't the best and I ended up motor sailing a lot. The seas were a little rough and didn't agree too well with Dan.

After Dan left I went back to VIERS and worked for a couple more weeks and tried to get the boat ready for the trip north. These pictures were taken on the Bordeaux Mountain trail. Bella Vita is happily tied to the closest mooring. In the bottom left corner of that picture one of the roofs of the VIERS compound is slightly visible. The other picture is from about the same spot but shows more of the buildings. I left there this morning and sailed, actually motorsailed to charge the batteries, to St Thomas. I went past the resort on Little St James again and got a couple more pictures. One of the main buildings and the other is the palm trees and lawn along the beach. I had a few things to pick up and will go up to the Univ tomorrow to update the web site and then I will be ready to leave. The forecast is for heavy swells from the north through Thur so I may wait till Fri to leave. I am planning on going from St Thomas direct to the Chesapeake this trip. I have two routes setup, one goes direct to the Chesapeake and the other goes along the east side of the Bahamas. I will probably do the one close to the Bahamas so if the weather gets rough I can duck inside the Bahamas for some calmer conditions. Either way, I'll be out of contact, both phone and email, for a couple of weeks.

May 19, 2007

I left St Thomas yesterday morning after going back up to the Univ to use their internet access to correct the web site update I did the day before. Because of that little trip I didn't get started until about 10:30. I headed for Culebra with the plan of calling customs there to clear in and then continue on. It was a great day for sailing and I thought I might as well continue on. As I approached Culebra, I tried calling customs but it kept switching to an answering system for a different number. I was getting close to the reef on the east end of Culebra and decided that if I had to go through the reef to get to where I could call customs, I would stop and relax for a night at Bahia de Almodavar. The Culebrita Reef goes about 3 miles south from Culebrita. There is a very narrow passage through it near the north end that would save me a few miles of sailing so I decided to go through it. As I got to within about a quarter mile of the reef, I looked at the PC to check my position and found a blank screen. I though it had gone into power saver mode so I tried turning it back on but it was completely dead. Without the chart plotter on the PC, I did not want to take a chance going through the narrow passage so I turned off and started south to go around the bottom end of the reef. I got out my paper charts for Culebra and plotted my position and a rough course around the reefs. As I was going around the reef I was trying to decide the best place to buy a new PC and thinking that it was going to add a couple of days to my trip. I made it into Bahia de Almodovar OK and was soon tied to one of the free moorings. When I went inside to check the PC, it started to come up and then gave me a message that the battery was critically low. The battery had died as I was approaching the reef even though it was plugged into the AC power from my inverter. But at least it was working and I wouldn't have to detour to the south side of Puerto Rico to buy a new one.

I spent a nice night there and got up and underway fairly early, about 6:30. I decided to go around the south side of Culebra and inside the reef that goes a good part of the way from Culebra to Puerto Rico thinking it would be calmer. It was pretty good and I had had a nice sail. The winds have been a bit light, 10 to 15 K, and right from the stern for most of the trip. I have been doing from 3.5 to 4.5 K most of the day and right now, at 2:23 pm, I am about 7 NM west of the east end of Puerto Rico. I am going along the north side of PR and should reach San Juan about dark. My next waypoint is south of the Turks and Caicos and is about 321 miles away and at my current speed, it will take about 75 hours to get there.

May 24, 2007

The PC has been working normally since the little episode above. I would not want to do the trip north without a chart plotter although I didn't have it for the first trip down or back north so I can get by without it if necessary. I sure does make things easier though.

You do see some strange things at sea now and then. A couple of days ago I met the vessel in the picture. It was several miles away and it is still very hazy here because of the dust from the Sahara dust storm, so it is not a very good picture. I took it through my binoculars. I think it is either a deep sea drilling platform or a missile launching platform but it never got close enough to see what it was but it was definitely underway although not moving very fast. The other picture is of a hitchhiker I picked up along the way. It stayed and rested for a few hours and then took off

I ran into, or actually ran away from, a line of squalls two nights ago along the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Normally I can see them on radar at about 24 miles but these I could see sooner because there was a lot of lightning in them. I worry about the lightning because it can destroy your electronics if it hits your mast. I have heard that steel boats don't have that problem but I'm not sure and don't really want to find out. Also, they can have very high winds in them that cause other problems. These squalls were moving slowly toward me so I turned and ran off to the north and was able to miss them almost entirely. On the display, north is up and I am located at the center of the circles. The circles are 4 miles apart on this display so it is 24 miles to the top of the display. There are also two other boats visible, one to the north and one to the south. I got a little rain but no strong winds and was able to stay away from the lightning.

Right now, at about 7:00 PM, I am just south of the Turks and Caicos. I have had to run the engine so much to charge the batteries, and to run away from squalls, that I am getting a little low on diesel and I am going to stop in the T&Cs to refuel. There is a little island, French Cay, at the south side of the Caicos Bank where I plan on stopping for a while. It's about 35 miles away yet so I won't get there until the wee hours of the morning. The Caicos Bank is shallow and has a lot of coral heads growing randomly throughout it so I don't want to go across in the dark. I'll stop at French Cay until daylight and go on to Provo to clear in and out of customs and get fueled up. I then have 24 hours to leave the country so I may stay there for a night and drest. There may be some where close where I can update the web site so I've been working on it this afternoon. A north swell started hitting me a few hours ago so the boat is rocking pretty good now. Once I get behind the T&Cs, that should stop and it should be a nice sail on to Provo.

May 27, 2007

I got to the south edge of the Caicos Bank early Fri morning. I didn't want to cross the bank at night so I anchored behind French Cay at about 2:00 am. I figured I'd sleep for a few hours and then go on to the shipyard for customs and fuel. It's only about 14 NM to the shipyard so if I got going early I coul be there in plenty of time. I slept a little later than I had planned so it was about 7:30 when I was ready to go. It was a really overcast day and just as I was gettin everthing ready to leave, a squall hit. I wasn't in that big a hurry so I waited for it to abate and finally got underway about 8:30. Still not bad timewise. As I sailed across the bank, I could see a lot of squalls on the radar. I figured they would be gone by the time I got to the shipyard and I'd ba able to go in with no problem. The Caicos Shipyard has a very narrow entrance with a 90 degree turn in the middle. I did not want to go in there with high winds. Bella Vita does not respond to the tiller too well at low speed and a strong wind on the beam makes it tough to control. The winds were blowing about 20 knots even between the squalls so I dropped the sails and motored close to the shipyard entrance. I thought that if I got into the shipyard by 4:00, I would still be OK. It was getting late and there seemed to be no end to the squalls and wind so I decided to go to Sapodilla Bay and anchor for the night. It was a couple of hours away but I got there and anchored with no problem.

My new plan was to get up early and go back to the shipyard again. That's the olny place on Provo that is deep enough for me to get into for fuel except for Turtle Bay on the north side of the island. I motored back to the entrance, called the shipyard to make sure they had diesel and that I could get in with my 6 ft draft. Everything was OK so I went on in. What they didn't tell me was there was a 100 ft dive charter boat tied up at the dock and there was no place for me to tie up. I called them on the radio and they said they would try to find a spot for me. So I am drifting around in there harbor, not a real large one, when I see them moving the two dinghys the dive boat had tied to the stern. One of the guys then walked off the distance betweenthe dive boat and the sailboat behind it and motioned for me to come in. As I had told them on the radio, Bella Vita is a 38 ft boat. But with the anchor sticking of the front and the wind vane on the back, it really needs at least 40 ft of dock space. I motor over to the little slot they had for me wondering if there wasa really room and if I could get her into the slot. Luckily, there was very little wind and calm water so I could go very slow and still have control. I pulled into the spot so a guy on dock could reach the dock line I had ready on the bow and used the reverse prop walk to get the stern in. It went just like the book said. That was by far the smallest spot I ever tried to get into.

I had to clear customs before they would sell me fuel so I had to wait for the customs agent to show up. I had asked them to call customs when I was talking to them on the radio but they seemed to have forgotten to do so. It was about 1 1/2 hours before the customs agent showed up and I got cleared in and out. Then I needed to fuel up, pay up, and get going. All went OK, just a little slow, and I was underway again about noon.

I was planning to go back past Sapodilla Bay and on out the Sandbore Channel on my way to the Bahamas. Looking to the west I couldn't see West Caicos, the island to south of the Sandbore Channel, because it was in the middle of a huge squall. Checking the radar, there were squalls all around me. I decided to go back to Sapodilla Bay and anchor there for the night. With the overcast skys, it would be very difficult to see the coral heads along the channel. Plus there were still large swells from the north that were disipating today and tomorrow. I had 24 hours after I cleared out through Customs before I had to leave so I decided to use some of it. I spent a nice night at anchor and am getting ready to leave now. It's about 7:15 am and I want to listen to the weather at 7:45 before leaving. Waiting a while will also give me a better angle on the light so coral visibility will be better. It looks nicer today but still is a little overcast. I'm anxious to be underway again.