Sailing adventures with friends and dogs ... and first catch of the season!

After years of barely seeing each other, Ted, my childhood friend (well, more like another brother) has inherited part of the family house in Falmouth, right on the water (available if anyone wants to rent it!). Cynthia and I have enjoyed visiting with him and his wife Daniella and daughter Hailey, helping with the house, enjoying dinner there, sailing twice on our Rhodes 19. I think we've spent more time together this summer than our total over the last few decades.

On our most recent sailing trip we fought in incoming tide to sail along the salt marsh south of Strong Island. The wind cooperated enough that we sailed into the first large marsh creek, watching for crabs and anything else that falls under the heading of "cool!"

.... a small bright fish about a foot long caught some eyes and another. After a couple hundred yards, we ran aground, hopped out, and I pulled the boat back to open water. As we walked, we found clams with our feet and by sight and the dogs stood on deck to make sure we stayed nearby.

Once out of the creek, we climbed back aboard and sailed along the marsh. Cynthia cast a lure, hoping to catch a bluefish... and something struck her first cast. On her second cast, she set the hook and pulled it aboard. Given the legal size limit of 28", she released this little striped bass, but had one heck of a grin.

Once we left the island, we headed for the cut into the open ocean, the fair wind giving us some headway against the tide. Once outside the bay, we found a large dark area in the water... FISH! The entire dark cloud, perhaps a half-acre to an acre, was fish, perhaps 12" to 18" long, so tightly packed that we could see no space between them. Cynthia cast her line and could feel it bump into the fish, but none bit it and the hooks were too dull to snag any. Still, none of us had seen such a school before: probably shad.

Fearing that the tide was slackening and knowing that we could not fight an out-rushing tide, we sailed back into the bay, back to Strong Island, and up another marsh creek. No fish sightings, but lots of crabs and weed. We pulled ashore and explored some salt ponds for clams and critters, then sailed out and headed for the seals, then on to a large salt marsh to the north.

We explored,

got wet and muddy seeking clams

found crabs and quahogs and sea cucumbers, then headed back, Ted at the helm with Daniella beside him.

I dropped everyone and gear at the beach, put the boat to bed on its mooring, and rowed ashore to find them still chatting. Haley caught one of the multitude of baby toads from the yard, held it for a few photos, and released it into the flower garden.

Another day seized!


And the dogs loved it too, alternating between exploring marshes, standing on deck, sitting in laps,

and enjoying a nice safe place to relax.

They always seem to come home happy and exhausted and mostly sleep for an entire day after one of these trips.


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Skipper Skip?

I finally passed my captain's license exam! My head feels fuller, perhaps from the newly recruited neurons. Now all I need to do is get my first aid/CPR certification, get certified on the radio, get various clearances and certifications and drug tests and and and... and I'll be a legal captain and may charge for services.

Nothing is entirely smooth, of course: this morning I signed up for my first aid/cpr, a course that is partly online and finishes up this Saturday with an hour in class. I then spent a couple hours attempting to access the online portion through two computers and five supported browsers, but with no success. The information sent to me says

" We suggest you complete the online portion at least two days prior to attending the inperson classroom skills session."

while the helpful person I reached at 800-red-cross told me that the online portion is not available until 2 to 3 days before the classroom portion.

Hmmm.

Sailing adventures with friends.

Friends were here the in the beginning of July: David, Jill, Ruthie, and Tom. We try to get out for an adventure or two each year. Cynthia and I took them out for their first sail on our Rhodes 19.

Step one: sail for the seals. Every year, the local gray seal population increases. I would say the current number inside this shallow bay is about 3k, kind of like a city of 10k humans. Ugh. They attract great white sharks, eat huge amts of fish...and they STINK! On the plus side, these critters are cute, curious, noisy, and entertaining and the tourism and sightseeing brings in a decent living for some folks... and they attract great white sharks (another tourism draw). I like the individuals and would wish no ill to them, but as a mass.... well, I just heard an orca was sighted near Chatham and I cheered.

So we sailed past the hunting packs of seals

Some would flip their tails, some open their nostrils wide to catch the scent of dogs or humans, some would chase the boat under the water, checking it out or just playing with the turbulence from the rudder, then pop to the surface and peer at us. I love watching them swim and roll and play below the water and imagine what that freedom would feel like, perhaps like swimming in the Virgin Islands with mask, snorkel, nice fins, and a good lungful of air? Great fun.

We sailed on. We found great shoals of blue mussels and some softshell clams while exploring on Strong Island

Walked down the beach, past a cliff loaded with very active cliff swallows

then headed back, I dropped everyone and gear at the beach, we hugged them goodbye, and sent them off with clams and mussels.

Another day seized!

Agoraphoria

One thing I LOVE about living on a boat is that I get wonderful views from my deck.... and can change easily to another location. This is not so easy living on Cape Cod, although I have to admit that it is pretty darned easy to drive or walk to the beaches and enjoy that... or visit friends and family... or go sailing. But what to do when I wake up?

A thunderstorm rolled in at dawn a few days ago and I did not feel like getting in a car and driving miles.... so I pulled out a ladder and carried my coffee with me: nice view & good breeze...

but a bit hard to balance the coffee pot. Hmm....

(Wrote this in mid March... and later. Finishing it on Cape Cod!): adventures in St Croix, mulling over Culebra

Here we are anchored in Christiansted, wind roaring in from the north(!!!) instead of the normal south-easterly wind. This wind change was nice in that it allowed us to sail here from Culebra in a single day on a single tack rather than taking a couple days, but it pushes waves right into this normally protected harbor and the boats near us are rolling wildly from the off-center waves. We are using the new anchor on the bow and the old one on the stern to hold the boat head-on to the waves so it rocks fore and aft, but hardly rolls at all. Very nice... but I worry about dragging the anchor and ending up on shore.

We are the right-most boat, pointing a bit left..

The new batten car/holder I made performs beautifully! I finally feel as though my sail has some life in it rather than needing to perform repairs every few hours of sailing. I'll install another tonight.

Cynthia and I killed lionfish every day after she arrived until the day we left Culebra. We got two on Saba Island off St Thomas on our way to Culebra, then twenty-eight in Culebra. The weird and strong winds have made everything rather murky and turbulent: even on our last day of hunting in Culebra, we only killed two of the four we found. I bet that in normal conditions we found have found and removed six to eight... and we have decided that they are very tasty filleted and fried up in butter.

Cynthia caught her first lobster, but found that it had eggs under its tail,

so returned it to its lair. Later she caught another and we enjoyed it for dinner. Tasty, but not as good as those on Cape Cod.

The reefs in Culebra vary from dead and fishless to some of the best we have seen. We especially liked the reefs on both sides of Punta Tamarindo Chico: nice and shallow on the easterly side and 30' deep and complex on the other. The reef extending NW from Punta Tamarindo Grande is mostly dead, but has some really nice and interesting coral species still alive on it, ones I have not seen often elsewhere. Other reefs were almost entirely dead and some, like Bahia Flamenco, have no fish at all and no live coral... but wonderful smooth beaches. Some of the reef at Saba Island (off St Thomas) grew small, but healthy, staghorn and elkhorn corals, something that is rather rare elsewhere. Frankly, I'm getting a higher and higher respect for our favorite reefs on St John, even though most of it is pretty sad.

Well, we plan to enjoy exploring St Croix for the next day or four, then sail across the deeps to St John and our favorite lion spots. We miss hunting the little buggers and have not been in the water for two days! Withdrawal!




Written sitting a stopover in JFK:

We enjoyed St Croix, even renting a car for two days and driving from the dry, rugged, and reef-fringed easternmost bit of land possessed by the USA to the agricultural, wet, sandy-shored western end. In between, we dove in a shallow bay (no lions, darn it!), schemed on ways to sail inside the northern fringing reefs without wrecking (and looked at a boat that had failed earlier that day... although it had probably just dragged anchor), stocked up on groceries at CostULess,

checked on hauling and repairing the boat in the fall, and toured the Cruzan Rum distillery.

Well! We counted that distillery tour as a high-point (no pun intended!) of the visit. We learned about the history of the rum, from locally produced and bottled stuff based on slave labor to the modern globalized stuff. It begins with tankers of molasses from Guatamala

(I had thought Brazil, but no) getting fermented in immense tanks so large that the tiny bubbles created by the yeast make the surface roil like a low boil

and the excess heat must be removed through chilled water run through tubing

less it kill the yeast! Then the wonderful-smelling stuff gets distilled (we got to see the tower, but only from outside) into 189-proof clear stuff. Most of this gets shipped right to Kentucky (or was it Florida?), where the folks who purchased Cruzan most recently make it into various flavored rums. A lot also stays on-island to be aged in used oak barrels for various periods depending on the final product....

then blended into the final product and shipped to the mainland in these nice shipping containers to be bottled and labelled.

Most stays in the USA, with only a bit returned to the islands as a local product.

Included with the $8 price of the tour are two rum drinks and four tastes of whatever rums you want. This actually turned out to be very interesting and tasty. If you get a chance, go.

Of course, this nut for growing things couldn't stay away from the mango tree and spent some time admiring the embryonic crop:

By the end of Friday, the wind seemed to have shifted enough east to let us sail effectively north to to John, so we prepared to depart Saturday morning. Various things delayed us (not JUST beautiful flowers!)

and we didn't weigh anchor until 10:30. Once we sailed from the harbor the full wind and waves struck us and, for the next several hours we sailed over huge waves, but could often let the boat steer itself. We tried to stay as close to the wind as possible, trying to reach the east end of St John, but found ourselves drifting farther and farther west as the day progressed. Tiring, but we grew accustomed to the waves and enjoyed surfing up and down. I also saw a porpoise surf down a large wave-front, then disappear. And, as we came close to the protection of land, the waves diminished to only a few feet tall.

We tacked up the shore, finding all legal moorings taken by boats fleeing the abnormal winds and waves that must have made the north side of the island miserable. At sunset, we reached Rams Head, the south-east point of the island, and snagged a day-use-only mooring and dropped sail. What a relief!

Dinner, a drink, and sleep have seldom seemed so welcome!

Too busy to blog.... and the computer died

Yes, just after my last post in March, my computer had a couple little issues that I thought I could solve. One thing lead to another, I took days running repair programs, reinstalling windows, etc.... and finally the computer would not even boot to the bios, would not even respond to the power button. At this point, I pronounced it dead. Fortunately, I had managed to get it running briefly during the repairs and had done a full copy of all my data (I hope) to a backup drive, so I bought a new computer and loaded it up. The whole thing wasted about three days... and I am STILL installing some of the programs I need and adjusting things. *sigh*

So... Cynthia and I flew back down to the islands for more adventures. We ran into Rebekah and Bella, a mother and daughter down for a week, and took them out sailing for a couple days. Lots of fun, including getting caught in a torrential downpour, then having a nice hot lunch.

Then the post-flight incubation period ended and both Cynthia and I came down with horrible colds that lasted about five or six days. We still managed to take advantage of low winds to anchor in places that were normally too exposed and hunted lionfish and explored new reefs. Wonderful stuff, even sick.

We also unpacked our new sewing machine

and tried repairing the jib

before (the foot has been poorly repaired over the years... and needs more repairs)

and after (trimmed off several inches)

 and the head of the new used mainsail (the head of the sail was nearly ready to rip off due to sun exposure and fatigue.)

Interesting, fun, and somewhat frustrating, especially when I broke the needle and we had to sand the burrs, scars I had made on the sewing machine parts. Still, now that we have the machine and have watched videos, we can look at the sail I bought or the old genoa jib and see ways to improve them easily instead of seeing them as fixed quantities. We both love that.

We took off to the BVIs (British Virgin Islands), checking in at Jost Van Dyke. The folks at customs made everything easy (just make sure to wear decent clothing and shoes and to be polite: I have heard that walking in shirtless, smacking your beer bottle onto the counter, and then belching may increase your fees several hundred percent.... after you have been sent back out to dress properly.). The folks on Jost are delightful and we enjoyed chatting with Foxy, the most famous inhabitant. The prices are rather high: expect to pay four or five bucks for a bag of ice.

We sailed around the islands, to Little Jost, to Cane Garden on Tortolla, to Little Harbor on Peter Island (one of our favorite anchorages), to Haulover on Cooper Island (we walked over to the other side and found incredible trash on the beach and pretty darned nice coral and fish in the water), to Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda

 (we also pulled baby chickens from a concrete drainage ditch, but mom was gone. Later we pulled more out and these DID get back to mom), to The Baths and The Caves

 (very cool, but make sure to get out before the 9am crowds), to Gorda Sound (mob tourist scene), then worked our way back home.

Cynthia read a terribly depressing bit about the die-off of the corals and, apparently, it is continuing apace through disease, sedimentation, algae, climate change, etc. Folks who came here a half century ago would probably be in shock at the change. Cynthia and I find so many places to be so sad (dead and rotten coral and nearly no fish) that we just climb out of the water and sail away. On a more cheerful note, I recently heard a piece about methods for regrowing even giant 500-yr-old corals in five years or so, although one needs to listen to the depressing bit of the radio piece first: Science Friday Future of Coral.

We found nearly no lionfish (until we paddled far from the beaten path and found an awesome reef), the wind died and we spent a week of frustration considering a 3 knot wind to be wonderful, I found the masthead welds had cracked (probably on our stormy trip to or from St Croix),

 we will never go through customs in Tortola again (OMG!), and I spent two nights and two pots of coffee sailing us the last ten miles home.

Now Cynthia is back home, trying to get back into real life. I got the masthead welded a couple days ago, reinstalled it yesterday, and will get a new one made soon. Every trip gives new memories.

Culebra

I know I've been away a while, but things have been busy. Just after my last post, my computer had a couple little issues that I thought I could solve. One thing lead to another, I took days running repair programs, reinstalling windows, etc.... and finally the computer would not even boot to the bios, would not even respond to the power button. At this point, I pronounced it dead. Fortunately, I had managed to get it running briefly during the repairs and had done a full copy of all my data (I hope) to a backup drive, so I bought a new computer and loaded it up. The whole thing wasted about three days... and I am STILL installing some of the programs I need and adjusting things. *sigh*

Mostly I prefer nature, sailing, & outdoor adventure to culture, people, and other human-centered madness, but both Cynthia and I love Culebra and the main town there. At the entrance of the canal that cuts through from the ferry terminal to the main harbor is a breakwater and on that breakwater stands... or, more accurately, sits,... this wonderful sculpture.

Then there is the town itself. So many places we see in St John and St Thomas seem ramshackle, decrepit, dirty, and trash-filled. This little town, on the other hand, seems filled with joyful and colorful expression.

If you absolutely MUST leave your boat and step onto dry land (*shudder*), one could do far worse.