Author Archives: Matt

Great sail down island

From the Pitons in St Lucia to Bequia just south of St Vincent in about 7 hours, we sailed most all the way. Pretty much a nice beam reach between the islands and about 1/2 way down the lee (or backside) of St Vincent before we had to start up the engines to keep us moving. The wind had died down and was right on the nose of the boat, till we cleared the bottom of St Vincent. At the bottom of St Vincent, the weather had decided to turn wet, so took the opportunity to give the boat a quick bath and wash away some of our drink spillage and dirty feet marks that seem to gather dust no matter how many times you wash them.

Since we did run the engines for a bit today, we also took the opportunity to fill our water tanks with some freshly made water, topped off the starboard tank completely and 3/4 on the port tank – so another night with showers.

Rolled in to Admiralty bay with intentions of just clearing customs and getting out of here, as with all plans this was the 14th one of the day, it changed to going ashore to check out the markets/and little boutique shops. I cleared customs, by leeching some internet on the way into the bay, and submitted the form online, to eseaclear.com expecting that it would speed up the process. Not so much, but at least I didn’t have to fill the forms out in triplicate. While I was ashore, Jamie gave Christine a quick lesson in Yoga on the moving bouncing boat, and Wayne kept a diligent eye on them, er the boat since we didn’t set the anchor with the normal scope as we weren’t planning on staying. So before heading ashore, we had to let out more chain and test to make sure the hook was set, and then we all went ashore. Not 2 minutes after we stepped ashore another torrential downpour came down and we were soaked. A quick snack after not having much success in provisioning market, we were a little late, and even missed out on the 1/2 priced appetizers by 2 minutes at Tommy’s – we had nachos anyway.

Back to the boat for some chicken and pasta with veggies and capers for a light dinner. Started raining again and everything outside was wet so had dinner inside tonight. I was having some trouble getting the internet connection to stabilize and was getting some weird failure emails in my inbox, seems the temporary drive on this hosted server ran out of disk space. Logged in remotely from boat, and free up the ‘error’ log that was eating the drive space. Seems something always happens when I’m no where near reliable internet. All is good now and we can again post entrys from the ipad.

Its a very nice and cool night, no rolling in the bay, just a little swinging on anchor, boarder line cold if you are directly in the wind.

We made the connection

We found Wayne.

In San Juan. We made the connection and arrived St Lucia as planned and headed straight to the hotel and the over to Oceans bar for a quick drink after midnight. Pretty much had the place to ourselves. The marina is pretty empty.

Woke up pretty early when the sun started coming through the hotel windows and I set off to find the boat dragging one of the suitcases of boat stuff with me.

Found the shack in the yard and open her up and unloaded a bunch of stuff. Back to the hotel @ 8am for breakfast with the rest of the crew. And then back to the boat to put it all back together. Christine handled the inside and Wayne and I the outside. We were pretty well done by noon then putzed around doing some random projects and when it was time for beer we called it quits and headed to the conscience store and then to the hotel pool.

Hung out there for awhile then went over to the marina and chatted with the guys who fixed the inverter and got a little nervous that even if the part we are waiting on got in on friday it wouldn’t get out of customs till Monday. So we had another beer and walked around the west marine store to see if there was something that we couldn’t live without.

It was getting close to Jamie’s arrival so Christine went back to the hotel to meet her and Wayne and I went to Mikes bar to wait for them. Her flight was uneventful. Had a couple rounds watching the pirate boat load up with tourists for a sunset cruise.

Took the ferry (manual rope barge thingy) back to the marina for a bite to eat at a place that serves pretty good Rotti. We figured a nap was going to be necessary to make the Friday night jump up. So we went to catch up on some sleep. Set the alarm for a 2 hour nap. And wouldn’t cha know it. It’s 6am the next morning. Guess we missed the jump up. 🙂

We did get confirmation that the part was at the FedEx office but haven’t heard if it made it through customs to get installed today. Fingers are crossed.

Time for island fun again.

Its been a long 5 months, we haven’t seen the boat since January.  Lots of work travel, its time to travel for fun and go on vacation. Lazily putz around the caribbean under the guise of moving the shack out of the hurricane zone.

2 days and counting, till we get to enjoy the warmth and sea again.

We commissioned some maintanence and some repairs while we were way.  The yard at Rodney Bay marina takes great care of us when we are away, always attentive to email questions and status updates.

One of the things we had done, was the tiny plastic rub strakes on the bows were kind of always breaking, the previous owner had some nice stainless ones made for the outer sides that were never installed.  The rub strakes prevent the fiberglass from wearing and chaffing the rope when it rubs at anchor or at the dock, the dock lines did have the nice stainless ones installed but never the bow, and with last Christmas’ trip and the heavy winds some of the fiberglass was rubbed pretty raw, so there is a “china man” in Rodney bay that does some amazing stainless work, I think his name is Lawrence, but he shaped and formed the stainless to fit the curves of inner bow and added the outside protectors for us.  That will make the strain on the bridle and the constant rubbing we had on the last trip be minimized as well as protect the fiberglass.  This project had been on the list since we bought the boat in Turkey.

stainless rub strakes

stainless rub strakes

Had the water maker rebuilt, almost replacing the entire system – so it should be good as new. it will take about 12 hrs running the water to fill the fresh water tanks, we hold 700 liters or about 185 gallons of fresh water in our tanks. The water maker makes water at 16 gallons per hour, so every 20 mins is like filling up one of those water jugs they deliver to the office. Definitely easier than carting those 5 gallon jugs around we did last year.

The Mastervolt inverter/charger that gave up the ghost and let out all the good smoke was replaced so that we’ll have 110v electricity on board and we can blend some frozen drinks on this trip.

A good wash and wax by the nice folks at the ship yard, they did an excellent job last year and we are hoping this year is no exception.

Of course we are bringing spare parts in the luggage as usual.  At least with all my travel this year the airlines let me bring 2 bags, and don’t you know they are busting at the seams.

A couple of Dennis Rodman fenders for those who remember on Lake Austin.

A backup water pressure pump to keep the fresh water flowing out of the tank.

A new WiFi Antenna to pickup the available WiFi from the boat, we have to be able to play words with friends, right?

And some fun toys to play with fun 12v lights and a BlueTooth GPS to keep us from getting lost and that will connect to the Apple iPad see if it works for navigation.


All in all ready for some tinkering on the boat, some cold beverages, some sailing and lots of relaxation – 2 days and counting.