Saturday, March 28, 2009

Tobago Cays

We are now in Union (Clifton Bay), and are waiting for a spare part (something to do with water in the transmission fluid - we had to flush it out yesterday and the pump snapped, spraying me with transmission fluid - I was covered top to toe with it! Very funny (guess you had to be there)). Anyway, we hope to get the part tomorrow and then we can leave - we aren't enamoured with Union, the people are not exactly the friendliest we've come across. Internet was down for a few days, so I'm trying to do the blog while it's up and running.

Tobago Cays was our next stop after Mayreau - Phillip had been telling me for ages that this was the best water in the Caribbean, and that it would take my breath away, and he was right. Spectacular!

We went snorkeling out on the reef - really excellent, tons of marine life - but the highlight was this spotted eagle ray - he spent ages digging around with his little face in the sand for food and didn't mind if you got fairly close. What a cute little stubby face!





They have an area roped off by one of the islands (Baradel) where there is a turtle reserve. You can snorkel and dive in there, but of course, no boats. Joyce, Phillip and I spent about two or three hours snorkeling here and everywhere we looked, there were turtles, it was just fantastic. You could get up pretty close to them too before they'd swim off - it was delightful (Joyce took her heavy duty underwater camera along and got some great shots).


Joyce and I climbed to the top of Petit Bateau to take some photos - this is me back down on the beach watching about 6 needlefish stalk a school of fish.



Sunset - Tobago Cays


View from top of Petit Rameau












Joyce!!!! Full of energy and like a mountain goat, quickly climbed to the top for a photo session!





Mayreau

We spent a couple of nights in Mayreau, a nice small bay filled with charter boats mostly, and only a couple of cruising boats. Very secluded, not much on the island apart from a beachfront restaurant and some t-shirt/souvenir sellers.

Above on the right, those are the Tobago Cays. Very close (took us 45 minutes to get there).




Sunday, March 22, 2009

Bequia continued


This is another great shot of the small laundry/ice boat coming around!



We are anchored in Admiralty Bay, in the capital of Port Elizabeth. Can anyone spot Delphinus? Paul and Joyce on the Lady H are in front of us.


(scroll down for where we are)




Yesterday we checked in, took a taxi to the turtle sanctuary (well worth seeing, very sad how the reefs are dying and the turtles are being wiped out). It is run by one man, no aid at all from the government, the only support he gets is from the tourists and visitors - he needs publicity and funding to support his turtles.

http://turtles.bequia.net/




Then we went to the old Fort which has been restored into a magnificent villa and spent a few hours talking with the owner, Otmar (most charming) and loving the views. What a fantastic setting.

http://www.grenadines.net/bequia/oldfort.html



Today we went snorkeling in the Moonhole area - houses carved out of stone, kind of eerie in my opinion, couldn't imagine who would want to live there.


Tomorrow we are leaving for Mayreau - apparently from here on, the water is just incredible - best water in the Caribbean (including the Tobago Cays). I don't think we'll have internet access for a week or so, not until we get to Union.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Night Passage

For those of you who have not sailed in a boat, I'm going to describe what it felt like to me, as a newbie, doing an overnight passage. This was my second overnight passage - the first one from Virgin Gorda to Saba was on a relatively windless night, so we had no sails out, only the engine going, so all I had to do was watch out for other vessels on the horizon. This time, the wind was in full force so when I tried to handle the boat (for the first 10 minutes of my watch), I was completely out of my depth - the wind kept gusting and blowing the boat off course, so the autopilot would disengage and the boat would come round into the wind. Not knowing how to accurately trim the sails, I'd have to call Phillip, or else I'd just set the boat back on course but it was only minutes before the autopilot disengaged. This is all due to the strong gusts of the islands - firstly being in the lee of the land and the channeling effect of the wind on us, and then inbetween the islands - where it gusted up to 30 knots. There was no way I could cope with the boat by myself, even in broad daylight and as soon as it got dark, I started to feel really seasick and could only crawl away into my cabin to lie down - Phillip sailed the boat by himself the entire night, while I lay in my cabin with a pillow over my head, feeling ghastly. I couldn't go up above deck (in the darkness, no horizon to see, it just made me feel even worse), so I was literally in the cabin for 12 straight hours, lying flat, wedged in the corner up against the wall so that I couldn't be thrown about at all.

The boat was heeling over "on its ear" ( as they say), so when I looked out the portholes, all I saw was rushing water, a glimpse here and there of sky, but mostly all I could see was underwater. The first time I saw that I thought we were sinking or about to turn over and called Phillip in a panic - but he explained that it's perfectly normal. So I would say I'm relatively used to it and it doesn't alarm me as much as it did before. It's still unsettling though to look out a window and see under the water.

The motion on this passage was wild - the wind ranged from no wind to 30 knots, and it would blow up in a matter of minutes, so one minutes we'd be fairly flat, the next the boat would literally take off and heel over in seconds, always making me squeal in fright. When I was lying flat in the corner though, the motion from side to side didn't really throw me around, but it transferred my body weight from one side to another, and the motion up and down would cause my body, particularly my boobs, to be weightless for a short period of time (nano seconds I suppose although it felt like longer) before they'd join me back on earth. It's like being in a rollercoaster.

The sounds of the boat were what I found so hard to describe, and the only way I can do that is to compare them with things that you probably know or can relate to. The sound of the water rushing by, separated only by a thin fibreglass boat wall, ranges between the sounds of river rapids very close by, to the sound of firemen with their pressure hoses trained on the portholes, to a group of people with buckets of water tossing them hard against the hull of the boat. Then I could hear washing machines and dishwashers, and it made me think aha, this is what it's like to be a load of laundry - noise, motion - all just like being inside a washing machine. I could hear noises on deck I could not decipher - from the miaowing of a cat (or should I say many cats), to the whine of a dog, to the sounds of three men scuffling on deck - which turned into an aggressive fist fight (with no voices obviously, just the thump and grown of three men fighting hard, staggering around the deck, falling, kicking etc) - then I could hear paratroopers landing on the boat - about 4 or 5 of them, some of them landing hard, some softly, all dragging their parachutes with them. Many paratroopers landed that night, too many to count. Then I could hear thumping and knocking, and the occasional banging, as if someone was standing off the bow with a hammer, randomly clouting the hull from time to time. I heard pots and pans flying around the saloon (they weren't imaginary, they really were flying around, even though they'd been well secured), the chopping board kept taking off like a missile, the door (although wedged tightly) constantly banging.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the wind generator! Fortunately, thanks to John Cooper in St. Thomas, it has stopped growling (he and Phillip tweaked the wires), so now it only howls like the tube (subway) hurling through a tunnel next to you, or a freight train. Sometimes (like now, in Admiralty Bay in Bequia), it is a gentle soothing sound, but on that night passage it sounded like some kind of angry engine with the throttle turned up high, the sound going up and down depending on the gust of wind that was hitting it.

I could hear the lines creaking and knocking, the sound of Phillip trimming the sails, winding them up, letting them out. I was sure I could hear him running up and down deck (I couldn't - he didn't leave the cockpit the entire time), people throwing chairs, dismantling furniture - you name it, I could hear it. It's loud down below - don't ask me how anyone can sleep through that, particularly with the motion side to side, up and down, back to front - my legs would go in one direction, my head in another, my tummy and chest in another - and yet people still tell me it's the most soothing sleep I'll ever have. I think they're nuts. All I know is that I hated this passage and was so glad when the dawn came. I was staggering up to the cockpit (really ready to be violently ill) and was greeted with Phillip saying look - DOLPHINS! And there were about 30 - 40 dolphins swimming alongside us, some under the bow, some jumping out of the water, it was an incredible sight - and took my breath away and while I still felt really ill, I wasn't - just kept an eye on the dolphins and tried to appreciate them for what they were. Normally I'd be so excited and I'd rush up front to take pictures, but this time I just grimaced at them and watched them from the cockpit, holding on tight. What a great sight.

Bequia

Arrived Bequia after a rough (Phillip calls it "boystrous") 28 hour sail from Roseau in Dominica (did I tell you I HATE HATE HATE overnight passages?) - we saw dolphins along the way (see photos and video below) - two lots, one small pod that swam under our bowsprit for about 10 minutes about 9 am, just after leaving Roseau, and the other lot at dawn, while we were sailing off St. Vincent (it was too dark to take photos of them).









This pod was huge - about 20 - 30 dolphins that swam under our bow for about half an hour - fabulous. It really is a privilege to see them. Bequia is the gateway to the Grenadines where apparently you get the best waters in the Caribbean - can't wait to see/swim/dive them.


This is the laundry, fuel and ice barge that goes around - call them on channel 67


if you have laundry to be done or need ice. Very convenient but quite expensive. If you get diesel from them, it costs about US$8 a gallon. If you buy the fuel on land, diesel is $2.75 a gallon. A bit of a project, taking your fuel cans there to fill up, but so much cheaper. Internet is slow - too slow unfortunately to do a skype session with anyone or even make a VOIP call. But at least we can check our emails and do the blog!





Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Delphinus in Dominica


Dominica Island Tour (pronounced DominEEka)






Some general photos of Dominica. Banana trees everywhere!



A point worth noting, for those of us who remember the movie "Body Heat" with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, the final scene of the movie (girl on a beach) was filmed in Dominica.

We bought tomatoes from the market - the sweetest, juiciest tomatoes we've ever had! Delicious with mozarella cheese, pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil :-)


Did a fabulous tour of the island yesterday along with 3 other couples - left at 8 am and got back to the boat at 6.30 pm, just in time to go over to the Beez Neez (Pepe and Steven) for drinks and snacks. The tour took us all over the north of the island, from Portsmouth (where we stopped at a pig farm



to see several HUGE pregnant sows, through Dos D'ane, Bense, Calibishie,











We were told many times that Pirates of the Caribbean (1 and 2) were filmed here and shown the sites where they actually filmed the scenes - beach and jungle. Below is the road they built in the jungle for the dolly to run along.


I never saw any of those movies so it was lost on me, I'm afraid but obviously the people of Dominica are very proud of it!

These are jelly coconuts - you don't eat the meat on these, only drink the milk.





(where we had lunch)


to the Carib Indian Village and then to Red Rock. Red Rock is a beautiful area - the shape indicates the previous lava flow from the volcano and the little stones are pumice.




View from Red Rock







back through Bense to Chaudiere Pool (waterfalls).

Before the waterfall, we stopped to see the ruins of an old mill with a water wheel.




Chaudiere Pool is located at the top of the Hampstead River (miles and miles down a really rough dirt track with huge potholes - you really need to be in a 4-wheel drive instead of a minivan although the minivan coped just fine in 1st gear) and then down the very steep valley sides (over 2500 feet almost straight down) through the jungle to the valley floor.







It was a STEEP climb, both down and up.



There you clamber over plenty of rocks and boulders until you get to the waterfall. Going up was pretty brutal, very steep, but everyone managed it just fine although we were all breathless when we got to the top. Dillan (our guide) refreshed us after the hike with banana, raw cacao pods, grapefruits and guavas,




plucked fresh from the trees around us. During the tour throughout the day, every now and then Dillan would pull the bus over and pluck something from the trees or bushes - cinnamon, lemons, limes, guavas, grapefruits, lemongrass, nutmeg, lantana, passionfruit, soursop, papaya, cashew nuts, bayleaves, breadfruit, breadnuts, noni (apparently a miracle fruit that cures all types of ailments, but smells really awful), bananas (the blue bags protect the bananas from birds and bugs)


we even stopped for cassava bread and coconuts (drank coconut water and ate fresh coconut).


At one point, we saw HUGE orange coloured fruits in a tree, the size of cantaloupes - turns out they were apricots (not yet in season). We saw mangoes and avocados on the trees although they weren't in season, and saw plenty of dasheen and tannia for sale along the roadside. Pineapples weren't in season, although we did see some plantations. Bananas everywhere! What a lush island, a real "Garden of Eden" and definitely our favorite island so far. We'll be back!


Phillip (and Dic) opening up an almond

This is the tiny port/customs in Anse de Me (the main ports are Roseau, pronounced Rose-oh, and Portsmouth).

More photos of Dominica



a Cashew nut (still attached to its fruit)



Beautiful bright flowers, unfortunately the photo doesn't do them justics