Tim will be able to remain for 2 weeks, and then Carla will stay on for another month or so to continue with various projects including the work on SJ (our nickname for Sacajawea), to volunteer at a local school for children with special needs in Bequia, and also to research possibilities for work permits and such toward our goal to live and work at least part of the year down here in the coming years (with the remaining time spent working in Maine). More to come on that later, but for highlights from Carla's daily ship's log, please keep reading.
As you might imagine, phone calls from this part of the world to and from the states are quite expensive, but both our laptops are equipped with Skype for online chatting. If anyone has Skype capabilities and would like to reach us via voice please email and we'll setup a time to give it a try. [Note to Larry J.: thanks for the tip about SkypeOut - hadn't heard of that but will check it out. See my email reply for details about sailing in SVG. Thanks!]
Impromptu travel anyone?
As noted above Carla will remain in SVG until about mid-March if all goes as planned, and Tim may or may not return beforehand depending on his "day job" work schedule. So if anyone has a hankering to see this part of the world and doesn't mind basic boat accommodations, then let me know and if you can get to SVD, then I can find you from there. And yes, I mean that seriously. I'll be working and most likely based in Bequia or St. Vincent, but there's still lots you can do from this base with local ferries and such. If you haven't lived aboard a boat before, I describe it sort of like camping, but with water involved which can be good or bad depending on your personal relationship with water (some with "unwater-friendly" stomachs might describe living aboard as camping with seasickness, but hopefully not for long). The accommodations are rather basic and when the wind blows down here it comes through the boat like a freight train, but if you enjoy something different you are most welcome to come and join me and try it out if you like. Cheers! cy
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Welcome to our sailing log
Welcome to this blog highlighting our working trip to St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). For anyone not familiar with SVG, it is a series of islands in the Windward (southern) Caribbean, just south of St. Lucia and just north of Grenada. Most of the islands are small and largely unknown except to those who seek them out, but those who do are rewarded with locales of stunning beauty, friendly people, and virtually no ostentatious and large-scale development.
In addition to the largest island of St. Vincent, the Grenadines consist of about 30 islands including Bequia, Mustique, Petit St. Vincent, Canouan, Mayreau, Palm Island, Tobago Cays (pronounced “keys”), and Union Island. Later entries will talk more about these beautiful islands and include some photos, but for now if you’d like to check it out see http://www.insandoutssvg.com/ or http://www.doitcaribbean.com/stvincentandthegrenadines/index.html.en-US.
Tim and I are currently based in St. Vincent, located 40km (24 miles) across the St. Vincent Channel to the south of St. Lucia. Our boat, a Jeanneau 37.1 Sun Odessey monohull sailboat, is named Sacajawea. (A name which most islanders down here don’t even attempt to pronounce; so for instance when we call into a local vendor from the VHF radio onboard - when they respond, rather than repeat our boat name we are most often referred to as simply “boat hailing Howard’s Marine” or whatever). Perhaps not the most simple name for hailing purposes, but she was named after the Native American woman who guided Lewis and Clark expeditions into the Pacific Northwest, and whose tribe lived near our former home in Bozeman, Montana. Our boat Sacajawea’s hailing port is also Bozeman because that’s where we were living when we purchased her and formed an s-corporation which entered her into charter management with Tortola Marine Management (TMM). 
Sacajawea's home - TMM base at Blue Lagoon, St. Vincent
TMM operates bases in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, St. Vincent, and Belize. Sacajawea was located in Tortola for almost seven years, which is a pretty long time for a charter sailboat – a testament to TMM’s longstanding reputation for excellent maintenance of their sailing fleet. But even with TMM’s awesome care, it was eventually time to move on, so about five or six years ago we moved her to another TMM base in St. Vincent which at the time needed smaller boats at that base.
As someone who didn’t grow up sailing or participating in other water-related activities, I’d describe the sailing in SVG as more intense and demanding than the more mellow “lake like” sailing in most of the Virgin Islands. Farther “down island” in SVG, the islands are farther apart, the seas are bigger, the currents stronger, and the amenities like preset moorings (preventing the need to anchor) are much less prevalent. SVG also requires a bit more persistence to get to as well, which I’ll explain in a moment.
Now that SJ is almost 14 years old, we’re in the process of pulling her out of the charter management program entirely – except perhaps for the odd special request or substitute boat as needed. Hence the purpose of this trip is to figure out what we do with her now that she’s retired from regular charter.
Sunday, Feb 3 – Monday, Feb 4
Theme for this entry: Just how many airports can one fly through in a single trip anyway?
Our wanderings began late Sunday afternoon, when after taking our three dogs for a quick run around our coastal Maine neighborhood to take the edge off their seemingly endless sea of energy, we left them occupied with rawhide chew bones and in the care of our awesome friend and pet-sitter extraordinaire, Natasha. The trek from Portland, Maine to St. Vincent was a bit of a long haul, including an overnight stay in Boston near the airport so we could catch our 5:45am Delta flight to Atlanta. We were able catch the last half of the Super Bowl from our hotel, unfortunately to watch local fav’s New England Patriots miss a complete perfect season as they lost to the New York Giants.
Tim had just returned from his yearly January trip to France for JDSU, so he barely had a chance to repack his bags before we had headed out again. As I mentioned, the journey from Maine to SVG is somewhat arduous (and pricey at around $800 US) -- one of the reasons it's been almost 4 years since we were last here -- more than we were willing to pay to get here. And sometimes SVG feels like one of those places where "you can't get there from here." For example, after the 90 minute drive to Boston, an overnight stopover at an airport hotel, the shuttle to Boston Logan, and five (5) airports and two cab rides later – we finally arrived at Blue Lagoon on the south shore of St. Vincent which is Sacajawea’s home. And yes, I do mean FIVE airports later: Boston Logan, Atlanta, no less than TWO airports in St. Lucia, Barbados and finally St. Vincent. Piece of cake.
For anyone who might decide to travel to SVG, I would not suggest the routing I just mentioned unless you are looking to actually spend some time in St. Lucia as a stopover (and that I highly recommend by the way). I’ve always filled the “travel agent” role in our household, so I booked that itinerary as a change from the usual “Boston-Barbados-St. Vincent” schedule. I had read that St. Lucia was another gateway alternative, so being the “don’t want to miss a chance to go somewhere new” person that I am – I thought routing us through St. Lucia where we could make a brief stopover for a couple of nights on the way back might be fun. In theory that’s fine, but in practice I could have used Lorelei Gilmore’s warning advice of “Danger Will Robinson” a few months ago when I booked the tickets. Why? Read on….
Connecting in St. Lucia
St. Lucia is a beautiful island and one of the cleanest islands of any I’ve seen anywhere (and much cleaner than most US cities). The attractions are many: the world famous Pitons which climb steeply toward the sky from the sea, the lovely and protected Marigot Bay, world-class resorts and restaurants and much more -- it's a phenomenal island to come and stay for a while. But the hiccup if you're just connecting through the lush country on the way to somewhere else is that it has two airports, one where the inter-island hoppers depart for exotic locales; and another where the international flights arrive. Oh yeah, and did I mention the two airports are at opposite ends of the island?
Our Delta flight arrived at the larger Hewanorra International Airport at Vieux Fort on St. Lucia’s south shore, but our connecting flight to St. Vincent (via Barbados) departed from the smaller SLU airport on the north shore near Castries on the northwest side. Getting from one to the other involved a one-hour-plus cab ride.
But fortunately for us, and as is typical for the islands, a very friendly and helpful cab driver and native St. Lucian named Daine made the trip not only safe and enjoyable, but quite educational too. During our stunningly beautiful drive up the windward Atlantic side of the southern half of the island, cutting across the island through the rain forest to the Caribbean side and on to Castries -- he graciously pointed out sites along the way and even made photo stops for us, all the while answering my many questions (you know me and my inquiring mind). Daine was a gracious host and very informative tour guide. For example we learned bananas are the primary crop exported from St. Lucia (although tourism is now the leading industry), and the reason the bananas hanging from the trees in the many fields we passed were enclosed in blue bags was to protect from sun and bugs until they are ready for harvest. Daine also shared information about one of the island's rain forests as we drove through part of it near the center of the island, he explained how many parts of the coconut can be used and eaten as islanders do, and in short turned the 70-minute cab ride into a wonderful eco-tour of the island. If you come to St. Lucia (even for a short connection), I highly recommend Daine's friendly, fast and educational taxi service. Since he gets booked up it's best to contact him in advance when possible, and he can be reached at 1-758-718-0201.
Tim and Daine at one of our viewing stops.
From St. Lucia (SLU), local Caribbean airline Liat offers almost hourly flights between SLU and SVD (St. Vincent) with at least one direct flight, but unfortunately our Delta arrival was too late to catch the last one, so our itinerary included an extra stop in Barbados. Things were touch-and-go for a while when mechanical difficulties on the propeller planes delayed the SLU-BGI connection, and the uncertainty continued when we arrived in Barbados as flights were out of whack there too. But what Liat lacks in available replacement aircraft they make up for in ingenuity, and with some creative “rescheduling” they diverted the SLU flight bound to Trinidad to Barbados first before continuing on to Trinidad, and it appeared they reshuffled a Grenada flight to get about 50 of us from Barbados to St. Vincent.
We may not all have arrived at our destinations on time, but Liat at least got us all where we were supposed to be – more than I can say for stateside airlines much of the time. Of course that didn’t prevent everyone witnessing a few so-called “adult” melt downs in the Barbados airport because they had to wait a bit for all this to be sorted out, but then, isn’t there at least one or two in every crowd? As long as I’m not one of them (or traveling with any of them which I try to avoid) – then what’s the rush?
Arriving in St. Vincent & the Grenadines
We finally found our way to St. Vincent airport and of course had missed the cab TMM had scheduled to pick us up, so we just grabbed another cab and within 20 minutes we were on the docks at TMM. TMM operates from the same marina as competitor Sunsail, and we were welcomed by the marina security staff who rounded up one of those great marina carts to help get our luggage and gear to the boat, including bringing a flashlight and helping us load the gear onboard – all without one single request from us. The world is full of friendly and helpful people out there – especially when we slow down enough to remember to be friendly and helpful in return.
Since we hadn’t been to SVD in almost four years, SJ was a welcome sight, and we felt right at home as we were lulled to sleep after our long day by the lapping water and gentle rocking of the boat at the dock. Long trip or not, it was worth it.
Stay tuned for the next post covering our first day at the docks where work on our boat begins, including excitement from our run-in with a rat in our storage locker. Rats and docks go together unfortunately, and I’m not sure who was more stunned, the rat or Tim and I. Stay tuned for more later. Until then, cheers all!
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Tuesday, Feb 5 - Working at the TMM docks on Sacajawea
Our first day at the TMM docks found us very busy catching up with old friends among the TMM crew – Mourando, the lovely lady who runs the front office along with friendly Sonita and Lisa, the latter a new employee since our last visit. We were also glad to reconnect with the very helpful guys that make up TMM’s dock crew, who worked with us as needed while we identified what work needed to be completed on SJ after about a year without regular use.
A boat is not one of those things you just store away and forget about, because non-use, especially in a warm and salt-water based climate, can cause things to rust and/or seize, and the constant glare of the sun can just plain wear things out. We had asked TMM to keep the maintenance to a minimum to reduce our expenses since she’s not earning income these days, so we expected the long list of “needed fixes” which Tim and I developed after our inspections that first day.
The work we discovered we needed to do ranged from the purely cosmetic (sanding and refinishing the floorboards below in the saloon/galley), to more major repairs (our SeaFrost refrigeration had developed a leak and wasn’t working, hence we had no refrigeration until it was fixed). And we received an unexpected and somewhat unwelcome surprise when we opened our locker for the first time in four years and as Tim started to pull out our private items a large rat scurried out of the locker and disappeared among the gear and supplies packed into the small supply room. Unfortunately rats and docks have a long history together even if they don’t advertise that in the travel brochures. And when this guy leaped out of that locker to make his escape, I’m not sure who was more startled, the rat or us.
The “surprises” continued as we began to pull things out and discovered how busy Mr. Rat had been in our locker, chewing away until he made tatters of our rope-swing hammock and left odd-shaped holes in several other items including our LifeSling man-overboard retrieval device, left-over soft supplies like toilet paper and matchboxes (hope he doesn’t go near gasoline), and both ends of our seat cushions. But the most unwelcome result of his visit was the “rat residue” (if you know what I mean) which was present throughout the locker. Eeeeuuuuwwww!
The end result was we piled everything up into this large wheel barrow sized cart, rolled it out onto the docks and before putting ANYTHING on our boat we mixed up a concoction of soap and every disinfectant we could find and simply hand washed everything that could be salvaged.
Afterwards while Tim worked on the fridge repairs with Colin, I spread everything on the decks to air dry. Colorful burgees (flags for different countries cruisers are supposed to fly upon clearing entry) hung from a line attached to our boom after I tied them on with sheet-bend knots, creating a colorful and festive feel that Tim said looked like base camp at Everest.
Under the burgees on the foredeck was an odd assortment of sailing gear and accessories laying in the sun and breeze to dry – miles of line either flaked or coiled on the deck, inflatable life jackets and harness straps, a handheld spotlight, seat cushions, a Life Sling life vest and strobe, EPIRB (emergency beacon), spare parts, and even an extra set of stereo speakers for our cockpit where the rat hat chewed the box into pieces but fortunately left the speakers intact. After spreading everything out they covered the entire deck surface and when I stepped over the lifelines onto the dock, I couldn’t help but laugh at how much our boat looked like a giant floating flea market.
While I finished the "sanitation" detail with our locker items, Tim and Colin continued the complicated diagnosis and repair of our SeaFrost refrigeration. It was obvious there was a leak which prevented it from keeping the metal plate chilled (the plate is what keeps our in-cabinet cooler cool). As I worked on the docks, Tim and Colin worked mostly in the heat down below, tracing the lines from our the SeaFrost fridge on the port side just behind midship, to the engine compartment located just under the companionway steps in the center of the aft section of the boat, just ahead of the cockpit. They replaced tubing and hoses which involved a lot of cutting and taping and goodness knows what else. It seemed every time I turned around they were pulling out some long black rusty tube or another and replacing it with another.
Visiting local village Calliaqua by dinghy
After the long day of cleanup on the docks, along with working in the heat on the SeaFrost and other projects below decks -- we were both left sweaty and tired by late afternoon. So when Marlin (also part of the dock crew) offered to accompany us over to nearby village at Calliaqua where he also lives so we could get a few “starter” provisions (groceries), we readily agreed. The three of us dinghied out of the Blue Lagoon harbor and followed the shore west for about 500 yards to one of the local fisherman’s harbors and markets. We tied up to the concrete pier lined with tires and jutting out among the multi-colored wooden fishing boats (most made in Trinidad). A short walk past the Fisherman’s market and along the side of the playing field -- busy at this time of afternoon with a warm-up game of cricket as they practiced for the weekend games – and we were in the local village of Calliaqua. Cricket is huge down here, and everywhere we go it seems cab drivers and other locals are talking about the "20-20" which refers to a major cricket championship match going on right now - seem similar in importance to our Superbowl or World Series.
The village of Calliaqua consisted of 8-10 small wooden and/or concrete frame buildings of various shapes and somewhat non-descript colors. These buildings housed a couple of small markets and a slightly larger grocery (about the size of our 7-11), a bar, a bus stop, an Internet Café which also rented DVD’s and VHS tapes and a bakery.
As we entered Rem's, the small grocery, the wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread wafted toward us. While talking to young woman at the register, I discovered that most afternoons the tall bearded gentleman I saw working near the ovens in the back can be found right there, rolling and kneading dough into long loaves of soft white bread. The bread was almost ready so after finishing our purchases the guys had a beer and I wondered out into the street to see what was nearby. As I walked out of the small grocery only a few short steps toward the playing field and waterfront took me to the concrete road. I walked along the side of the road watching for the drop-offs down to the drainage culverts which prevent the frequent and often deluges of rain from flooding the streets. I walked on the right facing traffic (they drive on the left), and I passed first a concrete building without any signs or other distinctions so I’m not sure what that was. Then I passed another small bar/market on the right followed by a bus stop shelter on the left, then the Internet Café.
On my walk back to the grocery a water truck went by spraying down the dustry streets -- interesting since a few minutes later a short downpour accomplished the same objective. A few older men watching the truck laughed and joked with me as I went by that they had told him they didn’t need a bath today. I like the people here and find them to be friendly and with a healthy sense of humor. In the grocery there was a really cute little girl of 8 or 9 in her navy and white school uniform (dress with pleated navy skirt and white shirt), pigtails with dreadlocks. She said “Hola” as we entered and was singing to the music playing on a small television in the back of the store, and she spoke again to say goodbye as we left. The baker took a break from his ovens to speak for a few minutes and asked if we were from the states. He explained he had an uncle who lived in Florida, and although he indicated he'd never visited the states himself he mentioned he has worked on a trawler that worked near Florida and Jamaica.
After shopping we hooked up with Marlin again and walked short distance back to dinghy (past playing field, fisherman’s market and to concrete dock) and motored the short distance back to TMM’s base as the sun went down. Both Tim and I were pretty tired from a long and exhausting day, so we enjoyed some warm bread, hot Pepsi, and butter for a snack as Tim worked on tightening up all the top hatches (these are designed to flip up into the wind which blows from bow to stern when you're at anchor and draws the air down into the boat and the cabins below to keep them cool). It was a very pleasant evening with just enough of a breeze to keep things comfortable and largely bug free. 
I enjoy places like St. Vincent and the other islands in the Grenadines. Although I might describe them as “third worldy” I don’t consider that in any way to be detrimental – rather just an identifier of the building style and infrastructure so common to small and developing islands of the Caribbean. The fact that it is different from what we have in the states and most other more developed countries is a large part of the appeal for Tim and I. I admit I struggle a bit with my patience for people who spend most of their time in places like this comparing to what they have “back home” (and typically not in a complimentary way). To me, those differences are why I’m there – a chance to see places where people live in perhaps a different way – not better or worse necessarily – just different. It’s a chance to meet new people and experience new things, a chance to step out of my comfort zone and experience another world different from my own. To me that’s what travel is all about. I like that saying – be a traveler, not a tourist. The difference is only in our attitude.
1 comment:
Hi Carla -
Great to hear from you - it sounds like you are in a wonderful place (in all senses of the word)
Thinking of you as we shovel out from yet another winter storm!
Suzy
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