fetchinketch

The British Virgin Islands are a compact group of islands that made a conscious decision years ago to do everything they could to attract sailing based tourism.  In this they have spectacularly succeeded.  I do not know how many charter boats there are here, but the answer is “a lot!”

Most of the activity is in the “bareboat” charter fleet.  If you rent a “bareboat” you get the boat, without crew or supplies. You have to drive it yourself.  There is also a large market for “crewed” boats where you just show up with your luggage and the captain takes you where you want to go.

The islands appear to be among the most prosperous we have visited.  While we were waiting for our fishing licenses to be processed, we glanced through the local newspaper. There were multiple large display ads, looking for workers.  One was a full page ad  in the main news section of the paper to hire a butcher!  A half page ad from a local resort looking for a wide variety of skills from chef to chambermaid. If you are anything from a heavy equipment operator to a sailboat captain, somebody on this island needs your services. It seems there is no excuse for not working if you live here!  The official unemployment rate is in the neighborhood of 2.5%.

In addition to the standard check-in at customs and immigration, we also needed to stop by the Fisheries Office to get our temporary fishing permits, and then to the National Park Office to get a permit to use the moorings they place at the various diving locations around the islands.

Yes, it is this pretty…

For a couple of days we have pulled into a marina.  Our primary reason for coming here is to replace our 10 year old outboard engine.  We have wanted to replace our reliable, but aging, 8HP 2-stoke Yamaha with another 2-stroke engine because of their simplicity, lightweight, and robustness.  Unfortunately, 2-stroke engines are no longer available in the USA.  After reviewing options, we ended up getting a 15 HP 2-stroke Yamaha.  An engine that has been in production for more than a decade, and is probably the most common outboard engine in the world–so parts are everywhere.  The dealer is located here at this marina, and will be dropping off the shiny new engine tomorrow morning at our boat.

Other benefits to being in a marina:  big laundry machines, decadent showers, and easy loading of the boat with provisions.

Our plans here are to load up with supplies, and then head to the easternmost island in the BVI, Anagada about 20 miles away.  We’ll do some deep water fishing there, and explore the other islands as we make our way back toward Tortola in a week’s time to pick up Karen’s friends Bill & Cindy who will be staying with us for a week.  Then, our clock starts to run out.  By the beginning of June the tropical Atlantic Ocean begins to get warm enough that hurricanes start to become a significant risk, so it’s back north we go!

This morning we untied from our mooring in Caneel Bay off the island of St Johns in the US Virgin Islands, and sailed 13 miles to the city of Road Town on the island of Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands.

It was a typical Virgin Island sail, in 15 knots of wind and quite flat water.  Karen kept commenting this wasn’t ocean sailing, there is land visible in every direction!  We short-tacked Harmonie through “The Narrows”.  OK, the Narrows are a mile wide, but on a 53 foot boat that FEELS like short-tacking!   We then made out way further upwind, moving east through the Sir Francis Drake Channel half way down the length of Tortola to Road Town, a Port of Entry into the BVIs.

Whenever you arrive in a new country, your first stop must be in a “Port of Entry” to clear customs and immigration.  Road Town  is one of two Ports of Entry on Tortola. The Customs office is at the ferry dock where the boats from the US Virgins land.

We were first directed to the immigration office, where we were given the three forms we needed.  An Immigration Card for each of us, (Charge:  US$0.10 each) and a Customs form for the boat (Charge:  US$1.00).  We filed them out, and handed the paperwork in to the immigration officer, who checked them for completeness, and then held our forms and passports while we were sent to Customs (on the other side of the room) to pay our fees.  US$6.13 later, and several official stamps later, we had all our paperwork back and were officially checked in to the country.

We have a couple other things to do here in Road Town.  Get a SIM card for a phone so we have data access around the islands, get a fishing license, and go to the grocery store. It is unlikely we will get all that done tomorrow (Things are closed on Sunday!) but Monday should have our chores finished here and we can head on to other scenic spots.

I taught sailing skills to adults for many years.  When it was time to learn traditional navigation skills with paper charts, sometimes I felt like I was teaching ninth graders trigonometry.  “Why do we have to learn this?”  “This is so old-fashioned, what’s wrong with using a GPS?” “Will this be on the test?”

Well, let me tell you a story…

Once upon a time there was a boat cruising in the Caribbean, just like our boat.  They had all the latest navigation tools, charts on the electronic screen, showing exactly where they were all the time.  Since the data was all electronic, it could be updated and kept current anytime they had an internet connection.  Life was good.  Just like on our boat.

Then some new electronic toys appeared onboard this boat.  Just like on our boat.  Those new electronic toys used the same kind of micro data card as the chart plotter used to store its charts. Just like on our boat.

The Captain of this cruising boat decided to update his chart data over the internet, as he should do on a regular basis.  He made the mistake of having more than one of these tiny little data cards out on the table at the same time.

Quick, which one is which????

Now when this Captain was done updating his charts, he took the other card and put it in the computer to import some photos.  Just like on our boat.  Then this (unnamed) Captain put a card into the camera, and pressed “Format”.  Ooops, wrong card. Chart data all gone.  Captain says naughty words. Just like on our boat…

Now the good news, on OUR boat we have a complete set of paper charts for the area we are cruising. We are not lost, we know what to do.  That other Captain?  He doesn’t have paper charts and even if he did he really doesn’t know how to work with them.  He is stuck.

We can download the complete chart data, but it is over a gigabyte of data, and our cellular data connection just won’t support that in one go.  So we have to find a real network connection in town to do our download.  In the meantime, it is back to navigating in primitive fashion.  Like people did in the dark ages–10 years ago.

So… to all my old students:  That’s why you have to learn how to work on paper charts!

Our video from Carnival is up!  Have a look!

If you like it, share it!

LAT:  18º 18.6′ N
LON:  064º 40.9’W

We are anchored in the lee of Great St James Island, just off the east end of St Thomas, about half way between St Thomas and St John.  It is a private island, so we haven’t had the chance to get ashore, but the water exploration has been fun.

We are now in a places with a much higher population of boats.  It is unlikely we will have an anchorage to ourselves for quite some time.  Under the boat, there have been lots of fish, and bottlenose dolphins.  The island itself is beautiful, not totally arid, but not bright green either.  Just full of interesting textures.  Oh, and there is pizza!  You’ll have to wait for our video to learn more about that surprise…

The small island in the middle of the anchorage is home to a colony of laughing gulls.  We have found it a bit unusual to see gulls this far away from town.  One of the interesting things we learned from one of our birding references, is that large seagulls were historically rather rare birds–until the existence of human garbage dumps where they could find unlimited food.  Our travels would confirm that.  It is quite unusual to see a gull away from a city or large town.

Another bird comment…  I always wondered why the common Blue Heron carried the name “Great Blue Heron”.  I figured that it was like the “Great White Shark”, just an extra adjective that added no value.  But, I was wrong.  It turns out there IS a “Little Blue Heron” I hadn’t heard of before…

A Little Blue Heron hunts along the shore line.

Target acquired!

Dirt? Who needs dirt? A crack in the rock is all we need! If you are a plant person who is interested in succulents, this is a fun place.

A Turks Head Cactus and an Aloe share a crack in the rock.

Baby dolphins!

We will be making the short hop over to St Johns later today.

He wears his chef’s costume well.

The kids really get into the dances.

The costumes and drums for the “Indian” dances were a lot of fun.

Everywhere you look you see sequins and sparkles.

Tis trombone player was doing sound checks on the stage while I was walking by. Have you ever seen a face with so much character? I imagine just sitting and listening to this guy’s stories for hours.

Age, or size, anybody can be a parage queen!

you can’t ahve a parade without baton twirlers. Can you?

Just looking cool!

Like Carnival anywhere, costums and makeup are bright and colorful.

The Atlantic “BrownPelican” is a bit of a different color morph than I am used to from the California coast.

Sometimes the crown is too heavy to wear.

What would a Carnival parade be without pretty girls in colorful costumes?

Regal all the way!

If you are from a smaller island, you get a bigger crown!

Job #1: Perfect that royal wave!

We are ready to move on from Charlotte Amalie to points further east in the Virgin Islands.  We got the repairs done we came for, and had a great time at the local Carnival celebration. It was much more fun than I expected!  The people are a delight, and we felt privileged to participate in an event that was obviously NOT oriented towards tourists, but to what the locals wanted.

It was a special event, because it was the 100th anniversary of “transfer”, when the USA bought the islands from Denmark.  In fact, today (Sunday) it feels oddly quiet.  No bands, no cruise ships.  Everybody on shore is recovering from four days of heavy partying, so it is really peaceful here in the harbor.

This is a beautiful little island in the Spanish Virgin Island group. The Spanish Virgins are a group of islands between Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands that are administratively part of Puerto Rico. Like in most parts of Puerto Rico we have visited people are as likely to address you in English as in Spanish—here maybe even more likely in English.

This island is one of the oldest wildlife sanctuaries in the western hemisphere. I’d guess less than 15% of the island is developed in any way. It has a population of around 2000. It was also one of the islands used for many years by the US Navy as a live-fire bombing range. There are posters around town reminding you to not pick up anything unusual you might see on the ground.

Culebra is home to Flamingo Beach. Rated, by those people whose business it is to do such things, as one of the top three beaches in the world. So far in our time here on the island we have seen exactly one flamingo.

The towers of the lift bridge in downtown Dewy, Culebra, Puerto Rico.

The main (actually the only) town on the island is Dewy. Named after the presidential candidate who famously lost to Truman in 1948. The town was relocated by the US Navy to put it “closer to the water.” Actually, to get it out of the way of the bombs they wanted to drop. The local story is that there were two fishing boats on the island who needed access to the ocean, so the Navy built a lift bridge over the canal so they would not have to take the long way round. The bridge hasn’t worked for years.

The town is well and truly on “Island Time.” Just up from the dinghy dock, there is a small grocery store that seemed to be closed more than it was open, but with no posted hours. Today we were in the bakery, and Karen asked what the deal was with the grocer’s hours. The answer was, “She opens when she feels like it. She lives across the street. When we see her head toward the store, we rush over to buy what we need.”

A hike on the wild side the other day showed us all kinds of interesting things. A Green Mango hummingbird sitting on its nest. Karen is really good at spotting these things, then it is my job to get a photo.

Wild cotton plants

Like on many of the arid Caribbean islands, a spices of cotton grows wild here. Birds love using the fibers to build their nests. The problem is the nest which would be quite cryptic if built of other materials, stand out dramatically when made of the snow white cotton fibers.

We have now received our hard copy of the Harmonie’s official documentation for the coming year. So if the weather gods cooperate we will be heading off to St Thomas in the American Virgin Islands tomorrow.

Well… sort of!

I posted our first “real” video to YouTube this evening about our fishing experiences in this part of Puerto Rico.  Hopefully you’ll enjoy seeing and hearing about our experiences.

At least some of the scenes are worth expanding to watch in full-screen mode.  You can see it here:

Putting it together was both fun and challenging.  I learned that video production is quite tough to do well.  There is SO much BAD video out there, I do not feel I needed to add to that dung heap!  I really want to hear from people about what they think I could do to make it better, and if they want to see more.

Most mornings I try to get at least one maintenance project done to keep Harmonie in ship-shape. Today’s project was to change the intake filter on the watermaker.  A pretty simple project, swapping out the old filter for a new one.  This is the filter than catches little bits of “stuff” that are in the incoming saltwater to keep it from contaminating the main reverse osmosis membranes.

Of course, on a boat there is no such thing as a “simple” project.  As I was reinstalling the filter I also worked to track down a tiny saltwater leak.  I found it in a few minutes on a high pressure line that is part of the watermaker system.  This kind of fitting doesn’t often leak, and when they do it is not normally something you can just tighten and make better.  Sure enough, I found a crack in the flared sealing surface. Taking it apart to inspect it just made it even worse, now the watermaker high pressure pump puts out a spray of saltwater across the engine room when it is running. This puts our water maker out of commission until a replacement high pressure hose can be obtained.

Good news, we have a mostly full fresh water tank.  Almost 700 liters of water will keep us going for quite a while.  More good news, there is a hydraulic hose fabricator on St Thomas, just 50 miles east of here who makes hoses like this.

It was our plan to head that direction anyway, now we just have a significantly higher motivation to get there.  We are waiting for delivery of the renewed documentation from the US Coast Guard, essentially Harmonie‘s registration paperwork.  As soon as that arrives here in Culebra, in a day or two, we’ll be headed off to the (relatively) big city of Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas.

Just because we are out here exploring paradise, doesn’t mean there are not chores to do. A typical morning on Harmonie starts with Bill getting up  first (Karen likes to sleep late) to run the generator and if we are someplace with clean clear water, we run the water maker at the same time and put some fresh water in the tanks. Typically, we drain our batteries down to about 65 to 75 percent of full over night.  Ninety minutes of generator time brings them back up to about 85%, and the solar panels take care of the rest over the course of a sunny day.  While the generator is running, Bill’s coffee and breakfast is made.

I try to get at least one “boat project” done every day.  Usually just simple maintenance, but sometimes a repair is in order.  We also have a few improvements and upgrades that occasionally bubble up to the top of the priority list.

Occasionally, there are administrative things to take care off.  Like today.  US Customs and Border Protection has a “Small Vessel Reporting System” that allows a boat to check back into the USA with just a phone call–if you have previously signed up and been interviewed.  We have done the web application and our interview is this afternoon here in Culebra.  Hopefully that will speed up our check-in the next time we return from foreign waters to the USA.

This afternoon we will do some food shopping, and we’ll be headed off toward the American Virgin Islands, landing in St Thomas where we have some boat supplies to source.  We will have a bit of recalibration to do as we move into the American and British Virgin Islands.  For a long time most of the anchorages we have been in have been quite empty.  We have been sharing our “space” with just few boats at a time.  Where we are headed next, it will not be like that. Every anchorage will be crowded.

One of the things I have been working on and learning is a bit of video editing.  The technical skills come pretty fast–it takes a bit longer to workout what works “artistically”.  Hopefully in a few days we’ll be posting our first little “show”.