Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The ol' Island Grog... life blood of the Caribbean
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Art of the island... Bonaire
Kralendijk; Bonaire
Time to rest
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday 19 December 2010
We have arrive in Bonaire and just finished our breakfast. Well we continued our speedy trip and reached a new high speed of 10.9 knots during a rather strong rain storm. We were well ahead of our schedule to arrive here so we furled the jib and ran with only the main with two reefs. Needless to say we arrived off the cast at 4am so really took a slow sail around the coast - about 9 miles - to where we could pick up a mooring bouy. It only got light at about sixish. Its a very dark coastline with lights in the interior that made seeing anything difficult. The chart plotter earned its keep and the coastline showed up very clearly on the radar. The water here is beautifully clear with plenty of fish. This is the cleanest water we have seen since the outer islands of the Canary Islands. Need to sleep now as it was a long night with large swells really giving the boat a good shake up and us no sleep. We will spend a few days here then move on to Curracao which is only a short sail from here.
Cheers for now
Colin and Sandy
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Saturday 18 December 2010
Here is our next position report:
12*14.382' North
67*12.529' West
From 6 am Friday 17 December to 6 am Saturday 18 December we covered 154.1 nm - our average speed has been 6.42 knots and our maximum speed was 10.3 knots. This is taken from our water log. We seem to have picked up a bit of a current - 3/4 to 1 knot
The lumpy seas calmed some during the night and the swells were less frequent and seemed to drop in height. We were disappointed that this has not remained with daylight - seas more lumpy again and swells increased too with the sun!!!
We have had quite a bit of heavy rain - which makes watches a bit uncomfortable. Colin has put up our small sunshade to protect the cockpit area a bit better but it does cut out visibility, so we need to poke our head around the canvas and get a bit of a hair wash!!!
I started this report earlier, but had to close down as we had some lightning - the computer gets put into the oven with a few other electronic items.
The swallow didn't return but we had another swallow taking shelter during a rain squall this morning but he was not people friendly and kept his distance, though he did chirp his thanks when he left.
We have 73.7 nm left to go - hope we don't arrive in the dark!!!
Will send the next report once we have anchored and after we have caught up on much needed sleep.
Hugs and smiles
Colin & Sandy
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Friday, December 17, 2010
(no subject)
We have now been sailing for 24 hours and our position is as follows:
12*21.564' North
64*25.632' West
We lost our initial wind about half an hour after we left at about 3.30 pm Thursday and motored for about 2 hours. Then the breeze picked up and we landed up galloping along at an average of 6.5 knots with our fastest speed over water being 9.88 knots - and this morning at 6 am we had covered 103.6 nm - and we have covered a total of 166.1 in 24 hours. Our best ever to date. The strange thing is we do not have the current pushing us - our water speed is greater than our speed over ground. We were hoping for a 2 knot push which most sailors report.
We have a stow-away on board - he/she arrived this morning on Colin's watch pretty exhausted - a swallow. He has flown off 3 times and is not aboard at the moment - the first time he left was for about 20 minutes - the second time just under 2 hours, so are not sure if he will return. The swallow was fairly people friendly - we could move past him close by and he sat on Colin's knee and foot and sat on my finger. Colin was also disturbed from a rest by the swallow fluttering around his face - we feel very honoured to have had this visitor taking a brake on our yacht.
The sailing conditions are a bit uncomfortable with a northerly swell of about 2-3 metres and a north easterly swell of 1.5 - 2 metres so lots of holding on required. The sea seems flatter than when we did the Atlantic crossing and no growling waves breaking at our stern this time.
We had quite a large rain squall at about 4.30 this morning - making the cockpit an uncomfortable place to be.
We we'll send another position report in about 24 hours.
Hugs and smiles
Colin & Sandy
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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
time to go
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Le Marin; Martinique to the Grenadines and Grenada
As this is a new blog and this will be our first entry and we will try and backdate all the other letters as well as add all our photos to this site .... if I last working on it that long. Its all very new and my patience is old. A very big thank you to Paul - Sandy's nephew in Brisbane - for setting up this blog for us.
Leaving Rodney Bay in our wake |
The next morning we got up at 04h00 and sailed down to Admiralty Bay on the island of Bequia. We skipped stopping along the coast of St Vincent as it does not have a good reputation for staying at anchor overnight. It looked like a lovely coastline as we sailed down its coast, with some lovely bays etc, but still preferred heading for the little island of Bequia.
Old house and informal shop |
Walkway along the beach and restuarants |
Street stalls |
The Grenadines are made up of many small islands that lie between St Vincent and Grenada and provide some of the best sailing and bays for anchoring. Even though this was out of season there were many boats around, mostly cruisers with only a few charter boats. We reckon that this was a great time to be there as the weather was great and there was plenty of room off the islands and in the bays to anchor compared to winter which is prime time and it all turns to chaos. Cruising around here so late in the season is fine as one can do a day run down to Grenada or if necessary Trinidad to escape any major storm coming in from the Atlantic. Grenada is normally relatively safe and that is why we stopped here... but always with an eye on the weather.
Spent a couple of nights In Bequia which has a little village around the harbour area with its market and small shopes. There are some pretty and also some very basic restaurants along the beach area where you could get a fair meal at a reasonable price. The best value on most the islands are the local dishes at the local shops where you can have an enjoyable and very tasty meal quite cheaply. The more up market resorts and restaurants cost a fortune. From here we then moved down to Canouan Island
Canouan island. Small village with town jetty. Ferry at jetty on the right. A beautiful calm anchourage with only a handfull of yachts |
which was very pretty and very few boats at anchor. There was an expensive hotel on the beach and a little village but very little else.
Boats anchoured between Horseshoe Reef and the Islands at Tobago Keys |
Beautiful turquoise water around the reefs |
Tabago Keys |
Next we sailed down to Tobago Cays. These little islands are protected by a massive reef system and we anchored between the islands behind Horse Shoe reef. The water was clear and the snorkelling good.
Saw a few turtles and lots of lovely fish. The one evening we sat up from 02h00 onwards to watch the falling stars as the earth was passing through an asteroid belt and it was well worth it as the next two nights we had cloud cover. On the day we left here the water turned a green colour and has
stayed that way all the way down to Grenada. It has only recently been clearer here. This is apparently caused by the massive river systems along the South American coast that pump millions of tons of fresh water into the sea. The main current comes up the coast and flows through the islands into the Caribbean Sea at 2-3 knots. This results in some interesting effects around the islands and on ones heading between the islands. From here we went down to Salt Whistle Bay
Salt Whistle Bay early morning sunrise after a stormy night |
where we spent time snorkelling and even filled our water tanks with the overnight rain. The photo was taken at sunrise after a night of heavy rain and thunder and lightning. We were to learn that these storms got a lot worse than this. Lightning as you can imagine with a 60 foot /19m mast is a real scary deal. From here we cruised across to the west side of Union Island to Chatham bay that again had nothing but beautiful trees and bush and a bay full of fish. We caught a lovely 2-3kg trevally/jack for dinner that night. Great way to enjoy a birthday dinner....it went from ocean to pan in under 10 minutes. There were only four yachts in the bay, one of whom we knew. Great place with a few local “restaurants” on the beach open when there are enough yachts around but little else. Winter this bay would be loaded with charter and cruisers alike. There are no roads in or out of this bay.
Chatham Bay on the west side of Union Island |
Chatham Bay on the west side of Union Island |
The next day we took a tiki tour around and after heading in a few different directions decided to go for Clifton on Union Island. We saw what we have now looked up as a Pigmy Killer Whale which is reasonably rare playing on the surface. We motored around it for some time but it would not let us get too close. Rainstorms and thunderstorms are common this time the year and we have sure been getting our share of them. This was one of our reasons for our tiki tour as we were trying to avoid a big rainstorm. We were headed for the middle of the downpour at the bottom of this cloud. We sailed around this one!
Rain storm comming in over Clifton at Union Island |
As it was just after anchoring our fair 10-15 breeze increased to 34 knots followed by a down pour which lasted about 20 min. and then everything returns to normal. Clifton is a pretty little town and one of the larger villages in the Grenadines. It is also the last of the islands that belong to St Vincent so we would sign out here to go to Caracao which belongs to Grenada. The people on all of these islands are very friendly and as the islands are so small everyone knows everyone else. They are used to tourists and know how to charge for their produce... however they do smile and are cheerful as they do so. The little market here was different as it was made up of a number of colourful shacks.
Colourful little market in Clifton on Union Island |
The town had a pretty centre and the anchorage was rather pleasant with a restaurant on the reef.
Clifton town centre |
The colourful bakery and shop near the wharf in Clifton |
One evening we had a big storm at sunset that made pretty viewing. We got one shot of the lightning but it was blurred......
Evening storm... what a lightning show |
The break in the clouds above Clifton |
Tyrell Bay on Carriacou the first of the islands that belongs to Grenada |
Monday, October 25, 2010
First Post
Photos can be viewed in the box on the right that links to our Picassa account and our current location is shown (hopefully) on the google maps application down the bottom!
The link is http://www.cs-papillon.blogspot.com
Hopefully this will be a place where people can come and check our travels!