May BVI back to Antigu w Mom and Dad

 Still back blogging but hopefully with the extended respite in the UK I will catch up

We left off the last blog post in the BVIs after the charter/regatta/charter.
The Captain and I stayed on for a day or two as it was a friend of ours' 30ieth birthday (yip we're all getting there quickly) and she happened to be in the BVIs too as they (her and her captain/boyfriend) had been in the Oyster Regatta.

 The rib that was hired for the day so that the 6 of us could zoom from island to island (they are close in the BVIs) beach to beach and bar to bar (swimming ashore to reach the aptly named Soggy Dollar Bar)

After Island - beach - bar hopping we returned to our respective boats to get ready for the evening out in a smart Caribbean restaurant. 
Can you think of a better way to bring in the next decade?

Waving goodbye to the BVIs we started our upwind journey to Antigua with a stop in St Maarten/Martin for some shopping

The bridge dividing Dutch and French St Maarten/Martin

 

 After years of squabbling the Dutch and French decided to simply share St Maarten. The harbour you sail into dictates which entry fees you pay.

 The shop with the impractical but totally irresistible shoes (yip Sis, this is where they came from)

 Shopping urges temporarily satiated, we completed the final leg of the journey to Antigua to meet Mom and Dad.

Beach 1: Picnic on Rendevoux Beach

 

 With the BVI regatta followed closely by the much appreciated and enjoyed visit with Mom and Dad followed literally days by the next charter (a 3 week epic saved for the next blog post) meant that there was some work that needed to be done while Mom and Dad were with us.
So the Captain worked most of the time, Mom and Dad helped out some of the time and the rest we went beaching, snorkeling, exploring and, courtesy of the owner, sailing! 

Beach 1: A mermaid emerging from the sea after an almost hour long swim (ok we sort of got swept down the coast while floating and chatting)

followed by drinks at OJs beach bar

 Beach 3: Spotted Eagle Ray obliging us with an appearance off windward beach

 

 Mom and Dad timed their trip well, arriving in time for Antigua Classic Week. This is a week of the world's most elegant and often largest, classic yachts gracefully racing each other around courses off the Antiguan coast. http://www.antiguaclassics.com/13html/gallery.html for anyone who's interested.

After a snorkel at windward Mom Dad and I took the dingy out to watch the start of that day's racing. Trying to get close to the race while staying out of the way proved a challenge. Finally we decided that if we stuck right next to a boat that was flying an RC flag and didnt seem to be moving, we wouldnt be somewhere we shouldn't...right? They obviously knew where they should be. All the other spectator boats (and the ABSAR safety boat) saw our confidence and followed us...
This was the point we realised that RC stood for Race Committee which is the boat that is the marker for one side of the start line...and we had just merrily led the spectators into the starting area... No harm, no foul hey?

'Beach' 4: Resting after a hard day's sailing, swimming and swinging

The owner had very generously offered us to take Mom and Dad sailing. So off we sailed into the wind and waves up the east coast of Antigua to Green Island. It's where most crew bring their boats for some relax time as it is a bay well sheltered by the island, with great reefs for snorkeling and good winds for kite boarding. Best of all, as it is an upwind sail from the major harbours, it's not normally too crowded.

Dad's first attempt at halyard swinging ended in him becoming intimate with the yacht first person to actually connect

 Lunch ashore at Harmony Hall 

(when we found it, having never been there by boat before)

 We each had a dessert to finish our 3 course culinary and visual delight

My favourite: Pineapple carpaccio, marinaded in ginger

Mom's halyard swinging

 Perfect dismount

 Neat splash

 And now for Dad's go

 Hey look, he remembered to let go this time...

 Sploosh. Both Dad and boat safe

If anybody is curious as to why Mom's sequence is a mere 5 photos long...ask her...

A hint: remember that the bow of the boat where you jump from is about 3m from the water

Sailing back from Green Island. The downwind run

 Sailing around the southern tip of the island we came face to face with the entire Classic Regatta Fleet

No probs, we just slowed down and stayed off to the side. Unfortunately two of the oncoming yachts were in a bit of a fight, one keeping the other out, which meant that they went much further past the mark than anticipated. But easily avoided. Much to our surprise though, the outside boat kept coming resulting in very unexpected avoidance tactics needed. We watched them sail very far past the mark and put it down to strange sailing angles due to sail shape etc.

Dad with Elena in the background

(http://www.charterworld.com/index.html?sub=yacht-charter&charter=sy-elena-1839 for those of you who are interested)

Back ashore, we later found out that the tactician on the strangely behaving boat had been using a gps assisted computer program to tell him where to go. Unfortunately for him, the race committee had moved the outer mark in a bit and as he hadnt changed its position on his program, they unnecessarily sailed around the fictitious original marker. Score 0 for technology. Score 1 for old school sailing.

Beach 5: Snorkeling off the beach around the corner from Half Moon Bay, Mom spotted an alien

After literally hours of snorkelling: check out those wrinkly toes

View of Falmouth Harbour from half way up Monk's Hill

What's a trip to the Caribbean without exploring some of Nelson's forts? We climbed Monk's hill for the stunning view of Falmouth and English Harbours. And of course to do some treasure hunting for 300 year old glass, clay pipes etc

All in all: too much fun that passed by way too quickly!

Thank you so very much for making the 2 day trip out here to visit us and see what its all about, It really meant a lot to me

BVI Spring Regatta / charter 22nd April to 7th May

After much planning and a lot of preparation we are in the BVIs (British Virgin Islands) for the BVI Spring Regatta.

17 days of: charter for two then regatta for 15 followed by charter for 4.... Confused and complicated? Yes!

We arrived in the BVIs with the boat half in cruising mode half racing

Racing: stantions and rails, sails on board, everything removed that is not too necessary e.g. Coffee tables and loose saloon chairs

Cruising: well, everything else, considering at least half the time was to be spent cruising we couldn't make it too uncomfortable - cruising sails still on, all alcohol still on

But it's just the owner and wife for the first few days so no stress right...

Right

We spent the time cruising from anchorage to anchorage after late starts and long breakfasts (by the time we set sail the captain and I were having lunch snacks)

Coral and conchs taking over the strewn metal wreckage

And we were taken diving!!!!

We dived the wreck of the Rhone.

The following story is not for sensitive viewers. The tale of the wrecking of the Rhone is a tragic one. Sensitive viewers have been warned.

The wreck of the Rhone

The Rhone was a formidable 94m long postal ship which was anchored off Peter Island (one of the BVIs) in October 1867 next to the passenger ship RMS Conway, to refuel. When the barometer started dropping the captain of the Rhone got worried, as it was however October he thought it was too late for a hurricane. But a hurricane it was. Both ships survived the first wall of hurricane San Narciso but had dragged anchor. As a result they decided to up anchor. The Rhone was considered... unsinkable... As a result the passengers of Conway were transferred to Rhone adding to her 146 passengers already on board.

No unwatered Greek temple, this is the Rhone

The plan was that Conway would head for Road Harbour in Tortola (another one of the BVIs, they are REALLY close to each other) and Rhone would head out for open sea. Conway left first but was struck by the back end of the storm and sunk before reaching safety. After having worried about her dragging anchor Rhone could not get her anchor up and just before the second part of the storm hit the captain called for the anchor to be cut free and they high tailed it the shortest route to open ocean, between Salt island and Dead Chest Island. Due to a submerged rock between them the captain made the call to stick closer to Salt Island but less than 230m from the safety of the open ocean the reverse winds hit, blowing the helpless leviathan onto Black Rock Point. As the vessel was ripped open by the coral the cool sea water rushing in came into contact with the boilers operating on full steam. As you can imagine Dad, the result was a catastrophic explosion that ripped the boat in two with her bow sinking in 80 feet of water and her stern a mere 30 feet. Only 23 people survived, 22 crew and 1 passenger (an Italian of course) why did more passengers not make it? Back in the day, due to most passengers not being able to swim and not being considered particularly helpful in an emergency, they were tied to their bunks...

She is now considered one of the best wreck dives in the world



We eased into this event in stages, first with just the owner and his wife. Followed on the Monday by the rest of the crew...totalling 14... We hired Villa Tortola to house the spillover of the crew and since we obviously hadn't been able to view it before hand, I had inquired as to the distance between the Villa and Nanny Cay Marina where we were moored. The answer, in writing, was a definite 5 minutes, 10 if you're really slow.

Balcony of the middle tier complete with swimming pool

The day the crew were flying in, while the Captain swapped the sails over and offloaded the alcohol etc, the owner and I went to pick up the rental cars from Jerry, meet our Villa on island contact and see this Villa. After driving for ten minutes we reached the car rental, sorted that out and trustingly followed our guide. Another 10 minutes and we were in the mountains weaving our way along not just mud but clay tracks, crawling across the trenches some farmers would recognise as rain drains and seeing nothing but trees with more unmarked tracks fingering off in impossible directions. 50min later we were there and I was um shall we say, put out.

View from the middle tier balcony, fresh and salt water views...where would you rather swim?

The villa itself is stunning! A massive, open 3 tiered structure overlooking the ocean and the lake, complete with swimming pool on the deck, open air showers (who wouldn't want the view and if it rains, well free rinse) and heaven: a gigantic kitchen with a double door fridge any American would be proud of, a massive centre island, double sinks big enough to wash not just a puppy but full size Rottweiler and glory be... An oven you could crawl into in the event of an unexpected ice age! All very important features I assure you, when you are expected to provide 3 meals daily for 15 people!

Our on island man redeemed himself when he revealed that there was a second route to scale the mountain to reach the palace atop. It is a LOT shorter and about 90% tarred with the rest being gravel. Ok so the switchbacks are so sharp that you go forwards up one and reverse up the next and it is still a far cry from 5 minutes from the marina but at least visions of crew pushing a 4x4 up a clay slope slowly began to fade.

Yet another advantage of being ahead of the fleet on a downwind leg...looking back at all the kites

What a manic day. 1 day to change the boat over. We got the crates of alcohol, bags of preprepared food (a result of slaving over the stove the week before), cruising sails etc etc and more etc and carted them all along with the owners wife up to the villa (an exercise in time management: I'm not saying it was a case of getting certain people out of the way but it is slightly more efficient to just do a job in 5min than to take 20min showing someone how to do it)



Ok this is turning into an epic saga. So how's this, I'll summarise the next few days' events in bullet points

• Crew arrived at usual Caribbean speed - 2 hours late
  
• The regatta was two parts A race to and from Virgin Gorda (another of the BVIs) with a day off in between. And 3 Days of day racing
  
• We were going to do the Virgin Gorda race as a practise but as the crew arrived the night before we pulled out of the race there. As it turned out the race was called on account of a lack of wind

Our spinnikar as it breaks free of its wool constraints

Virgin Gorda race

Thus our first race was from Virgin Gorda back to Tortola and it was the first with...our Frenchman. We had to leave Nanny Cay at 5am ish to get there in time for the race. Charactor explaination: he was a professional sailor...as a grinder, and entertained us with horror stories of being in an Americas Cup race crew in the 70's - cocaine prescribed by team doctors as a legal sport stimulant etc But once we were racing he thought he should instruct us...

Three of us girls usually packed the kite but on this occasion the guys finished it off so we could grab some lunch...despite what it looks like, it's not just shoved in...

This was a problem for several reasons, predominantly though because his instructions were shouted, wrong and while delivering them he neglected to do his designated job resulting in him burning the owner's wife's legs with the spinnikar sheet...

When it became clear that he was not going to calm down and fit in the captain skilfully removed him from his position without ruffling feathers and to everyone's great relief.

Overtaking the class ahead

The day racing

• We came first over the water every day
• Once handicap was factored in we came 6th 6th 5th 4th 3rd 2nd which resulted in a 5th overall (Considering, for example, one race we came in more than 20min ahead of the boat that won on handicap, in a 50min race, methinks we need to have a chat with the chap that dols out the ratings)
• It was loads of fun!

Post race diving along Wreck Alley

• We had two local crew racing with us - marketing manager and general manager of Bitter End Yacht Club. Great chaps, fun and very useful-tactition and grinder
• Getting in and out of the marina was a nightmare! We draw 3.5m, the charts say that the marina entrance is 3m deep, the marina manager says that there is an unofficial channel that is deep enough for us... Um maybe at high tide (tides here are only a couple of cm but every mm counted here) which wasn't obliging us by being in the mornings. So most of the time we had the crew on one side of the boat, navigated through at snails pace and still ran aground albeit as the gentle caress of a butterfly...

Famous Pussers Rum, a BVI original

• Feeding the hungry sailors turned into a diplomatic act of mediation. Information gathered and relayed on beforehand informed us all that local restaurants would put up food tents in the marina selling food at the post race party every evening. I had been instructed to cook anyway as there was 'the feeling' that the crew would prefer to be at the villa rather than the party...as it happened the majority of them, 13 to be precise, preferred to well, join in the party. So some nights some crew had drinks beforehand then headed up to the villa, other nights everyone simply came to the villa and the remaining nights I cooked for some at the villa then joined the rest at the party... You can imagine how it went: "we'll eat here tonight", followed 15min later with "no, it seems like people want to go down so we'll all go down", amended 10min later (in one case, as we were walking out the door) with "actually I really don't feel like getting out of my bikini so can you make something for us here. I'm sure X and Y also want to stay", resulting in me quickly throwing a 3 course meal together (thanks to the prepreparing it took 10 min) and the unfortunate X and Y having to politely wave the rest of us goodbye

Post race dingy sailing courtesy of our Bitter End Yacht Club crew members

• Days went like this: in the morning the captain would cook breakfast for the crew on the boat while I cooked for the crew in the house and made the sandwiches with the invaluable help of two teammates. Then I would rush to the boat with the first load of crew while the later risers ate and got themselves ready. We got the boat ready following which the rest of the crew arrived from the house (one morning I received a phonecall 15min before we were due to cast off informing me that the rest of the crew were stuck at the villa with a flat tyre. I made the 20minutes-one-way trip in 20min flat, including the time it took for them to lock up the villa and get in the car...it was safe, but I won't claim comfortable for those in the back and there was more than 1 pale face on arrival) Racing, I was the pit person in charge of the halyards so quite physical tailing for the men pulling the spinnikar up; while the captain was skipper, crewboss, peacekeeper and general spot-any-silly-moves-before-they-cause-a-problem um person. No small feat. Following races, I would make my way up to the villa with the first load of crew to prepare dinner and get going on sanwhich fillers for the next day. Then it would be serving drinks and food to 15 or trips down and up the hill for drinks, dinner and perhaps even dancing in the sand to a live band.

Scuba diving with weird moving, feeling, looking starfish

Post racing the crew left in dribs and drabs, we got the boat back into cruising mode and moved out of the villa. There were still 5 crew on board who, now in cruising mode, had morphed into guests.

So we sailed around once more exploring new anchorages, being treated to more diving, dingy sailing and even a few dinners ashore!

Dropping the guests off at the airport in the dingy proved a novel experience following which the captain and I collapsed into deep sleep in a state of satisfied exhaustion.

The dessert menu ingeniously presented pictorially in a child's toy turned out to be irrisitable

 

Posted with Blogsy

2012 Jan - Mar Bobbing about in Antigua

After our first long charter the season kinda slowed down...to a grinding halt. We sat on the dock from January until the end of March. What fun! 

Some of the things we got up to follow below.

Our Biltong drying room ->1x forepeak + 1x fan + 1x freezer basket  

Having procured the worlds best biltong recipe courtesy of a certain Aunt and Uncle down south, we proceeded to mangle it. Apparently where biltong takes two weeks to dry in the karoo, in the 80% humidity of the Caribbean we can get it bone dry within 3 days with the aid of:
a) the Caribbean Sun through a 1m squared hatch
b) 24hr fan directly at said meat

Unfortunately trial 1 went wrong when we neglected to remove the salt after salting it. So instead of a scrummy meaty treat we had turbolax that tasted like the inside of a full salt cellar.
Trial 2 ended with the obvious error of over compensation for error 1...tasteless...
Trial 3 pending

 Monks hill Fort

After work and weekends were for exploring. When it wasnt too too hot we hiked around the old, forgotten forts. At the top of Monk's Hill is a fort that most people seem to have forgotten about. A lot of it is still standing despite the growth, like this guard house at its entryway. Theories on why a fort in such relatively good condition is not advertised as a tourist site:
a) Then money would have to be spent maintaining it
b) It is on prime land overlooking the entire Falmouth Harbour AND 10m in the other direction and you can see Green Island. So if everyone forgets about the fort one day it can be developed
c) The communications tower is up there and they dont want people messing with it
You choose.

On these excursions we would search for treasure.
Treasure [tre-shure] noun: The rubbish left behind by Nelson and his troops including broken bits of pottery, smoking pipes (the equivalent of the modern cigarette butt); musket balls; buttons; broken rum bottles; misc clay jars etc.

 Clams

Then there was the random food that wandered up the dock, in the hands of entrepreneurial locals. We were slightly suspect of the clams that were apparently harvested in the bay next to the airport as we did not know the vendor but if you dont try... We were the only willing customers on the dock but our risk taking was well rewarded with two delicious dinners and no nasty consequences. 

Building a WC....that is Wobbly Cup boat

The WC tradition has been revived thanks to Newport Shipyard and ABSAR (Antigua and Barbuda Search and Rescue). Teams are given 2 sheets of 8 x 4 and 4 hours to build a boat that has to take a member of the team from the beach on one side of the Catamaran Club Dock to the other side, picking up a mermaid along the way.
This is no casual, rock-up-on-the-day, build-whatever-design, kind of race. Nope, weeks of planning and designing go into this and some teams arrive with generators and powertools. Welcome to the yachting world, we're not competitive at all...

UShaka was built with muscle power and fast curing apoxy (it cured so fast that it was smoking). The building muscle work being done by our Captains and the artwork and paddling by the Stewies.

UShaka, The winninf vessel

Some teams simply strapped their 8 x 4 onto large fenders that hosted garden chairs and even a table; others built box shaped tubs; but we built the super canoe UShaka with her pointy bow and rockered hull she was powered by our professional paddler and unbeatable. By the time UShaka had paddled round the course, picked up the mermaid (yes, me of course) and finished to startled applause, the majority of the fleet were approaching the first corner.

The victorious UShaka was loaded onto the roof of our team mates' rangerover and ridden through Falmouth chariot style by our singing paddler and her daughter.

Sunset View from the Catamaran Dock 

view from our 'back door' for 3 months

New Carbon Fibre Main Sail 

It wasnt all hiking and WCs, there was some work included in our Antigua stay (8-5, Monday to Friday) and one of the more fun jobs was getting and trying the new mainsail. Shipped in from Peter Kay at One Sails it is incredible! It is all carbon fibres held together with sunprotection (simply put) It has incredible shape and allows us to sail 7.5knots at 30 degrees apparent in about 9 knots of wind :)

We had fun putting it up for the first time (to check it and mark where the spreader patches had to go) as we took fellow crew from the 100ft Swan Virago along with us. Their boat is big and you push buttons to get lines in and out so we had them on our coffee grinder and pulling the main halyard etc. They also mentioned that it was novel being able to feel the seastate (on a 100footer you sort of well, plough through most waves)

 Just another full moon between the rig and across the bay

Racing the Super Yacht Challenge

On a 100ft Swan 

What better to do when you dont have charters than go racing on other people's yachts? 

We started out on  J122 which was cute and fun.. The couple owning it are in their 70s with him on the helm and her performing gymnastic feats on the bow at top volume. It was my first experience of a shouty boat but at least at the end there were handshakes all round and everyone was friends again.

Then we were invited to do the Nelson's Persuit Race on a 100ft Swan. Wow. I was just rail meat. Captain was a trimmer and obviously did such a sterling job that we were invited back for the Round Antigua Race and Super Yacht Challenge. There is nothing quite like being the second to smallest boat in a race while standing on the decks of a 100 footer... Downwind with all those rugby field spinnakars up is quite something else. Then there are the Super Yacht Rules. They are slightly different due to the size of these splendid Leviathans. 

The yachts have to keep ____feet apart at all times

If yacht A is approaching yacht B to overtake, yacht B is considered overtaken when yacht A is within ____ feet of yacht B

They are ever so polite to each other over the VHF: Yacht A yacht A this is yacht B yacht B, We are preparing to tack, what are your intentions?

Distant Spinnakars

I unfortunately did not get to do the Around Antigua Race as we had guests that did not want to go sailing and were staying in a hotel so we decided we had to do something for them with the result that I took them on a tour of the Southern end of Antigua. Which turned out to be great anyway.
But the Super Yacht Challenge was tons of FUN!
It all came down to the last race where we had to win the race to win the regatta.
As we were the smallest yacht we were the only one that could pack our spinnakar in time to fly it on the final leg. We were well in the lead and approaching the final leg where the captain called for the spinnakar to go forward in case we needed the extra speed across the line.
Having just reached the rail after packing said spinnakar we were watching the bow crew drag the kite bag forward when our luck was blown away.

Substantially more people fit on a 100footer's rail

There was a call from the bow, "Steve has broken his ankle, we are bringing him back."
Followed immediately by a call from the aft cockpit, "Ready to Tack"
Suddenly us kite-packing-rail-meat realised that the Aft crew (Helmsman, tactition, trimmers, skipper etc) had no idea there was a situation on the bow. They were 100ft apart and couldnt hear each other. So KPRMs shouted back, "no no no no" mixed in with "we're not ready to tack"
Not understanding why they were suddenly getting instructions from the KPRMs, the Aft crew shouted slightly louder "ok, we're ready to tack" followed by a slightly more coherent "No, there, no, is, no, an, injury, no, on the, no, bow"
Finally we got through to them when they saw a man being dragged along the side deck.
After the first mate/exnurse had had a look, the skipper to a hard look at the final rounding mark and called the race and ABSAR.

We heard later at the prizegiving (where we took 3rd place overall anyway) from people who had being watching the race from the lofty Shirley's Heights that we had our competition in the bag and there would have been no way they could have caught us. Ah well, good to know that we would have won and that an entire race short, we still came 3rd.

Oh and Steve had his ankle operated on in Antigua following which he was flown back home to the USA where we hear he is recovering well.
 

This year's birthday beach

Rendevous

 For my birthday this year The Captain took me to Rendesvouz for a braai. Stunning beach, caribbean blue seas, yummy food and fun company. Entertainment was provided right on our beachmat as a crab kept tentatively poking out of his hole but dashing back the moment he remembered us there. That is, until we figured out he liked sausage and would come all the way out of his hole for cooked duck fat...

Nothing like Strawberries and Champs on a secluded beach to log in another year

We returned to the Catamaran Club for a dinner at the dock Italian Restuarant - Cambusa - with all our yachtie friends.

Snorkeling at Windward

Everyday, when we finished early enough and it wasnt too windy, we took the dingy round to our favourite snorkelling spot. Dont tell anyone, it's just windward beach. Bizarrely, despite it being literally just around the corner and having some of the best coral in Antigua, we very rarely see another boat there. So we claim it as Our Snorkelling spot.

 Another Underwater World shot. 

The fish are too quick for my disturbingly slow camera

Everytime we swim here we see some new, slightly different thing.

Moray eel; Giant Spotted Ray; school of cuttlefish; lionfish; baracuda; octopus and so on

Preparations begin

pork sosaties that are to be frozen then braaied when required

But alas, despite what many of you might think (or the fact that I only display the highlights in this blog) we do actually work and one of the things that all this time we were preparing for was the BVI Spring Regatta.
This entails prepping the boat for racing followed by sailing it to the BVIs. There the owner and his wife arrive for a cruising charter following which there is a day to change the boat from cruising to racing with the arrival of our 15 or so crew, the organising of the prebooked villa and rental cars, and all the cleaning and cooking that is involved with 15 people for 10 days. So here is the head start on cooking...