Dec 23-25 St. Thomas

Third post of the December cruise:

On Friday 12/23, with the wind still occasionally whistling in the rigging, we opted to enjoy a second night at Crown Bay Marina. The place was half empty since few boats were moving in those conditions. In the afternoon we took a ten minute ferry ride over to Water Island, took a short hike up a hill and down a hill, and arrived at a postcard perfect spot called Flamingo Bay. It is a very quiet and protected bay on the leeward side of Water Island with moorings and plenty of room to anchor; we’ll be back with Heron some day. We enjoyed an afternoon of snorkeling and eating at the beach grill with friendly folks from the UK who arrived by catamaran from the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship docked at Crown Bay . The seven of us were now chillin’ to the max, getting more and more reluctant to move anywhere.

On Saturday 12/24, conditions had eased so we were off to nearby Christmas Cove for more snorkeling. After a low-speed tour of Charlotte Amalie, we cranked up the engine to 2000 rpm to power into the wind and current along the south coast of St. Thomas.  But wait...  the stuffing box started spraying sea water all over the engine compartment. Here we go again. Arrrrgh. In our new adrenal-avoidant state, we just held 1700 rpm to keep it dry and watched the coast drift by at a sluggish 4.5 knots. We’ll adjust it later, mon. Island time.  Limping into the cove, we picked up a very protected mooring next to the prime snorkeling spot and got into the water. Wow. The variety of fish was amazing. This is what we came for, and this is the memory we will take home with us. Christmas Eve in Christmas Cove. Catchy, eh?! We did our Hanukkah menorah lighting ceremony and listened to reggae christmas tunes on the local radio station. Bizzah. Wicked bizzah. Jamie put together a yankee swap that had everyone laughing, taunting and playing Bananagrams. The beer was cold. Life is good.

Aside on stuffing box adjustment: We later found that our guardian angel mechanic had set the s.s. collar to compress the bellow only 1/8” from the neutral position. After talking with both PYI and New England Boatworks and downloading the instructions from the web (isn’t modern communications wonderful), we set it to 1” per the manufacturer’s specifications.  So far this setting has worked perfectly at all rpm.

On Sunday 12/25, we were challenged to make a decision. Should we jump back into the water or sail over to Francis Bay on StT? We swam, analyzed, agonized and swam some more until mid-afternoon when it was clear that we weren’t going anywhere. At least 70 boats of all kinds—power, sail, monohull, multihull, dinghies and huge yachts-- arrived from StT and formed two huge rafts between Heron and the beach. The place was rockin’ with great audio and the drinks were flowin’. A fine bikini-clad specimen wearing boots and a flowing red santa hat was water skiing amongst the boats. People swam, kayaked, dove and danced. One sailboat had folks halyard diving --where someone holds onto the middle of a very long line that is attached to the masthead on one end, and a fast dinghy on the other end; when the dinghy speeds away from the sailboat, the line straightens out and lifts the person high up and away from the boat, where they let go and dive into the water to the cheers of the adoring crowd.  Evidently this tradition is repeated every Christmas Day. By sunset, tropical peace and quiet once again reigned over the cove.

Dec 21-22 St. Thomas

Second Post on December Cruise:
On Wednesday 12/21, after a sleepless night, Emily and I left Coral Harbor for Christmas Cove and then moved on to Charlotte Amalie. Coral Harbor was an overcrowded anchorage, with all boats on anchors with different scope and dubious tackle, and with very strong gusts from almost every direction and noone watching.  It would have been imprudent to go ashore with noone aboard.  See ya. Got to go. We were just glad that our anchor wasn’t below another boat when it came time for us to boogie.

With just the jib, we ran back down the south coast of St. John, passing all the wonderful anchorages that we plan to come back to some day. Saltpond Bay is reported to be wonderful, with hikes up the hills.  We stopped for lunch at Christmas Cove on Great St. James Island, but the place was packed with boats and so had to anchor out. With the strong Christmas Winds and northerly swell, it was an uncharacteristically nasty place. So we moved on to gain the protection of Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St. Thomas and the home of ginormous cruise ships. True –Charlotte Amalie is surrounded by land and there is plenty of room to anchor –but the wind was blasting over 40 knots at times, making it exciting to walk up up to the bow to check the anchor, which held well. The sea was 80F, the air was 85F. When a strong breeze blew, it was still warm. What a strange place. I knew I wasn’t in Kansas any more when the Disney cruise ship left the dock, blowing its horn to the tune of “When You Wish Upon A Star”. Ohhhh-Kayyyy.

Aside about anchoring: In 18’ of water, I put out the 55 lb. delta plus100 ft. of 3/8” chain plus another 10’ of the 250’ of 5/8” megaplait self-flaking braid that is attached to the chain, plus a 35’ 5/8” 3-strand chain snubber. This primary ground tackle is used by Scott Piper, J/160 Pipe Dream, now on his fifth circumnavigation. When rarely needed, he puts a second anchor in tandem with the first, separated by 10’ of chain. That’s my plan too. The Vesper AIS has a fantastic anchor watch on its display that consumes almost no power (a few hundred milliamps as I recall). It beeps me awake when the boat moves out of a circle of a configurable radius centered on the anchor; I use 110 ft. In the past I used the anchor watch on my Raymarine RL80CRC chartplotter with the Raymarine GPS on Seatalk. This works great but this combination consumes something like 5-6 amps –way too much. I’ve n-e-v-e-r d-r-a-g-g-e-d with Heron, but there will be a first time.

On Thursday 12/22, Emily and I awoke in Charlotte Amalie to continued strong winds. It was the beginning of a day that would deplete our adrenal glands. My daughter Julia (12), my brother Andrew and my sister-in-law Jamie, and their two daughters Leigh (16) and Kelsey (15), were scheduled to fly in to join Heron for our remaining week of vacation from the cold.  Four teenage girls together on a boat for a week should spell trouble. But these girls have been thriving together on boats for many years, not only making it easier on parents, but providing one of the biggest reasons that we go boating.  Crown Bay Marina offers a short five minute ride from the airport, a high quality market to provision the boat, fresh water, shore power, and Tickles –an open air restaurant that offers great food, drink and atmosphere. So that's where we were headed.  The only problem is, it’s a total bitch to get into a slip there when the wind is howling. It’s so tight in any condition that you have to get cleared in and out by their traffic controller.

Scene one: We waited until 11 am, when the dive boat captain said the wind was expected to ease. We called ahead and changed to a leeward slip assignment and lined up some dock hands to help us. We set our lines and fenders and rehearsed diagrams on paper as to how we would enter, back in, and secure the boat. I had an extra cup of coffee. But it still howled. As we entered the marina, the wind was still in the mid-20s with stronger gusts. After two power-on attempts to line up on the slip, with the bow anchor poised dangerously at the belly of a 120’ power yacht, I bailed. In reverse, my 3-blad Maxprop pulls the stern to port, rotating the bow to starboard --the same direction the wind was pushing it --not in the direction we wanted. I didn’t have enough room to gain way for the rudder to do it’s job. Ain’t got no shtinkin bow thruster on this performance cruiser... but I sure wish I had one this time.

Scene two: Back out into Crown Bay, our plan is to collect ourselves by picking up a mooring (any mooring) until the wind abates. The plane lands in an hour, but they’ll have to suffer at Tickles until we’re ready for a second landing. It’s blowing so hard, Emily and I have to punt on our first attempt to pick up a mooring. We land on a second mooring with a pulse rate that I don’t get to in the gym. A very nice guy with a santa beard passes by on his dinghy saying that we’re on a very strong mooring and they probably won’t be back for a few days, and that we should call him on VHF66 if we need anything. I’m feeling relieved. When I come back to the cockpit, Emily casually mentions that “The water tanks are making a funny noise.” That’s weird. When I go below, I hear the electric bilge pump running and the distinctly horrifying sound of rushing water. Bing. The adrenalin pump goes to full max. Floor board up; water 4” below the floor; engine compartment door open; stuffing box flooding; towel wrapped on stuffing box; Emily manning one manual bilge pump; I pump the other. Holy kripes. We’re sinking. I get on VHF66.  Santa says he’ll be right over, but advises us to call a towing company as they carry pumps. With a pump handle in one hand and the cellphone in the other, I called Tow Boat US (per my subscription). After reporting my position and situation to the dispatcher (somewhere in the US), he replied that they don’t have any facilities in the Virgin Islands. Not good. Meanwhile, there is now a dinghy arriving to my stern with another a few minutes away. I thank the dispatcher and hang up. Approaching the fellow in the dinghy, I get an earful about how I’m on his mooring and that his boat will be returning..... blah blah blah... to which I responded that “I’m sinking and sure could use your help if you are willing to come aboard.” His affect flipped 180 degrees.  He was a professional boat mechanic and knew exactly what to do!  Dinghy two arrived with santa from VHF66, who was a friend of the first guy, so we were ready to party.

Within 5 minutes, the leak was stopped. He jumped into his RIB and ran off to the chandlery at Cruz Bay Marina to buy parts to improve the design, returned to install them, and departed with a heavy tip and a few bottles of my good wine. He was a guardian angel, arriving within minutes of the crisis. If he hadn’t arrived at that time, it would have taken me seemingly forever to calm down enough to repair it.  Emily is always calm and would have been the tool gopher, but I was a wreck.  It turns out he was a retired long-line fisherman out of New Bedford then Boston, fishing on the Grand Banks and Flemish Cap –perfect storm territory. He (who’s name I can’t recall) also spent time with Linda Greenlaw and passed hydraulic fluid to the Andrea Gail, the ill-fated ship in the book. We must be in some kind of movie.  Anyway, somewhere along this timeline I’m hearing the US Coast Guard out of San Juan Puerto Rico repeatedly calling a vessel that sounds like Heron.... Highreon or something. After a classically repetitive conversation, they get the idea that I’m the guy they are looking for and that we are no longer in danger.   Tow Boat US had notified the coast guard of my position and my identity, using information from my subscription. Later I found voicemail messages on my cellphone from both Boat US and from the USCG San Juan –which I returned and closed their incident reports. Whew. It’s a good thing I didn’t hit the SOS button on the SPOT, or the GPIRBs, or call mayday on the VHF or SSB, or call 911 on the cellphone, or....

Aside on the stuffing box failure: The stuffing box is a PSS (Packless Seal System) Shaftseal dripless stuffing box from PYI. It was completely replaced for purely preventative reasons by New England Boatworks at my request, 10 months ago, in preparation for this trip. It worked flawlessly all summer. The old one was 10 years or 900 hours of engine use old, and looked fine. Evidently the allen head set screws that hold the new stainless steel collar to the shaft had loosened. While attempting to dock at Crown Bay, a burst of reverse probably caused water to extend the bellows and to push the s.s. collar forward on the shaft. Subsequently there was a gap between the s.s. collar and the carbon ring that is attached to the bellow and the stern tube. It’s shocking how fast the water came in. The guardian angel mechanic who fixed it has installed several on his boats, but now prefers the old fashioned packing type. But for the PSS design, he enhanced safety beyond the installation instructions in three ways: (1) replace the allen set screws with long 5/8” hex head bolts, with nuts to lock them against the s.s. collar. (2) use Loctite on the bolts. (3) put a zinc anode donut or ring on the shaft inside the boat, tightened against the s.s. steel collar. The amount the bellow is compressed beyond the “neutral” position is important, as I’ll report in a subsequent scene of this drama.

Scene three: OK. We’re not sinking, the wind is down to 13, the gang is waiting at the marina, and Emily and I are ready for more action. Our plan is to land on the marina fuel dock (infinitely easier), refuel (since we’re there), get my brother aboard (who is good at this stuff), and make another attempt to get into our slip. After kisses and hugs, we try three more attempts to back in. No go. Ain’t gonna happen. So I go in bow-first in one shot and before we know it we’re all hooked up with every last inch of our power cord. So I’ve learned something about my boat: It’s always more maneuverable in reverse –except in tight spaces where prop walk dominates over rudder flow and where pulling the stern to port defeats the plan. It’s time for dinner and drinks at Tickles followed by star gazing in the cockpit!

Jay

Dec 18-20 in St. John

We’ve had a fantastic ten day cruise in the US Virgin Islands with my girls and my brother Andrew’s family. Here’s the play-by-play of the first few days:

My daughter Emily (16) and I arrived on Sunday 12/18 by non-stop flight from cold Boston to glorious St. Thomas (StT). I’m still amazed that you only have to stand a single 4-5 hour watch to jet above an eleven day sail. We took a taxi ride over the mountain to Red Hook, a ferry ride to Cruz Bay, St. John (StJ), a taxi ride to Great Cruz Landing on Great Cruz Bay (GCB), and finally a dinghy ride to Heron on her mooring. The journey was easy, but the intricacy of it made the arrival all that more exotic –like going up the river in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” or in Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now”—only different. We kicked back in the evening light, happy to simply take it all in. Ahhh.

 Heron was an especially welcoming sight since the Proper Yachts team who takes care of Heron in GCB (Steve, Ashley and Veronica?) had already put some food aboard, cooled down the icebox, opened up the boat, and had put up the bimini and the ensign. They had also re-done the varnish work, polished the stainless and the gelcoat and had cleaned everything to Bristol condition! Despite having to patch several years of poor varnish work, they had produced a surface on the teak toerails that looks as if it was sprayed on -- the best since the boat was new. I shouldn’t be so surprised since I counted at least seven big Hinkleys in the harbor under their care. It is true in my case that a sailor’s mood can be predicted by the status of their boat’s bright work.

On Monday 12/19, Emily and I had brunch on the beach at the Westin Hotel on GCB. It was an indulgence of overeating in a stereotypical beach resort setting—just what we needed. After recovering from the carbo crash, we took Heron out for a sail along the south coast of StJ to Ram Head and back. We close-reached out and broad-reached back in NE18. The mountain tops of St. Croix were visible above the horizon 30nm to the south. I called my in-laws Sam and Shirley, who spend winters on StX, that their island was still there. The uninhabited green slopes of StJ dropped steeply to the turquoise ocean—the opposite of our own beautiful Buzzards Bay marshes and slate gray water! The sea was 80F; the air was 85F. It was still warm when the breeze picked up or when gusts blew down from the hillsides. Ya gutta luv de tropics.

On Tuesday 12/20, we retraced our steps to the SE corner of StJ, headed for Coral Bay. Under full sail, beating into 23-30 apparent and an ocean swell, the two of us were “in our glory”. At one point we crossed tacks with a gorgeous red Hinkley 50-something. The contrast was notable: Heron was under full sail (#3 jib and main) hard on the wind without dipping the rail, two people aboard in tee shirts, shorts and sandals and big smiles. The Hinkley was under deeply rolled main and staysail, rail under, five solemn folks in full foul weather gear in the cockpit, headed for Saltpond Bay in the lee of Ram Head. I know, I know; it’s just cruising and I’m being a jerk. But any two boats on the same water at the same time define a race... We dipped their stern in salute. I later learned that they are mooring-neighbors in GCB, where Heron is surrounded by a flock of gorgeous Hinkleys.

The wind continued to honk down Sir Francis Drake Channel as we tacked close aboard Leduck Island into Coral Bay. We screamed off onto a reach into Hurricane Hole and dropped the sails. Not a single house or boat was within sight; this part of the island is in the national park and probably appears as it did 300 years ago when slave traders and pirate ships lurked in this bay. Having nothing but Trader Joe’s canned goods aboard (good stuff, but it gets tiring), we motored around the corner to Coral Harbor. What an odd place it is!

Each harbor has its own boating sub-culture. You can usually tell by the type of boat and how it is equipped and maintained. This could be the subject of an entertaining book. The BVIs are loaded with charter boats from the Moorings charter base in Tortola. Many of them motor from beach bar to beach bar and enjoy a week-long party—honestly. The woman seated in front of us on our return flight recounted her sailing vacation as the sequence of beach bars they visited: Foxey’s, Willie T’s, etc,. etc. Some families do have fabulous charter vacations, snorkeling and hiking throughout the BVIs. Since it’s rare that a week-long charterer will go through the trouble of checking in/out through customs to go between the US and British islands (and they are all equally beautiful), the USVIs have far fewer charterers, and have more cruisers and live-aboards. Cruisers (like me) are mostly from the US east coast and spend too much time or money working on their boats. Many cruisers have jerry cans of fuel and water strapped to their deck, RIBs (Rigid hull Inflatable Boats) with big outboards on stern davitts, photovoltaic panels or windmills, etc. etc. Some of these are gorgeous voyaging yachts. Others have short waterlines that can’t reasonably carry all that stuff (without dramatically raising their wetted surface area, center of gravity and angular moment of inertia) and so wallow more than sail. I watched them hobby-horse and corkscrew down waves coming out of the Chesapeake. But the Coral Bay fleet is of a different sort. There are no charterers here and the very few cruisers stick out like the odd dog in the pack. Heron looks like an alien spaceship. Most are much shorter than elsewhere. Many of the boats there have no masts; even more have no sails. Some look like they were recycled from Katrina or another fatal storm in the late 70s. Many haven’t moved in months or years. They have barnacles growing up the topsides and just a few remaining shreds of sun-bleached canvas. I didn’t see any moorings. Except for the occasional presence of an odd rowboat on the stern, or an occasional raised hatch, there are no signs of life aboard. I’m guessing that they serve as a floating bedroom for someone who is living close to (or under) the edge. I’d like to imagine that they are an eco-friendly tuned-in peace-loving floating camp of idealists, living John Lenon’s “Imagine” or Bob Marley’s “One Love”. But I doubt it.  More to follow.
Jay

Gone Fishin'

Hundreds of miles from the nearest anything, the VHF radio came to life:

Freestyle: “Heron Heron, this is Freestyle....We are slowing down to let you catch up. Get your cameras ready.”
Heron: “Roger.”

As we sailed up along side Freestyle, our jaws dropped and our shutters clicked. Holy &*(@#!!

That is a monster fish, an incredible animal. Jim Cody and all hands aboard had landed a 7 (foot) black marlin—almost 200 hundred pounds of sport fish. Don can tell a better story, but it dove deep, nearly ran out their line, nearly shook the reel off of the rod, and required full drag and gloved hands squeezing the line against the rod to slow it down. That fish provided sushi, grilled steaks and sandwiches for many many meals, and yet most of it came home in their luggage.

Though Heron and Freestyle were partners in this adventure, shadowing each other mile after mile, this fish caused the gloves to come off.   A few hours later:

Heron: “Freestyle, Freestyle, this is Heron.... We are slowing down to let you catch up. Get your cameras ready.”
Freestyle: “What? We didn’t see you catch anything.”
As they sailed up along side Heron, there was dead silence and searching eyes, followed by roaring laughter from both boats.

 

Now THAT's what I'm talkin' bout!  The crew of Heron had strung up their catch-of-the-day--a 7 (inch) flying fish that had landed on the deck the day before, drying in the tropical sun. True to form for a fine offshore racing machine (cough), we were proud to demonstrate our success in minimizing both weight and unsightly blood stains.

As it turned out, fishing turned out to be an exciting way to pass the time. We were happy to share Freestyle’s excitement, since we weren’t too sure what we’d do if we actually caught something. Thanks to a rig that Don had made up for us beforehand, we caught tons of seaweed and one gorgeous mahi mahi.  We were convinced that it was too small and too beautiful to keep, so we released it. Honest.  Here’s the proof:

I’m looking forward to the February and March cruise in the company of Freestyle --and their fantastic fishing gear, gas grill, soy sauce and wasabi.  We'll bring the camera and the rice.

Jay