Sailing BrainWaves

November 30, Thursday.  We thought we'd have a calm night for sleeping but there was a lot of rocking.  We left at.  for Les Saintes, a group of islands off the coast.  We got into the mooring field by bourg at.  The town looked like an idyllic village of red roofed bungalows.  There were many boats moored and more came all day long.   The islands are a popular spot for day trips with a variety of ferries coming and going all day.  We swam immediately and lounged around until Don went into town around 1500.  He said looks were deceiving and that things onshore were pretty ramshackle. We went ashore around 1630 to explore a little and get dinner.  We passed a creperie, several gelato shops, a pizza place and one upscale restaurant.  There were a couple of nicer shops.  The roads are horrible with a few very narrow sidewalks.  Mostly you walk in the very narrow streets and try to avoid being run over.  ...

November 29, Wednesday.  We left at  to go to Pigeon Bay and we wanted to pick up a day mooring at Pigeon Island.  The weather deteriorated as we went, the sky getting very dark with rain all around us.  There had been little wind until we neared Pigeon Island when it got very windy.  There were a number of dive boats at the moorings in all three mooring spots and it was raining hard.  The skies looked better ages ahead of us so we kept going.  We anchored in.       . There was a fleet of small fishing boats and about the other sailboat moored in the bay, all of which appeared to be local and units uninhabited.  We had to anchor in 40 feet over what the guidebook said was not great holding.  We got a good hold and never dragged.  Near sundown a large catamaran came in.  They dropped their anchor about six times, then gave up and moved on. Deb

Nov 28, Tuesday.  It was rainy when we got up and I was feeling pretty dragged down with my cold, so we decided to stay put in Deshaies for one more day.  We spent a lazy day opening and closing hatches and dodger as it rained much of the day.  The upside of that was that we didn't have to hide from the sun and the boat got a good cleaning outside.  We'd taken a lot of spray on the way to Deshaies and everything was pretty salt encrusted.  Deb

November 27, Monday.  Don went and checked in and got a baguette and some pain au chocolate for breakfast.  Yum!  It was very windy when we came in yesterday but today was quite still and therefore hot.  We swam and Don snorkeled some. There is a lot of activity in the harbor so you have to be careful to not get hit when snorkeling.   Went in at 1700 for groceries, which is always a challenge due to the unusual stores   went back at 1900 for dinner at L' Amer.  We're using their WiFi so want to support them.  Don had a plate with the different types of fish, which was good.  The waiter and I couldn't come to a conclusion about whether the fish I was going to get was cooled or raw due to my bad French, so I went with chicken.  It was good but it was SPICY! - Deb via email

Sunday, November 26, 2017 Nov. 26. Sunday. We left Rendezvous Bay in Montserrat at 0700 heading for Guadeloupe.  Went north of the island which was slow going against big seas.  We did get a good view of the volcano venting gasses. The seas settled some and we had a nice sail, arriving in the bay at Deshaies   at 1500.  Kind of a cute little fishing village surrounded by hills.  Don went ashore but couldn't check in on a Sunday.  He got a code for the WiFi from L'Amer so we were able to talk to the kids. - Deb Guadeloupe We made it to Guadeloupe today. We're having problems with the alternator again but don't think we'll have any trouble getting to our final destination on Sunday. We had two long, bouncy, heeling days to get here. It is very beautiful!! -  Deb Amanda Roth Brennan Glad you made it there. Hope you can get the alternator fixed! Debbie Lawrence Roth They should be able to do it in Point à Pitre. It seems to charge righ...

November 25, Saturday We left at 0700 heading for the island of Montserrat.  We were heading right into a 10K SE wind.  We motored and made good time, arriving at 1530.  We anchored in the little bay north of the town anchorage.  It was just us and a barge with it's tug anchored quite a bit further out.  It was a beautiful spot next to 500 foot cliffs.  There were ledges about 300 feet up with trees growing on them.  My pictures are bad because they were taken from inside the boat.  Longtailed tropic birds were doing acrobatics off the cliffs. We passed the island of Rodonda on the way.  It's pretty forbidding looking and is currently uninhabited.  It has a history similar to King Strange on Beaver Island. The alternator had not been charging correctly while we motored, so Don took the stairs down (which is why my pics are from inside) and we checked out the motor.  The belt seemed to be slipping and the hose leading to the im...

Nov 23-24.   The last entry should end on the 22nd.  The 23rd was  Happy Thanksgiving!  Strangest Thanksgiving we've ever had.  We took a long dinghy ride over to Carombola's, the restaurant in Friars Bay because we thought we'd have a Thanksgiving lunch and be able to call the kids.  It was incredibly hot, no AC and the WiFi didn't work.  We decided to make reservations for dinner and skip lunch.  We took the dinghy back to the development at Christophe Harbor.  Don got a sandwich and a Coke and I got another iced coffee.  We were able to talk to the kids and a couple of Don's siblings.  We were bummed that we didn't think we could have called Rod, since he had the app we're using to make calls  We moved the boat to Friars Bay to go to dinner at 5:30.  They had a Thanksgiving buffet.  The foods were all quite different but very good, except for the turkey, which was very dry.  We are outside under the st...

November 23, 2017 Thanksgiving Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and lived ones. We are in St Kitts. Don has sailed our boat over 2700 miles from Petoskey with the help of for different crews. It has been just he and I for the last two weeks. We have sailed from Tortola to Saba to St. Bart's to St. Kitts. Our final destination is Guadaloup. We miss you all. We don't have many opportunities to communicate, but will try to post when we can. -  Deb

Nov 21-23 Left for St Kitts at 0600 in an East wind.  Nice, close reach all the way to Mt Misery then motor-sailed tight hauled up the coast to Basterre.  Arrived around 1430 and anchored near the marina   Don went ashore to check in which took an hour at the different places.  Two agents were difficult and one was very nice.  When he got back we went over to the marina and got fuel for the boat and the dinghy and potable water.  All of these provisions can be hard to come by.   On Wednesday we went ashore in the morning, after a bouncy night.  We had breakfast at Ballahoo Bistro and used the WiFi to contact the kids.  Went back to the boat then Don took the dinghy back in with the propane tanks.  He'd been told he could get propane at C+C but decided to take take the long walk to Sol Petroleum, the distributor.  He got a ride there and they filled them but then he had to take them to C+C to pay for them.  He got a ride...

Hi!  We're now in St. Kitts.  We had to wait a day again for winds but had a great said over here yesterday.  I felt a little seasick, not sure why.  We stayed in a very, very roll-y harbor but got fuel and water, both of which are hard to find.  We're nearly out of propane for cooking, so we're really hoping to be able to fill that.  Nothing is easy here.  Very little hurricane damage here.  We're trying to get more data for phones today too. Much love to all!!  Please send news of you all.  I'll get it sometime. Deb

Nov 18-20  Saturday morning we dinghied back into town to explore.   There was a fair amount of damage.  Many of the designer label stores were cleaning up and working to open again as were many of the bars/cafes. There was an excellent chandlery in town but we couldn't get the oil filters Don wanted.   We went back to the boat and moved it to an anchorage in Anse Colombier.  We stayed in that beautiful place for three nights.  There was a gorgeous beach but we never saw anyone dinghy to it.  On Sunday we took our dingy over late in the afternoon and discovered why.  There was a steep shore break that made it hard to land the dinghy.  We landed it and then it kept getting pummeled by incoming waves that filled it with water and sand.  We swam in the incredibly warm water then managed to launch the dinghy and go back.  Don spent some time and effort cleaning the dingy out and there was sand in the painter for many days. O...

Nov 16-18 On the morning of the 16th we headed over to Spanish Town to check out of the BVI.  Clearing was surprisingly easy.  We left for Saba around 14:30.  We went by The Baths, an area of huge tumbled boulders, very popular for swimming, but didn't stop as we had a 16 hour sail ahead of us.  Sailed a close reach in SW wind, 10-12K, backing to S.  Lighting was behind us most of the way but it never caught up.  We crossed with three other shops at about the halfway point.  They we're heading to St. Martin.   We took turns trying to sleep but only Don got a few minutes.  I saw some great shooting stars.  It was a great night for Star gazing as there was no moon  We arrived in Wells Bay on Saba at around 0700.  The scenery was spectacular but the anchorage was pretty much untenable because of the rolling.  Neither of us could sleep even though we'd been up since the previous morning it was too rough to get into...

I talked to my mom a couple of times in the last two days and they are doing well.  After getting to the airport around 5am on Saturday morning to discover that her flights had been changed to a different airline altogether, mom got checked in but found out that, unfortunately, her baggage was only checked through as far as San Juan while she was going all the way to Tortola.  She only had 55 minutes in the San Juan airport so had to decide if she would get her luggage (and most likely miss her flight getting stuck in San Juan where there were only 3 hotel rooms available) or catch her flight and leave her luggage behind.  She caught the flight (but later thought she might have had enough time to do both).  Customs almost didn't let her in since she had no return flight booked at this time, but after she started crying, the customs officer seemed to take pity on her and implied that, if she just picked a departure date, she would be cleared.  Thankfully, they we...

Nov 14 and 15  We spent two nights in the "Bight" on Norman Island in the BVI.  It was a beautiful spot, which we had nearly to ourselves the first night and then only about five boats the second night.  There were two bars on land and a large boat that was a floating bar.  All were severely damaged in the hurricane.  They had done quite a lot of work on the two on land and were hoping to open in several weeks.  The boat did not look salvageable.  The second day we took the dinghy over to a dinghy mooring and snorkelled along the cliff.  Nice fish, including a 14" blue-green pastor m parrot fish.  Don had seen a barracuda here earlier in the trip.  We saw a small jellyfish from the boat.  I had a new full face mask for snorkeling that is really nice   I still battle with claustrophobia when snorkeling.   In the afternoon we took the boat over and picked up a day mooring at "The Indians".  It was quite windy an...

Wednesday, November 8, 2017 Tortorla, British Virgin Islands In the morning when I got up everyone else was in the cockpit discussing the night's activities. I went up the ladder and into the cockpit and said "So, what does Hell look like in the daylight?" The area we were drifting into at at night Some of the destroyed sailboats at the harbor at Beef Island. Some where up into the brush. Closer view of some of the wrecked sailboats from the hurricanes.   It was a surprise to me (the others had been in this location in the past) how small the area was, to see the rocks we had missed coming in, and the small rocky island we had almost drifted into during the night when the anchor had failed to hold us. The airport was really close, just a short and hopefully dry, dinghy ride away for me later in the morning. Beef Island airport from our anchorage. We moved BrainWaves closer and to the left of this picture before I departed. After saying goodbyes...