St. Barth

Quick hello from St. Barth while we dodge raindrops and try to hold onto a stolen wifi signal...we are holed up in Anse de Columbier, a secluded, protected bay, only accessible by boat or mile long hike along the cliff.  St. Barth is a picturesque island, but we can't afford to do much here.  We've been taking lots of pictures, Chris has been experimenting with some night sky exposures, see below. we'll post more pictures when we have better signal.  we rented a four-wheeler and toured the island, there are some VERY nice houses here!  the wind has made it difficult to do much, but we still swim, carefully launch the dinghy and go ashore.  The wind kicks up the sand and it gets everywhere, but it's supposed to let up this weekend and we'll reprovision in the town of Gustavia, and then (weather permitting) start making our way to Saba, with a stop at Ile' Forchue, which we think means "the fork" since that's how it's shaped.  We stopped there on our way here, it's a neat, uninhabited island with trails all over it, and awesome views.  It used to be overrun with goats, so there is little vegetation, but the goats are gone and it's easy to walk around.  Privately owned, but there is no infrastructure, the owners are okay with sailors taking a stroll.  I write this from the lobby of a super swanky hotel, we definitely don't look like guests, but they haven't kicked us out yet, better make tracks before they get on to us! Au revoir!

Our Early 2013 Schedule

Wow - over 100 page views on our blog today alone...it's almost like some people are back at work and wishing they were somewhere else!

Well, if you want to get away, feel free to come and meet us in the Caribbean! Here is our latest estimate of where we will be for the next few months:

Early January - St Barts (France)
Mid January - Saba and Statia (Ned Antilles)
Late January - St. Kitts and Nevis

Early February - Montserrat and Antigua
Mid February - Montserrat and Antigua
Lat February - Guadeloupe (France)

Early March - Guadeloupe (France)
Mid March - Guadeloupe (France)
Late March - Dominica

After that is kind of up in the air.

Hope those New Year's resolutions are going well...Happy New Year!

Beach Quest 2012

   The Berube's came to visit for the past week, and we partook in "Beach Quest 2012," seeking out some of the best beaches on Dutch St. Maarten, French St. Martin, and on a neighbor island of Anguilla (UK).
   We collectively decided that a "perfect" beach needs the following:
 - Natural shade (Chris)
 - Perfect power sand (Kathy)
 - Background music (Don)
 - Warm water (Kellee)
  So in our quest to find these criteria, we visited about 9 beaches in three countries over the past week, and along the way were assaulted by scantily clad men, wayward fowl, and too much patisserie.  However we saw some pretty cool beaches.
   The highlight was a three day diversion to Anguilla, where we sailed to Road Bay and spent some time on the quiet and beautiful island.
   St. Maarten is great - but all to easy to eat baguette and pain au chocolat every day.  So, with that in mind, we'll be shoving off for St. Barts (French) in a couple days to continue our trek southward.

  Check out a couple videos from the past week on the "videos" link above.  Happy New Year!

 St. Maarten

  Maho Beach

  Hollywood Casino

  Meads Beach, Anguilla

2012 Photos

We were going through our files and decided to post some of the best photos from the past six months of sailing Navigator down the east coast of the US and the eastern Caribbean.  Hope you enjoy!  Better resolution photos are available on Flickr on the "Pictures" link above.  Happy Holidays from St. Maarten, Dutch West Indies!   

 

Adios to the BVI and Arrival in Sint Maarten

We safely arrived in the Dutch side of St Martin (Sint Maarten) around lunchtime today and after a nap, checked into customs and made the evening bridge opening into the protected Simpson Bay Lagoon, where we were able to bump up our dock reservation.  We arrived a couple of days ahead of schedule in order to take advantage of a weather window, which made for a beautiful over night sail from Virgin Gorda. 

Since leaving Soper's Hole (delayed a couple of days due to Christmas winds...so we checked out Roadtown, nothing of note to report from there), we headed over to Peter Island, home of deadman's bay and the video from the last post.  We also explored Peter Island, a privately owned resort island of which the likes of Robert DeNiro supposedly spends his Christmas holidays.  We hiked over the island to White Bay and did some snorkeling, which was okay, but the highlight was finding a bunch of perfectly preserved, already bleached, sand dollars.  The next day we grabbed a dive mooring on Dead Chest Island and did a nice dive amongst some canyons filled with coral.  Saw a large sting ray too.  We also hiked up to the top of Virgin Gorda, a 9.5 mile pretty steep hike, but with a good view at the top.  

We haven't talked much about our snorkeling escapades, but on any given day we've seen lots of fish, a night snorkel yielded lobster and octopus, we've seen a few spotted eagle rays, small eels and a couple of turtles and nudibranchs.  We see a lot of turtles sailing around, and this morning we saw a pod of sperm whales as we approached the island.  We did one last snorkel in the BVIs up in Eustatia Sound and saw a bunch of live conch shells and a neat starfish.  Our first impression of St Martin is that this is where the wealthy come to  "yacht", we've seen more megayachts just today than we have in the whole of our journey so far.  Chris' parents are coming to visit for the holiday, so we're going to use our early arrival to get some needed boat maintenance done before their arrival so that we can enjoy the beaches, snorkeling, shopping and fine cuisine when they arrive.  Chris has been boning up on his french so at least we can order hamburgers and lemonade  on the french side of the island.  This island is the smallest landmass to occupy 2 distinct countries.  You can drive or walk seamlessly between the two, but if sailing, we will need to clear in and out of each country, even though the offices are only about 5 miles apart!

The next several islands  in our travels (Saba, St Barts, Statia, St. Kitts) are all visible from here, the next time we'll have to make an overnight passage will be after Grenada!  We are getting spoiled with having the next adventure always so close by!  Merry Christmas everyone!

 Peter Island hike.

The Sand Dollar haul.

New Short Video

   While visiting Peter Island, in the British Virgin Islands, we found ourselves dropping the anchor in Dead Man's Bay.  Across the water was Dead Chest Island.  It turns out this region is alleged to have inspired the lyrics "15 men on a dead man's chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"  Who knows if this is true or not, but regardless, we found ourselves in need of some oreo cookies....

Just posted a new video in the "video" link above.  It is low quality due to bandwidth restrictions in our present location - we'll replaced it with the HD version in a couple weeks or so. Hope you enjoy:
Click here to go directly to the video.

Virgin Islands round 2

Greetings from Soper's Hole, West End of Tortola, BVI.  The last 10 days have been very busy... (sarcasm).  After relaxing at the pool and enjoying the tv, spa and restaurants of the Marriott, we got back on the boat and motored over to Crown Bay Marina to give the Navigator a little TLC.  We topped off on food, water and fuel and planned out the next week or so.  We sailed over to St. James Island the next day, just to take advantage of a free mooring and nice anchorage for the night.  Then we motored up back to Francis Bay, part of the national park on St. John...and spent the next 5 days there, swimming, chillaxing, reading, doing some boat projects, cleaning, relaxing some more and just hanging out.  The "Christmas winds" are in full effect, so it blows 25kts most of the day and calms a bit at night, so the bay was a nice place to be.  It often rains, seemingly out of nowhere, and only for about 5 minutes, which is nice to keep things cool, but frustrating to have to close the hatches in the middle of the night.  We stayed on the boat for the most part, but did spend one day ashore to hike 9.5 miles from the north end, up and over the peak of the island to the south end on the "Reef Bay" trail.  It was a perfect day for it, breezy, but no rain, and there were some neat sugar factory ruins along the route.  We were a little sore the next day, so we relaxed some more, swam to stretch out and ate an entire tray of brownies for dinner...we figured we earned it.  Today had us itching for fresh food and an internet connection, so we motored the less than two miles over to the BVI, checked in at Customs and got some fresh groceries.  We'll stay here tonight, probably head over to Norman Island tomorrow, then the winds are supposed to lighten up over the weekend, so we want to head over to Peter Island and dive "Dead Chest Cay"...supposedly where the phrase "15 men on a dead man's chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum" originated. From there we'll work back up to Virgin Gorda, get a dock in Spanish Town to clean the boat and fill tanks, then wait for our weather window to head over to St. Martin, which is 80 miles away and should take us a full day/night. Chris' parents are meeting us there for Christmas and we can't wait to explore the Dutch/French island with them!  We'll check back in from Spanish Town before we head over there, hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Virgin Islands Week 2

We just completed a circumnavigation of the British Virgin Islands, stopping at all the cool places and snorkeling our brains out.  It was a good time with perfect weather.

One of the highlights of this past week was diving on the wreck of the RMS RHONE, which sunk in a hurricane in 1867 off the British Island of Salt Island. The ship was a mail transport vessel which was carrying passengers, many of whom unfortunately drowned in the disaster.  The wreck lies in two major pieces in about 50-80 feet of clear water, with several swim throughs and artifacts present.  It was a great 2-tank dive with a local company.

After leaving the southern BVI's, we stopped at Tortola to partake in a full moon festival, which was quite interesting, including spending some quality time at the "Bomba Shack" on the beach on the northern coast of Tortola.

Right now, we are back in St. Thomas to drop our friends off at the airport.  A side benefit is that we can cash in our Marriott Rewards Points for some free/discounted time in a hotel (I guess the long winter months in Maine were good for something!) It is an unbelievable luxury to have a shower, pool, internet, and real bed.

In the next couple days, we'll be heading back east again, through St. John in the USVI for some hiking  and then quickly through the BVIs again before heading over to St. Maarten for our Holiday Rendezvous.

There are some new pictures posted on Flickr in the link above.  Also there is a long (35 minute) "documentary" about our trip from North Carolina to St. Thomas in November. It is basically just a video blog to give you an idea about what it's like to sail a small boat south.  Kind of long but hopefully enjoyable.

Signing off for now - the pool awaits.

 Shawn checking out a dive site.

 Diving on the RHONE

Navigator at St. Thomas

Short Video

We have posted a short video of our arrival in St. Thomas - we have a longer video but the bandwidth won't let us get it through, sorry! Here is the link to it, or you can click on the "video" link above.

https://vimeo.com/54183970

The Virgin Islands

We've had a great week visiting the US and British Virgin Islands with our friends Shawn and Meg, but alas, the internet has been hard to find.  After turning the boat around and cleaning it up after our big trip, we set sail the next day and visited St. Thomas and St. John for some pretty cool snorkeling.  We also hiked to the ruins of an abandoned sugar plantation from the 19th century.

Over the weekend, we crossed to the British Virgin Islands and visited the tiny island of Jost Van Dyke, and the remote coral atoll of Anegada.  On Anegada, we rented mopeds for the day and were able to access some isolated snorkeling spots which was great.

Today, we anchored 100 yards off a great surf break on the west end of Anegada, which we had to ourselves for the whole morning.  Right now, we are anchored in Virgin Gorda, at the Bitter End Club, to celebrate Thanksgiving with turkey and fixings - a nice surprise since we thought we would be eating canned chicken tonight!

All is well on the Navigator front and we are enjoying the islands.  As internet allows we will post pictures and video.  Thanks for all the kind words after our big trip!

Morehead City, NC - St. Thomas, USVI

We arrived in St. Thomas on Thursday, 15 November after a passage of 1428 miles in 13 days, 6 hrs. We averaged 4.5 kts, or 107.7 miles per day.  Our best day was 135 miles and our worst day was 93 miles.

We left before dawn on Friday, 2 November and set sail in lumpy seas to make tracks for the Gulf Stream.  We used the remnants from Sandy to propel us forward at a good clip, but the seas were such that the autopilot wouldn't hold so we handsteered the first night in short watches. We watched the ocean temperature climb 10 degrees as we crossed overnight.

After the Gulf Stream, we wanted to make miles south to avoid a developing low (which eventually brought snow to NJ).  Luckily we made excellent time on a brisk SW wind and were able to get ahead of the trailing cold front.  The HAM radio worked very well to provide weather reports and hopefully some of you were able to use the shiptrak website to watch our daily position updates.

We cruised on a southeasterly heading for 7 days, making miles and settling into a routine.  The nights were chilly but the days were pleasant if still a little lumpy.  We eventually made it to 65W, the longitude of our destination with 600 miles still to cover straight south.  This worked well as we soon encountered the easterly trade winds.

About 2 days from St. Thomas the winds abandoned us and left us frustrated for a day, which resulted in an arrival a day later than originally thought.  We finally arrived around lunch time on the 15th (Thursday) and immediately jumped in the water after anchoring, very happy to have safely arrived.  We picked up our friend Shawn at the airport and started making plans for our next couple weeks of adventuring with Shawn and Meg.  We moored in a marina Friday night to clean the boat, our clothes and ourselves and restock provisions and will be on our way back to the water later today.  When able, we have a great video of the trip down that we'll upload to vimeo, but it might take a few days until we can find enough bandwidth, so stay tuned!

Arrived

Made it in to St. Thomas safely. Good trip, will post more when bandwidth allows. Thanks!

Heading Out...

We are departing today or early tomorrow from Morehead City.  It looks like a favorable (but cold) forecast, so we are going to make tracks. We plan to head south for a day or so, then east towards Bermuda, then south again towards the US Virgin Islands.  The circuitous route is to follow favorable winds and avoid large seas. We expect the trip to take about 12-15 days, but we are provisioned for 30 days just in case!  So you won't hear from us for a while, but we'll update the blog as soon as we can upon arrival.

During our trip we are going to try something new - we are going to call in positions on the long-range radio to a plotting website.  It may or may not work, so if you check it out and we appear to be heading off the edge of the earth or not moving, that doesn't mean we are in trouble, just that our radio is not propagating well.

This will be the link to our position reports: http://shiptrak.org/

Type in Kellee's radio call sign of: KB1YUE and it should show our latest position.  Again we are not sure if it will work but its worth a try!

Thanks to everyone for the kind words and emails as we get ready to start the next phase of our voyage.  The gear is stowed and the brownies are readily accessible, so we are off now!

Morehead City Week 3 and Final

We weathered Sandy just fine - some wind and rain and movies. All is well here.

During our last week in Morehead City, we finished up our maintenance projects and took a tour of the Pacific Seacraft factory in nearby Washington, NC.  This is where our type of boat is built. Navigator herself was built in California in 1986, but the company moved in the past few years, so we had a great time with Thumper as he showed us around the factory.  It is amazing how strong our hull is, especially when you can see one "in progress." This type of boat was built for what we are doing, so we feel lucky to have such a strong platform to voyage on.

We also loaded up on groceries, water, and emergency fuel to get us to our next destination. Luckily we had rented a car - that many groceries on a bike would be a problem.

The two of us at the factory.

Hurricane Sandy and Morehead City Maintenance, week 2

  Luckily Hurricane Sandy is passing well to our east today and tonight, so we are only subject to the outer bands of precipitation and wind, allowing us to take a break from working on the boat and instead enjoy some Red-Box "triple features" while we hunker down in the cabin waiting for the storm to pass.
  We are seeing about 30 knots of wind today and expect to see gusts to 50, but that should be no problem where we are at...tied to a dock with doubled lines and plenty of fenders (and a Red-Box across the street).  So far the only casualty is a stray flip-flop which blew off the dock in the wind and is now missing in action. We will endure.
   Earlier this week we finished up our varnishing projects and the boat looks great. We also did one of our two big provisioning runs, getting some food staples and things that we may not have access to for the next month or so.
  Our friend Heather is going to grad school in Virginia, so she came down this weekend and we took a trip to the local barrier island (Shackelford Banks). There are no bridges, so we took a ride over from the local ferry (a 25 foot open boat) which was loaded with surfers hoping to catch the "epic curls" from the offshore cyclone.  We were able to take a long walk on the deserted beach with tons of shells, see some wild horses, and watch the crazy surfers doing their thing in the swells.  In fact, the humans were not the only ones surfing - we saw some dolphins riding the waves as well as some Pelicans riding the clean air just in front of the wave....pretty cool.

   After Sandy passes, the wind field looks pretty strong for a couple days, so we are looking at a departure closer to Thursday or Friday of the coming week.  In the mean time, back to our movie!

Waiting for the rain to pass.                                       Storm lines set.




Shackleford Banks, NC.                         Loading some provisions for the big trip.