On Seasickness...

  By Chris

   There are those who get seasick, and those who say they don't.  The problem is, people automatically equate "seasick" with "puking."  That couldn't be further from the truth.  I know many fine sailors who never puke or turn any shade of green when the seas get up.  It's not that they are liars, it's just that they are uninformed.

  Humans are not meant to stir the waters of the world's great oceans. Originally designed for arboreal life, we descended to the savannah a couple million years ago, started hunting, speaking, and gradually grew bigger brains.  Around 50,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans departed Africa, most likely by crossing the southern portion of the Red Sea (when sea levels were much lower due to glaciation).  And thus began our love-hate relationship with the sea, an environment we were clearly not designed for.

  I've been traditionally "seasick" several times.  I guess I'm proud to say it doesn't happen often. In fact I can recall each time I puked in 9 years at sea.  There was the time on POLAR SEA in 35 foot rollers just north of Antarctica.  There was the time on ALEX HALEY in the Gulf of Alaska in winter while trailing the fishing fleet.  There was the time on DORADO getting airborne off 14 foot waves near the Lost Coast of California while our sewage system backed up onto the deck.  And there was the time on JEFFERSON ISLAND when we were getting battered by the steep seas of the Gulf of Maine in February (although I attribute that more to Jon Larson's serving eggs and sausage for dinner on our way out to the search and rescue case).

  However, seasickness is not just puking.  It's a spectrum of behavioral and physical differences that remind us of our ancient past on the plains of Africa.  As soon as we go down to the sea on ships, our inner ears start speaking to our brains, providing data inputs that say "something's wrong!!"  As  sea conditions worsen, or the time exposed to them increases, the human body starts to show signs of wear.

   Chief among them are fatigue and malaise, followed by dehydration and limited cognitive response, then nausea, vomiting, and a general wish to leave the world of the living.  I've seen the spectrum in my shipmates over the years, and I'm just glad that I was not the guy we had to airlift of ALEX HALEY for unrelenting seasickness - after he had been stuck in sickbay for 2 weeks barfing his intestines out.

   Luckily, time tends to dull the body's response to the stimulus and most people get over it quickly, including the crew of NAVIGATOR.  However, the past couple days near the Dutch island of Saba have reminded me of the nefarious side of the ocean...it's ability to turn me into a raging lunatic.

   My shipmates on EAGLE may have caught a glimpse of the banged up clothes locker above my computer station...the banged up portion was caused by my fist repeatedly colliding with it in my frustration of trying to work on my computer in gunwale to gunwale 45 degree rolls.  The ceaseless rolling of that cursed vessel would interrupt me as I tried to send emails or coordinate port events...left...right...left...right...for hours, days, and weeks on end.  After a while, I just couldn't take any more, and my clothes locker got a new impact crater.

   As we sat aboard NAVIGATOR in the "lee" of Saba, a 3000 foot high island with no harbors, we rolled...and rolled...and rolled.  I could feel the rage building.  There was no sleep. Instead it was a fitful night spent wedged into a corner trying to find some relief.  Lay one way and it felt like an endless ride on the pirate ship at the amusement park.  Turn the other way and I changed venues to the teacup ride.  Head aft into the cockpit and I was on the trampoline getting launched. The foc'sle was a dunk tank, taking green water over the bow...at anchor! Luckily I didn't rage against any inanimate objects this time - just noted a good reminder of how seasickness can manifest itself in a variety of ways.

  So, we cut our visit to Saba short and are now in the lee of St. Eustatius, in the Dutch West Indies...named for the Christian martyr who was tempted by his God on a sea voyage.  Thankfully, the rolling is much diminished.

Rage Against the Potatoes.

St. Barth

The weather has finally abated.  A week of strong trades followed directly by a gnarly north swell has had us hunkered down since we arrived in St. Barts almost two weeks ago.  We looked but did not find a decent surf break within walking/swimming distance, but I'm sure the North Atlantic will spin up more swell before the winter ends.  After our pleasant stay in Anse de Columbier, we made a pit stop in Gustavia for showers, water and groceries...and a fresh baguette of course, then headed back to Ile de Forchue.  Definitely the coolest island of the trip so far, totally uninhabited, and a great spot for some night photography.  Unfortunately, the first night the swell was so big, we couldn't land the dinghy, but that didn't stop Chris from swimming ashore with the gopro to capture some neat sun movement time lapse footage while Kellee lounged in the sun and read, she's up to almost 100 books read on the trip.

Last night we packed up chili and homemade bread and ate dinner ashore as the sun went down, then spent a couple of hours taking pictures.  This morning we got up a bit late after watching some Downton Abbey on the computer, so we opted to spend one more night in Gustavia before heading out to Saba.  We'll grab showers and some more provisions and finish up our list of "what to look up on the internet when we have a connection" and sail the 30 miles to Saba tomorrow.  Saba is seldom visited because it has no harbor, but it's a 4600' high rock with some unspoiled reef surrounding it, so we figure it will be worth the wait, we'll see.  We are still finalizing our plans for the hurricane season and will be sure to post our tentative schedule when we decide...and we can do that without worrying about opsec! After Saba is Eustatia, followed by St. Kitts/Nevis.  We don't expect to have internet until St. Kitts, so we'll have lots to update in a week or two.

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!