Fair Winds, Capt. Mike
Much has passed without comment, as you can infer from the datestamps, or just from having lived through the last couple years yourself. It’s not an excuse, I own this blog, not vice versa. Sometimes what’s inside can’t get down onto black and white for me and it isn’t mere laziness. I just didn’t want […]
Old Friends on a New Shore (Guadeloupe Landfall)
Pointe Noire, Guadeloupe My first Caribbean carnival was on Dominica not long after hurricane Sandy swept the East Coast. Portsmouth afforded me a verdant, vertical wonder of waterfalls and cliffside gardens, and a swirl of people, colors, and sounds after my long year in flat, grey Norfolk. Anchored near me was Spellbound, crewed by a […]
Upwind to Guadeloupe
It hit me square on the head with an audible squish of bones and secretions at the end of its last flight before pathetically flapping and bouncing on the cockpit sole, its wings now useless to forestall its doom. “Ahhh! Fuck! Sara!” “What? What? What?” “I just got hit by a fucking fish!” I rolled […]
Anagada Passage
We’re sipping coffee and listening to French radio on 105.9. To be fair, it’s a French station rebroadcasting here on St. Martin from Martinique, and mostly what they play is a schizophrenic-eclectic mix of our favorite oldies, mixed with favorites we never knew were our favorites, with a sprinkling of some French selections just to […]
Back in the BVI
I explained the proper use of the yellow “Q” flag as we made for Jost Van Dyke in light Easterly wind. We took a ball in Great Bay and surveyed the damage from Irma. Corsairs and the dive shop were rebuilding with a frenzy with hopes to complete before start of season. Foxy’s survived just […]
Headed to Jost
The moorings at Great St. James are still cozy and snug behind Fish Cay. The weather improved and we wedged ourselves between St. Thomas and St. John for a couple nights, snorkeling the reef. We filled a tank in Cruz Bay, and I was happy to see Low Key Divers were up and running, although […]
Virgin Passage
The Virgin Passage is probably the most traversed body of water around here. And it almost always sucks. A huge river of Atlantic floods the strait between Culebra and St. Thomas twice a day, and fiercely on a new moon exacerbated by Florence as she passes well north of us en route to her inevitable […]
Watching the Weather from Culebra
We made it as far as Culebra. Culebra, per usual, was mostly closed for reasons. They open their businesses when they want to, take the day off when they have better things to do. Must be nice, unless you’re an employee. Dinghy Dock was still open. Imagine, a dock where one can tie one’s dinghy […]
A Cleaner Bilge
Today Sara and I cleaned the bilge. This undesirable task was inadvisably initiated at anchor instead of a dock, where fresh water was to be had. Removing and disposing of a thin layer of engine oil was no problem. The odor from anarobic bacteria which bred beneath the warm, murky surface was not the worse […]