[Most recent entry is at end.] [Previous log file is http://www.geocities.com/bill_dietrich/Magnolia/MagnoliaLog2005Late.txt ] 1/14/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Salinas. Sky full of rainclouds, and little rain-squalls coming over every 5 minutes or so, but there's no wind with them. Debated staying in bed this morning and leaving tomorrow, but then I got up and moving. Checked engine oil and coolant, added water to batteries and strapped them down, got ready to go. Anchor up at 7 AM. Motored out and through "inside passage" to Bahia de Jobos. Swells look pretty bad out in the ocean; don't think I'll be going any further for a couple of days. Easy trip, protected from the ocean by lots of small cays. Ran the auto-pilot most of the time, and it worked just fine. Engine not quite 100%; a little wandering of the RPMs, but quite reliable. Looking good. Feels good to be moving. Eyeballed the Jobos mangrove-creek hurricane hole as I went past, and I think I'd rather stay right at Salinas during a hurricane. The middle of the hole is pretty deep, although I guess the point is to go up the creeks, which are shallow. Two cruising sailboats ("Primrose" and "Lollipop") anchored inside Boca del Infierno pass, more or less in the anchorage recommended by the guidebooks, but I decided to go up into the body of Bahia de Jobos and to the town of Puerto de Jobos, just out of curiosity. Went past an enormous power-station-and-factory complex at Aguirre. But as I rounded Punta Rodeo, none of the channel markers shown on my chart and guides were there. I took my best guess and slowed down a bit and went in, but then the depth went from 20 to 17 to 12 to 5 as I quickly put the engine in reverse. Managed to stop without grounding, and I backed out and gave up. Too bad; I can see a big marina full of boats at the town. Went down and anchored near the other two boats, finishing at 9:15 at lat 17.55.542 long 66.13.018 I'm just inside the Boca del Infierno pass, inside the Cayos Caribes reef and cays. Hey, the engine kill-switch worked ! Got sunny around 9 - 9:30, but then clouds closed in again. Finished installing SP2 on my laptop, and installed anti-virus and firewall. Heard half an hour of Car Talk on an AM station. Used my laptop a little too long and the plug started melting. Have to do something about this. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Listened to NWS weather, and it's totally confusing. The SE end of a front is moving down toward us, and is going to stall right over the area I want to head through. So the weather forecast, which covers a region hundreds of miles on a side, includes every kind of wind and seas you can think of, from small to large and in every direction, at various times and in various places. Very confusing. And the VHF WX channels give only a two-day forecast: today, tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night. So that's a bit limited. 1/15/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Boca del Infierno. Listened to NWS 6 AM weather forecast, and decided to stay put. Sounds like weather will be bad until a small window on Tuesday, then bad again. At 6:45, saw "Primrose" and "Lollipop" leave, going out the pass and heading east. They seem to be pitching quite a bit; looks rough out there. Confirms my decision to stay put. Heard "Wounded Spirit" talking to "True Companion" at Salinas, and WS was saying they had to abort their exit because they had a fuel pump problem. Then I heard "True Companion" saying it was nice outside, SE 5 wind and seas 3-5. So, suddenly I gave in to peer pressure and decided to go ! Anchor up at 7:45. Skies opened up halfway through raising the anchor and rained poured down. Headed out through the pass, which was quite scary, with sandbars and breakers not more than 100 feet away on each side. Fairly rough outside, but maybe it'll be better further from the pass. Three cruising boats just west of the pass; I think they're "True Companion", "Chez Freddie", and "Maritza". We all head east, and I'm not making nearly the speed I should be; doing only 4.3 knots or so. Probably a current against us, and maybe my prop is a bit fouled. As usual, all the other boats are faster than me, and they slowly pull ahead. Since they're only gaining slowly, there must be a current against all of us. We're motor-sailing straight into a very faint breeze, and the swells are lumpy and rolly, but not sharp enough to slow the boat down. Lots of rainclouds, but the actual rain goes away by 9 or so. I had thought of going to Palmas Del Mar on the east coast of Puerto Rico, but I talked to "True Companion", and he confirmed my suspicion that it's a tight anchorage and not good in strong E wind. Everyone else is going to Vieques, and it looks like I'll be going there too. It's 10-15 miles further than Palmas Del Mar, so I might arrive after dark. I do some research and decide that's okay. At 10:45, the auto-pilot quit. I turn it off for a while. Heard "Wounded Spirit"; they fixed a loose fuel line, are coming out, and will stop at Puerto Patillas today. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me; that place doesn't have much protection and this swell is going to make it uncomfortable. They'll go to Vieques tomorrow. At 11, I rotate the auto-pilot pulley in the engine compartment, turn on the auto-pilot, and it works. At 11:30, can see Vieques as a faint but large lump on the horizon. I'm still 30 miles from it. At 12:30. auto-pilot quits again. I turn off the "clutch" switch, go down and rotate the pulley a little, and it works again. Happens again at 12:45 and 2:45. Long slog through the afternoon, around the SE corner of Puerto Rico and across to Vieques, generally heading about 70 degrees. Stays lumpy and rolly all the way. Occasionally I get a little wind and the mainsail gives me an extra 1/2 knot or so, and the boat stops rolling. But generally it's a long, slow, somewhat uncomfortable trip. All of the other boats have gone out of sight ahead of me. And Puerto Rico is almost totally disappearing under low rainclouds behind me; the end of the front has reached down and it's tip is extending over top of me. But there doesn't seem to be any wind in it, or in any of the other clouds on the horizon in all directions. About 5 PM, I pull even with the west end of Vieques; another 7 miles or so to go. I had thought briefly of anchoring on the west end of the island, since it might protect from the ESE swells and tradewinds, but the weather forecast had some cycling of wind around to SW and NW, and swells from NW, so I don't want to try it. But that means I might arrive after dark at the anchorage at Esperanza. Should be no problem; it's an easy anchorage to get into. But on a cloudy day like this, it might get dark in a hurry; no lingering light after sunset. I have some salad, to start dinner and make sure I'm in good shape physically when it comes time to enter the anchorage. At 5:20, the auto-pilot quits and won't revive. Soon I take down the mainsail, wanting to do it before dark, and the rolling gets far worse. Just have to grit my teeth and bear it. Approach Esperanza around 5:45, with not much time left before dark, and it's a little hard to figure out from my angle. I'm approaching from west, and entrances to the three anchorages are from the south. Turns out the two cays that separate the three anchorages are much bigger than I expected; they're tall with cliff-sides. As I start passing to the south of the first anchorage, I see a lot of anchored boats, and can't tell which anchorage they're in. I get on the radio and hail "any cruiser anchored at Esperanza" for some advice about which anchorage is best sheltered from the swell, and one boat responds. He's in the third anchorage (Ensenada Sun Bay), the one everyone had said they were heading for, and the one that looks best-protected in theory. Although I realize that the swells are coming from almost the S now, so all of the anchorages will not be very protected from them. Anyway, I go to the third anchorage, entering with the last of the light, to find that I was talking to the ONLY boat that went to this anchorage; everyone else is in the anchorages closer to town. And it's harder to get to town from here than it looked on the chart. Oh, well, I'm committed. So I go in, head for the town end of the anchorage, and get the anchor down at 6:20, at lat 18.05.547 long 65.27.955 Engine kill switch didn't work. Starts raining right after I finish anchoring, so now I have to keep all of the ports closed, inside a boat all hot from the hot engine. And it's rolly here. But I'm safe and nothing really went wrong today, and it's good to be in a new place. PBJ sandwiches for dinner. Around 7ish, saw some huge explosions over on the other side of the island; seems to be the finale of a fireworks display. A little later, some lightning. Wind did slowly cycle around a bit in the evening, showing a bit of W for a while, but never more than 5-10 knots. At most angles, the swell didn't rock the boat, so I was pretty comfortable. Just after midnight, wind blew maybe 15 from N or NNE. 1/16/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Ensenada Sun Bay at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Totally grey morning. A little wind, from NE. Starts raining about 6 AM. Hey, I can receive an NPR FM station here ! Fuel level 3.3 inches at engine hour 3881; pretty low. Shockingly low, actually: did I really use 2.7 inches or 30 gallons in the last 13 engine hours ? About 2.3 gallons/hour versus the 1.4 I usually assume is my cruising-speed consumption. But there are a lot of variables, mainly that the tank shape is unknown but definitely non-rectangular, the tachometer is miscalibrated, and I pushed the RPMs a little yesterday to keep the speed up. I guess 2.0 - 2.3 is not unreasonable. I had been planning to fuel at Palmas Del Mar, but then didn't go there. Prices here may be ugly. "Maritza" left, heading for St. Croix, but got a late start and was "only" making 7 knots, which would make them arrive after dark. So they were going to divert into some bay on Vieques. Heard them talking to "Chez Freddie", and CF said Chris Parker this morning (I couldn't receive him) said rest of week will have a lot of NE to E wind, and seas up to 11 feet. Sun started coming out around 9:15. Fixed laptop power connector. Replaced single 5-amp (I think) plug with two 7.5-amp plugs. Hope this doesn't make some connection further down the wire overheat. Didn't realize the power adapter would draw up to 12 amps, since it only puts out about 7.5 amps. Raised anchor and moving at 10:50. Motored out and around and into 2nd (center) anchorage. Blowing NE 15+ today, probably more in the open water out of shelter of the island; glad I crossed yesterday. Anchored by 11:15, at lat 18.05.506 long 65.28.213, not more than 300 yards from where I was before. But this is MUCH better, sheltered from all the swells, well sheltered from the NE and E and maybe SE it should blow for the next few days. Realized later that the mooring balls I'm near are free moorings; I could pick one of them up. But there's no need, and I don't have a lot of practice picking up moorings. Saw a woman in a bikini on the beach; first one I've seen since Boqueron, I think. Thought there was a school of dolphin in the middle of the harbor, but it turned out to be several people snorkeling way out from the beach to one of the cays. Good thing there isn't much boat-traffic here. Took a shower, scrubbed part of deck, did dishes, emptied diesel jug into fuel tank. Beautiful sunny afternoon. Around 2:30, dinghied ashore and wandered around. Not much here, just a waterfront strip with lots of little restaurants and stands, plenty of small boats, and a bunch of houses. There is a bakery and a library and a school. But no gas station; will have to pay $5 or more for ride to "town" (Isabel Segunda) which is on the other side of the island, all of 4 miles away. Not too much going on, and today probably is a "busy" day because it's a holiday: MLK day. Salad and cornedbeef­-chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. 1/17/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Feeling very lazy; loafed all morning, when I should have been going ashore to get fuel, or working on the auto-pilot motor. Started blowing E 20+ this morning. "Maranatha" called me at 10:50, and they're arriving. They're coming in from the west, through the first anchorage. I told them I didn't come in that way, and the Pavlidis guide said maybe 6 feet through there. Their chartplotter said 16 feet. Talked to "Maranatha" at 11:45, and they did touch the bottom briefly trying to get through from the first anchorage to the second ! Their chartplotter chart (C-Map) had it wrong. Fortunately, mostly due to my warning, they were going very slowly and cautiously, and bumped very gently. They spent a night in Puerto Patillas and saw "Wounded Spirit" there, but have no idea where they are now. And then they spent a night in Palmas del Mar's anchorage, and the swell made it VERY uncomfortable, so I'm glad I didn't go there. They had a rough crossing to here, often putting the bowsprit into the water, and later found they'd lost a decorative carved wooden faceplate off the side of their bow. At 12:20, Jim and Freddie from "Chez Freddie" came by to say hello. They're on a mooring, and I said I was thinking of momvinbg to a mooring. But they said they dove on their mooring, and the big main line was severed, and what had been holding them was a piece of clothesline someone had put down there ! So dive the mooring if you go onto one. They invited me over for drinks tonight. They said they left this morning, but it was so rough outside that they came right back in. I'm keeping an eye out to see if my anchor is dragging; the holding here is supposed to be not so great. Around 1:30, decided that the anchor was indeed sliding a bit, and decided to move it forward and also put down a second anchor, else I'd never feel comfortable leaving the boat. But the operation turned into a fiasco: I managed to get the secondary anchor, dangling off the bow, tangled around the chain of the primary anchor, and then hooked on the chain when I tried to let out the primary anchor chain again. And the primary anchor started dragging after I put it down, so by the time I had the second down and gripping, I'd slid back out a lot farther than I'd hoped. But the second grabbed well, and my position was okay, so I settled for that. Didn't have the energy to raise both again and start all over. It's blowing 20+, and the bow was slewing all over the place as I raised and lowered anchors and tried to untangle them. Sat down and monitored the situation for 45 minutes or so, then dinghied ashore, taking fuel jugs with me. Stood waiting for a publico to town for 20 minutes or so, and chatted briefly with Desmond and Hiro. Then a couple from New York came by, and they had a number for a van and called it for me on their cell-phone. We had a nice chat. They complained that you can't get decent fruit here for some reason; there seem to be fruit trees in people's yards, but no fruit in the (limited) stores here. Then the van came, and it turned out that the round-trip fare was what I had hoped, $6/person round-trip, but the driver wanted me to pay to make up the 3-person minimum load: he wanted $18 from me ! I didn't want to just get out, because he'd already come from town for me, and also he might be the only publico here. We negotiated to $12. So, off to the gas station in this big van, and we had a nice chat on the way. The roads are a bit narrow, so every time there was opposing traffic, we both had to slow down and move over to the very edge of the road to pass each other. Got to the station, and gas is much cheaper here than in Salinas, but diesel is just as expensive as in Salinas. Strange. Got 10.5 gallons or so for $33, at 80.7 cents/liter or about $3.15/gallon. But when you add in the van fare, $45 for 10.5 gallons. Back to Esperanza, put the fuel jugs in the dinghy. Walked down the street heading for an internet place, but Hiro hailed me from the upper deck of a bar. So I went up there and had a gin-and-tonic with Desmond and Hiro. A bit pricey at $4.50, I thought, but Desmond said in Japan sometimes a drink was $16. Back to the boat, and "Chez Freddie" called to remind me of the invitation to their boat for drinks, and they invited "Maranatha" too. So at 6 PM we all went to "Chez Freddie", a very nice catamaran (30-something long, lots of Beneteau parts in it, ex-charter, built by Roberts and somebody) with Jim and Freddie aboard. Also there was Luke from ???, a French-Canadian. We had a very nice time, drinking and snacking and chatting for almost 4 hours. I had brought my box of wasabi peas, so everyone got to try them. Lots of nice conversation about boats and cruising and then politics and world affairs. We even touched on some pretty sensitive territory with Hiro from Japan, talking about WW II and the atomic bomb and Pearl Harbor and such. I was surprised to learn that "Raven", the boat which went on the rocks at Samana and was pulled off for $7000 salvage fee, had a lot of serious damage. I had heard they had a hole in the side of the hull but quickly patched it. Now Desmond says that "Raven" had lots of structural damage, with bulkheads coming loose and shifting so that doors and such inside can no longer be closed. Back to the boat about 9:45. Found a dead cockroach in the aft galley. [I've been told that if I EVER want to get a woman to join me aboard, I'd better stop writing about cockroaches!] 1/18/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Lots of rain and wind at 6 AM. Anxious that my anchors might be dragging, but later I decided they probably hadn't moved. Emptied fuel jugs into fuel tank. "Primrose" and "Lollipop" came in from the east, to hide from the coming strong winds. Blew 30 in the squall this morning, and I think we're supposed to get sustained 30 tomorrow. At 10, went ashore and joined Desmond and Hiro and Jim and Freddie in a van to "town": Isabel Segunda. Another couple aboard was heading for the ferry to Fajardo. $3 one-way. Wandered all around town, which was interesting. Lovely views out into the Sonda de Vieques, and back over the island. Could see the east end of Puerto Rico too. Lots of wind and whitecaps out there today. Went to the lighthouse, which was a surprisingly low building, built on top of a rise. Then to the fort, which had a terrific museum ($2) and incredible views. Lots of historic artifacts and photos, and some art too. The center of town was all torn up with roadwork, with lots of mud in several of the streets. But I couldn't figure out why this town is here; the harbor here is dubious at best, and there doesn't seem to be any other valuable feature here. Maybe just because this is the closest part of Vieques to Puerto Rico ? Had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with Desmond and Hiro, and Hiro and I accidentally ended up with stuffed potatoes, to our disappointment. Obviously the lady didn't translate the dish properly for us when we had asked. But it was filling, and the view was terrific. On this island, we all keep saying things like "it's so NICE here!" to each other. Wandered a little more after lunch, then to the supermarket for groceries. Back into the van ($3), and to a gas station for more fuel (another $33 for 10.5 or so gallons of diesel). Back to the boat, saying hi to the people from "Primrose" and "Lollipop" on the dinghy dock. Emptied one fuel jug into the fuel tank. Spilled just a little diesel and wiped it up. Then went to put away the jugs and found that the small gas-jug I'd transferred my extra gallon or two of gasoline to had split on the side. I probably lost 1/2 gallon of gasoline onto the deck. Transferred the remaining gas back to the big gas jug. Dinghied ashore. Went to Historical Trust building and did internet ($3 for 1/2 hour for very slow link). Some attractive women there, and a nice little museum and a book-exchange. Nice place. Asked the volunteer there why Isabel Segunda was built where it was, and she didn't know either. Walked up to the library, which is very neat but has very few books, and has internet computers for free. I'll try them tomorrow. I was chatting with Luke and partner on "Aigue Belle" when we saw a small ketch sailing in to the anchorage from the west [found out later it was "Dream"]. Very pretty, until suddenly they went aground. A couple of people zoomed over in dinghies to help them, and ended up towing them over onto a mooring. They must not have an engine, or the engine was not working. [Found out later, the alternator quit, so the batteries went dead and engine couldn't be started.] PBJ sandwich and cheese sandwich for dinner. 1/19/2006 (Thursday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Up on deck at 6:30, taking advantage of the usual slight lull in the wind in the early morning. Raised anchors and moved forward into shallower water, and put them down again. Will have to snorkel out and move the primary anchor a little; I ran out of depth when trying to place it, so I'm really just hanging on the secondary. But I feel much more secure with the anchors in 4.5-foot water now instead of the 7.5-foot I had before. With 95 feet of chain out on each anchor and 6 feet of freeboard at the bow, that gives me about 9-1 scope instead of the 7-1 I had before, and gives me much more room to drag before getting to deeper water. It's supposed to start blowing a sustained 30 knots with squalls to 40+ tonight, and keep doing that for several days. Waves up to 15 feet in the open Atlantic. At about 9:30, went out in the dinghy and moved the primary anchor, getting it out far enough so the two anchors are grabbing equally, and so I don't swing too close to a neighboring boat if the wind goes SE (which it won't do until at least Monday). Blowing 20+ by 10 AM. Dinghied ashore and went to the library, but it was closed. To the grocery store, which turned out to be surprisingly nice, and prices were decent. To the waterfront, and chatted with a couple of guys who I overheard talking about the cruising sailboats. One of them has lived here for a couple of years off and on and says he still hasn't figured out the schedule of that library. To the historical trust building and used their book-exchange. Back to the boat. Anchors look good. Blew 30 or so for 10 minutes or so just after noon. Saw a stingray jumping out of the water and landing back in with a loud slapping noise. I'd heard the noise and seen the splashes the last couple of days, but never seen it in midair. Rainclouds and brief squalls coming through every hour or two, all day. Plenty of wind but the rain is always brief. Sunny and clear and breezy between squalls. Went snorkeling around 2 PM. Scraped the prop and a little of the hull. I had thought the gooey grassy stuff that grew in Salinas would be torn off when I got underway, but it seems to have died in place. So the prop is pretty clean but the hull has matted fibers all over it. Probably cost me 1/2 a knot on my way over here. Scraped the prop thoroughly but left the hull for another day. Swam forward to check the anchors, and saw the stingray cruising along the bottom. Its body is only maybe 15 inches square, but its tail is a good 5 feet long ! Shocked to see that neither anchor had grabbed in the thick grass. In fact, the secondary (a Danforth 40-something) was dragging as I looked at it. The tips of the blades were pointed down but the butt of it was tipped up in the air, and only the crosspiece was digging in and providing any holding. Dove down 5 or 6 times to jam the tips of the blades into the tough base of the grass. Couldn't get it in all the way, but I think I got it in solidly. Over to the primary anchor (CQR 45), and it's on its side, unable to dig the tip into the grass. Found an edge of a nice big hole to hook the tip of the anchor over; that'll hold tremendously well. In fact, I may have to snorkel again when I want to raise the anchors; they won't be easy to get loose. Got in the dinghy, went over to the nearest cay (Punta de Tierra) and snorkeled there a bit. Grass everywhere. Plenty of little fish, but most of them are grass-colored. Strong wind creating a surface current that pushed me downwind pretty hard. Didn't stay too long. Since I had jammed the blade-tips of the dinghy's small Danforth anchor into the base of the grass, it was very hard to pull up from inside the dinghy, even when pulling straight up on the rode. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Squalls coming through every hour or two all night. 1/20/2006 (Friday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. A couple of squalls or windbursts this morning that probably approached 40 knots. Took the auto-pilot motor off to fix it again. Got about 1/2 teaspoon more of carbon dust out of it, then squirted lots of "electronics cleaner" through it. Put it back together and back into the auto-pilot, and it seems okay. As I dinghied ashore about 10:15, saw a big white schooner heading west outside the harbor. When I came back at 1:30, they were anchored near "Maranatha". Pure white 55- or 60-foot schooner. Ashore, went to library and did a long internet session. Had email from "Too Lazy To" saying they'd had a fatal engine problem near Nassau (crankshaft broke ?). Had lots of trouble sailing west, then were becalmed and hit rocks off Gun Cay, fortunately doing only moderate damage. A long slow sail across the Gulf Stream to be becalmed off Miami. Boarded by Homeland Security, who wouldn't give them a tow into the harbor. Eventually sailed in and down the Keys and around to Shark River, where hurricane Wilma went right over top of them. Now they're somewhere further north, maybe Punta Gorda, house-sitting and working on the boat. They bought a used Perkins 4-108 with bad bearings for $350 from someone. Various other non-boat troubles. Quite a story. Used the book-exchange at the library. Went to smaller grocery store, which turned out to be quite reasonable; the few stores in this small town are surprisingly decent. Back to boat, and the wind is HOWLING this afternoon. I'm pulled up 100 yards behind a sheltering beach, and still the wind is whipping up enough of a swell to make it lumpy. Yet I see a smallish cruising sloop out in the Caribbean, heading east ! They're pitching like crazy and have reefed sails up, but they're moving along just fine. No way could my boat do that in these conditions, and I wouldn't want to try anyway. Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches for dinner. 1/21/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Wind howling again this morning. Jim from "Chez Freddy" came by to invite me for drinks at 6; he's inviting all the cruisers in the harbor. Don't know why he didn't just call on the radio. Called Desmond to tell him a boat in front of him had its jib starting to unfurl; he was aware of it, and after a while someone fixed it. Chatted with him a bit, and he said they took the van to town to do internet, and when he got there he found he'd forgotten to take his WiFi card with him. Added water to the batteries. Loafed, reading books and listening to NPR. I've been plowing through quite a few books lately. One of the best things about being retired is the time to read books and listen to the radio. Wind howled all day. But my anchors are holding. No rain except for once later in the evening. Several people surfing in the breakers at the harbor entrance, 100 yards from my boat. Salad and peanut-butter-crackers for dinner. At 6, launched the dinghy and went to "Chez Freddy" for drinks. A large crowd: Jim and Freddy from "Chez Freddy", Desmond and Hiro from "Maranatha", Luke and Carol from "Aigue Belle", Sylvie from "Tringa", Fred from "Dream", and me. Lots of nice conversation and drink and food. The wind calmed a bit, but several people's wind instruments had read well up into the 40's during the day. We saw bioluminescent worms in the water around 9 PM: little spots of light. When someone turned on a spotlight, we could see hundreds of wormy things squiggling away. Back to the boat about 9:45, and hoisting the dinghy with the boat rolling, in the dark, with the wind picking up again, was a challenge. Half an hour later, the wind was howling full-strength again. 1/22/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Wind blew and blew all day. Read and listened to radio all day. Heard Car Talk at 1 PM, and Prairie Home Companion at 4 PM. A couple of boats came in in the early afternoon: "Painkiller", and a catamaran whose name I couldn't read even after I saw it clearly through the binoculars; why do people have the boat-name painted in fancy, unreadable script ? [Later saw that it is "Dawn Star"; had to read it from their mainsail cover.] Chicken-onion-rice for dinner. Started to get rolly in the evening; swells are curving or bouncing into the harbor, even though the wind direction hasn't changed. 1/23/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Wind still howling. Some sustained wind in the mid-40's for 10 minutes or so at 6:30 AM. Dinghied ashore in the morning and did a long internet session at the library. Exchanged some books and got groceries. Very rolly in the afternoon. "Dawn Star" tried moving into Sun Bay to see if it was better over there, but came back here and went onto a mooring. Catamaran "Blue Tang" came in and anchored next to me. Around 5 PM, heard sailboat "Hoyden" trying to raise Coast Guard, then trying to raise "Maritza". After a while, I called "Hoyden", and the woman was very relieved to hear from me. As I guessed, they had a distress situation: a member of the crew had chopped off the end of a finger by getting it caught in the hinge of a swim ladder, I think. They were anchored in Ensenada Honda, further east down Vieques, in a pretty isolated area. I tried calling USCG on the VHF, and got no response. Then tried "Maranatha", who has a cell-phone aboard, and got no response. Then called for anyone with a cell-phone, and "True Companion" responded. Some confusion because "Hoyden" had an international-only VHF, and some channels are US-only or international-only. Eventually USCG and "Hoyden" connected via VHF, then by phone (turns out "Hoyden" had a cell-phone aboard). Last I heard, they were trying to arrange for Vieques police to meet them at a dock in Ensenada Honda. Salad and cheese sandwiches and rum-and-coke for dinner. Listened to the NOAA weather, and sounds like wind will ease a bit Wednesday afternoon or evening, then immediately strengthen again. 1/24/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Wind seems to have eased a little. More in the 20-30 range instead of the 25-35 range. Found I'd left the refrigerator turned off all night. I turned it off yesterday evening because it was interfering with shortwave weather reception, then forgot to turn it back on. "Painkiller" left about 9:15, heading SE. Looks rough out there. "Blue Tang" left about 11:15. About 12:30, heard a boat "Rita Louise" getting a tow from the Coast Guard. Dinghied ashore after lunch and went to the library. Did a long internet session, and exchanged a couple of books. Stopped at "Maranatha" on the way back and gave a book to Desmond. They're planning to leave tomorrow morning and head to Green Beach. Desmond heard "Hoyden" saying that the crew who had the tip of his finger chopped off had it reattached. Salad and chili for dinner. Anchor light doesn't work; bulb must have burnt out last night. 1/25/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Esperanza on Vieques PR. Wind down to the 15-20 range and clocked to SE. "Dawn Star" left at 8 AM. Heading due south, which is a bit strange; where are they going ? Heard Jim on "Chez Freddie" on the radio telling "Maritza" that he'd tried to leave this morning and blew a coolant system gasket (which he'd made from Liquid Gasket), so he had to get a van into town today. I called him and offered my stock of gasket-material; I have about 5 different kinds. He came over and picked it up, and was grateful. I told him to take some as spare, too; everyone out here should have some aboard. "Lolipop" left at 8:30; later heard them saying it wasn't bad out there, swells about 4-6. "Primrose" left soon after. "Maranatha" left about 10. Had an early lunch, then launched the dinghy and put on the gear and snorkeled under the boat. Scraped the hull for a couple of hours, getting about 2/3 of the job done. A couple of dozen 5-inch-long fish swarming around in the cloud of debris I'm creating, but I doubt there's much edible in it. There are some little crabs and shrimp and barnacles and such being scraped free. A sailboat came in and anchored next to me while I was snorkeling, then raised anchor, went out, and came back in to the west part of the harbor. Guess they didn't like the rolliness here. Last thing I do is snorkel over to the anchors and pull both of them loose, hoping they will hold enough in these milder conditions to give me time to get back on the boat safely. No way I could have raised the CQR from deck; it was hooked solidly on a "cliff" in the bottom (I hooked it there). The boat stays still, with weight of anchors and chain on top of the grass holding okay, but I'm still a bit nervous as I swim back to the boat, get in the dinghy, take off my snorkel gear, hoist the dinghy, shower myself and rinse off the snorkel gear, check engine oil, and get boat ready to go. All the time, I'm looking out to see if the boat is dragging, but it's not. Then I rest for a couple of minutes, to get some energy back before heading out. I'm a little nervous about heading out in the afternoon, because if something goes wrong I'll have fewer daylight hours left to work with. And I'm guessing it's rough out there, and I'm heading for a bay that may be tricky to get into. Oh, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained ! Started raising anchors about 1:45. Both up and boat moving around 2:10. Motored out of the harbor, into big swells. And at least a knot of current against me. Slow slog upwind and up-current, making about 3.5 knots. Very rolly. Got to entrance to Puerto Ferra bioluminescent bay, and it's gut-check time. Lots of breakers on both sides of entrance, but entrance itself seems okay. But I'll be entering with wind and waves from behind; if something goes wrong, I could well lose the boat. (I hate dwelling on this, but the best way to avoid doing it is to think hard about how it could happen.) Check the charts and guides and GPS and terrain again and again, making sure I'm really looking at the right place. Then I head in. Turns out to be fine; the charts are accurate and I avoid the shoal areas, and the swells in the middle of the entrance aren't bad. Once past the swells, I throttle down to idle speed and nose in carefully, because there are shoals on both sides, and you have to favor the starboard side. I find the deeper water inside with no problem. Very nice: it's much calmer here than in the harbor at Esperanza, and I'm the only boat here. Lots of room. Finish anchoring at 3:30, at lat 18.06.427 long 65.25.645 Very quiet here, unlike the sea outside. A couple of signs warning of unexploded ordinance ashore; this end of the island was the bombing range area. Salad and salami-cheese-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. Got up a couple of times after dark, to look for bioluminescence, but nothing to be seen. When I pulled up a bucket of water and dumped it back in, I think I saw a bit of glowing. But nothing impressive. 1/26/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Puerto Ferra bay on Vieques PR. Listened to NOAA weather at 6, and it's going to be E or SE 15 today, then NE 20-30 for at least several days after that. Thought briefly of heading out at first light and around E end of Vieques and up to Culebra. But it's 10 miles to the E end, in rolly seas and probably doing 3.5 knots, so 3 hours. [Actually, at 6 AM, I miscalculated, thought it was 15+ miles and thus 5 hours.] Then about 15 miles NNW to Culebra, maybe 3 to 4 hours. So I decided not to go. And that means another day here, then back to Esperanza and probably another week there. I guess that's not bad; it's a nice place. But I feel I should be moving along somehow. So, what chores can I accomplish today ? Climb mast and replace anchor light bulb and turn radio antenna right-side up ? Snorkel and finish scraping the hull ? Or just loaf ? Lots of rainclouds coming at 8 AM, and then lots of rain and some SE wind at 8:30. Turned into a completely grey day. Guess I won't be climbing the mast today. Loafed all day, reading and eating and listening to radio and using the laptop. Boring but nice. Salad and mushroomsoup-and-noodles for dinner. In the middle of the night, I pull up a bucket of water and see luminescent things in it. Lots of glowing when I dump the water back into the bay. But the little sparkles light very briefly; not quite what I expected, and not what we saw off the stern of "Chez Freddy" a few days ago. The thing you're supposed to do is dive in and see yourself covered with a glowing envelope. I go back to bed. 1/27/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Puerto Ferra bay on Vieques PR. Listened to NOAA weather and VHF WX at 6, and it's going to start blowing NE 25-35 tonight, and keep doing it for a couple of days. So do I stay here, move a little east to a new anchorage, head west back to Esperanza, or head east around the end of Vieques and north up to Culebra ? Decide to head out and see what the swells and current are doing. If I can get east, I'll go to Culebra. So, anchor up just after 6:30, when first light is just appearing, and put the mainsail up and head out of the anchorage. Nice outside, swell is small, and when I turn east, the current isn't too bad. With engine at reduced RPMs, I'm making 4.2 knots of so, probably against 0.5 knot current. Another boat heading in to Ensenada Honda anchorage as I'm coming out of my anchorage. Nice motor-sail east along the coast of Vieques, and approaching the east end just after 9 AM. After an initial hiccup, auto-pilot is working fine. I expect a boost in speed after turning the corner and heading N, since the swell is from SE and the prevailing current should be from the SE, although the wind is already NE. But I'm discouraged to see my boat speed drop to 2.7 knots or so ! Why do I always seem to find an opposing current ? Soon I hear some occasional rumbling too; wonder if I've run over a crab-trap float. As I cover the 9 miles from Vieques to Culebra, my speed gradually increases. Within a couple of miles of Culebra, I'm doing 4 knots. As I pass into the mouth of the harbor, I'm doing close to 5 knots. So I think I really did have opposing current all the way across. I haven't changed the throttle setting all morning. Into Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra, and it's nice in here. Boats anchors in every cranny along the sides, but there's still plenty of room. I Take the mainsail down, and then "Maranatha" calls me on the VHF to welcome me. When I ask about internet, they say there's free WiFi in the harbor ! I head up to the town of Dewey, and anchor in about 17 feet of water, fairly close in to the dinghy dock, about 50 yards behind "Maranatha". They say "Second Wind" is here too; I don't see anyone else I recognize, but I haven't looked carefully. Finished anchoring by 12:30, at lat 18.18.346 long 65.17.961 Feeling tired in the afternoon. A shower made me feel a bit better. Tried to connect to WiFi repeatedly and got only a few tantalizing moments of connection. Found out "Chez Freddy" is anchored next to me, "Otra Mundo" on the other side, "Aigue Belle" and "Primrose" are here, and "Wounded Spirit" arrived at Esperanza yesterday. Lots of small-plane trafic here; there's an airstrip right at the edge of the water, and planes are passing about 200 yards in front of me. Seems to be a flight every 20 or 30 minutes, but they're all 4-seat or 8-seat planes, nothing very large. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Finally managed to get a few minutes of sporadic WiFi connectivity, long enough to upload my log file and update the virus-checker. Front hit us at about 7:30; blasts of 40-knot NE wind and some rain. And it stayed very windy and gusty all night. I didn't sleep much; kept getting up to look out and make sure I wasn't dragging and no one was dragging down onto me. Hard to tell much in a strange harbor in the dark. Lots of very strong wind, probably up to 45 knots at times. 1/28/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Strong, gusty wind continues. Chop and whitecaps in the water, although there's only a couple of hundred yards of fetch in the direction the wind is coming from. But no one has dragged in the night; everything seems fine. Almost solid grey cloud cover, and it's blowing a solid 20-25 with gusts over 35, I think. Supposed to do this all day. I think I'll stay aboard, although it's tantalizing to have a new town 100 yards away and not be able to get to it. Fuel level 5.0 inches at engine hour 3890. Repaired dive gloves with duct tape. Saw a small plane take off the from the airport, and suddenly his nose pitched way up. He must have been hit by a severe gust. For a moment I thought he was going to stall and crash, but he recovered. Several other planes took off today, but none of them did anything close to that. Salad and salami-cheese-crackers for dinner. 1/29/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Wind down to 20+ in the morning, but back up to 25-30+ by noon. Dinghied ashore about 10 and wandered. Around the harbor and halfway up the hillside, to a very nice view. Then it started raining, and I walked when it was drier and hid behind telephone poles and under trees when it was wetter. Headed back toward town, stopping in a panaderia for a sugar donut to fortify myself. Lots of traffic on the roads; it seems like every time I want to cross the road, I have to wait. And it's all SUV's. Stopped in a hardware store, then watched the ferry load up. Talked to cute girl running the Paradise gift shop. Nice lady in a hotel printed out a map of town for me. I told her my parents had come here 20 years ago, and she said she arrived here about then, and "there were tumbleweeds blowing through town back then". Bought bread in the "Pan Deli", then across the little lift bridge. Stopped in a gift shop, and then had a box of free books, so I took one. To the grocery store, and bought onions and an apple. Checked out fuel prices. Then back to the govt dock and into the dinghy, and had a very wet and rough ride back out to the boat. Listened to Car Talk; very nice. Worked on repairing laptop and radio power cords; not sure I accomplished much. They both have intermittent glitches. Bummer; the free WiFi signal has become for-pay. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Watched a couple in a small rowboat rowing out, and making very little headway against the rough conditions; they must have taken 20 minutes to go 100 yards. If my dinghy had been in the water, I would have offered them a tow. Jim on "Chez Freddy" invited them aboard for a drink and a rest, and then gave them a tow out to their boat. Squooshed a cockroach in the cockpit. 1/30/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Still blowing hard occasionally. Lots of clouds. Woo-hoo ! The free WiFi signal is back, at least for now. Dinghied ashore and walked around. Looked for the library, but it's been moved inside the school and made kids-only. Exchanged books at the book-exchange in the gift shop; no cute girl behind the counter today. To the ferry dock and chatted with the guys from "Aigue Belle" and "Otra Mundo". Climbed hill to hospital to see the tremendous view from up there. Back down to town and chatted with couple from "Chez Freddy". To internet cafe, and they have the highest prices I've seen anywhere: $15/hour ! To hardware/marine store, but it was closed. Bought bananas and then a wet, rough dinghy ride back to the boat. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner. 1/31/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Wind stalled out in the middle of the night and it got a little warm and buggy. Did a bucket of laundry. Lots of boats moving this morning, heading out to other anchorages or other islands. Saw a school of a thousand 1-inch fish leaping out of the water behind the boat. Soon they were being dive-bombed by a couple of pelicans. Good segue to the only poem I can remember: A strange bird is the pelican His mouth holds more than his belican -- Ogden Nash [Whoops: my friend Stacy told me this is a common mis-attribution, and the correct poem and attribution is: A wonderful bird is the Pelican, His bill can hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week; But I'm damned if I see how the helican. -- Dixon Lanier Merritt ] Loafed and read and did internet. Spaghetti and rum-and-grapefruitjuice for dinner. 2/1/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Raised anchor about 8:30 and moved, hoping to strengthen that free WiFi signal. Dropped anchor under the airport flight path (but pretty far out) and checked; no good. Moved to the NW corner and dropped anchor again; marginal. Sat there for an hour and then raised anchor and circled the harbor, constantly checking signal strength. Felt like a total geek. Ended up anchoring about 100 yards from where I started, on the other side of "Maranatha". Still not a very strong signal. And the planes probably can read my email as they take off. Did internet much of the day. Went snorkeling under the boat about 3:30, for more than an hour, scraping the hull. A school of very tiny fish, not more than 1/2 inch long, darting around in the debris, looking for food. Talked to "Maranatha" on the VHF. They figured out why I was unable to contact them for the last couple of days: whenever they put a big load on their inverter, such as running the microwave oven, their VHF radio cycles on and off, and often ends up turned off. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. 2/2/2006 (Thursday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Totally grey morning. Rain from 6 to 7:30. "Santana" came into the harbor about 9:30. Read and did internet much of the day. Stayed grey and rainy until about 3 in the afternoon. Then it got sunny and nice. Salad and chicken-mushroom-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 2/3/2006 (Friday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Rain before dawn. Sunny from 8 to 9 or so, then cloudy and rainy and windy all morning. Windy with whitecaps in the harbor in the afternoon. Loafed all day. Really should get off the boat and get some exercise, but I just don't have the energy for the nasty dinghy-ride in these conditions. Laptop adapter kept blowing fuse that powers the cockpit. Then I figured out the problem: the socket in the cockpit stupidly has positive and negative very close together, and the plug from the laptop is a bit wide and loose. So it shorts out positive and negative and blows the fuse. Salad and peanut-butter crackers for dinner. Struggled all night with the refrigerator, which wanted to run continuously and drain the batteries. 2/4/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Totally grey after dawn, and rain at 8 AM. Then sunny and a gorgeous rainbow, with a second faint rainbow outside it. Emptied diesel jug into fuel tank. Pumped up dinghy tubes. Dinghied into town, stopping by "Maranatha" to chat briefly with Hiro. To fuel dock at gas station, and got $5 worth of gasoline (about 1.5 gallons) and $30 of diesel (10+ gallons). Got 5 gallons of water before I realized they were charging for it (10 cents/gallon). To marine/hardware store to look for fuses, but they directed me to a one-room auto-parts store. All they had was a 25A fuse; I need 7.5A. To govt dock. Disposed of garbage. Walked around town a little; not much happening. Bought bread at bakery. To book-exchange in gift shop; got 6 books and left 9. To small supermarket, got onions and cheese and milk. They had some fuses, but not the automotive 2-prong I was looking for. Bought a pack of cylindrical fuses to replace the ones I was blowing yesterday. Back to boat, and emptied 5 gallons of diesel into fuel tank. A bit headachey in the afternoon. Wind blowing hard again. Salad and spaghetti for dinner. Lots of rain and some wind at 9 PM or so. 2/5/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Ran engine for 30 minutes to charge batteries. Looked up around lunchtime to find sailboat "Windchime" anchored pretty close ahead of me. Didn't hear them come in. Salad and tuna-salad sandwich and rum-and-coke for dinner. Moderate rain around 8 PM. 2/6/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Thought of climbing the mast, but too many rainclouds rolling past. Blowing hard by noon. Heard a couple of boats out at Culebrita who couldn't take the rolling, and were debating where to go for shelter. Added water to the batteries. At 5 PM, dinghied over to "Maranatha" to have dinner and drinks with Desmond and Hiro and also Bonnie from "Hot Pursuit". Lots of fun, although Desmond poured a really stiff rum-and-coke that had me reeling. Terrific food: Desmond made a Thai meal with a couple of curry dishes, a sweet dish, and a spicy dish. Had a nice time chatting and looking at photos of their trips. Bonnie told us about the horrors of her trip from Ft Laud to Culebra. I knew about all the mechanical breakdowns she had, with engine and fuel and steering problems. But I didn't realize all the crew problems she had, too. A nightmare, and a very expensive experience, and a one-week trip that turned into an 8-week trip, but finally she got here in one piece. Only to find things going wrong here, too: a resort cancelled out of their deal to retain her boat as a daily charter, kicking her off their dock, and her home docking association has decided to kick out permanent boats too. So she's still having bad luck. 2/7/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Lots of clouds and some rain. Bonnie was supposed to call me on the VHF to come over and help her do an oil change, but I never heard anything on the radio. "Wounded Spirit" came into the harbor. Hoyt came over later to say hi. Salad and chili for dinner. Lots of wind all night, both from the SE, and from the chili. 2/8/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Lots of rainclouds. Blowing hard by 10 or so. The free WiFi access went away about 48 hours ago, and still is gone. Sigh. Dinghied ashore in the afternoon. Chatted with Desmond and Hiro on the dinghy dock; they did laundry at Bonnie's, and told me she's having a poker-party tomorrow. Town pretty dead; wandered around a bit to get some exercise. One supermarket closed, but got groceries at the other. Salad and cheese sandwich and rum-and-coke for dinner. 2/9/2006 (Thursday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Climbed the mainmast. Hoped to do three jobs: replace anchor light bulb, turn radio antenna right side up, and replace spreader light bulb. But I failed to hoist the climbing rope all the way to the limit, so I came up 1 foot short of the top of the mast. Saw that the main halyward wire is badly chafed; will have to chop a few feet off the end and re-swage it. I did successfully replace the spreader light bulb, although I had a major struggle with the stupid compression-ring thing that holds it in. Finally got it right. I've been having problems with the keyboard on my laptop; it seems to have to "warm up" a lot in the morning before I can type in the startup password successfully. And sometimes a key or two won't work during normal use. I don't see how to get keys off to clean beneath them, and the manual doesn't say how to do it. Took a solar shower in the midafternoon, which I don't usually do, and was reminded why: the water was hot enough to scald me, even after adding a quart of cooler water to it. Had to be careful. At 4 PM, dinghied to "Wounded Spirit" to give them a book, then we all dinghied ashore: Hoyt, me, Desmond, Hiro. Met Terry and Frankie from "Second Wind", Bonnie arrived in her pickup truck, and then we all drove to Bonnie's house, with Desmond and Hiro and I making a brief stop at the post office. Her house is about 5 miles east of the main harbor, up on a hill, with a stunning view over the sound to the SE, and down onto a pretty bay (Puerto Manglar, I think). A steep, mostly unpaved driveway that was an adventure even in the SUV and pickup truck we were driving. A simple but elegant house with a very open plan to show off all the great views. Then we had a nice evening of food and conversation and poker (Texas Hold-Em). I had brought a suitcase of laundry, and used her machines; very nice. Really clean sheets and towels for the first time in a while. The food was great: some nice bean-cheese-chips stuff for appetizers, then small pizzas for dinner. Poker isn't my favorite game, but I did fine. We each put in $10 at the start. Terry and I (the novices) each ended up with almost $15, Hoyt and Desmond broke even, and Bonnie was cleaned out; not very nice of us guests. A couple of shy cats hanging around, and at least one is a "Hemingway cat": six toes on each foot. Back to the boat around 10 PM. A huge ketch that came in and anchored earlier was all lit up. Their mainmast has five sets of spreaders on it, which is incredible (my boat has only one set of spreaders on each mast). Even their mizzenmast has four sets of spreaders. Not sure how long the boat is, but probably a little less than 100 feet. Glad I don't have to climb their masts and replace their spreader light bulbs. [The next morning, I heard them on the radio announcing their departure, and they said they're 190 feet long !] 2/10/2006 (Friday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. "Wounded Spirit" left early, for St. Thomas; heard them out in the Sound saying they were happy to be actually sailing for once, although they we making only 2 knots. Heard them talking to "Wandering Albatross", who must be coming in. Bonnie suddenly called at 1:45 and as ready to do her oil-change. So I dinghied ashore (seeing that "Wandering ALbatross" has come in and anchored). Bonnie picked me up, and off to her house to pick up the boat key, then off to her boat, over a very rough rutted dirt road; fortunately we were driving a four-wheel-drive pickup truck. Her boat is a 30-foot or so sport-fisher that she runs charters on. While she warmed up the port engine, we tried to figure out how to make her new swordfish-kite fly, but no luck. Then she stopped the engine, raised the cockpit floor hydraulicly, and I sat next to the engine and put the oil-pump tube in while she was up on deck pumping the pump. Right away we had trouble; the oil slowly filled the tube, but wouldn't flow once it got to the pump. She was very wary of pumping too hard, because the last time she tried this, an identical pump imploded and sprayed oil everywhere, and sound of the implosion was terrifying. So we went slowly and carefully, trying lots of different tubes and arrangements. Then she warmed the engine up more, to the point where I worried that we'd melt one of the plastic tubes. After a couple of hours, we still had less than a quart of oil out of the engine; it wasn't working. She kept saying that she thought the oil was turned to sludge in that engine, but I thought it was flowing okay. Finally I handed the tubes and pump up to her on deck, to have her pump the oil out of the pump and into a jug, to see if it was sludgy. She started pumping, and said that yes, the oil was very thick. Then, suddenly, disaster ! The tube joints all came apart in her hands, and oil started pouring all over her nice clean deck. She was distraught, remembering weeks of cleanup from the previous oil-mess. I came out and took the oil pump and tubes onto the dock, and she started cleaning up with mineral oil and paper towels. Soon I joined her. After we did our best with that, she dumped more than a pint of lacquer thinner down, despite my telling her to go easy with it. We both started feeling a bit lightheaded as we worked to mop up the remaining oil; I kept popping up to get fresh air. We got most of the mess cleaned up, then she dumped some detergent and water on it and scrubbed that in, and we left it to soak overnight. Onto the dock, cleaned and stowed the oil pump and tubes, and by then Bonnie was feeling a bit dizzy and light-headed. I think maybe the stress and fumes and some dehydration and heat had gotten to her. And she said she hadn't slept too well last night. So I had her drink some water, and she wanted me to drive. In fact, she had me drive her home (up her majorly steep dirt driveway), and then drive myself back to town and keep her (borrowed) truck overnight; she didn't trust herself to drive back from the dinghy-dock to her house. So I drove this big, fancy pickup-truck back to town, praying that I wouldn't have an accident or anything. Went down the tight, steep road to the dinghy-dock and then had to back out when there was nowhere safe to park, and finally parked on another street. Out to the boat by 5:45 or so. So now we have to figure out what to try next. Thin out her engine-oil with diesel or something ? But we don't want to get that in her bearings; we just want to thin the sludge at the bottom of the crankcase. Maybe we should just keep pumping the sludgy oil, although it will take all day to get a gallon or two out ? Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. 2/11/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Lots of rain at 5:30 or so. Called "Maranatha" on the radio and asked Desmond to help with Bonnie's oil change today, bringing his oil-change pump. Dinghied ashore about 9:30, taking my electric oil pump with me. Drove the pickup truck to Bonnie's, and did a little email and internet as we waited a few minutes for Desmond to arrive. Then off to the boat. Desmond told us the story of their trip to Fajardo yesterday. He and Hiro and Frankie and Terry caught the 6:30 AM ferry to Fajardo, rented a car, and went computer-shopping, then sailboat-hardware shopping. Then they dashed to catch the 4:30 ferry back to Culebra. Frankie had to stew through a very slow ticket line, only to be told at the front it was the wrong line, so she fumed through a second line. Then they all ran to the ferry, lugging lots of purchases with them. On board, Frankie was ranting about the horrible ticket lines, someone offered her his beer to calm her down, and then they suddenly found they were on the wrong ferry: they were about to go to Vieques ! They ran off, headed for the right ferry, but it had cast off and was 10 feet off the dock when they got there. They begged and pleaded for it to come back, and it came back ! They got aboard, and the crew chewed them out a bit for the inconvenience, but they were beyond caring. They could just see being stuck overnight at Isabella Segunda on Vieques. We spent about an hour trying various things before we got Bonnie's oil-change pump to work. We got it working by making a tight seal at the top of the dipstick tube, instead of inserting a tube down into the dipstick tube. And Desmond wanted to leave the oil-fill cap on, but I thought that might be bad, because you don't want to build up a lot of pressure in the crankcase and blow a gasket. Anyway, we got almost 2 gallons of oil out that way. Once we got the right arrangement, the oil came out fairly quickly. But the engine is supposed to hold 4 gallons or so. In Luperon, guys tried to pump out the oil and also got only 2 gallons out of this engine. So she's assuming the rest is sludge at the bottom. But after sucking air with the original arrangement, we tried a couple more, and then when we tried another pump, inserting a tube into the dipstick tube, I could feel it bottoming out solidly, and it didn't get plugged up with sludge; instead it sucked air. So it seemed to Desmond and I that the crankcase was empty. So we stopped there and put 9 quarts of new oil in, and added some coolant to the other engine. She'll run it tomorrow on a charter, and Wednesday or so we'll come back and see how much oil we can get out of the port engine again, to see if maybe the supposed sludge has been dissolved. And change the oil filter, which we didn't do today. Back at her house, Bonnie felt dizzy again. She thinks maybe she's strained a bad disc in her neck, an old injury. Desmond and I did most of the work today, so she must not be dehydrated, and we didn't have any cleaner fumes today. I was amazed when Bonnie said her boat is the ONLY charter fishing boat operating out of Culebra. Desmond and I drove back to town, stopping to leave the used oil and trash at a disposal place, then I ferried him out to his boat and went to my boat. Back about 1:45. Wind blowing hard. Dinghied ashore at about 3. Did a fair amount of walking around town. xchanged a bunch of bad SF books at a book-exchange. Bought groceries. Lots of radio traffic from yahoos out boating on the weekend. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 2/12/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Was planning to leave the harbor this morning, but it's blowing hard with whitecaps inside the harbor before 9 AM, so maybe I'll stay put today. "Maranatha" had said they were going to leave today too, but they didn't. Blew hard all days with lots of whitecaps. Listened to Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion on the radio. Repaired the main halyard: brought the sail down, cut two feet off the end of the wire halyard, swaged the thimble back on. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Radio says 27 inches of snow fell in Central Park in NYC ! 2/13/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Dewey town in Ensenada Honda harbor on Culebra PR. Anchor up at 6:40 and headed out of the harbor, motor-sailing with main up. Stuck behind a slightly slower sailboat moseying along, motoring. Tried to call him on the VHF to make sure he saw me, but no answer. Out of the entrance, followed him W, then he headed W for PR and I headed NW up the W side of Culebra. Nice to have the wind and current going my direction for a change. Up and around the north end of Cayo de Luis Pena, and finished anchoring by 8:35, at lat 18.18.766 long 65.20.067 Anchorage is a little smallish and the coast is forbiddingly rocky, except for a small beach right in front of me. But the water is fairly calm despite a good breeze; just a very slight roll. And I have the place to myself. About 10:40, sailboat "Que Sera Sera" anchored nearby. Another sailboat came in at 11, but they stayed only 30 minutes or so. After an early lunch, launched the dinghy and went snorkeling. Under the boat and scraped hull and prop; a fair amount of new growth since scraping a couple of weeks ago in Vieques. A couple dozen 8- to 12-inch fish hovering around in the debris cloud I made, looking for food. Then into the dinghy and off to the east a bit to do some fun snorkeling. Put anchor down in 8 feet of water and snorkeled for an hour or so. No big coral heads, but lots of sizable individual corals spread through the area. Some brain-coral almost 3 feet in diameter, lots of fan and elkhorn coral. Plenty of colorful fish; best snorkeling I've had since the Exuma's Land and Sea Park (but I didn't go to the good areas in the Turks and Caicos). Saw something new to me: in a chamber under a coral-head, a fat greenish-gray shark 5-6 feet long lying on the sand bottom. When I went back 20 minutes later, he was facing the other direction, so he was active. Several other boats in and out in the afternoon, but only three other boats staying the night with me. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinnr. 2/14/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor on north side of Cayo de Luis Pena. Breeze from N, which doesn't match yesterday's forecast, and threatens to swing me close to some unknown water which might be a bit shallow. And today's says wind from SE but swells from N-NW tonight. At 9:15, expected SE wind suddenly kicked in. Anchor chain making alarming noises on the hard bottom here as it slides around; wind is shifty, and swells from N are starting. By 11 or so, the swells are really starting to come from the N, and "Que Sera Sera", which is anchored quite a bit further in than the rest of rest, is lifting and surging alarmingly. They raise anchor and leave, in a very dubious operation involving a snorkeler in the water loosening their bow anchor, then climbing into the dinghy as the boat propeller turns nearby. He climbs into the boat as they drift back toward me, pointing bow-to-bow, and they raise the side-stern anchor they had out. Then they veer away from me and head out. Not confidence-inspiring. Went for a snorkel after lunch, but conditions are much rougher today. The fish are being thrown around by the currents, and there are breakers on some parts of the reef. Still saw some nice fish. In the water for about 45 minutes; when I came out, the last remaining boat had left. Anchor up at 1:30, and motor-sailed around W side of the cay. About 0.8 knot of current against me, and it looks rough out in the open Sound. To Lana's Cove on the SW corner of Cayo de Luis Pena. Somewhat protected from SE wind and N swell, but a little rolly. Only one mooring, and a skiff is on it, so had to anchor in 18 feet of water. Anchor down by 2 PM, at lat 18.17.951 long 65.19.987 Heard "Maranatha" on the VHF, and chatted with Desmond. Asked if Bonnie wants us to do another oil change tomorrow, as we'd planned, but he's busy tomorrow and hasn't heard from her. The guys on "Maranatha" managed to puncture their refrigerator coils with an ice-pick somehow, so a repairman is coming by tomorrow. Put dinghy down and went snorkeling. Some nice fish, lots of greenish and whiteish coral. Got some good exercise. Back to boat about 3:15, and it's ridiculously rolly now; can't stay here tonight. So I hoist dinghy, take off and wash snorkel gear and myself, then raise anchor. Not easy with the wind blowing and the boat rolling and the deep water here, but anchor up about 3:35 and I motor-sail around the S end of the cay and head east. Into Bahia de Sardinas on west side of town of Dewey, and put anchor down. Then raise it again, move a bit, and finish anchoring at 4:30, at lat 18.17.981 long 65.18.214 A slight roll here, but far better than in Lana's Cove, and it's time to stop for the day; I'm tired. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner. A bit rolly at times during the evening, but seemed to settle down later at night. 2/15/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor on west side of town of Dewey. Grey and breezy and sprinkling rain off and on. Talked to "Maranatha" on the VHF, and their outboard motor has stopped putting out cooling water. Thought of moving around into the main harbor, but decided to stay put. Rolling here isn't too bad. Emptied diesel jug into fuel tank. Started making USVI courtesy flag. It's a tough one, a drawing of an eagle with a shield for a body, grasping arrows in one claw and something (olive branch ?) in the other. A little too shallow for comfort here; only a foot of water under the keel at low tide. Squalls coming through every hour or so, with plenty of wind, and horizontal misty rain. Picked a gap between squalls and dinghied ashore. Bought $5 of gas and $15 of diesel. Disposed of garbage. Exchanged books. Bought groceries. Back to boat, and it poured rain about 15 minutes later. "Maranatha" postponed trip to Fajardo from tomorrow to Friday; I'm planning to tag along with them. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 2/16/2006 (Thursday) At anchor on west side of town of Dewey. Very rolly in the mid-morning. More painting on USVI courtesy flag. Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches for dinner. Horribly rolly around 9 PM, and very rolly off and on all night. Very uncomfortable. 2/17/2006 (Friday) At anchor on west side of town of Dewey. Dinghied ashore at 6:45 and caught the 7 AM ferry to Fajardo with Desmond and Terry. Ferry is ridiculously cheap: $2.25 for 20-mile, 90-minute trip. Nice scenery as we went north of Cayo de Luis Pena where I anchored the other day, then past Cayo Lobos and Isla Palominos. Got to Fajardo about 8:45, and immediately met the guy who brought sailing hardware parts for Desmond and Terry. Had expected to loaf around until a 1 PM ferry, but we got done very quickly and caught a 9:30 ferry right back out. So I only had a chance to walk around for 5 or 10 minutes. But that was enough: as I'd heard, the area near the ferry dock is junky, and you need a car to get to anything interesting. So back onto the ferry. Trip back was a bit rougher and windier, since we were going mostly upwind. We saw a couple of whale spouts in distance, off toward the N shore of Vieques. Back to the boat by 11:30. Headache. Dinghied ashore about noon. Exchanged a couple of books and bought some fruit. Back to boat. Trying to decide where to go. Not going to stay here for another rolly night. I'd like to go to the nice snorkeling areas on the north side of Culebra, but on the ferry the swells seemed to be from the north (even though the weather forecast said swells from the east), and the weather forecast said wind ENE for the weekend (although it's from SE now). Don't want to be on the north beaches if there's any north swell. So I decide to go to Ensenada Dakity on the south shore. Anchor up at 12:55, just after another boat came in and anchored right next to me. Motor-sailed down the west side of Culebra, seeing "Wandering Albatross" and "Otra Mundo" anchored on the west side of Punta Soldado. Chatted with Chris on "Wandering Albatross", and he says it's nice there, but they're rolling a little, and I want something totally protected tonight. Kept going around the point, clawing slowly into wind and swells, went into the harbor, and curled around into Ensenada Dakity. Full of moorings, and I've picked up a mooring about 4 times in my life. Spotted a good location, eased up to the mooring ball, brought the boat to a halt about 2 feet from perfection, strolled up the deck and smoothly picked up the line with a boathook. Joe Cool ! Done at 2:15, at lat 18.17.407 long 65.16.797 Very nice here, water totally calm, because we're just behind a reef that's eating up all the swells. Several boats that look like permanent residents, and I think the place will fill up with weekend boats. Amazing: got a WiFi connection here ! Brief and shaky, but it held together just long enough to upload my log file. Finished painting USVI courtesy flag. Figured out why many of the powerboats here are stern-tied to the mooring balls: so they get shaded from the late-afternoon sun. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Wind backing around to E, so I guess the weather forecast was right: we'll have some ENE this weekend. To bed early with a headache. 2/18/2006 (Saturday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Headache. Lots of dark clouds and rain starting about 9:30. Wind ENE and NE and a little N. Good for "Wandering Albatross": they were planning to sail south SE to St Croix today. Plenty of powerboats arriving all morning, from about 11 to 2, most coming from Puerto Rico. The moorings all filled up quickly, with 2 or 3 boats rafted onto some of them. Then boats started anchoring everywhere. Felt tired and headachey all day. Napped and read and loafed. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Boats still coming in just before dark, and even after dark. Headache all night; felt miserable. Interesting; many of the powerboats are running air-conditioning all night, even though the temperature is lovely and there are no bugs. I guess it does save them from having to close ports when a rain-squall comes. So they're sleeping in cocoons, oblivious to anything that might be happening outside. Strange. 2/19/2006 (Sunday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Still have a bad headache. Loafed and slept and read all day. Some attractive women in bikinis in nearby boats. I thought everyone would vanish by 2 PM, but only about half of the boats left. Maybe the rest are staying because tomorrow is President's Day ? A couple of boats had a visit from SeaTow before they left; don't know if they were getting jump-starts or maybe a delivery or something. Managed to sit on the hatchboard from my main hatch and break it in half, along a previously-repaired break line. Will have to glue it again. Salad and peanut-butter-crackers for dinner. Headache starting to ease a bit. 2/20/2006 (Monday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Headache much better this morning, but not gone. Added water to one of the house batteries which has a couple of cells that frequently get low. Slipped mooring about 7:50 and headed across the harbor in search of a better WiFi signal. Anchored about 8 AM at lat 18.17.953 long 65.16.706 But it didn't work; the WiFi signal is no stronger, and it seems to have become not-free today. Bummer. Headache finally went away in the early afternoon. Watched the powerboats leaving the Dakity anchorage; by 2 or so, the place was practically empty. A bit rolly here, and no WiFi, so might as well try elsewhere. Anchor up at 3:40. Swwung into Ensenada Fulladoso to see if there was a WiFi signal there, but ended up going back into the Dakity anchorage. Picked up a mooring at 4; snagged it flawlessly despite the 20-knot wind. Next to a small powerboat with a bunch of young yahoos playing loud music and whooping it up; was delighted when they left a half-hour later. Salad and chili for dinner. Almost all the powerboats are gone; just four sailboats and a couple of permanent residents (a couple of houseboats, a couple of small powerboats, and a sailboat) now. Several sharp rain-squalls during the night. A bit anxious because I don't know the quality of this mooring. But everything held okay. 2/21/2006 (Tuesday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. "Maranatha" came past, and we chatted. They've spent a couple of days snorkeling at Luis Pena, and loved it. They're heading to St Thomas tomorrow, probably. Loafed all day, doing a bit of internet in the afternoon. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. 2/22/2006 (Wednesday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Loafed and did internet all day. I've really been terribly lazy recently, but heck, I'm retired ! Several sailboats came in and anchored or moored nearby. One is a big triple-spreader sloop, flying a German flag, I think [later saw it has a Netherlands home port]. Chicken-mushroom-saffronrice for dinnr. 2/23/2006 (Thursday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Listening to weather forecasts and thinking of heading east, starting with Culebrita, but lots of north swells are forecast despite the east wind, so I don't know. About 10:15, "Maranatha" left for Culebrita, and "Second Wind" picked up a mooring near me. More boats came in later, including "Makai". Loafed and read and did internet all day. Dinghied over to nearby shoal and walked on it a bit, with a bunch of other people. But it's all coral and there are lots of dead shells, so it was very hard on bare feet and I didn't stay long. Back to the boat, and I jumped off the dinghy and swam a couple of laps around the boat. Hard going on the upwind leg, with lots of chop slapping saltwater into my face. Then had a bit of a surprise when I found I couldn't hoist myself back into the dinghy; every other time I've done it I've had swim-fins on, but I was barefoot this time. Without the extra 6 inches or so fins give on the initial "jump", I couldn't get high enough on the tube to get my weight forward and lever myself over. Had to get between dinghy and boat and put my feet on the boat to help lever myself up over the tube into the dinghy. Got a bit scared later when I thought about falling out of the dinghy in the middle of deep water with no swim fins. But I guess I could have put my feet on the outboard's lower unit and used that as a bit of a ladder. Will have to try that some time. Tried to call "Maranatha" to find out conditions at Culebrita, but got no response. Salad and peanutbutter-and-banana sandwich and peanut-butter-crackers and a beer for dinner. In the middle of the night, decided to go to town tomorrow, but debating whether to take the big boat or the dinghy. It's about 1.5 miles each way, and it's been blowing fairly hard the last couple of days. Outboard is a bit marginal these days, but taking the big boat would mean a lot of work to anchor and then raise anchor, burning more fuel, and someone might take my mooring. Eventually decided to take the dinghy. 2/24/2006 (Friday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Emptied jug of diesel into fuel tank. Cleaned outboard's spark plugs; they were extrmely oily. At about 10, dinghied to town. About 1.5 miles, not too bad downwind, but slow because the outboard starts clunking if I push it much over 3 knots or so. Bought $15 of diesel, disposed of garbage, exchanged books, bought groceries. Slow trip back to the boat, into 20 knots of wind with lots of chop, but not too bad and not too wet. Back at 11:30. Read and did internet most of the afternoon. Had email from "Sanctuary" in Luperon, and they're starting to think of staying another hurricane season in Luperon. I'm trying to persuade them to get out and come to PR. But they're still doing engine work, they have a safe harbor and a nice support community in Luperon, and they had a traumatic passage to get there, so there are a lot of barriers to their departure. I've noticed this psychology many times in myself; it takes a real effort of will to leave a safe, known harbor and go to a new place, especially if it's been a while since you moved. I'm having a bit of this myself right now, in a small way; the situation here is nice and safe and convenient, so I tend to just sit and vegetate instead of going somewhere new. Several powerboats came into the anchorage in the late afternoon, but only one stayed the night. A couple of them spent 20 minutes or more nosing at different moorings and then rafting together before leaving and heading towards town; very strange. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. 2/25/2006 (Saturday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Blowing hard from NNE in the morning. Weather forecast has massive swells from N for next few days, so I guess I'm not heading to Culebrita (which is exposed to the north) any time soon. Could go straight to St Thomas, I guess, but not until the wind settles down a little. Used epoxy to glue main hatch hatchboard together again. Fuse to the power adapter for my laptop suddenly blew. Have to run it off the inverter until I can get more fuses. Boats trickling in all day, and moorings filling up. Wind blowing hard; lots of chop building up in the short distance from the shoal/reef to the boat. About 4:30, a small powerboat took the mooring close behind me, and then another rafted to it. 20 minutes later, I looked over to see a nice-looking woman in a thong bikini coming out of the water after a quick dip. Then she stood on the swim platform and took a long shower. Yow ! Salad and tuna-salad sandwich for dinner. Headache in the evening. Refrigerator started running constantly again, draining the batteries. So turned it off, and got up several times during the night to turn it on for 20 minutes at a time. Should have run it more; started getting too warm. 2/26/2006 (Sunday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Blowing hard from ESE in the morning. Slightly headachey. Loafed and read and listened to Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion and other radio. Felt headachey all day. Napped for a while. Epoxied main hatch hatchboard some more. Salad and chicken-mushroom-onion-rice for dinner. Frig started working properly again in the late afternoon. Up several times during th night to check it and tweak the thermostat colder. 2/27/2006 (Monday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Zero wind this morning; water totally transparent. Tempted to go to St Thomas, but the forecast and the binoculars say there are pretty big swells out there today, and small-craft alert this morning. Supposed to blow E10-15 tomorrow (bad for going E), but with much smaller swells. So I stay put. But I checked engine fluids and added water to batteries, in case I changed my mind. Climbed the mainmast about 8:30, and spent a good long time up there. Replaced bulb in anchor light. Turned main radio antenna right-side-up; I had inverted it several years ago to save a couple of feet of height for my Tenn-Tom and Mississippi River trip. Dropped a washer, which vanished, but no problem. Tired and sweaty by the time I got down. A couple of sailboats left around 9:30, motoring west. Wind SE 5 around 9:30. Rain-sprinkles at 10. More sprinkles at 11:30; there's only one black cloud in the sky, and it's hovering right over us. Some guys brought a houseboat from the harbor to the anchorage, using a small wood powerboat rafted to it as power. Sounds like the engine on the powerboat was firing on about 2 out of 3 cylinders. Dinghy nearby escorting it too. A trimaran with a hobie-cat rafted to the side of it (with the hobie-cat's sail up) left under power later. Some strange boats moving around today, I guess because it's so calm. Did last round of epoxy work on main hatch hatchboard. Snorkeled under the boat at about 4 PM, and scraped off some stuff, but it looked pretty good, just grassy with no barnacles. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Still headachey in the evening. 2/28/2006 (Tuesday) On a mooring in Ensenada Dakity on Culebra. Suddenly thought to test the anchor light, and it works. Finally cut the umbilical; tore myself away from free WiFi. Slipped the mooring at 6:40, raised the mainsail, and motor-sailed out of the harbor and towards St Thomas. 120-foot charter-schooner came out right after me doing about 10 knots, motor-sailing with 6 out of 10 sails up, and soon disappeared ahead of me. Saw them come in yesterday; nice boat, but all three masts are the same height, and somehow that doesn't look right. A bit rough and choppy today, wind about E15-20 and seas mostly from ENE, and I want to go ENE. But I find I can go ESE at a tolerable speed and motion, so I do that for several hours, on port tack. Then change to starboard tack and head towards St Thomas, heading NNE. Making about 4 knots all morning, since I have throttle at less than full cruising speed. Just a long slog all morning, into wind and chop. Not great conditions for this trip, but large N swells are coming again tomorrow, so I decided to take this wind of small swells. More and more whitecaps as I near St Thomas; the wind is blowing a little harder. Boats going downwind are really rolling badly. Into St Thomas a little after noon, and end up anchoring just off Honeymoon Bay / Druif Bay on W side of Water Island, at 12:25, at lat 18.19.136 long 64.57.594 Pretty crowded; boats everywhere, a cruise ship docked on the main island. And I'm not even near the main part of Charlotte Amalie harbor; I'm just seeing West Gregerie Channel and Water Island. Heard a race committee boat operating on VHF 6, but I don't see a race anywhere. Every now and then, anchor chain makes alarming "dragging over a coral bottom" noises as the wind shifts, but the anchor isn't dragging. Woo-hoo ! Free WiFi signal here. First bugs I've seen in a while; Vieques and Culebra seemed to have no flies or mosquitoes, at least at this time of year. But a few flies came into the cockpit as I was approaching St Thomas today, and I just squashed a cockroach in the cockpit. School of 10-inch-long fish feeding around the boat. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Watched two cruise ships and an empty freighter leave, and another freighter come in, all passing 1/4 mile off my stern. The cruise ships had lots of passengers lined up at the rails, looking down at the islands and all of us cruising boats. Saw a guy zipping along in a dinghy in front of me just before dark, and suddenly he came to a halt, and started looking at his motor. Turned out the painter on his bow had gone under the boat and fouled his prop. Got rolly after midnight, and stayed rolly through the morning. 3/1/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Forecast said E15-25 wind today, but it hasn't appeared by 9 AM. Maybe I should have traveled today instead of yesterday. Or maybe it's rougher out there than it looks from in here. Added water to the bad battery. Looks like water sloshes out through the crack in the case when the boat heels. Time to replace it. Saw that a big powerboat next to me had left, so I raised anchor about 9 AM and moved over and into the cove a little. Hoped to get a little more protection from swells (didn't get much), shallower water for better holding (got 16 instead of 22), and better WiFi signal (nope). Blowing pretty hard by 11:30 or so. School of 10-inch-long fish feeding around the boat again. Dinghied ashore after lunch. Walked on the beach, then up and down a couple of hills to see various parts of the island. Nice place, some nice flowers, great views everywhere, very little traffic. Got tired of rolling, and raised anchor at 2:35. Motored around the corner to Elephant Bay. Deep and crowded. Anchored in about 30 feet of water by 3 PM at lat 18.19.367 long 64.57.294 Much less rolly here, but not totally still. Huge low grey clouds came in at 3:30, and it was grey and almost rainy for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Light, misty rain off and on. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Nervous time during the night when the wind shifted to the NNW; wasn't supposed to do that. Threatened to put me onto a rocky lee shore. But I stayed far enough away, and the wind eventually went back to the E. 3/2/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Elephant Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Heard weird noises, and went up on deck to find a big school of 10-inch-long fish feeding around the boat, some slapping into the hull. Dinghied to ferry dock on Water Island and used the book exchange. Dinghied ashore to St Thomas, chugging slowly across wide, lumpy harbor. Went ashore near Haulover Marine, and walked several blocks, making a mental inventory of all the useful businesses. It's a retired submarine base, with lots of old Navy barracks being reused for businesses. Stopped at an electrical supply place and an alternator place. Back into the dinghy, and went into Crown Bay marina. Dinghy dock was completely jammed; person who came in after me gave up and left, I think. Disposed of garbage, then wandered out and down the street. Bought groceries (prices pretty high, even in a supermarket). Guy at auto-parts place gave me a couple of fuses for free, then asked me a question about hooking up a bank of batteries so he could use solar power at his house. Stopped at a marine store to look at anchor light bulb; they had 10W 0.8A for $4/bulb. Wasn't sure if that's what I wanted, so didn't go for it. Back to the dinghy and across the bay to the boat. Raised anchor about 1:30, and it didn't want to come up, feeling like it was hooked on something on the rock/coral bottom. But I just kept the chain vertical and let the boat motion work on it, and eventually it came loose. Motored down West Gregerie Channel, and passed a boat named "Maranatha" ! I've been calling them for a couple of days now. Not quite sure it's Desmond and Hiro; features of the boat look a little different to me. But it's probably them and my memory is not reliable. Through Haulover Cut, a narrow cut with rock/reefs on both sides. And as I got halfway through, a ferry roared up behind and tailgated me until he could pass. Out into the main harbor, and to my surprise there's plenty of room in the anchorage area, and the center of the harbor isn't as deep as charted. Three huge cruise ships at dock, half a dozen megayachts docked stern-to along town waterfront. A bit rolly here, about the same as the Elephant Bay anchorage I just left. Anchored by 2 PM at lat 18.20.249 long 64.55.769 As usual, wish I had put my anchor down about 20 feet more over THAT way; swinging about 60 feet from a catamaran when wind is from E. Safe, but would be nice to have a little more room. Decide to move. So I raised anchor, moved a bit, having trouble getting the bow to swing around as I wanted, and anchored again. Still slightly close to that catamaran, but now I'm alongside instead of in front in E wind, so it's more tolerable. I'm tired; that's it for today. Half an hour later, did it one MORE time, finally getting a decent position. Float-planes landing in the harbor and taking off right down the main channel. Got out the maps and charts, and looked around. I can see a smallish concrete turret at Bluebeard Castle, and a large compound at Blackbeard Castle, and a cable-car going up to Paradise Point (I think). Lots of WiFi signals here, but none of them are free. Salad and chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. All three cruise ships left in the early evening. Very rolly all night long; what a lousy anchorage ! Didn't get much sleep. 3/3/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. One of the three cruise ships is back at dock; must have been just an evening cruise, which is strange for such an enormous ship. Maybe they go out 3 miles so they can have gambling ? Dinghied ashore around 9 and walked around town. Fort Christian is closed for renovations. Lots of duty-free shops selling diamonds, jewelry, liquor, cameras. Some nice art galleries. Some nice old buildings. The town is formerly Dutch, with lots of Dutch street names. Several nice little parks. Went to library and read for a while. Bought used books at Salvation Army store. Bought some fruit, walked up the waterfront, looking at the megayachts. Back to the boat. Rough in the harbor. Finally got a radio response from "Maranatha"; I've been calling them several times each day. But it turns out to be a different "Maranatha": a guy who's been here on his boat for 30 years ! Funny that his boat is so similar-looking to Desmond and Hiro's "Maranatha". Raised anchor and moved a couple of hundred yards toward the SE corner of the harbor, to try to get calmer water. Anchored 1:25 at lat 18.20.199 long 64.55.557 Still messing with the refrigerator; the thermostat keeps sticking or something. Salad and cheese sandwiches and a beer for dinner. Cruise ship "Constellation" left. Very rolly at times during the night, but not as bad as last night. Slept pretty well. 3/4/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Grey and rainy just after dawn. Another cruise ship at the docks, but it's not the one that left last night. Got a free WiFi signal for a little while. Dinghied ashore. Walked up to the cruise ship docks, which are surrounded by an enormous outdoor shopping mall. Actually, several: Port of Sale mall, Havensight Mall, Buccaneer Mall. Did a lot of walking. To Radio Shack, and bought bulbs for anchor light, and a cigarette-lighter connector. To supermarket, and lugged $30 of heavy groceries back to the dinghy under a hot sun. Amazing: got a 750 ML bottle of Puerto Rican rum for $3.29 Heard "Leadership" calling "Maranatha", so I talked to Howard on "Leadership". Turns out they're both over on the north side of the island, in Magens Bay. Not a common cruising destination, maybe because the Scott's guidebook doesn't even mention the entire north coast of the island, and maybe because it's open to NW swells. "Maranatha" came through here, went around the east end of the island, and will be coming back around in a day or two. We'll probably see each other in The Lagoon. Was thinking of leaving today, but between WiFi and calmer conditions and a decent supermarket, maybe I'll stay another day. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Almost no breeze, so it's a bit hot with the late-afternoon sun pouring into the pilothouse. Nice music coming from shore; I think there's a concert in Emancipation Park. I'm 1/2 mile away, which is a nice distance for listening to it. 3/5/2006 (Sunday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Heard an odd "grinding" noise through the hull at 6:15, and popped up my head to look around. Saw a cruise ship docking; I think I was hearing its bow-thruster, through 1/4 mile of water. A second cruise-ship came in later; didn't hear or see it come in. Then a third in mid-day. After listening to Car Talk at 1, dinghied ashore. To Radio Shack again, and bought an electrical part. To supermarket, to get another $30 of groceries. Back to boat. Worked on outboard a bit; the tilt mechanism has frozen, probably from rust and congealed grease in the horizontal shaft. Opened grease points and loosened nuts and squirted penetrating oil and tried to loosen it, with little luck. Listened to Prairie Home Companion. Fruit and yogurt and crackers for dinner. 3/6/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Was thinking of leaving this morning, but the WiFi is working fine, so I stayed and started working on ordering a used jib. Aft water tank is empty. Haven't found free water in a while; may have to buy some. Radio call from Jerry on "Carabella"; he just found my web site and then realized I'm in his backyard, so he invited me over for happy hour. Dinghied over to "Carabella". Long, slow dinghy ride across the main harbor, through Haulover Cut, and halfway down Crown Bay. Only had to dodge one big boat; glad I didn't have to deal with any fast ferries or seaplanes. Had a lovely visit with Jerry and Shary on "Carabella". They bought their trawler in Pittsburgh as a project boat; it had been caught in a huge ice-pack that tore the marina apart and took the boat 25 miles downstream, with a low bridge shearing the entire superstructure off. They spent several years rebuilding it, then finally sold their house and other stuff, headed down the Tenn-Tom (in January, I think; lots of stories of ice an inch thick on the lifelines) and to Florida. They were the boat that circled mine in Ft Myers Beach, waving hello, and totally mystifying me at the time; I didn't know who they were. They stopped in Stuart to install lots of equipment, and went from Stuart to Ft Myers and back several times, dodging the 2004 hurricanes. Then they headed down here, having a very rough passage from Luperon to Ponce. They were in George Town Exumas on Nov 1, and there was only one other cruising boat in the entire harbor. Now they're running charters on the boat, with the business being slow but enough to survive on. They had stories about some of their charter customers, some who whined, and some who drank amazing amounts of liquor during a one-week charter. The boat is quite nice, very clean and with lots of stuff such as Marine SSB, satellite phone, TV, computers, three refrigerators, watermaker, washer/dryer, solar panels, two wind-generators, 120 VAC generator, etc. Lots of canvas, and it felt a little odd to sit there and not be able to see out into the harbor, because all the canvas was up to keep the rain out. They have three cats aboard, too. We talked and drank and had pizza for dinner, and had a nice time. But I had to cut it a bit short, since I was nervous about dinghying home in the dark with no lights on the dinghy and a slow and unreliable outboard motor. But it was dark by the time I got to Haulover Cut anyway. Dodged a dinghy coming the other way without lights. Saw a small freighter go out East Gregerie channel before I got there. Made it through Haulover Cut without hitting either of the reefs. Motor quit just as I got into the main harbor, but it started right up again. Threaded through all the anchored boats and found mine without any problem. Hoisted the dinghy and done around 7:30. 3/7/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Forward water tank probably has 40 gallons in it. Fuel level 6.0 inches at engine hour 3905.6 Wind from the south today, so I'm smelling exhaust fumes from the cruise ships all day. They run generators all day. Frustrating; still haven't gotten details on how and where I can ship a used sail to here, to receive it. Worries about mortality: the news today has stories of Kirby Puckett dying of a stroke at age 44 and Dana Reeve dying of cancer at age 44, and I'll turn 48 in a couple of months ! Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. 3/8/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. One of the cruise ships that came in this morning is the Disney cruise ship; I saw that ship in Key West two years ago. Finally got details about shipping a package to here. Now working on ordering a used jib. Hard to do everything through email; some of these companies don't check their email very often. Chatted with Jerry and got a lot of local info from him. Dinghied ashore in the afternoon. Met a nice lady at the dinghy dock, Betty from the CT 47 "Parrothead". We chatted as we walked to KMart. She came up from Venezuela recently, a 4-day singlehanded passage. She's 60ish, and would like to keep boating, but feels forced to sell the boat because her crew or boyfriend or whatever has left to go live on land, and the boat is too big for her to handle and maintain by herself. She's not sure what she's going to do next, but living ashore back in the mainland USA is lowest on her list. She spent a hurricane season in Luperon a while ago, so we compared notes about Luperon, mentioning people we both knew. Bought groceries in KMart. While I was in the downstairs part, power failed, and there were no emergency lights; we all just stood there in total darkness. After 15 or 20 seconds, a big generator started up and the lights came back on. When I came out, traffic was even worse than usual; I think the traffic lights were out too. Salad and fruit and cheese sandwiches for dinner. Around 5, wind started clocking around quickly, with very dark, low rainclouds coming over, but little rain. Then it started blowing N 20, leaving me about 1 boat-length ahead of the sailboat "Sweet Karma" behind me; not a comfortable situation. I guess he's swinging on less anchor rode than I am. Watched the situation for more than an hour to make sure it was stable, and got up several times during the night to check again. Wind will slowly get more E over the next day, so we'll move into a less threatening configuration. Cool all night, with fluky, gusty wind. 3/9/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Howling wind all day. Shifting from N to SE and back again, blowing 20+ with gusts to 40 or so. Boats surging and veering wildly. Wondered several times if my neighbor's wind-generator was going to explode, it was going so fast. Still no response from the used-sail place. Wind blowing so hard that when I left my laptop unattended in the cockpit for a minute, the wind blew it onto the floor. Seems to have survived undamaged. Traffic ashore at a complete standstill many times during the day; really horrible. Local FM station went off the air several times; I think they may be having power outages. Salad and chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. Wind eased from 2 AM to 4 AM, with only a few gusts. But then it picked up again. 3/10/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Trying to decide when to raise anchor and head over to fuel/water dock. Still gusting wind at times, which makes me reluctant to move. But I'm almost out of water. Did a bucket of laundry because I'm completely out of clean underwear. Only one cruise ship here today. A few more 40-knot gusts in the afternoon. Dinghied ashore, losing a flip-flop off the dock in the process. Went to a payphone and called the used-sail place in CA; they swear their email is working, but gave me a different address than the one on their web site. Bought groceries. Back to boat, and finally got an email response from the sail place. Ordered the sail. Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches for dinner. 3/11/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Feeling a bit headachey this morning. Saw a container-ship 5 or 7 miles away, and it's unlike any other I've seen. It's compltely rectangular; couldn't discern any shape of bow or stern. Looks exactly like a huge container floating on the water. [Later, a couple of my faithful readers told me it probably was an automobile-carrier; cars in containers are so light that they can stack car-containers a lot higher than normal containers.] Wind blowing 20-25+ all day. Harbor starting to get a little rolly again. Salad and chicken-onion-rice for dinner. 3/12/2006 (Sunday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Loafed all day. My pile of "books read and ready to be traded for new ones" is quite large. Salad and eggsalad sandwich for dinner. Woke up in the middle of the night with a headache. 3/13/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Headache. Grey most of the morning. Horizontal mist-rain for 5 minutes at 1 PM. Wish we'd get a proper vertical deluge so I could catch some water. Instead, I'm going to have to buy some at 14 cents/gallon. There's been no free water since PR. Still no confirmation that my sail has been shipped. Added water to batteries. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. 3/14/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Grey and damp and rainy and rolly. WiFi connection seems to be gone. Cleaned outboard's spark plugs. Dinghied ashore after lunch. Disposed of several bags of garbage. Tourist area is really hopping today, and some of the tourists are good-looking women, for a change. Went to the library and did an hour of slow internet for $2. Still no news on the sail. Dinghied from one dock to the other, through a very rough and lumpy harbor, then walked to KMart, making better time than the traffic. Bought flip-flops, then to supermarket and bought groceries. Salad and cheese sandwich and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Incredible moonrise of a nearly-full moon: just after the sun set in the west, the moon rose in the east, coming up over a hillside about a mile away. The top edge appeared first, looking like a flourescent light or domed house on the top of the hillside. Quickly, more and more of it appeared. The hillside made the moon appear like it was only a mile or two away. 3/15/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Still no WiFi. Dinghied ashore after lunch. Saw a very strange rig on a steel sailboat. It had a boom that extended fore and aft of the mast, with no stays or shrouds, and with headsail also mounted onto the boom, and with one sheet for the boom (no separate sheet for the headsail). So effectively both sails combine to act as one big mainsail, fore and aft of the mast. I've never seen anything like it. Did internet at the library. Extremely slow today: up to 30 seconds per page-load. Still no confirmation that my sail has shipped. Climbed 120 or so steps up the hill to Blackbeard's castle, but couldn't get in; they sell tickts only from 9 to 1, and the main attraction seems to be a swimming pool. Not at all what I expected. But tremendous view of harbor from up there. Came down a bunch of stairs back to the waterfront, with my new sandals giving me a couple of blisters by the time I was done. Salad and chicken-onion-rice for dinner. 3/16/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Charlotte Amalie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Free WiFi still gone. Raised anchor about 10:30. Took a while; I got the chain vertical, but the anchor seemed to be stuck. Eventually figured out that the anchor had slid off an edge of 20-foot water into 35-foot water, and the weight was making the chain slip on the windlass gipsy. Finally hauled up the last 35 ft and 45-lb anchor by hand. Motored over through Haulover Cut and to Crown Bay Marina fuel dock. Came in without fenders deployed, and a little too close and fast, and scraped a 1-foot length of oxidation off the gelcoat in one place. That's what I get for assuming their dock would have rubber lining; it had wood, and below the level of my rubrail. Loaded 65 gallons of diesel ($202 at $3.11/gallon), 3 gallons of gasoline ($9.60 at $3.20/gallon), and 182 gallons of water ($25.50 at 14 cents/gallon). Hate to pay for water, but $25 for about 3 months worth isn't bad. Chatted with the guy running the dock, and asked him what was the largest amount of fuel he'd ever pumped into a boat. He said 25,000 gallons into a megayacht. Left the dock, barely making a U-turn inside the marina, and got out. Over to anchor outside Honeymoon Bay as it rained briefly. Anchored by 12:30 at lat 18.19.146 long 64.57.585 Got a free WiFi connection, which is why I came over here. Still no news about the sail; I'll have to call from a pay-phone. Got email about sail. Turns out the company's email has been receiving but not able to send for the last couple of days. Gak ! They say shipping the $95 used sail will cost $450 ! Asked them for details, and to try other methods. I bet they ignored my direction to try US post office express mail, which I'm told is much cheaper than other methods. Salad and fruit and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. 3/17/2006 (Friday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Loafed and did internet. No word on the sail. Salad and chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. 3/18/2006 (Saturday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Loafed and read and listened to radio. Waiting for paper mail to arrive, and to resolve the used-sail shipping business. Salad and soup for dinner. Woke up ith a sinus headache in the middle of the night. 3/19/2006 (Sunday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Loafed and listened to radio, including Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion. Heard one show repeat a David Letterman joke: the NCAA tournament teams are going from 64 to 32 to 16, sort of like Bush's poll numbers. [This weekend is the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.] The Iraq situation is just sickening. There is no good option left. So I would pick the option that stops our $100-billion-and-800- American-lives-per-year spending on it: get out immediately. A bad option, but better than staying there. We've already destroyed any credibility we once had, and poisoned the whole Mideast situation, so there's nothing more lost on those scores if we withdraw. The lives lost already can't be recovered; the best we can do is avoid throwing away any more US lives. Let the Iraqis have their civil war, and if we have to go back to quarantine a Sunni "failed state" in a few years, so be it; that will be a much simpler and clearer situation. The worst is that we STILL haven't done enough to protect against the next big terrorist attack in the US homeland; the whole Iraq thing has been a distraction and a step in the wrong direction. Some time in the next few years, some little group of 5 or 10 guys from Indonesia or Pakistan or Michigan is going to let loose a bio-attack inside the USA that will make 9/11 look like a tempest in a teapot. I don't know how to stop it, but nothing we're doing in Iraq is going to help. And we're STILL obeying the hypocrites in control in Washington. The guys who say they're for smaller government, but make it bigger and borrow and spend us into bankruptcy. Who say they're for freedom, but want to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us. Who say they're for democracy, but whose favorite tool is the military, which is close-minded and repressive and intolerant. Both Reagan and Bush II have been such OBVIOUS hypocrites, and wrong about so many things. Okay, enough ranting. Sorry. [Heard from a couple of readers who strongly object to politics in my log file.] Gray frontal clouds hanging overhead much of the day. Salad and chicken-onion-potato and rum-and-coke for dinner. 3/20/2006 (Monday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Still no news about the used sail. Gray frontal clouds hanging overhead all day. Gave myself a haircut. Salad and hardboiled eggs and yogurt for dinner. Ran engine for 30 minutes to charge batteries. 3/21/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Cruise ships moving in and out of the Crown Bay docks today; the docks have been vacant the last few days. Solidly grey cloud layer hovering above all day. Salad and clam chowder for dinner. Ran engine for 45 minutes to charge batteries. In the middle of the night, turned over in bed and managed to gash the side of my heel against some corner of cabinetry. 3/22/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Finally got some sunshine today ! Finally heard from the used-sail place, and found out the problem. I was asking them to get a quote for shipping via US Post Office, since people here tell me that's by far the cheapest way. Turns out the company has had bad experiences with US Post Office, and refuse to deal with them any more. So they've been stalling me a bit, and I have to do the legwork to find out about shipping that way. Dinghied around the corner of the island to the ferry dock, and exchanged about 20 books at the book-exchange. Had a long chat with Mike from Milwaukee, who's been thinking of retiring to live on a boat down here. I've had a lot of similar chats with aspiring cruisers, and I've gotten pretty good at hitting the high points concisely: - start by simplifying your life; even if you don't end up cruising, you'll end up with more options. - there's no one "right" way to boat; don't feel you have to live aboard full-time or circumnavigate, buy the most expensive or "best" boat. - costs and lifestyle are very individual choices; some people spend a fortune in marinas and bars and restaurants, others don't. - don't plunge in too quickly: it's a lot easier to buy a boat than to sell one. - the life is not all pleasure; don't expect non-stop partying. - the lifestyle can be very rewarding: you can learn many new skills, see new places, meet interesting people, get a different view of life. Spaghetti for dinner. Sailboat "Quixote" next to me fired off a very loud cannon at sunset; really hate that. I remember someone did that in Boot Key Harbor in Marathon a couple of times until everyone told them to cut it out. 3/23/2006 (Thursday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Very sunny today; nice. Got email that my paper mail from NJ arrived yesterday. Dinghied over a mile in to Crown Bay Marina. Chatted briefly about hurricanes and such with a guy who helps run a charter boat; he said the only month in history that the Caribbean has never had a tropical cyclone is February. Disposed of garbage, bought starter fluid at the marine store, picked up my mail at the mail store, and bought groceries at the gourmet supermarket in the marina. Highest food prices I've seen since the Bahamas. The envelope of mail was much thinner than I expected, and I suddenly realized that I'd just assumed there would be tax forms in it, and should have asked my brother about that beforehand. Oh, well, mostly a waste of $6. Will have to print forms from the internet. On third thought, might have brought some with me when I came back from Christmas. Salad and eggsalad sandwich for dinner. Saw a turtle swimming near the boat. 3/24/2006 (Friday) At anchor near Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Added water to the batteries. Anchor up at 6:40, and motor-sailed south around the corner and then east toward St John. Auto-pilot didn't work at first, but then I found a switch set in the wrong position. Kept the engine at low RPMS and made about 3.5 knots into SE 2-3 swell and east 10 wind. Lots of low, dark rainclouds, but there doesn't seem to be any wind with them. Rained briefly a couple of times. As I approached "The Lagoon", swell built to 3-4. Jersey Bay and St James Bay are full of sailboats, and I see motorboats towing racing marks into place; must be a huge race today. Weaved around several sailboats as I crossed St James Bay. As I approached Current Cut, "Otre Mundo" called me on the radio. They're in Christmas Cove, right next to me. They said today is the Rolex Regatta. Thought briefly of stopping, but I'm heading to Cruz Bay, where there's a Blues Festival tomorrow. Through Current Cut, getting about a 1-knot boost from the current. Very lumpy out in Pillsbury Sound beteen St Thomas and St John. Ferries roaring past, putting up big wakes. Across to Cruz Bay by 10 AM, with another brief rainshower just as I furled the mainsail. As I semi-expected, the harbor is tiny and full of smallish boats on moorings, with ferries roaring in and out through a channel down the middle. Did a U-turn and headed a mile SSE to Great Cruz Bay, which is much bigger. Same story there: full of moored boats, with some anchored boats edged among them, and a channel down one side with ferries roaring in and out of the Westin resort. Another U-turn, and headed back across the Sound. Had to dodge a few more sailboats. So, if it's this crowded in prime season in the USVI, what's it like in the BVI's, which I'm told gets "really crowded" ? Back through Current Cut, fighting a 1.5-knot current, and was hailed by "Wandering Albatross"; they're anchored right next to "Otre Mundo". Nice empty spot on the other side of them. Got a huge wake from a powerboat as I talked to them. And it was totally unnecessary: the powerboat had the current with it as it went through the Cut. Anchored at 11:25 in Christmas Cove at lat 18.18.667 long 64.49.941 Five minutes later, the party-boat anchored in front of me left. Didn't have the energy to raise anchor and move forward into the better position. Very scenic here: great view across the bays, with 60-80 sailboats racing or just sailing. At 12:35, most of the big-boat racers out in the ocean have spinnakers up; very pretty. Party-boats with 10-15 snorkelers each moving in/out all afternoon. One of them had lots of trouble trying to anchor in front of me, and made us all nervous by circling very closely past our boats. Big wakes from ferries racing through Current Cut, but the wakes are making us pitch instead of roll, and it's a far more comfortable motion. But some of the smaller boats really pitch wildly when they get going. One small motorboat came in with two pretty girls in bikinis: one black bikini and one white bikini. Now I see a lot of spinnakers in the smaller-boat race; pretty. Launched the dinghy. Snorkeled under the boat and scraped the prop and hull a bit; not bad. Did a loop around the anchorage, but didn't see any coral worth snorkeling on. Some of the race-boats came in and either anchored or rafted to anchored boats, staying for the night. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 3/25/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Christmas Cove, St James Island, USVI. Second day of Regatta; things starting up at 9 AM. Wind 15+ compared to yesterday's 10 or so. A bit rolly in the anchorage. Powerboat astern of me has deployed some kind of "flopper-stopper" on a boom out to one side; first time I've seen one in action. Don't think it's working very well. Pretty windy and rolly in the middle of the day. A few pretty women in bikinis on the party-boat "New Horizons". Racing sailboats came in and anchored. One of them anchored from the stern, put up a spinnaker with a seat tied between the sheets, and only one sheet back to the boat so guys on deck could try to help control the sail, and guys started trying to fly up. Took them a while to get it right, but then guys were getting good rides 20 or 30 feet into the air, with people from several boats cheering. One or two jumped in from 30 feet up. Salad and tuna-salad sandwich and a beer for dinner. VERY rolly in the evening, and most of the night. Should have moved somewhere else today. 3/26/2006 (Sunday) At anchor in Christmas Cove, St James Island, USVI. Raised anchor at 10:50. Motored across to Cowpet Bay, but all the shallow parts were taken up by moorings. Through Current Cut and into Great Bay, which seems to be ignored by the guidebook. Anchored behind the reef about 11:20 at lat 18.19.229 long 64.50.261 Seems pretty sheltered; a little bit of a swell coming in every now and then, but so far it's much more comfortable than Christmas Cove. A couple of resorts with beaches here, but I'm pretty far from them. A couple of WiFi signals, but couldn't get connected. Nice view out into Pillsbury Sound; lots of boats sailing, and a huge 4-masted charter sailboat is anchored over near Cruz Bay. After a while, the rolling was a bit too much, so I put out a line from the starboard stern to the anchor chain, to try to pull the boat around to face into the swell. Sort of worked, somewhat. Lovely afternoon. Every now and then some rolling, but generally peaceful. Watched little Hobie-cats sailing in the anchorage, listened to radio, read book. Nice. It's mainly a Ritz-Carlton resort here, plus some houses that must be million-dollar-plus, given the location. Several more houses being built perched on the cliff/hillside on the NE corner of the bay. Salad and chicken-onion-mushroomsoup-mushroom and rum-and-coke for dinner. Nice, peaceful night. 3/27/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Great Bay, St Thomas, USVI. Two small dolphins swimming near the boat at about 6:15. Almost no wind, water very clear: can see every pebble and fish on the bottom, 17 feet below. Saw a turtle swimming nearby. Raised anchor at 8:55, and motor-sailed across Pillsbury Sound to St John. Was intending to go up around the NW corner to Francis Bay, but swung past Caneel Bay and decided to see if I could anchor there. Too deep to anchor, but found several free moorings. Distracted by a pretty girl in an orange bikini on one of the boats. Took several tries to pick up the mooring, since the wind was fluky and boats were pointing several different directions. Done by 9:55, at lat 18.20.546 long 64.47.544 Huge wake from a ferry 5 minutes later, but I think the ferries here are not too frequent. I hope. No, it's REALLY rolly here at times. Uncomfortable. After lunch, launched the dinghy and headed more than a mile S to Cruz Bay. Would have picked a mooring ball closer to it if I'd known I was going to take a mooring, and if I'd thought ahead. Docked near the Visitor's Center. Grabbed some brochures and looked at the exhibits in the VC. Saw a sign that says the moorings are free during the day but cost $15/night if you stay between 5 PM and 7 AM, so I guess I'll get off my mooring and anchor out tonight. Walked around to the Customs House and disposed of my garbage in the free dumpster there. Walked around a bit, checking out the activity at the passenger ferry dock, and the general scene. Okay town, some colorful buildings, but nothing great. Plenty of car-traffic. Got to the library by asking directions from a couple of people. Interesting building, and a nice library, but as usual the only newspapers they have are the local daily. Pretty hot; there's no breeze, even where the library is, up on a hilltop with great views in several directions. Did an hour of internet in the library for $2, and was glad to find out that my sail shipped from CA on Friday ! Went US Post Office; don't know the final charges yet. Found out "Maranatha" was in Road Town BVI on 3/11, so they're well ahead of me, and they're going to keep going to Venezuela. So I'll probably never see them again; that's how this cruising life works much of the time. To the supermarket, which is well-stocked but extremely expensive, even a bit more than the gourmet supermarket in Crown Bay. For example, one of those boxes of brand-name kids cereal that costs $4 or so in the USA is $8+ here. Granola that's $3.50 in USA is $6.30 here. But I've noticed that chicken costs the same in all modern supermarkets everywhere: about $1.49/lb for legs/thighs. Why is that ? Maybe it all comes from Tyson and gets shipped in huge bulk ? And they have no bananas, which I've noticed in a few other well-stocked supermarkets in the USVI; why would bananas be rare ? Plenty of fruit from many countries. Back to boat. Put away groceries, hoisted dinghy, started engine, and slipped the mooring at 3:45. Headed N through Durloe Channel, then around N side of St John. To Francis Bay, and the situation was about what I expected. Plenty of available moorings, but I don't want to pay $15 to stay on one for the night. But the surrounding water is too deep to anchor, about 50 feet. All of the shallow water around the edges has been marked off-limits, either as swimming areas or just with danger markers. I talk to a couple of boats on the radio, but they don't know if I'm allowed to anchor. Several larger boats are anchored, but I know boats over 60 ft HAVE to anchor; they can't use the moorings. Finally done at 4:50, at lat 18.21.651 long 64.44.875 Now to wait and see if a Park Service boat comes along and tells me I can't anchor here. A bit rolly, too. You know, the anchorages in the US Virgin Islands really suck. Crowded and/or rolly. 5:07: NPS dinghy came by and said I can't anchor. And it's $15/night whether you anchor or moor. Apparently, it says that in the brochures I picked up at the Visitor's Center but haven't had time to read yet. I gave them a bit of static about how the moorings really should be free if they want to encourage people to not anchor, and how $15 is enough to keep me in food and fuel for cruising for several days. If the anchorage was really nice, I'd consider paying the $15. But I tell them I'll leave. They go away, I raise anchor, and now I'm motoring in a race with the sun. Could be almost dark by the time I get back to Great Bay on St Thomas, which is the closest, safest-to-enter free anchorage I'm familiar with. But fortunately, everything is so close together here that I'm not too worried, or else I would have stayed. I can enter Great Bay in total dark if need be. Along the N side of St John, back through Durloe Channel, and I'm happy to find no current opposing me as I head down Pillbur Sound. Into Great Bay with daylight to spare, and anchored by 6:30 at lat 18.19.227 long 64.50.279. Didn't get dark until about 6:55. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner. So, that was a bit of a whirlwind day. 3/28/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor in Great Bay, St Thomas, USVI. Can't get the BBC at 6 AM as I usually do; haven't heard them for the last couple of days. Wonder if the UK changed to/from daylight savings time this last weekend ? Guess I'll have to try at 5 AM. Very cloudy, and very little wind. Loafed all day. After lunch, went for a snorkel around the nearby reef. Nicer than I expected. The coral is mostly dead, as usual, but there were plenty of fish, including a few fairly large and colorful ones. Some sun in the middle of the day, but generally pretty grey. Heard flood-watch warnings for Puerto Rico; they're getting a lot of rain there. Around 4 PM, a huge wake came in and hit the boat right on the beam, causing ferocious rolling. But I had everything stowed and lashed properly; only my solar shower and some buckets in the cockpit and a pan in the galley went crashing down. Salad and chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. 3/29/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor in Great Bay, St Thomas, USVI. No BBC at 5 AM either; will have to look up their schedule on the internet. Raised anchor by 8:10; motor-sailed out of the anchorage and headed for the S coast of St John. Fairly rough; the eSe wind is stronger than I expected, and I think the tidal current is opposing it. Lots of houses perched right on the high cliffsides here. Chocolate Hole full of anchored boats. Got around to Rendezvous Bay, and there's room to anchor; only two boats here. As I came in, a guy in a dinghy came out to one of them. I wondered if he was about to leave, but couldn't wait to see. Anchored a little before 9:30 at lat 18.18.927 long 64.46.122 Rainclouds coming over. Sure enough, at 9:40, the powerboat left. I was all set to raise anchor and move over to a bit in front of where he had been, but then I saw he'd left a milk-jug float there; I think he left his anchor and rode as a private mooring, effectively. Pretty selfish. So I stayed put. A bit of a roll here, but it's no better 100 feet further in. A pretty rugged place: steep hills/cliffs coming right down into the water. Lots of houses clinging to the hillsides, and a few more being built. Several elusive WiFi signals, but I can't get connected. After lunch, thought of doing some snorkeling, but it's too windy and grey and rough to make that appealing. Got tired of the rolling; don't want to spend a whole night doing this. So raised anchor at 1:30 and headed out. Only three options: Fish Bay right next door, Coral Bay about 5 miles E, or back W to Great Bay. The rest is National Park, $15/night, and much of it is too exposed to be feasible anyway. Pretty rough out here; I'm only making about 3 knots into stiff wind and swells. Fortunately, Fish Bay works out well. I roll heavily entering it, but there's room inside, and by easing into 6-foot-deep water, I'm around behind a shoal that cuts out almost all of the swell. I'm about 50 ft outside the National Park boundary, I calculate, so anchoring is legal and free. Terrific, as long as NPS doesn't come along and say I have to leave for some reason. And the sun's even coming out a bit. Finished anchoring at 2 PM at lat 18.19.180 long 64.45.803 There are four other boats here; several look like permanent residents, and two might be charter-boats used by local hotels or something; they have that spic-and-span look of commercial boats, and one has a liferaft on deck. 8 or more new houses under construction here. The island must be having a construction boom. Around 3 or so, a NPS boat with 4 or 5 people aboard came in, but they just seemed to be taking a water sample or something. Salad and chickensoup-rice for dinner. No-see-ums came out around sunset; not surprising in a such a small anchorage with mangroves on one side, and with the wind stalling out at night. 3/30/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Fish Bay, St John, USVI. Grey and sprinkling rain in the morning. Good-looking woman in a yellowish bikini on one of the anchored boats nearby. Around 10, the boat left, powered by a dinghy side-tied to it until it got out of the harbor and could raise sail. After lunch, launched the dinghy and went for a snorkel. Went out into theeeee mouth of the harbor, but the swells were coming in and making sizable breakers, so I turned around and came back to the boat. Left the dinghy there and swam out to the inside of the reef ahead of the boat. Not far ahead of the boat, was a bit scared to run across a huge stingray, easily 3 feet across and maybe 7 feet from nose to tip of the tail. Since the water was so shallow, I was pretty close to it as it sat on the bottom, and it seemed to be giving me the evil eye. Kind of spooked me. Swam over a lot of grass and sand with almost no fish over it. Then got to a large field of jumbled, broken, dead coral that seemed to have a fish living in every hollow. Many were as white/grey as the sand and dead coral, but some were colorful. A couple of schools of thousands of tiny fish, maybe 3/4 inch long and very thin and silvery. Out in the deeper water with a sand bottom, some ugly white tube-worms. Swam back to the boat, and not more than 10 feet behind it, found something standing upright in the bottom. A man-made cylinder about 15 inches tall, 6 inches in diameter, with a brass padlock and a couple of tie-wraps near the top, and a couple of 1-inch-diameter tubes taped to the side near the bottom. Looked like it had been there for a while. If the NPS boat comes back today, I'll ask them about it. Salad and cheese sandwich and rum-and-coke for dinner. Saw a turtle swimming nearby. 3/31/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Fish Bay, St John, USVI. Anchor up at 6:40, and motor-sailed out into calm morning conditions. Headed E along the S shore of St John, past some nice scenery: green hills and white/red cliffs. Pretty, but bleak. Auto-pilot seems to be crapping out, wanting to turn left a few times, so I shut it off. Around the SE corner of the island, and up into Coral Bay. Lots of boats anchored here, far more than I expected. Did a loop through the harbor, but had to anchor far out on the edge, directly exposed to the prevailing wind from the SE. If it gets too rough in the afternoon, I'll leave. Anchored by 8:45 at lat 18.20.409 long 64.42.699 Bummer: can't get my NPR station here; the hills are blocking it. Can see a regatta over at Norman Island in the BVI's; still surprising how close together everything is here. Could be there in two hours (but then I'd have to deal with Customs and Immigration). Dinghied ashore. Large dinghy dock is very crowded; had to wedge in to get to dock. Guy at the dock gave me directions to garbage dumpsters, so I took my garbage and walked counterclockise around the harbor. Three huge public dumpsters; I guess they don't have garbage pickup from homes here. Not much here; a gas station, a small shopping complex with a grocery store, a couple more miscellaneous stores. On the way back, stopped at a flea-market type business and bought a used book. To a marine business which owns the dinghy dock, then to another small shopping complex with restaurant and internet and stores. But they did have a book-exchange. On my way to the dinghy to grab my books, chatted with a guy on crutches. He said he's been here 20 years, and it's changed a lot, for the worse. Back then, his was the only boat in this harbor; now there must be 150 or so. He claims to be some famous ex-rock-star in hiding. He's living out of a broken-down jeep right now. Used the book-exchange, then back to the boat. Trying to decide whether to stay here (not much to recommend it except the anchor is already down) or leave (to get NPR back, more protection from SE, and somewhere to snorkel). Quick lunch, then raised anchor at 1:30 in a bit of a breeze. Motored out and E to Round Bay in East End (of St John island). Engine surging a bit; maybe it's fuel-filter change time (not according to engine hours; maybe I need to bleed water out). Nosed into Long Bay a little, then did a few donuts in Hansen Bay, looking for water that's not too deep. Finally found an acceptable / nice spot in the NE corner, and got the anchor down at about 2:20, at lat 18.20.509 long 64.40.598 Lovely spot, nice and calm and protected, and some decent snorkeling nearby, I hope. And reception of NPR is back again, mostly. A little beach with some people on it, some other people kayaking and snorkeling from one of the two boats anchored nearby. Nice. Smallish sailboat came in and anchored nearby, and soon the couple on board was swimming, the woman going topless. But she was bit too old (in other words, MY age) to be interesting. Salad and spaghetti for dinner. Around 11:30, suddenly had wind and real rain, the first real rain I've had in a couple of months, probably since Puerto Rico. Kept going for half an hour or so, and I managed to catch 4 or 5 gallons of water despite the wind blowing most of it away. The wind backed around from S to SE to E to NE, and may have dragged my anchor into 40-foot water from the nice 15-foot water it was in. No problem, until I go to raise it. I didn't expect this weather, although the ex-rock-star guy had mentioned that a front was coming through tonight; don't think I heard it on the weather forecast yesterday afternoon. Very glad I got out of Coral Harbor; there's a lot more room to maneuver out here if need be, and I'm not on a lee shore as I was back there, and there's land here protecting me from all the directions the wind has come from. 4/1/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Round Bay, St John, USVI. Around noon, a lot of boats sailing into the bay, some very pretty with spinnakers up, and several boats coming in and anchoring near me. Figured out later that there was some kind of charity-benefit party going on ashore. More and more boats poured in, most of them fairly unusual sailboats; lots of gaff rigs, several wood boats, one enormous sailboat. Many of them displaying very good sailing skills; I was impressed. After lunch, went for a lovely long snorkel. Had to swim upwind about 100 yards across the bay, watching out for speeding dinghies and incoming boats. Got to the rocks at the south side, and the fish were terrific. Hundreds of thousands of the tiny, 3/4-inch-long silvery or translucent ones, and for the first time I saw other fish attacking them. Couldn't see if any of the attacks were successful; they happened faster than the eye could follow. Plenty of colorful fish, including some spectacular yellows and neon blues. The coral looks like someone quarried some of it; lots of straight lines cut into it, and several 6-foot-deep canyons that were fun to hover over. A brain coral that was more than 2 feet in diameter. Lots of huge black sea urchins, which I've been seeing since coming to the USVI's. Nasty-looking, with thousands of wavy black spikes sticking out, just waiting to jab something. Some here bigger than a basketball. Snorkeled for almost 90 minutes, then swam back to the boat. Should have dinghied ashore to check out the party, but didn't have the energy. And soon an annoying guy on a megaphone was announcing raffle winners interminably. Around 4 PM, dark rainclouds started coming over, and everyone scooted for their boats and started leaving. I was a bit relieved; several of them had anchored pretty close to me. Added water to the bad battery. Salad and tuna-salad sandwich for dinner. 4 or 5 boats from the party stayed overnight. Wind and rain at 7 PM; again the wind backed around from S to E to N. 4/2/2006 (Sunday) At anchor in Round Bay, St John, USVI. Did a small bucket of laundry. Two rafted boats who stayed overnight from the party struggled to get one of their anchors up; I think last night's wind twisted them around each other. Raised anchor by 8:50; it came up with a 20-pound chunk of dead coral on it, to add to the effort. As soon as I got going, the auto-pilot tried to steer me right into the two rafted boats; it's doing the hard-left-turn business again, so I shut it off. Motor-sailed SW, but the wind was very light and a heavy beam sea made the boat roll. Got around the SE corner of St John, Ram Head, and made a hard right and picked up a day-use mooring just W of the cape. Overran it the first time, got it the second time. Done at 9:55, at lat 18.18.119 long 64.42.241 Loafed, ate lunch, listened to Car Talk. Then into the water for a snorkel. Headed S along the shore out toward the point. Lots of jumbled boulders, but little live coral. As I got further out toward the point, the coral and fish got better, and the boulders got bigger and bigger until a few were the size of Greyhound busses, and there were canyons 20+ feet deep. Then I could look out into deep water, 80 feet deep or so, but the visibility wasn't good enough to see anything. The fish got better and better, more types than I could count, until I was looking 25 feet down at schools of hundreds of 6- to 10-inch fish of various types. Just spectacular. Back to the boat, and slipped the mooring at 2 PM. Motor-sailed W; tried to sail a bit, but only got 2 knots. With the engine just idling but in gear, got 3.8 or so, going downwind. As I approached Fish Bay, the wind got fluky and shifty, then suddenly started blowing N 25; very strange. A few dark clouds around, but nothing that looks like a well-defined front or squall line. Pulled into Fish Bay, waiting so a kayaker wandering around and not noticing me meandered out of the way. Anchor down by 3:10, at lat 18.19.126 long 64.45.814 Wind still blowing. Weather forecast says "frontal boundary that was hovering has finally left the area", and says nothing but E wind today and for next several days. They certainly don't have this afternoon's weather right. Blew N and NNE all evening, although the speed decreased to 10 or so. Changed clocks to adjust to Daylight Savings Time. Salad and chicken-onion-mushroomsoup and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/3/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Fish Bay, St John, USVI. Lots of no-see-ums in the boat, biting me. The screen on the forward hatch blew open during the night, although they can get in even if the screens are closed properly. A couple of people standing in the surf on the other side of the bay, fishing with what look like fly-fishing motions. They must have had a pretty stiff hike over rough terrain to get there. Actually, on second thought, I bet they came over a short trail from the beach in the next bay over, Rendezvous Bay, instead of hiking down the rough spine of the peninsula from the houses. Anchor up at 10:20, and motor-sailed out and around the SW corner of the island. Wind changed totally as I rounded the corner, from SE 10 to N 10. Up the end of the island to anchor just S of the entrance to Cruz Bay harbor at 11:15, at lat 18.19.822 long 64.48.022 A horribly exposed position, especially to ferry-boat wakes, but all I want to do is dinghy ashore for a couple of hours. Sure enough, to minutes after I finished anchoring, a ferry roared by and gave me a HUGE wake right on the beam. Chatted with "Otre Mundo" on the radio. They're in Francis Bay today, about to head for BVI's and then starting south down the islands. They haven't seen "Wandering Albatross" for several days. When I mentioned the big wakes here, and how I didn't like the wakes over at Christmas Cove where they'd been staying, they said a wake made a bottle of rum shatter on the cabin sole of their boat, and they're still picking slivers of glass out of the carpet. Free WiFi signals ! Connected and did a little internet, but it's far too rough here to do much. No news about my sail; sent another inquiry. Launched dinghy in rough water, and dinghied into Cruz Bay harbor. To dinghy dock near passenger ferry dock, and it's a squeeze to get in. Disposed of garbage. To Tourist Office to ask about a book-exchange, and gave a book to a cruiser there. Found the bar with the book-exchange and exchanged half a dozen books. Then off to the library, and did an hour of internet there for $2, printing several tax forms. Still no tracking number for my sail, but found that they charged me $150 shipping and handling. That was the max I said I'd be willing to go when I was waving money at them to get them to use US Post Office shipping; guess they took full advantage. Bought a used book for 50 cents at the library; a Harry Potter book. I've read almost all of them, and I really like them. To the shopping complex, and checked out the hardware store, then got groceries. They had a sale of a gallon of milk for $3, compared to 1/2 gallon for $3.89, so I got the gallon, even though I don't know if it'll fit in my refrigerator. Back to the dinghy, with one flip-flop coming apart and making it hard to walk. Out to the boat, and it's a race to get everything stowed and hoist the dinghy before a huge wake comes along and the weight of the loose dinghy tears the davits off the boat. Just managed to win the race: just as I got the last lashing secure, a powerboat came by about 200 feet away making a huge wake on my beam. Stood up and gave him the finger, and he slowed down and came out on the stern deck to yell at me. Something about getting what I deserved for anchoring here. In fact, he's responsible for his wake no matter where he is. I gave him a few more gestures and comments that didn't improve his temper, and he zoomed away. A struggle to raise the anchor in rough conditions, with it holding fast even with the chain vertical, with the swells making the chain jerk hard at the bow roller. A strong enough shock-load could bend or break the bow roller or even crack the bow fiberglass. Got it loose as quickly as I could, without any damage, by about 3:10. Motor-sailed back down around the SW corner of the island. Current helping me at first, but then as I neared and turned the corner, wind and swells and current opposed me. Lots of whitecaps coming straight at me. Mainsheet's braided covering has come apart; well past time to replace it. A long, slow, rough slog to get around and over to the Fish Bay anchorage. Pulled in and anchored about 4:15 at lat 18.19.170 long 64.45.833 Such a relief to be back in a sheltered, calm place. Turtle swimming near the boat. Started getting my income taxes organized. I think I'm missing a couple of numbers, but I'll file the forms on time and let the IRS fix the problem and ask for more money. My taxes have become very simple, with no income except interest and dividends. Didn't even do any stock trades last year, I think. Salad and clam chowder for dinner. Berth invaded by mosquitoes; killed 5 or 6 before I could sleep. 4/4/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor in Fish Bay, St John, USVI. Slept late. Did a bucket of laundry. Good day for staying put: by 11, it's blowing fairly hard from SE, with plenty of whitecaps out there. Messed with the auto-pilot. It starts okay, the light over the compass card is on, but after a couple of minutes, without the "clutch" on, it suddenly goes into full-turn mode. Not sure what that means, maybe a stuck compass card or a slipped drive cable between motor box and "binnacle". Bled the two primary fuel filters. As usual, can't tell if what came out is diesel or watery diesel. It doesn't separate into layers, and it definitely has SOME diesel in it. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Got rolly some time after midnight; swells are curving in, and I'm anchored a bit further out than usual, to try to reduce the bugs. And the wind is holding me sideways to the swells. Uncomfortable and hard to sleep. 4/5/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor in Fish Bay, St John, USVI. Rolly. Put a bridle to the stern on the anchor rode, and it worked great for 10 minutes, then the boat spun completely around to hang by the stern, and I took it off. And sure enough, when I started the engine to re-anchor, it ran for 20 seconds and quit dead. Bled fuel lines and cranked, bled and cranked, no luck. Oh, well, guess I wasn't going out today anyway, I woke up with a little headache, and it looks pretty windy and rough out there. Wind howling by 11 or so. Saw a sailboat heading E out there, and they were pitching so much that their bow was almost going underwater. Got engine started at 11:30. Immediately raised anchor and moved into shallower water, more protected by the reef. Lots of dark clouds, wind, and rain at 1:30 or so. Salad and eggsalad sandwich for dinner. Very heavy rain at 1 AM, then again at 3 AM. Caught 5 gallons of water. 4/6/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Fish Bay, St John, USVI. Extremely cloudy, and thunderstorms predicted for this afternoon. Raised anchor at 8:10 and headed out. Motor-sailed, rolling a lot in downwind conditions with a heavy swell. Into Benner Bay about 9:50, and as I expected, it's very exposed to the SE wind, and the sheltered parts are jammed full of boats. Anchored outside on the edge of the channel, at 10:10 at lat 18.18.821 long 64.51.989 Think I'll check out the place and then leave for Water Island. Looked at my mainsheet with an eye to buying a new one, but figured I can just end-for-end it; there's lots of extra length. Dinghied ashore. Didn't know where anything was, and there are no signs. Landed first at Compass Point marina, but it's isolated from everything else. Got rid of my garbage, at least. Dinghied around and spotted another dinghy dock, and it's at a Budget Marine store, and found it's in the middle of Independent Boatyard. Checked out the store, used a book- exchange in a bar, went to the boatyard office and got haul-out info. Chatted with a British guy outside the store; he's an old-timer, and we chattd about how crammed the harbor is these days. walked out of the boatyard and down the street a bit; this place is loaded with marine businesses. Nice supermarket right across the street, too; bought some groceries. Back to the boat. I think I'll come back and haul out here in a couple of weeks. I already have the bottom-paint, and will do the labor myself. Need to replace the cutless bearing, too. And see if I can tighten the bolt at the bottom of the rudder. Need to buy painting supplies and something to cut out the old cutless bearing. Have the bottom paint already. The boatyard charges for my 44-foot boat will be about: - $530 for haul, pressure-wash, block, launch - $53/day in the yard (would be halved if I used their labor) Having them paint the bottom (not including prep) would cost $265, but save $50 or so of day-charges. Painting should be fairly easy (just rolling on a modified-epoxy paint). Prep is just scraping the surface of the old paint, which is hard, same type, and adhering well, plus any epoxy-filler work needed. So, if all goes well, say 2 days to paint and 2 days for other work, add some extra, total of about $800. Ate lunch, thought about my options. Stay here: not a good choice; this is a lousy anchorage. Go 45 minutes upwind to Christmas Cove: really nothing to do there, and it's wakey. Go to hours downwind to water Island, to get the free wiFi signal there and be close to facilities of Charlotte Amelie, although it might be a bit rolly. At 1:30, raised anchor in rough conditions and motor-sailed SE out of the anchorage. Then headed W in very rolly and uncomfortable downwind conditions, boat rolling and yawing, mainsail often flogging and then filling with a "pop". Got to Water Island around 3:15. My favorite spot outside Honeymoon Bay was full, so I went back and anchored in Flamingo Bay. A little tight, trying to avoid blocking a ferry dock and a channel down one side, and with three boats permanently anchored in the best places, but nice and calm in here. Finished about 3:35 at lat 18.18.724 long 64.57.546 Salad and chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. Slept like a log; very nice and calm here. 4/7/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Flamingo Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. After lunch, went for a snorkel, despite the threatening grey clouds and sometimes gusty wind. Went under the boat and scraped prop and a bit of the hull; lots of stuff growing under there. Scraped off a couple thousand baby barnacles along the waterline. Saw a huge thing on the bottom, right under the boat; looks like a homemade anchor that got loose. Or maybe the framework of a piece of farm equipment; it's about 8 feet wide, with a dozen or so tines off a horizontal bar, then a long shaft up to a ring. Glad I didn't put my anchor down onto it. Then swam across to the NW corner of the bay, watching out for high-speed dinghy traffic. Had a VERY nice snorkel among the rocks there. Hardly any coral, and lots of nasty spiky black sea urchins sitting out in the open. But plenty of interesting fish, and a few nice canyons and walls, and then a semi-sheltered grotto around the other side containing dense schools of thousands and thousands of 1-inch to 3-inch silver/translucent fish. I've never seen such dense schools of fish, all pointing the same way and moving mostly in unison, in real life. Beautiful. Many other schools of the same kind of fish, too, but pointing in random directions. Some small schools of pale yellow fish, and lots of nice individual fish. Salad and tuna-salad sandwich for dinner. Saw a fish soar through the air, going at least 25 feet at probably 30 MPH, not more than 3 feet above the surface. Totally under control. 4/8/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Flamingo Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Raised anchor about 9:20 and motored out of the bay and around to Honeymoon Bay. Still a lot of boats clustered near the spot with the WiFi signal, but I got in and started doing internet. Surprisingly rough; wind ENE 20 or so, with plenty of whitecaps, and occasionally the boat rolled heavily. Still no news about my sail, either of a tracking number or its arrival. Tried to get some numbers for my tax form, but somehow the brokerage web site is producing an encrypted PDF file that my computer can't handle; why do they have to make everything so complicated ? I just need a couple of numbers. Looked into buying an external WiFi antenna to get more range. Did a long internet session, through lunch, then raised anchor at 2:15 and went back to Flamingo Bay. Glad to find no one had grabbed my spot; anchored again by 2:35, and it's nice and calm here. Still blowing hard, ENE 20+, but I'm very well protected. Messed with the mainsheet tackle; want to remove a cam-cleat part of the block, which has been chewing up the surface of the rope. Can't get some small bolts free; maybe the bolt ends have been flattened so the nuts can't work loose. Salad and chicken-onion-mushroom-potato and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/9/2006 (Sunday) At anchor in Flamingo Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Still blowing hard, now from ESE. Lots of huge grey rainclouds with sunshine between them. After lunch, tried to listen to Car Talk, but after a minute, someone hit the wrong switch and it was replaced by the music program they broadcast yesterday at the same time. Bummer. Went snorkeling under the boat and scraped the hull for half an hour. Then swam across the boat channel to the SW corner of the bay. The bottom here is very boring, just a shallow field of grey boulders, but there are plenty of fish. One big, ugly something hiding under the biggest rock; must have been a fish, but the face sort of looked like a turtle face. Saw a school of several hundred 5-inch fish circling around several times; several different types of fish in one school, which is strange. Or maybe they were just different colors of the same species. Swam back to the boat, and got caught in the middle of the channel by an approaching high-speed skiff. But they saw me in plenty of time, and I raised an arm up to make double-sure they saw me, and they had lots of room to go behind me. Salad and yogurt for dinner. 4/10/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Flamingo Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Still blowing a bit hard, from the E. Nice and sunny. Fixed the mainsheet, removing the cam-cleats from the block and cutting out the bad section of the line. Started working on the propller shaft coupling, which has to come off so I can replace the cutless bearing. Squirted some penetrating oil on the bolts. Salad and cornedbeef-onion-potato and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/11/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor in Flamingo Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Raised anchor about 8:05 and moved over to anchor outside Honeymoon Bay by 8:25. Did long internet session. Went for a snorkel. Scraped the hull for half an hour, then over to the shore NW of the bay. Lots of tiny fish, and a few colorful small fish, but generally pretty lackluster. Messed with the propeller shaft coupling some more. Bolts won't budge, area is so cramped that I can barely get a wrench onto the bolts and can't get much leverage on them, not much light down there, and have to use a 2x4 to wedge the shaft so it doesn't spin when I use the wrench. Not easy. Salad and vegs-and-rice for dinner. Lots of rain from 10 PM to 2 AM. Caught 3 or 4 gallons of water. 4/12/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor outside Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Rain at 8:30. Partly sunny morning, but lots of huge dark grey rainclouds coming through, with occasional sprinkles. Did some internet. Took a cabinet off the wall in the engine compartment to get better access to the shaft coupling. Rainclouds off and on all day. Salad and chicken-onion-noodle-mushroomsoup and rum-and-coke for dinner. Very rolly after midnight. 4/13/2006 (Thursday) At anchor outside Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Anchor up at 7:20. Motored through Crown Bay, seeing "Wandering Albatross" anchored there. Through Haulover Cut, and found a seaplane doing a few loops in front of me as it waited for a cruise ship to get out of its takeoff path. Threaded my way up through the numerous anchored boats, seeing "Serendipity" anchored here. Anchored by 8, at lat 18.20.235 long 64.55.619 Third cruise ship came in, docked, then pulled out and pivoted and docked pointing the other way. I've never seen that happen before. They must have gotten in and found a gangplank or something on that side didn't work. Finally buckled down and did my income tax return. Took only a couple of minutes; I have nothing but interest-type income these days. But the return's a travesty: I'm missing a couple of numbers, and had to hunt up last years return to find an address to mail it to. Don't have this years tax tables either, but my income seems to fall below the standard exemptions and deductions, so my tax is zero. Maybe I don't have to file at all. Figure it's best to file something and let the IRS correct it, although I'm tempted to file nothing and see if I can drop out of the system somehow. (Not a chance, with multiple bank accounts reporting interest to the government.) I don't even know what correct postage is these days; put 43 cents on the envelope. Now I have to go find a photocopier ashore, copy the return, then tape the envelope shut (all of my envelopes have gummed themselves up because of the moisture on the boat), then mail it. Maybe I should have tried electronic filing, but my internet connections haven't been very solid recently; even getting email has been a flaky process. Most of my financial / legal life is conducted electronically these days, and most of it works pretty well. Once a month, I click a button on a web page to pay my credit card from my checking account. Proxy statements, bank statements, etc mostly come electronically. One 401K statement comes electronically but I can never get it to open, so I let it ride. When I had auto insurance, I could pay even that electronically. But annual tax returns and boat documentation renewal and IRA changes all require paper mail. Every now and then a new ATM or credit card comes in paper mail, but usually the old one works long enough to let me pick up the new one. One big pain: voting is still in the Dark Ages, and I don't even really have a legal residence address any more, so I'm probably going to miss voting in the next few elections. Apparently, every county in the country has a separate voting organization (as specified in the US constitution ?), so there is little chance of getting a unified mechanism that works from anywhere. Before the 2004 presidential election, the Pentagon was ordered to build an internet-based mechanism for soldiers and others overseas to vote electronically, and after a year or so of study they came back and said it couldn't be done. Dinghied ashore. Walked to KMart, looking for a photocopier, and had a lot of trouble finding one. Finally found a shop in another strip-mall. Then couldn't find a mailbox. Bought snacks in KMart, and groceries in the supermarket. Came out to find the sky totally grey and starting to rain. Had a lot of refrigrated stuff, so I couldn't wait out the rain. Got wet, stopped to rest and wait out a strong patch in a bus shelter, then kept going. As I got into the dinghy, the skies opened and it started pouring. Soaked by the time I got to the boat. Long process of stowing the groceries and drying myself off. Rain stopped about 20 minutes later, but the sky remained very threatening. Lots of wakes rolling the boat. In the print shop, I confirmed something: I shouldn't have changed my clocks when Daylight Savings changed; the time doesn't change here. What fooled me was that the local radio station (and TV) programs DID change times; apparently they're driven from the US mainland. In late afternoon, dinghied ashore to the dock near town. Stopped by "Serendipity" and had a long chat with them. They say "Second Wind" and "Fidelis" are STILL in Culebra; "Second Wind" must have been there well more then 2 months by now. They're upgrading to a bigger watermaker or something. Also: "Raven" has been in the Ponce boatyard for about 7 weeks having work done after getting blown onto rocks at Samana; every time they try to get out of the yard, something else comes up that must be fixed. Now I'm told the grounding happened outside the harbor, not inside, and it was a swivel that failed, not a shackle. Also: "Wandering Albatross" is still here because they're having problems. They have an electric motor and lots of batteries instead of an internal combustion engine, and the "controller" electronics for their motor have died. A $3000 item, and the manufacturer is debating whether it's still under warranty. And about the time that happened, they lost the handle for their anchor windlass, so everything was conspiring against them. But I think "Serendipity" said "Wandering Albatross" left today; must have left soon after I saw them. And the couple from "Neshuma" has a new boat and is/was in San Juan. Got ashore, went to Post Office, and mailed my tax return. Then sat in a park reading a book for an hour so. Pleasant, and some good-looking tourist women. Salad and eggsalad sandwichs for dinner. During dinner, guy from boat next door, "Calaloo" from Titusville FL, stopped by; think his name was Rick. Turns out he was reading my web site several years ago when I was buying my boat and he was about to buy his. And our paths have crossed a couple of times, at Boot Key Harbor and at Rock Harbor in the Bahamas, but each time I was leaving harbor just as they were coming in. And I think they stopped briefly in Luperon just a month or to before I got there. So he finally got to say hi to me today. They're heading for Trinidad or Venezuela for hurricane season; that's about the first topic cruisers talk about when they meet at this time of year. They've been stuck here for 7 weeks because his wife broke her leg. They were hiking on St John, she stepped on some heavy gravel and fell and her leg was broken, just that quickly. So they took an apartment ashore so she could recuperate; she couldn't handle being on the boat and in the dinghy. They just got back onto the boat in the last day or two. Horribly rolly evening and night; very uncomfortable. And it started pouring rain every hour or so. Then about 2 AM, the wind suddenly shifted from SE to SW and blew 35-40 knots or so with very heavy rain. Now we're on a rocky lee shore, with a pretty good fetch across the harbor onto us. Everyone's anchors held, but "Serendipity" suddenly was swinging very close to a permanently moored small sailboat, and I saw them on deck in the rain motoring a bit to keep clear. Looked up at the hillside above town at one point, just in time to see a huge brilliant greenish flare of light; I think it was an electrical transformer exploding. Couldn't hear an explosion, and didn't see any section of lights go out, but the light was shaped like a transformer canister and a telephone pole below it. 4/14/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Charlotte Amelie harbor, St Thomas USVI. Totally grey and pouring rain at dawn; visibility down to less than 1/2 mile; can't even tell if there are any cruise ships at the docks. Had planned to raise anchor at dawn and get out of this rolly harbor and back over to Water Island, but I'm stuck until the rain stops. Visibility improving a bit by 8 AM, but still raining fairly heavily. Boat rolling strongly. What a pain. Harbor has big streaks and areas of muddy water in it, and lots of garbage (mostly plastic bottles) floating around. All being washed in from the land. Rain FINALLY eased a bit around 9, so raised anchor about 9:20 and headed out of the main harbor. Through Haulover Cut and Crown Bay. Rain stopped completely. "Wandering Albatross" is gone. Looked at Honeymoon Bay briefly, and thought of looking into Flamingo Bay, but there's a pretty heavy S or SW swell coming in, and the weather forecast says some more S or SW wind, and both bays are no good in those conditions. So back into Elephant Bay and anchored about 10:10, at lat 18.19.361 long 64.57.295 Pretty rolly here, too, but a bit better than the main harbor, and I've explored all options (except going into a marina !). Sun trying to peek out a little a few minutes later. Put 6-7 gallons of rainwater into the tanks. Set the clocks back an hour, to get back to local time. Nice and sunny by noon. Nice to open up the boat and get some air through. Getting a little less rolly, too. Having lots of problems with the laptop's keyboard, and it's getting worse. Certain keys don't work at all for 15 minutes or so after startup, then start working intermittently, often repeating multiple times, then eventually work okay. Salad and chicken-onion-noodle-mushroom-mushroomsoup and rum-and-coke for dinner. Not a bad night; boat rolled a little every now and then, but generally pretty calm. 4/15/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Elephant Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Well, lost my gamble. Yesterday, I anchored up against the south shore, because the water everywhere else is 30-40 feet deep, and the forecast said wind would be SW. But this morning the wind is from the NW. I was watching it all night, as a very gentle NW wind held. There's often a gentle N wind at night, from a land breeze (from land cooling off at night). I think my anchor chain weight was holding me, or the chain was over the edge into deeper water, or caught on some coral. But now the wind is picking up, and it will blow me onto shore. And I'll have to be careful while raising anchor, to make sure I don't get blown ashore when the chain and then anchor come free. So raised anchor at about 8 AM. Motored around the corner to see if I could day-anchor outside Honeymoon Bay, but the wind and swells are from the W there, so no good. Back into Elephant Bay, and put the anchor down in 30-foot water. Boat ended up exactly where it had been, but with the anchor well out from shore and holding it away from shore. Sail still hasn't arrived at the marina mail store. Radio screwed up Car Talk again: dead air for the first half hour, then it suddenly started up in the middle. After lunch, got part of the propeller shaft coupling loose. Freed bolts holding the metal flange onto the aft end of the rubber coupler. Tightened them again; enough for today. The usual quantity of cursing, sweating, bruises and scrapes required to get the job done. Next step: loosen the two setscrews holding the flange onto the shaft. I think I'll stop there; don't want to try to force the flange off the shaft until I get into the boatyard, because forcing it back on probably will require hammering on the end of the shaft from outside the boat. Still blowing from NW in midafternoon. Then to N and then NNE. Listened to weather forecast, and it's totally different from yesterday's forecast. Says NE tomorrow and then E on Monday. Boat rolling a fair amount. Added water to the batteries. Thinking over options for getting to a more comfortable anchorage, suddenly thought "when it blows N, go S". Time to go to St Croix ! It's about 35 miles south of here, about 7-8 hours of travel. The only complication is that my sail might arrive in St Thomas while I'm gone. The used-sail company has ignored my emails asking for a tracking number, so I have no idea when it might arrive. Oh, well, St Croix is only one long day away, so I could rush back to pick it up if I had to. And the mail store probably wouldn't mind if it sat in their store an extra few days. Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches for dinner. Up at 2:30 AM. Got the boat ready to go, stowing and lashing things. Nice, calm conditions and a bright mostly-full moon. Raised the mainsail and mizzen. Started raising the anchor. Then realized that the boat was snagged on a mooring it had swung over. One of those private moorings, just a couple of fenders lashed together as a mooring ball. Eased the anchor rode and used a boat-hook to mess with the mooring line, but couldn't get it free. So I got out a knife and cut through one of the mooring lines. Really shouldn't have done it; a bad thing to do. That STILL didn't free the boat. So had to lower the dinghy and go snorkeling under the boat in the dark, not a pleasant thing to have to do. Untangled the lines and fenders out of the rudder skeg. Back out of the water, into the boat, hoisted the dinghy, rinsed off the snorkel gear and myself. Anchor up a little before 4 AM. Had some trouble getting the running lights to come on; all of the old electrical switches on the binnacle are a bit balky these days. Motor-sailed around the SW corner of Water Island and headed SSE. Had to keep an eye on one cruise-ship, and heard a freighter announce it was leaving dock, but nothing else out here. Ran the RADAR for a while to exercise it. Nice, conditions, with wind and swells generally from the N, giving me a downwind run. Just enough wind to keep the sails full. Lots of finicky hand-steering; wish I'd fixed the auto-pilot instead of loafing the last few days. And I'm worrying a little that the shaft-coupling bolts I messed with might work loose. Always get a little anxious about stuff like that when starting a longish passage. Keeping the engine at pretty low RPMs and doing about 4.5 knots; trying to keep fuel-consumption down. 4/16/2006 (Sunday) In transit from St Thomas to St Croix USVI. At about the halfway point, around 8 AM or so, wind and swells started picking up from the NE, on the beam as I'm going SE. Boat rolling a little, but not too bad. Gorgeous day; lots of clouds in all directions, but plenty of sunshine. Can see St Thomas behind, St John left-behind, St Croix ahead, maybe Culebra far to the right-behind. Nice. Could be sailing if I had a jib. By 11 or so, wind is up to 15 or so, swells are bigger with a few whitecaps, and I'm tired and headachey. Want to get there. Heard the first half of Car Talk that I missed yesterday. Into the harbor at Christiansted just before 1 PM, through a channel made a bit confusing by a couple of sharp turns and a fork around Round Reef. Inside and E of Protestant Cay, did a loop and stall to furl the sails. Place is smaller than I expected from looking at chart and guide. Then weaved through the anchorage area S of Protestant Cay. Much more crowded than I expected, and I got worried I might motor into a tight spot and be trapped. Lots of boats anchored and moored very close together, some with dinghies tethered behind and/or bowsprits and long shallow anchor rodes stretching out in front. Very glad to get through to the other side without incident. The funny thing is that exactly this area is marked as a "cable area" on the chart, which usually means no anchoring. Then saw a seaplane base on the W side of the area, so probably not a good idea to anchor over there. Had just about given up on anchoring near the cay, and was going to head over to E side of the harbor, when I saw a triangle of open water just off the channel W of the cay. Got into it and put the anchor down. A bit tight, but should be okay in NE and E wind. In SE wind, I might swing into the channel. But it looks like a lightly-used channel anyway; doesn't really lead to anything. The main channel and marina are over on the E side of the harbor. Finished anchoring about 1:10 at lat 17.44.991 long 64.42.362 Time to go lie down. Took some more headache pills. Seaplanes landing and taking off just on the other side of the channel from me. Resort on island playing loud decent music; lots of people on the beach or in the water. Blowing pretty hard in the later afternoon; glad I got here early. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner; still headachey. Found I'd left the instrument panel light switch on all day, and it was dragging down the batteries a bit. Fortunately, the band and MC at the resort quit at 7 PM or so. Headache went away and I slept like a log. 4/17/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Still blowing from NE; weather forecast said was supposed to be E by now. Dinghied ashore around 10. Lovely wood boardwalk all along the waterfront, and free dinghy dockage on it. Strolled through a bit of the town, and it's charming. Danish from 1750's, I think, with many buildings of cemented-over brick with an arched sidewalk roofed over by the upper stories, giving shade and coolness as you walk. Have to watch your step: lots of sills and different sidewalk surfaces and steps up or down. Peeked into a pretty Episcopalian church where they were havig a funeral service; nice singing, and a nice building. Much of the town closed today because it's Easter Monday. Very nice lady from New Hampshire in the Tourist Office, where I got maps and she wrote down the bus schedule for me. When I asked about a book-exchange, she dug into the back room and brought out some books another boater had left a while ago, so I took a John Grisham novel. Back to the boat for lunch. In midafternoon, dighied ashore. Pried $3 out of my wallet and went through the old fort and the "steeple" building across the street from it. The fort was pretty interesting, with great views from the tops of the walls. Its main purpose was to protect agaist slave revolts. A big barracks building nearby was totally destroyed by fire, and it turned out that the fire was set by one of the commanders to cover the theft of the payroll. Then walked around the harbor to check out the ferry dock and boatyard on the east side. Hot, not much happening, and one of my flip-flops chewing a hole in the top of my foot. Got up onto a rise and had a nice view over the harbor, and watched the ferry roaring out, heading for St Thomas. Back down and through a shopping center, but the only useful store in it was a big hardare store. Eventually found my way toward a grocery store I'd been told about, but started running out of steam before I got there. Suddenly saw a bakery, and decided to get bread and head back to the boat, giving up on the grocery store. Just as I got to the bakery, one of my sandals/flip-flops came apart. Great timing, happening just as far from the dinghy as possible. Got the bread and limped home, sometimes walking barefoot, sometimes one foot barefoot, sometimes on the broken remains of the flipflop. Hot sidewalks burned my feet a little. Grass at the fort was cool to walk on, but had some kind of burrs or prickly stuff in it. The wood boardwalk was pleasant to walk on, but had to watch out for splinters. Dumped the flipflops into a garbage can and got into the dinghy, and back to the boat. Salad and chicken-onion-noodle-mushroomsoup and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/18/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Weather forecast said wind was supposed to be SE today, so of course we have a knot or two from the W this morning ! Around 9 AM, wind is SW 5, and threatening to wrap me around a nearby floating channel-marker. About 9:30, finally gave in and started the engine and raised anchor; that channel buoy was about 10 feet behind me, and the wind still hadn't decided what it was going to do today. Can't sit here all morning watching it. Tried going south to see if there was room between a catamaran and another boat and near the seaplane area, but the people on the catamaran waved me off and pointed out a very shallow wreck right next to them; they said they were about to move too. So I went back and anchored about 200 feet N of where I had been. More room here. Wind still W 5+ at 9:45. Dinghied ashore. To NPS station at fort to get an anchoring permit for Buck Island. Stumped the NPS guy there by asking why the part of the fort facing land is triangular; he said he'll have to research it. Then to library. Much confusion there; they have no signs explaining the internet access, and two guys after me had a big argument about who'd been there first. Did a hour of internet for $2. Got some paperback books; apparently every paperback in the place is on a book-exchange basis. Looked for bananas, but couldn't find any. Back to boat. Wind NW 5-8 at 1 PM. Dinghied ashore after lunch. To library. Exchanged a pile of books, and read newspapers. Heavenly; they had TODAY's Wall Street Journal and USA Today and San Juan english-language paper, and NY Times from 3 days ago. What a treat ! Wind NNW about 2 knots at 5 PM. Salad and eggsalad sandwiches for dinner. At 6:45, wind suddenly flipped from N to S. 4/19/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Wind SW 1 knot or less. Water glassy-clear. A tug and fuel barge came through the channel at 6:45. Dinghied ashore to catch the 8 AM bus to Fredericksted, the town at the west end of the island. While I was waiting, chatted with an old security guard guy also waiting for the bus, and I just couldn't understand his mix of English and local language, plus his accent. Just impossible. Lots to see as the bus went right down the center of the island, passing shopping center after shopping center, and pulling into the hospital and university. Took an hour and 25 minutes, for $1. Lots of the passengers knew each other, and joked with each other as they got on and off. Sort of a moving social center. Fredericksted itself was a bit of a disappointment; not many interesting buildings, and not much happening. Very pretty waterfront walkway and park, and a nice fort that I went through for $3. Had a nice chat with the gatekeeper for a while. This fort has a (much smaller) triangular part facing land, a little like the one at Christiansted, and again I asked about the reason for it. The gatekeeper did't know. When the curator came in, he gave a pretty bogus reason for it, and one that didn't explain the Christiansted triangle at all, and I think he really didn't know either. He did tell me that the fort was mostly a fiasco: an inspector once found that the powder store was wet and useless, and only one guy there knew how to fire a cannon anyway. And once a hostile warship came into the harbor and took the crew of another warship prisoner, right under the nose of the fort, without the fort firing a shot. Caught the bus back. Heard on the radio that yesterday a plane took off from St Croix and crashed into the water 5 miles short of St Thomas. Wonder if it was one of the seaplanes taking off next to us here. There's also an airport on the south side of the island. [Found out a few days later: it came from the airport.] Got off the bus a mile or two short of Christiansted at a supermarket. Bought groceries and walked back. Got back to the boat about 1:45. Tug and fuel barge came back out through the channel at 3 PM. Barge draft was 4 feet less than when it came in, so they off-loaded onto the island. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/20/2006 (Thursday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Anchor up at 6:40 and motored out in about 1 knot of wind; extremely calm, water almost glassy. Turned W and headed for Salt River. Don't have a decent chart for it, but guidebook has a good sketch of the entrance, which is very tricky and barely marked and between a couple of historicly ship-eating reefs. So I'm a bit nervous about it. But these are the best possible conditions for doing it. And if it's hopeless, can go back to Christiansted, or back past it to Buck Island. Auto-pilot still not working; did a hard-right-turn when I engaged it. Got a drive-by WiFi signal as I passed half a mile offshore of a lot of houses ! Connected for about 60 seconds, just long enough to upload my log file. Got to Salt River sooner than I expected (I did't even have GPS coords for it). Lots of floats, and the single green marker the guidebook shows is much farther in than I expected. Got on the VHF, and someone in a slip in the marina answered. He said the floats are all mooring buoys or dive buoys, ignore them. The single green marker is all there is. So I headed in, sweating bullets, going as slow as possible, watching the depth-sounder. Got through the main entrance past the green marker just fine, made the sharp left turn, turned back to right, and then the water got shallower and shallower. Saw 5.2 ft for 50 ft or so, and they say this place has a 5.5 foot limit. So I guess I wasn't too far off the nominal track. Would be nice to have a couple more markers. Plenty of room inside; about a dozen boats here. Pretty and very protected. Finished anchoring about 8:15, at lat 17.46.637 long 64.45.383 More activity here than I expected: a dive boat went out, and a flock of kayakers. Later, a few more boats in and out, including a Coast Guard boat. Just kept reading my book and ignored them, and they left. This is a historic place: Christopher Columbus sent boats ashore here, looking for fresh water, on his second trip, in 1493. There was a skirmish with Carib Indians, with one killed and a couple wounded on each side. Around 11 or so, wind suddenly turned on and started blowing a steady E 15 or so. Soon some whitecaps out in the ocean. I'd hoped the glassy-calm conditions would last until I did some snorkeling, but no such luck. After lunch, went for a snorkel. Tried a mooring buoy outside the reef, but it was too rough out there and the buoy was pretty far from the reef. Outboard quit once on the way out, but got it restarted right away. Swam about 150 feet from the dinghy and then decided this was stupid, too rough and some chance of a boat coming along and running over me, I was in such open water. Went back inside, anchored inside the reef, and had a pleasant little snorkel. Not much to see, some drab fish and lots of storm-broken old dead coral. But it was refreshing. Saw a stingray about 7 feet long dug into the sandy bottom with just tail and eyes showing. The water outside has a canyon going to 350 feet deep; there are lots of dive sites all along the north and west coasts here. The canyon connects to the Virgin Islands Trough (18,000 feet deep), which connects to the Puerto Rico Trench (28,000+ feet deep; deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean). Took a little tour of the harbor, just to see what is here. The marina is mostly a couple of seawalls with boats along them, although I didn't go all the way back into the narrow channel; saw a couple of masts sticking up from far back in there. A couple of guys working on boats, and another sailboat up on the hard, so there must be some way of hauling out. Probably two dozen boats total between marina and anchorage, maybe 6 being lived on, a dozen idle, and 6 more near-wrecks. Also a couple of tents on a beach, probably part of the Park, and probably a trail from there up to the Visitor's Center. Cleaned outboard spark plugs; they were filthy. Squashed a cockroach in the cockpit; I guess he flew in. Supposed to blow E and NE 15-20 for the next few days. So I want to go back to C-sted, since there's nothing of interest here, and I need to get back on the internet and see if my sail has arrived back in St Thomas. Salad and cheese sandwiches for dinner. 4/21/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Salt River Bay, St Croix USVI. Up at dawn, wanting to leave before the wind got too strong. But had to wait as a trimaran very slowly felt its way into the anchorage. Finally raised anchor at 6:30 and went out, not having much problem getting around the reefs. Motored E, slogging into NE 15 wind and swells, and bucking a 1/2-knot opposing current. Saw a couple of schools of flying fish. Into Christiansted harbor and put the anchor down. Ended up too close to the channel, and was raising anchor and repositioning when a fuel-freighter came down the channel right next to me. Finished anchoring at 8:15. Sprayed a cockroach in the aft cabin, but he scooted away. By 10 or so, blowing ENE 15-20 and some chop coming through the anchorage, but hitting me straight on the bow, so it's no problem. Some smaller boats are pitching a bit. Dinghied ashore after an early lunch. To library. Exchanged a couple of books, did internet for $2 (no sail yet; paid credit card bill), and read newspapers. Got a stack of free magazines, mostly New Yorker's, which I love. To the Tourist Info place for some info (that lady knows EVERYTHING; I asked why the oil refinery on the south coast is there, and found out her husband works there, so she knows all about it). Got cash from ATM, then back to boat through semi-rough conditions. The newspaper said St Croix has much lower fuel prices than the rest of the USVI, because fuel here comes from the oil refinery on the south coast, while St Thomas and St John have the fuel shipped through Puerto Rico first. Fuel-freighter left at 3. And the seaplanes are taking off right up the channel next to me, about 150 feet away. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/22/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Pretty rough in the anchorage: windy and a lot of chop. Found the cockroach I sprayed yesterday, dead in the aft head. Listened to Car Talk. Dinghied ashore and went to library. Read newspapers and got some more free magazines (they have a whole table of free magazines they're trying to get rid of, but many of them are things such as "Numismatic World"). Chatted a bit with a guy who lives on a boat here. Huge line of grey rainclouds moving overhead all day, from ENE to WSW. Shading my solar panels. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Saw some kind of fish skimming along just under the surface, heading straight for the side of the boat, making a wake like a torpedo. He banged right into it, and probably said the fish equivalent of "D'oh !". Rained hard from 5:45 to 6:30 or so. People here have been saying they need some rain. 4/23/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Still blowing hard, mostly from ENE. Some rain after dawn. Took apart laptop keyboard and cleaned a lot of hair out of it, but that didn't fix it. I've been trying to figure out my plan for the next week, but it's tricky. Carnival has started in St Thomas, and there's a concert on Thursday I'd like to go to, and parades next weekend. I'd also like to snorkel a couple of days at Buck Island here, before leaving for St Thomas. But the wind has to settle down before I do either of those things. Forecast says it will still blow hard through Monday at least. And the wild card is: when will my sail arrive (in St Thomas) ? Loafed all day. Salad and chicken-onion-noodle-mushroomsoup and rum-and-coke for dinner. 4/24/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Tug and fuel barge came through the channel about 6:30. Big line of grey rainclouds moving overhead again, from ENE to WSW. Emptied 5 gallons from diesel jug into fuel tank, and 1/2 gallon from gas jug into dinghy fuel tank. Dinghied across the harbor to the boatyard/marina. Got 11 gallons of diesel for $26 ($2.38/gallon). Checked out their marine store and decided to buy a new battery tomorrow. Got their boatyard rates. Walked to grocery store (stopping at bookstore and computer store on the way), which turned out to be a fairly pricey gourmet-type place. To bakery, where they didn't have any loaves of wheat bread. Back to boat. After lunch, dinghied ashore. Chatted with liveaboards Joe and Andy for a while. Went to library and read newspapers and magazines, then they suddenly closed the place because wet ceiling tiles were falling down in the main desk area. Sat on the waterfront and read for a while, then back to the boat. Tug and fuel barge came back out through the channel at 4:30. Salad and tuna-salad sandwich and a beer for dinner. Wind cycling around and stalling out during the night; made it rolly at times, since a bit of a swell is still coming in. 4/25/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Very light, fluky, shifty wind this morning. Did a small bucket of laundry. Emptied 11 gallons of diesel from jugs into fuel tank. Took the damaged battery out of the engine compartment. A sweaty, messy job, using lots of baking soda to neutralize the acid and keep it from getting everywhere. Hauled the 63-lb battery up the companionway, out onto deck, and down into the dinghy with a bit of a chop making things interesting. Across the harbor to the boatyard/marina. Price of fuel has gone up 20 cents/gallon overnight ! Got 5 gallons of gasoline ($12.75; $2.55/gallon), 5 gallons of diesel ($12.90; $2.58/gallon), a tube of polysulfide caulk ($19), and a golf-cart battery (Trojan T105, $94 plus $10 to dispose of old battery). Had to fill out little forms certifying that the fuel was for marine use and thus non-taxable; didn't have to do that yesterday. Hauled everything back to the boat and out of the dinghy. Wind blowing NE 15 or so again. Cleaned up the engine compartment a bit, working to get out acid splashed from the old battery. Took the cover off the new battery to top off the water, and found the middle cell so low that the tops of the plates were exposed ! Should have looked at it in the store; would have gotten a different battery if I'd seen that. Don't feel like hauling it back to exchange it. Put it in, and it seems to be charging up normally. Will see how well it holds charge overnight. Dinghied ashore after lunch and went to the library. Read newspapers and magazines; waited almost an hour before I could get on the internet. To bakery for a loaf of bread and a couple of huge bread-puddings. Chicken-onion-mushroom-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner, and a bread-pudding for dessert. 4/26/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Batteries seem to have done fine overnight. Weather forecast still says N swells, but I decide to go to Buck Island anyway. It's only 5 miles or so away, so if the anchorage there is too rolly to stay overnight, I can come back here. Anchor up at 7:25, and motor-sailed out. Found the wind right on the nose, so furled the mainsail. Got a drive-by WiFi signal about 1/4 mile off shore just east of the harbor, so uploaded my log file. Lots of dark rainclouds, and it sprinkled on me a couple of times; could see it pouring on the north shore of the big island. Ran the auto-pilot for 45 minutes or so, and it worked fine. To Buck Island, and the only boat anchored at West Beach left just as I approached. Put anchor down by 8:50, and it's decent here. Just a little roll; protected on several sides by reefs and island. Lat 17.47.229 log 64.37.752 Less roll here than in the town harbor. Less than 10 minutes later, Park Ranger boat swung by to check me out. Didn't ask my boat name or registration number, but said something about not recognizing my boat, and wanted to know who I'd talked to at the fort to get my anchoring permit and when ? Strange. There is no physical permit; they just put you in a computer somewhere. Or maybe they just keep paper files ? Turned into a nice day: lots of sun and few clouds. Boats started coming in and anchoring, and people wandering on the beach. After lunch, cleaned the outboard spark plugs, added gas to the tank, and headed to the other end of the island. About 1.5 miles or so, and a long slog into wind and chop. Got into the "lagoon" and up to the snorkel moorings at the end of it. Chop pretty rough here; the reef doesn't stop much of it. Into the water and to snorkeling. There's a "trail" here: cement blocks on the bottom every now and then, with plaques explaining some fish or coral. Some nice grottos formed by huge piles of broken coral, and some nice schools of fish. Half a dozen thick 3-foot-long barracuda hovering around, looking evil. But it's a bit rough today to be comfortable, some strong currents, and the snorkeling doesn't live up to expectations. And a toenail I hurt yesterday (on my big toe) is hampering my snorkeling. In deep water near the outside of the reef, got stung on my right arm by something, probably one of the little translucent jellyfish I can see here. Back into the dinghy, and the ride back to boat goes much faster, because it's downwind. Scraped the prop and hull for a while, and saw an old two-bladed prop on the bottom. Not worth trying to pick up; it's pretty encrusted. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and yogurt for dinner. Pretty quiet night; slept well. One other boat spent the night here, a catamaran. 4/27/2006 (Thursday) At anchor at Buck Island, St Croix USVI. Red areas and lots of itching from stings on my arms and hands; guess I got stung a bit more yesterday than I realized at the time. Cleaned laptop keyboard again; didn't help. Guess I'll have to buy a new one. Did a small bucket of laundry. Several boats came in, one a nice small powerboat "Sea Turtle" with a cutie in a bikini standing on the bow to handle the anchor. After lunch, dinghied ashore. Walked on the beach, then up a trail into the interior. The trail climbed up and over the island, with terrific views. I missed the actual "observation point"; it must have been down a piece of trail that seemed to be leading down and in the wrong direction. Lots of cacti and thorny stuff along the trail, and it was a bit hot and still. And this island has lots of manchineel trees; I read a blurb about them saying "every part of the tree is poisonous: bark, sap, berries, leaves". Had to stop twice to pull thorns out of the bottoms of my flip-flops; they were sticking right through into the bottoms of my feet. But lovely exercise. Came out on the south side of the island, and back along the beaches to the dinghy. No one interesting on the beach, but three pretty women in bikinis on the powerboat sunbathing on the foredeck. Back to the boat, and saw a lovely sloop "Illusion 3" coming in, apparently not knowing where to go (although it's very simple and open). They were heading right for the reef, and I waved to them a couple times to change course. Eventually they meandered into a safe area and anchored. Then they hopped into the dinghy and took off for the other end of the island, leaving their engine running, which is a really bad idea. A clog in the intake or a sheared impeller or a broken fan belt, and their engine overheats and is ruined. Now the women in bikinis on the powerboat are sunbathing TOPLESS on the foredeck. That's why it's a good idea to carry binoculars on a boat. An hour later, the topless ladies were whooping it up, taking pictures of each other striking naughty poses, spanking each other on the butt, and posing for the guy up in the flying bridge who was running a videocamera. Very entertaining ! "Illusion 3" ran their engine all afternoon, for at least four hours, maybe to drive refrigeration. Pretty bad, at today's fuel prices. Salad and chicken-onion-mushroom-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. A dark Jamaica rum that is very nice. Three other boats spent the night here. 4/28/2006 (Friday) At anchor at Buck Island, St Croix USVI. Red welts and itching on my arms still bothering me a bit. Could take an antihistamine, but it's not quite that bad. Added water to the batteries. New one didn't need any. Time to check out Teague Bay, partly to see if I can get a WiFi signal. Anchor up at 9:25 and motored across. Through the reef and started scanning for signals as I went along. Found a couple, and put anchor down at 10:15 at lat 17.45.717 long 64.37.067 Then couldn't get the signals I saw, but got another very tenuous signal. Never could keep it going for more than a minute or two. Took over a hour to upload files and get a look at my email headers; no news about my sail. Anchor up a little after noon, and motored up to the Yacht Club. Pretty dead up there, and no WiFi signals, so decided not to stay. Turned around and came back down W inside the reef, then out and across to Buck Island again. Anchored by 1:25 at lat 17.47.214 long 64.37.730 More activity today, but no topless babes. Sprinkles of rain at 2:15, then some wind and real rain at 2:30. That chased away most of the other boats. Salad and fruit and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. One motorboat spending the night here with me. 4/29/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Buck Island, St Croix USVI. A bit tired and headachey all morning. Spent most of the morning in bed. Boats piling into the anchorage after noon. Probably 15 or so total. Some interesting anchoring gyrations. Listened to Car Talk on NPR. After lunch, felt a bit better, and went for a snorkel. Scraped the hull a bit, then had a long swim across to the reef. I guess the real reef is much further out; all I could find was grass and some rocks, with a few fish. Saw a stingray gliding along. Swim back took about four times longer, against wind and some chop. Got some good exercise. Several good-looking women in bikinis on the various boats, and one thong bikini. Pleasant afternoon. Chicken-noodle-mushroomsoup and rum-and-coke for dinner, and a bread-pudding for dessert. Threw a chicken bone overboard, and instantly there was a flurry of fish and one seized it and they took off. First time that's ever happened to me, and I've wondered why it doesn't happen more often. 4/30/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Buck Island, St Croix USVI. Anchor up at 9:35. Wind on the nose, so motored toward C-sted. Hoping for a WiFi signal on the north shore. No signal in Punnett Bay, but got one in Beauregard Bay. Went in and anchored 10:45 at lat 17.45.443 long 64.41.178 Did internet. Hard to respond to email with the e, n and w keys not working. Updating the log file is a pain too; have to paste those keys in from elsewhere. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Bad swell started at 2:45. 5/1/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Beauregard Bay, St Croix USVI. Swell eased a bit after dawn, so I stayed here and did internet. Raised anchor at 2:15 and headed into harbor. Had to dash across the channel to get out of the way of a fast ferry coming in. Anchor down by 2:45 at lat 17.45.022 long 64.42.264 Sailboat "Snowfire" came in and anchored a little close to me. Feeling tired and headachey. Cornedbeef-and-potato for dinner. 5/2/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Headachey. Dinghied ashore and caught 10:30 bus to shopping center. Bought groceries at supermarket and walked the 2 miles or so back to the dinghy. After lunch, dinghied ashore. Chatted with several cruisers at the dock, about interesting things such as war in Iraq, and former careers. To library, to exchange books and read newspapers. Back to boat, and unexpected S wind is swinging me very close to nearby sailboat "Snowfire". Hope they'll get the idea and move a bit or let out some more anchor rode; I was here first. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Headache really bad in the evening. To bed early, and had a lousy night. And wind kept clocking around and stalling out and making our boats swing closely. At about 2 AM, we went stern-to-stern and were about to collide. I called over to them and blew a horn, but couldn't get anyone up. Pulled in about 20 feet of anchor rode, and we swung past each other. But now I'm worried I might drag. Rain and wind soon afterward. Kept raining off and on until dawn. 5/3/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Still very headachey; feel lousy. Totally grey and damp morning, and very still air. About 6:30, raised anchor and moved about 80 feet further away from "Snowfire". Now I'll have to watch to see how close I come to another boat if it blows from ENE. After lunch, headache started to ease a bit. Lots of rain at 2 PM or so. With what I got last night, added about 5 gallons to the water jugs. Salad and spaghetti for dinner. Headache almost gone. Slept well. In the middle of the night, started blowing N 15-20 or so, but that's a good direction for me: plenty of room to swing. 5/4/2006 (Thursday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Headache gone. This is my 5-year anniversary of owning and living on Magnolia ! Took possession of Magnolia on 5/4/2001 in Key Largo. Have been living aboard and cruising ever since, except for a couple of 2-week "vacations from the boat" each year. Dinghied across the harbor to the marina. Bought 6 gallons of diesel at $2.58/gallon; they say the price is going up 12 cents tonight. Walked to hardware store, but they didn't have the fuses I need for my laptop power connector. Bought a scraper and a small bucket. Getting back into the dinghy at a very rough seawall with a large drop, managed to let the scraper poke a dent in the bottom of the bucket; that's $2 mostly wasted. There's a triathlon here on Sunday morning, and they were practicing the swimming leg of it in the harbor as I came back. Had to wait for a gap, then stupidly went too close in front of an incoming freighter, with my outboard sputtering and threatening to stall. After lunch, dinghied ashore. Chatted with several cruisers at the dock, then to library. Did an hour of internet for $2. 10 minutes before I got on, the marina in St Thomas sent a message saying my sail had arrived ! So now I have to get back there pretty soon to pick it up. Salad and tuna sandwiches and rum-and-coke for dinner. Looked over at one point and saw a woman on a boat next to me walking around stark naked in the cockpit, probably after showering. Not a very pretty woman, but I appreciate the friendliness. Soon she had clothes on and was joined by two guys for a while; I think I chatted with all three of them on the dock today. 5/5/2006 (Friday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Still blowing hard from the N. Might be a little E in the wind tomorrow, which would be good for going to St Thomas. But I might have to wait for N swells to go away. Loafed all day. Late in the afternoon, looked over to see the woman next door walking around on deck stark naked, with a male friend swimming next to her boat. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Around 5:30, cleaned outboard spark plugs and then dinghied ashore. Happened to meet a woman at the dinghy dock, who asked which boat I had come from. She said "oh, you're my neighbor; I'm the naked lady". She wasn't the woman I'd chatted with ashore the other day; this one is younger and better looking. Her name is Sherry or Shelley or something like that. I said I'd noticed her walking around naked, and she said she didn't really believe in clothing, she just wore some when ashore so she didn't get arrested. Before I could get any further into a conversation, she dashed off to find her dog. Tonight's the "Jump Up" festival. Lots of roads closed, with food booths and bands set up. Lots of people strolling around. Several nice bands, including a steel drum band and a high-school steel drum orchestra. A couple of street performers making balloons for kids and clowning around. A sprinkling of guys I guessed must be triathlon competitors: weathered types with zero body fat. Some pretty women. But the highlight was a group of 8 or 10 guys on very tall stilts, dancing around to the music. One of them was doing a kind of limbo on top of stilts; very strange to see. 5/6/2006 (Saturday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Still blowing hard from the NNE. Took the shore-power connectors off and cleaned them up, in preparation for rebedding them. Pretty sure I get water leaking in there during a hard rain. The existing caulk was in terrible condition. Sailboat came in, circled many times, and finally anchored close behind me. They can't have more than 2.5-1 scope on their anchor rode; I'd never do that in such a crowded place. I have about 7-1 scope out. But they look like pretty experienced cruisers. [And their anchor held overnight.] Listened to Car Talk, then dinghied ashore and went to the library. Salad and chicken-onion-saffronrice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 5/7/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Blowing hard from the NE. Totally grey, with low solid clouds and occasional misty rain. Good weather for the triathlon. Start of the swimming leg of the triathlon was from the small island next to me, so I watched them go from the cockpit at 6:30. Many more competitors than I expected: at least a couple hundred of them. Maybe three times as many spectators watching from ashore on the big island. Fastest male pro finished the swimming leg in 25 minutes. Back to bed and slept/loafed much of the morning; I didn't sleep too well last night, and I had no energy or desire to launch the dinghy and go ashore to watch more of the triathlon. Loafed all afternoon, watching it blow and get greyer and wetter. Bored (you can do only SO much reading) and uncomfortable. Around 3:30, dark low clouds with thunder, wind light and fluky, then rain. Soon the clouds were down to sea-level, and the rain was thick and hard, often blowing into the pilothouse and forcing me to stay below. Rained and rained until about 6 PM. Then strong wind, NE 25 or so for the rest of the evening and night. Lots of strong chop in the anchorage. Salad and peanut-butter crackers for dinner. 5/8/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Blowing 25 or so from the NE, with higher gusts. Totally grey, with low threatening clouds and high humidity. Lots of strong chop in the anchorage. Dumped about 4 gallons of rainwater into the water tanks. At 8:30, boat close behind me raised anchor, and to my surprise they left the harbor. Looks really rough out there, and they're getting the crap beat out of them. They must HAVE to get back to St Thomas today for some reason. Wind is trying to clock to E a bit, a good direction for going, but it's way too rough out there. Dinghied ashore after lunch. Chatted a bit on the dock, then went to the library and the bakery. Wind clocking E often, and easing. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 5/9/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. Awake at 3 AM, thinking of leaving at 4 AM, but the wind and swells are too strong and too N. Forecast is better for leaving tomorrow. Dinghied ashore to catch the 9:30 bus to the big shopping center, to see if the auto-parts store has the fuses I need. But the bus never came; waited 25 minutes after the scheduled time and gave up. Read magazine and chatted with guys on the dock for a while. They say taxis are surprisingly cheap, but I'm too tired now to do it. Back to the boat. Dinghied ashore in the afternoon and went to the library, for internet and newspapers. Feeling a bit bored and depressed in the afternoon. Added water to the batteries, checked all engine fluids, cleared tons of seaweed out of the engine intake strainer. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. 5/10/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor at Christiansted, St Croix USVI. At midnight-thirty, wind has gone S and stalled, and chop is minimal. Forced myself to get a little more sleep; too early to go. Raised anchor at 2 AM, looking hard to make sure I don't run over either of two nearby moorings. Brilliant near-full moon helps. Motored out, through tricky channel: right turn, left turn, right, left, then out. Most markers are lighted, but several are not. Small freighter went out just ahead of me. Nice out here; wind about NE 5 and swell NE 2-3, about what I expected. Motor-sailed NNW to St Thomas. A bit rolly all the way across, but not too bad. Nice moon and clouds, comfortable temperature. Anchor down just outside Honeymoon Bay, at 10:45, at lat 18.19.099 long 64.57.582 Did a quick internet session, then took some headache pills and had a nap. Lovely sunny, calm day. After lunch, some more internet. Then launched the dinghy. To the book-exchange at the ferry dock, then across the harbor to Crown Bay marina. Chatted with a couple at the dinghy dock; they just came across from the Caicos in a 5-day passage, and they got hammered the last couple of days. The main problem was that they went into a fuel dock in the Caicos, and the tide went out and stranded them there for a day, causing them to lose part of their weather window. I told them about people being towed in to Luperon after the Caicos-to-Luperon crossing, to make them feel better. Picked up my sail from the mail store ($10). I see that the actual shipping charge was $35, so the store in California made a $115 profit from me by initially refusing to send it via US Post Office; I had to give them $150 to get them to send it (UPS would have been $450). Probably should have had them ship it UPS to my brother in NJ, and had him ship it US Post Office from there. Walked to auto-parts store and got fuses for laptop power connector ($6). For some reason, the out-of-stock 7.5A fuses I wanted would have been 50 cents apiece, but the 10A fuses they had in stock cost $1 apiece. Same thing, just with a slightly different wire inside. Strange. Bought groceries, then back to the dinghy. Halfway across the harbor, fiddled with fuel line connector and outboard suddenly started working fine; probably could have floored it and got up onto plane. I think there's something wrong with connectors from tank hose to motor. More headache pills; getting up at 2 AM gave me a headache. And I'm tired. Interesting to watch it raining a few miles away, over the ocean. You see a sharp edge between the raining and not-raining areas. Pretty, when it's not happening over you. Salad and chicken-onion-rice for dinner. Slept deeply. 5/11/2006 (Thursday) At anchor outside Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Totally grey with rainclouds, and occasional sprinkles. Took the new/used jib out of the box and raised it. Looks great ! In far better condition than the old one, even though the used-sail place rated it only "fair" condition; guess my old sails really are crap. As I expected, I need to make a 2-foot length of rigging to raise it high enough to clear the bow rails. Rain starting at 9 AM. The wind stalled out and slowly clocked all the way around. At one point, was threatening to blow me onto rocks. Sat there stern to rocks about 30 feet away for a few minutes, ready to start the engine if the wind strengthened. Finally it kept clocking around and I was safe again. Half a hour later, started blowing fairly hard from the NE. Watched a large flock of smallish seagulls attacking a school of fish for almost two hours. Not sure they were getting anything, but they kept stooping down and attacking. Ferry went by very slowly with an ambulance on board, and the front ramp of the ferry open and down in the water. I think the ramp isn't supposed to be down, and might swamp the ferry if they go any faster. Maybe it dropped down after they got underway. A while later, it came back with a truck aboard, the ramp up, and at normal speed. Finally got some sun through the grey around 10:30, to get some charge into the batteries. Did some internet. Got one setscrew loose on the prop shaft, but the second is stuck. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. Woke at 11:30 to find the wind clocking around and my stern pointing at rocks again. A few minutes later, tons of rain and some wind. Started the engine and had to motor gently to keep off the rocks. When the rain and wind stopped, raised anchor and moved to a safer spot. 5/12/2006 (Friday) At anchor outside Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Totally grey and very rainy. Took another shot at second setscrew on prop shaft, but it won't budge. Pretty sunny by 9:30. Did a bucket of laundry. Did internet. Poured and poured rain from 3 to 5. Salad and chicken-onion-beans for dinner. Very rolly conditions; had to hold onto the pot a lot while dinner was cooking. 5/13/2006 (Saturday) At anchor outside Honeymoon Bay, Water Island, St Thomas USVI. Sunny and mostly clear. Still pretty rolly. Dinghied ashore to the island to use the payphone to call the boatyard to schedule a haulout, and to call Mom for Mother's Day. Both phones broken. Back to the boat. A real adventure hoisting the dinghy in these very rolly conditions. Raised anchor at 2 PM and headed east, motor-sailing with the main up. As I expected, a bit rough out there, and wind and current are mostly opposing me. But it's time to get to Benner Bay, where the boatyard is. Called them a couple of times on the radio on the way, hoping to make a haulout reservation, but couldn't get them. Bit of a scare 2/3 of the way there: vibration started and speed dropped. Worried that the prop shaft coupling might be coming loose, and looked at it with a flashlight while it was spinning, but it looks okay. Must have snagged something on the prop. Don't see anything dragging behind the boat. [Should have tried a little reverse, but I didn't think of it at the time.] Into Benner Bay and finished anchoring about 4:25 at lat 18.18.610 long 64.52.022 Calmer and more sheltered here than I had hoped; nice. After I backed down on the anchor, noticed a big chunk of thick green netting floating next to the boat; bet that was stuck on my prop. Still can't get boatyard on the radio. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. Slept like a log. 5/14/2006 (Sunday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Worked on shaft coupling for over a hour, but couldn't budge the stuck setscrew. Took the other setscrew out and poured penetrating oil down inside the coupling, but still no go. Forces started bending open the end of the open-end wrench I was using. Wonder if the second setscrew could be reverse-threaded, but I don't think so. There's about 7/8" of screw embedded in the coupling, and it's stuck. Guess I'll have to wait until I'm on the hard, unbolt the coupling halves and take off the prop, and slide the shaft aft, to the point where I have better access to the coupling. Then apply more leverage, or some heat. If the setscrew snaps off, either get a boatyard mechanic to drill it out, or see if I can replace the cutless bearing without taking the shaft all the way out. Snorkeled under the boat and scraped the hull. Got pretty itchy under my T-shirt; I think the little shrimp were biting me. A couple dozen excited fish working through the clouds of debris I created, and a five-foot barracuda that was the thickest barracuda I've ever seen. Had to weigh 50 pounds. He had a school of 2-inch-long fish hovering around him. Salad and chicken-onion-beans and rum-and-coke for dinner. Wind clocked around and stalled out, leaving me abeam to the small swell, so rolling a bit all night. 5/15/2006 (Monday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Still almost no wind, and rolling a bit. Boat pointing NE and swells from SE. Itchy red welts on my biceps and upper chest and neck; got bit while snorkeling. Dinghied ashore about 7:45. Looked at the water approach to the haulout slot, and it's do-able. I need to back in, to let the lift slid over the stern of the boat after I've taken down backstay and mizzen topping lift. So I have to do a K-turn in the tight basin near the lift, allowing for prop-walk. Disposed of garbage, used book-exchange, then to boatyard office. They asked when I wanted to haul out, and laughed when I said today. They have 6 or 7 boats hauling out today, and a space crunch in the yard. They said come back in the afternoon to see if they can take me tomorrow. Unfortunately they don't use the radio and I don't have a cellphone. Rained briefly. Got groceries at the supermarket, checked out bottom-paint at the marine store in case my paint is bad, and back out to the boat. In the afternoon, blowing hard from the E and some pretty big swells coming through the bay. But I'm a little sheltered from the worst of them, and they're hitting me right on the bow, so the only problem is when launching or hoisting the dinghy. A big swell while I'm in the dinghy and still attached to the davits could shock-load the davits and break them. Around 2:30, made the long dinghy ride in to the boatyard. They STILL can't give me a definite slot, unless I want Thursday morning. I'll have to dinghy in again tomorrow midday and see if they have a slot in the afternoon for me. Meanwhile I see the lift sitting idle at the haulout dock, but they wouldn't take kindly to me asking why. Back to the boat. Salad and cheese sandwiches for dinner. 5/16/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Around 1 PM, made the long dinghy ride in to the boatyard. They STILL can't give me a definite slot; come back tomorrow afternoon. Turns out it really is just a space issue; they need to have some boats leave before they can bring me in, and when boats will leave is a bit unpredictable. My length is a factor too; I can go in only a certain part of the yard. And they have construction going on, which complicates everything. Askd some guys in the yard if one of my coupling setscrews could be reverse-threaded, but they say no. Made my semi-annual phone call to Mom, to wish her Happy Mother's Day and Happy Anniversary. Got groceries. Back to the boat. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 5/17/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Still blowing hard from the E and big swells. Laptop keyboard is getting worse; more keys failing. Worked on shaft coupling again, taking out the working setscrew and pouring penetrating oil down inside the coupling. Made the long dinghy ride in to the boatyard, taking the laptop along. Girl in office said probably no space until next week. So I think I'll go for a little 4-day cruise, up to the north side of St John for some snorkeling, and around the north side of St Thomas to Magen's Bay. Got a WiFi signal while sitting on the porch of the marine store. So checked mail and uploaded log file. Found out I'm an uncle again: my youngest brother's wife had her baby. Into the marine store to get parts to make a pennant for the clew of the jib; the new jib needs to be raised up a foot or two to clear the bow railing. They didn't have the right sizes of parts, and the rigging wire I need. Then a guy behind the counter said he was a rigger for 6 years, and says I need something professionally built to do the job; hand-swaged ends won't work, because of the large forces involved. Later, I wondered if he's right, since the halyard to that sail has a hand-swaged end that has never failed. I guess forces are greater on the clew of the sail. And the roller-furling drum puts a twisting force on it too. But I think I'll try a handmade solution anyay, if I can get the parts. Saw the yard manager on the dock, and he says if all boats committed to splash on Friday actually do go, they may have space for me on Friday afternoon. So I'll have to stick around for a couple more days to see about that; no cruising. Back to the boat. Salad and tuna-salad sandwiches for dinner. Enjoyed watching the pelicans fish nearby; it's fun to see them plummet in from 40 feet up. 5/18/2006 (Thursday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Headachey, boat rolling, rain at dawn. Not a good morning. Blowing hard from SE and SSE. Headachey all afternoon. Salad and chicken-onion-beans for dinner. 5/19/2006 (Friday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Made the long dinghy ride in to the boatyard, taking the laptop along. Stopped at a couple of marinas to see if they would accept a package for me; I need to order a new keyboard. First marina happened to have a "computer guy" on the premises today. Second marina agreed to accept a package as a one-time favor to me. Boatyard says I can haul on Monday; I'm on the schedule now. Will have to come in Monday morning to see exactly when. No WiFi signal near the marine store today. So how can I order a new keyboard ? Sudden attack of brains: headed back to first marina, to see if their "computer guy" can get one for me. Took a while to track him down, but then it worked out fine: he ordered one from EBay, should be here in less than a week, and cost me $20 for the keyboard, $10 for shipping, and $5 to him. Easy. Well worth the $5 to get the benefit of his internet connection, payment account, shipping knowledge, shipping address. Meant to get groceries, but forgot until I was halfway back to the boat, so skipped it. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. 5/20/2006 (Saturday) At anchor outside Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Anchor up at 6:40. Motor-sailed E through Jersey Bay, St James Bay, then through Current Cut with favorable current, NE through Pillsbury Sound, through Durloe Channel with favorable current, then E to Trunk Bay. Christmas Cove and Caneel Bay looked a little empty to me; I think traffic is down now that hurricane season is approaching. NPR had dead air from 6 to 8. Lots of rainclouds, but I think they'll move off and it will be a nice day. Picked up a mooring after several tries; done at 8:15 at lat 18.21.293 long 64.46.289 A bit more rolly here than I expected with the recent E and SE wind. No other boats here. Lowered the dinghy and went for a snorkel a little after 10. Scraped the hull a bit, then made the long swim upwind to Trunk Cay and the underwater snorkel trail next to it. A really spectacular cloud of tiny fish hovering around it, those silvery fish I've seen in other places, 1/2 inch to 3 inches long here. One of the underwater plaques said they are French Grunts; it's hard to tell what they are because they're so small. I estimated 5 million of them at the time; let's see if I can calculate their number. Say 300 feet long by 50 feet wide by 2 feet thick, with 40 fish per cubic foot. That's 1.2 million. Plenty of bigger fish circling around, including a few 6-foot-long fish that may be groupers. Pelicans plummeting down to feed; tried to see the point of impact from underwater, but I was always too late. Half a dozen other snorkelers, but no pretty women. Back to the boat about 11:25, and slipped the mooring at 11:25. W to Hawksnest Bay, and snagged the mooring on the first try. Done about 11:40 at lat 18.20.989 long 64.46.806 Much calmer here, although there's still a bit of a roll. Half a dozen other boats on the moorings here. Listened to Car Talk on NPR. At about 2:30, lowered the dinghy and went for a snorkel again. Just as many of those fish schooling here as at Trunk Cay. Amazing. Slipped the mooring about 3:40 and headed toward Christmas Cove, motor-sailing with a fair amount of push from the mainsail. And a huge current (probably 2.5 knots) in my favor coming through Durloe Channel. Went down close to Cruz Bay (dodging a couple of fast ferries) to try a drive-by WiFi, but none of the signals would let me actually do anything. So across the Sound (pretty rough, swells and wind against current), through Current Cut (1-knot current in my favor), and into Christmas Cove. Anchored just inside Fish Cay, about 4:55 at lat 18.18.518 long 64.49.962 Nice and calm here. Salad and spaghetti for dinner. Only four boats staying the night here; I think there were about 25 when I stayed here a couple of months ago. Of course, that was a regatta weekend, but still I think it's end-of-season time now. 5/21/2006 (Sunday) At anchor at Christmas Cove, St Thomas USVI. After listening to Car Talk on NPR again, launched the dinghy and went for a snorkel. Went out to the exposed SW corner of St James Island. Nice of them to put a dive mooring out there; I tied to it. Swam to nearby crags, which are called "The Stragglers". Very rough, and not much to see except some dramatic coral canyons. Saw a 3- or 4-foot shark lying on the bottom. Came back into the shelter of the island, and did a little more snorkeling, but nothing intersting here. Still, it's a gorgeous day and it's nice to swim. Back to the boat, and pumped water out of the dinghy keel and tried to free up the outboard tilt mechanism, which has been frozen for years. No luck. Radio playing yesterday's program, including yesterday's news segment, when it should be broadcasting Prairie Home Companion. They screw up a lot on the weekends. I'm famous ! Was reading a maintenance/budgeting article in May issue of "All At Sea" magazine, and there under "Top Surfing Spots" they had the address of my Maintenance web page and a little writeup about it ! Salad and cornedbeef-onion-potato and rum-and-coke for dinner. Eight boats staying the night here. 5/22/2006 (Monday) At anchor at Christmas Cove, St Thomas USVI. Anchor up at 6:25. Motored across Jersey Bay. Into Benner Bay and anchored a little after 7 at lat 18.19.150 long 64.52.070 Pumped out bilge, cleaned toilet, took down mizzen boom and mizzen topping lift. Made the short dinghy ride in to the boatyard at 8. Filled out paperwork, then was sent to the lift operator, where I found myself 4th in line. Watched them haul out a powerboat at 8:30. Back out to the boat, where it rained while I put out fenders and lines, and took down the backstay, adding some lashings to reinforce the davits. Back ashore, and by 10 they'd started hauling the smallish sailboat ahead of me, and told me to come in to the dock. Out to the boat, hoisted the dinghy, and raised anchor with a charter boat going past. Headed in, with several dinghies buzzing or rowing past. Took 6 or 7 back-and-fills to make my K-turn, avoiding boats on all sides, and made it in to the dock with no damage at 10:15 ! Around 10:45 they came and hand-moved it from dock into haulout bay, having only one dock-line on it at one point, a strange feeling. But they knew what they were doing, and conditions were very calm. Hoisted it by 10:50. The operator says weight is 24,000 pounds; that's with fairly-full water tanks and fairly-empty fuel tank plus dinghy. So I guess the nominal spec of 23,000 pounds is pretty accurate; I wasn't sure if that included genset and anything in the tanks. "Shoe" on bottom of rudder shaft looks pretty bad; will investigate once they finish pressure-washing and then blocking it up somewhere. No free WiFi signal near the marine store today. I'm back onto the boat at 12:10. They've put me directly behind the marine store, which is a fine central location. To supermarket for groceries, bolted down a quick lunch, and then down under the boat. Good news: the rudder shoe problem is just a couple of missing screws, which maybe should be replaced with a through-bolt. Put penetrating oil on the prop and cutless bearing parts, and then started scraping barnacle feet off the hull with a scraper and a screwdriver. Scraped all afternoon, with a couple of brief breaks. Around 4, a nice older guy (later found out that he's the dockmaster at the marina) stopped by to kibitz, and I had him look at the cutless bearing and rudder shoe. He says rubber is bulging out of the cutless bearing; definitely needs replacement, even though it doesn't seem to have as much play as I remembered (maybe it's still swollen with water). He also says the rudder shaft has slipped down slightly; I don't agree. The problem with the shoe would let the shaft wobble sideways, not slip downwards. One blister weeping, on the port side, 6 inches above bottom of keel, maybe 12 feet in front of prop. Just the slightest bit of softness in the hull there. I scraped away all afternoon, until suddenly at 5:15 I couldn't do it any more. Wonder if I'll be able to raise my arms tomorrow. Chatted with people on boat next to me, a gorgeous sailboat that must be a charter boat. One of them was complaining this morning that the yard people had delayed them by not doing any of the agreed jobs while the owners were away from the boat. No surprise to me. Now another of the owners says the boat has been in the yard since January ! To the showers, to find that they're locked ! People on boat next to me say the office never volunteers the info to anyone, but you need to leave a $50 deposit and get a key. And then you have to stuff quarters into a machine to get water ! Unbelievable ! The lady on the next boat very nicely used her key to let me in, and 50 cents got me a lovely 4 minutes of hot water. Still no free WiFi signal. Salad and cheese sandwiches and rum-and-coke for dinner. Absolutely miserable night. Hot and still and bright lights and a bit noisy, but the big problem was that mosquitoes and other bugs got inside the boat and bit me. I swatted a couple dozen of them, and sprayed insecticide, but more kept getting in somehow. Got off the boat at 9 or so to use the bathroom and stroll around, but there's nothing much happening. Stayed up reading past midnight because the bugs kept me from sleeping. Also I'm whiskery and sunburnt. Now I'm remembering all the worst things about life on the hard: bugs, no breeze, having to climb down and up a ladder every time you want to use the bathroom, not being able to use any of the sink drains on the boat. 5/23/2006 (Tuesday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Up at 6 to use the bathroom and shave, then put penetrating oil on drive train parts, then back to bed for a little while. Shoulders are sore, but I AM able to raise my arms. To work at 8:30. Scraped the hull a bit. Helped John and Judy next door on "Thaleia" put their centerboard up. It was a quite an operation, since it's a 500-pound centerboard. The lift came over and lifted the boat, four of us walked the board into position, and then the lift lowered the boat down as we adjusted the board and levered it up a bit to make sure the weight of the boat wasn't coming down on the board. Took about half an hour. Chatted with John, the guy from "Thaleia". Turns out it's not a charter boat, just a gorgeous private boat. They had a leak inside the hull laminates, so the boat was in the yard drying out during January and February, and then they started working on it in March. He glassed over the entire hull below the waterline. Five years ago, they replaced the entire teak deck, and it still looks fabulous. They've been down in Venezuela for a while, and now are heading to the Chesapeake. Good news: got the rudder shoe off, the prop nuts off, and the cutless bearing's setscrews out without incident. There were three setscrews, and a stripped hole for a fourth setscrew. The bad news: the prop won't come off. I was hammering on it, when John from "Thaleia" came over and said I should use a prop-puller (I knew that). I got out my cheesey NAPA-Auto puller, and the prop wouldn't budge. Then John brought over a huge, fancy, serious puller. Prop still wouldn't budge. Then he brought out a propane torch, heated up the prop for a long time, and it STILL wouldn't budge. So he went back to his work, and I scraped hull and heated prop, back and forth, with the puller keeping heavy tension on the prop. Still no go by noon. Two more blisters weeping, on the port side at the waterline. No softness in the hull there. My back is sore. Ate lunch, listened to radio and read a book for a little while. Took bolts out of shaft coupling, holding the end of the shaft up with a rope. Loosened stuffing box nuts and slid them up the shaft. Went outside, and was able to slide the shaft out another 5 inches or so, so I can hammer better, and am no longer hammering against the transmission bearing. Tried to knock the key out, but it's solid. Torched and hammered, torched and hammered, and suddenly with a "bang!" the prop sprung off the shaft ! John from "Thaleia" said it would come off with a "pop", and he was right. Glad I was ready for that, because the hot and heavy prop and puller flew about 2 feet off the end of the shaft. Went into the marine store to see if I could buy a new propane bottle for him, and maybe a torch for myself, and found the store doesn't sell propane bottles, torches or even igniters. But John said don't worry, he has more bottles aboard. Took off collar on shaft that is designed to keep shaft from leaving boat if the coupling separates. Slid shaft back, then went outside and slid it ALL the way back, until the coupling was hitting the stuffing box nut, inside. Took out the coupling setscrew that I was able to get free a couple of weeks ago. Lit the propane torch in the cockpit, carried it through the boat to the sole of the aft cabin, and applied heat to the stubborn setscrew. Let it cool, put a 15-inch crescent wrench on it, and held my breath as I pulled. Got a little motion before I ran out of travel. Put the small open-end wrench on it and tapped the wrench with a small sledgehammer, and got more motion. Slowly worked the screw out with no damage ! What a relief ! Applied penetrating oil to try to get the coupling off the shaft. Later, banged on it with the small sledgehammer and got the key out of it. Heated it up with the torch and banged some more, but it doesn't seem to be moving. Salad and chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. Used a mosquito coil to chase bugs away while I ate. Slept pretty well; not too many bugs getting inside tonight. Maybe they were bad yesterday because of the rain in the morning. 5/24/2006 (Wednesday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Another blister weeping, this one on the starboard side, 6 inches above bottom of keel, several feet in front of prop. No softness in the hull there ??? I'm considering having the boatyard sand the hull; would cost about $300. I had thought of just chipping off the barnacle feet, roughing the surface a little with a hand-sanding block, and then painting. But that may not be good enough prep. But the previous time a boatyard painted for me, they didn't do ANY sanding. Still not sure what to do; guess I'll do some hand-sanding and see how the result looks. No chance of getting back into the water on Friday as I had hoped, and Monday is a holiday. Tuesday if I'm lucky. Got a late start. Spent more than an hour trying the standard trick to get the transmission coupling off the shaft: put a socket or nut between the coupling halves and tighten down the bolts, forcing the coupling halves together while the nut/socket pushes the shaft out of the coupling. Very hard to position the bolt/nut combo I was using between the coupling halves, and very slow and laborious to tighten and then loosen the bolts. Finished by 10:45, with nothing accomplished. Tried my pulley-puller to get the coupling off the shaft, but it was useless. Borrowed John's puller and torch again, and heated and pulled and hammered it. By 2 PM, nothing accomplished. I'm hot and bruised and tired and frustrated. Cement truck is here to pour a slab in the new construction area, preventing the lift from operating. "Thaleia" is supposed to splash this afternoon. Tried hand-sanding the bottom a little, and after 1/3 of one side of the rudder, I was dripping with sweat. No go, at least in the heart of the afternoon heat. To the office, and requested bottom-sanding. Should know tomorrow when they can do it. Also changed predicted launch date from Friday (ha!) to next Wednesday. More heating and banging on the coupling, then gave up and cleaned up. Tomorrow will try taking cutless bearing off without taking shaft out; everyone says it can't be done. If it can't, will have to get a mechanic to work on the coupling. At least I haven't ruined anything (yet); could go back in the water with the old cutless bearing if I have to. "Thaleia" finally got splashed at about 5:30. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner. At 6:30, made a rum-and-coke and went to "Thaleia" on the dock next to the haulout bay. A young couple named Chris and Chris were there too, and we had nice conversation and some great hors d'oeurves, and drinks. Very nice, and relaxing. John and Judy are heading up to Annapolis, and will show the boat for sale, but will continue up to NYC and New England if it doesn't sell. And then across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean next year. Not sure if they have a new boat in their sights already. Chris and Chris do deliveries and professional captaining on private yachts, and have been to lots of interesting places. Chris and Chris left, and later the lady from "Babycakes" joined us. She told a pirate joke: A pirate comes into a bar with a boat's steering wheel mounted on a pole going down into his shorts. Someone asks him if anything is wrong; isn't that steering wheel bothering him ? He says "Arrr, it's driving me nuts !" 5/25/2006 (Thursday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Loosened the hose on the inside of the stern tube and slid hose and shaft and stuffing-box forward. Can't see forward end of cutless bearing from here; turns out the stern tube is a lot longer than the bearing. Bummer; I was hoping to tap the forward end of the bearing from here, and force it aft. Put a long screwdriver inside the stern tube and oto the bearing and whacked the end of the handle with the small sledgehammer. But I'm hitting the rubber of the bearing instead of the metal sleeve, and I couldn't get the bearing to move. And I'm afraid I might put sideways pressure on the stern tube and damage it, which would be a disaster. So I went to the office. Asked about getting my bottom sanded, and the manager, Bruce, reminded me that I had said I would do all the work myself, and now I'm surprising them with a sudden request for resources. I admitted I had been unrealistic and wasn't expecting instant service. He said probably no one available to sand until Tuesday, but then I asked if anyone was available on the weekend, and he said he'd ask someone. Then we talked about the shaft coupling and cutless bearing. He said that since I'd already used torch and puller, it's probably not cost-effective to have one of their guys do the same, maybe with a bigger torch. Simpler and cheaper just to cut the coupling off the shaft, and buy a new coupling. But there's one other thing to try first: bolt the coupling back together, put a slide-hammer on the end of the shaft outside the boat, and try to hammer the shaft out of the coupling. That's feasible because my Borg-Warner transmission is a big iron monster that can take the abuse. I'm a little nervous that it might affect the rear seal, but he says they've done this to a lot of boats. First, I'm going to bolt the coupling together and try hammering the shaft inward, to see if I can get a little motion in that direction. And I can put the prop back on and hammer that aft, to act like a slide-hammer. Last time I was doing that (to try to get the prop off), the coupling still had setscrews and key installed; now it doesn't. Did so, and got no motion in either direction. Took prop off again and started waiting for someone to appear with a slide-hammer. Had lunch and read a book. Guess I'm going to be doing a bunch of waiting over the next few days; not a good thing to be idle in a boatyard with the meter running at $50/day or so (I had been thinking $25/day, but that's if you're using their labor). Went down at 1 to mess with the cutless bearing a little more, and chatted with a yard guy eating lunch in the shade under my boat. At 1:15, Jim showed up to do the slide-hammer thing. The slide-hammer is just a length of shaft, same diameter as mine with a bulge at one end and threads at the other end, a female-female fitting to attach it to the end of my shaft, and a big (maybe 20-pound) sliding weight. He attached it to my shaft and gave it 5 or 6 slams; no motion. We went inside the boat, and he says I have a DriveSaver, which is damping the impact of the hammering. We went out and both of us used the hammer together, and the shaft started coming out ! 5 or 6 slams, and it came out of the coupling ! Ten minutes later, a guy showed up to sand the bottom of the hull ! Terrific ! Messed with the cutless bearing for 15 minutes, and decided to get the yard to remove it; as the yard guy said, a SawzAll is the right way to do it. My pathetic little sabre-saw with a 1-inch blade travel isn't going to work on a 5-inch deep bearing. So to the office, where the manager says I should have kept the mechanic while I had him; he's off on another job now. I knew that, but wanted to try to do the bearing myself. Walked to the nearby Pirate's Cover marina, and the package with my new keyboard has come in ! Got groceries and back to the boat. Salad and chicken-onion-saffronrice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Looks like the sanding guy did about 20% of the hull in 3+ hours. He seemed to be resting a lot; it's very hard work. Lots of bugs biting me from 1 AM on; uncomfortable night. 5/26/2006 (Friday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Jim showed up at 8:15 to take out the cutless bearing. He made one cut with the SawzAll, and started prying the bearing in, levering against the side of the stern tube. I was nervous that he might damage the stern tube, so he agreed to make a second cut in the bearing and pull out a slice of it (although he grumbled a little that he's done hundreds of these and never damaged a stern tube). He got the bearing out okay, although the saw made a couple of grooves in the inside of the stern tube that were a bit deeper than I hoped for. Then he took the spare bearing, which has been on the boat ever since I've owned it, and which I kept in the freezer overnight so it would shrink and slip in easily. It slipped in FAR too easily: it's the wrong size ! Sure enough, the one that came out is a different model number than the "spare" one. 2-1/8" OD (or more) versus 2" OD. And 2-1/8" is an odd size, so the yard and marine store don't have it in stock; so the guy will order it with priority shipping. Bummer; two steps forward and one step back. Stern tube seems to be wider at aft end than it is at the forward end, for some reason. Not sure it's a full 1/8" wider, but definitely the two ends are different. Jim said the old bearing looked bad; should have been replaced a while ago (I think it's been in there 10 years, which includes a lot of motoring and a trip down the silt-filled water of the Mississippi River). And I showed him some wear on the shaft where the aft end of the bearing was, and he says it's a bit marginal; he wants the yard manager to look at it and see if I really should replace the shaft. I don't think I'm going to do that; it's at least a $500 item, probably would take a week or two to get here, and the wear doesn't look so terrible to me. Noticed several bulging small blisters on the port waterline. Total of about 6 weepers elsewhere on the hull, with little softness in any of them. No boat ever sank from blisters, that's my position. Sanding guy showed up at 9 AM. Installed new laptop keyboard, and it works fine. Nice. By 10, there were two guys sanding my hull. Around 10:15, Jerry from "Carabella" stopped by. He and his wife are here on a scooter, and he guessed from the silence of my log file that I was in the yard. They're going to store their boat on the hard in Virgin Gorda for hurricane season. He thinks my prop shaft is okay; no need to replace it. He says my hull looks good. Was nice to see him; raised my spirits a bit. Chatted with John and Judy on "Thaleia". Then put the laptop in my bag and caught a taxi ($2) to Red Hook. Happened to see a marine store there, went in and asked about cutless bearings, and they had what I needed on the shelf ! They called the boatyard for me to see if I could cancel the other order, but got no answer. I bought the bearing ($78), went across the street to a payphone, and call the yard office. The secretary there promised to call Bruce or Jim to give them the message to cancel the order. If the order goes through anyway, I'd end up with a spare bearing, but at the cost of probably $50 or more shipping. To a mail store and did WiFi internet ($5 for 30 minutes). Uploaded web site updates and did email. Caught a taxi ($2) back to the yard, and went around trying to confirm that the order was cancelled, but it's still lunch hour, so no one is in. Crap ! Found the yard manager at 1:15, and the cutless bearing order shipped the instant they placed it; their supplier knows they need things urgently. My fault for not making Jim call a couple other places on-island to see if it was in stock, before ordering. Guess I'll keep both bearings, one as a spare. By 4 PM, looks like the sanding is done. They've left a good sanding pad under a rock on one of the blocks; maybe that means they're not done. But it looks okay to me, and I'm not going to wait for them to come back on Tuesday and sand some more. Looked around for a hose so I could wash down the hull, but hoses and faucets seem to be under lock and key around here. Into the marine store and bought a quart of primer ($26) and a Tyvek suit ($8). Surprised to see they're just about out of stock (at least on the shelf) on both. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner. Lots of bugs inside the aft cabin; fairly sleepless night. 5/27/2006 (Saturday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Down under the hull and started applying primer with a brush, to places where previous paint flaked off, revealing gelcoat. I think the previous yard paint-jobs I had done were not done very well; not much prep, and I don't remember ANY sanding on the last one. [On the other hand, it's been 3 years and 4 months since my last haul-out, which is surprising: I thought it had been about 2 years.] The primer is xylene-based epoxy-type stuff, and the fumes are potent. Sometimes I get a good sniff and can feel my IQ dipping a few points; this stuff can cause dain bramage. But I'm outside, and with a decent breeze, so I think it's okay. I started out wearing latex gloves, but after the first round I stopped wearing even them. No Tyvek suit or mask or goggles (but I do wear eyeglasses anyway). A few paint drips here and there will ruin my clothes, but most of my wardrobe is nothing to worry about ruining. About 1/3 of a coat of primer done in an hour or so; not too bad. The sanding guys missed some barnacle feet. I keep expecting someone to walk by and point out that I'm doing everything wrong for some reason. The dive boat next to me has the right idea: about 5 guys working on it simultaneously. One person on a beamy 44-foot boat is not a good thing. The guys next to me started rolling on bottom paint, wearing no protective gear whatsoever. I commented to them that people had told me to wear full gear: Tyvek suit, goggles, respirator when rolling on bottom paint. They laughed. I didn't think the gear was really necessary for that. For sanding, yes. Finished first round of primer before 11:30. To marine store, and spent $32 on rollers, tray covers, and brushes. Asked if they would machine-shake the bottom paint I have, which I bought from a friend a couple of years ago. But they won't if there is any speck of rust on the can, because they've had disasters where cans ruptured and flying paint ruined all the stock on the nearby shelves. And my cans definitely have some rust on them. Under the boat to scrape off barnacle feet. Had lunch and listened to Car Talk. Under the boat to scrape off remaining barnacle feet and apply the rest of the primer. Done by 4:45. Cornedbeef-chili and rum-and-coke for dinner. Tried to work on the aft cabin hatch screen while cooking dinner, but I was too tired to concentrate and do much. Plenty of bugs bothering me during the night again. Up at 1 AM and out into the yard to use the bathroom, and chatted with the security guard a bit. Interesting guy: he fought in Vietnam, was a railroad detective, worked in Saudi Arabian oil fields. 5/28/2006 (Sunday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Down under the boat at about 7:45 to tape along the waterline and start painting first coat of bottom-paint. As I expected, the paint had settled into layers in the can, and for a few minutes I despaired to being able to mix and use it. I bought the paint exactly two years ago from a friend, and then didn't get around to hauling out and using it. But I used my biggest screwdriver to mix the paint, and after 15 minutes or so of good effort, it looked usable. Only a little bit of sludge, maybe a tablespoon's worth, that refused to dissolve. Rolled and rolled paint on. Tiring, mainly because I don't want to stop for a break and risk the paint congealing in the can or something. Finished the first gallon at 10:15 or so, having covered about 3/4 of the hull. So sweaty that I went off to the showers to cool off. To the marine store. Returned the Tyvek suit, bought two more rollers and a bolt/nut for the rudder shoe. Got the last two 9" rollers; incredible that their stock is so thin. Stirred the second gallon of paint, then listened to Car Talk and ate lunch. Back down under the boat at 1, and finished the first coat by 2:30. Took about 1-2/3 gallon of paint. Back to the showers. To supermarket for groceries. Salad and cheese sandwich for dinner. Worked on the rudder shoe and bottom of the rudder skeg, making the side screw-holes connect, enlarging them, and then coating the insides of the holes with epoxy to seal them a bit. Slept well. Up at 3 AM and out into the yard to use the bathroom, and chatted with the security guard for a long time. Everyone calls him "Yankee", but I think his last name is Green. Learned more about his interesting life. When he was college-age, he went to South Africa as part of a program where 16 black students worked with Dr Christian Bernaard to learn about heart surgery. He observed or assisted in various operations, including heart operations and other things such as gall-bladder surgery. Then Mandela was thrown in jail, apartheid conflict increased, and the students had to be rescued out of the country by Senegalese soldiers. We talked about the 60's, places he's been, lots of things. I encouraged him to write his life story, maybe putting it on a web site. 5/29/2006 (Monday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Down under the boat at about 7:45 to finish painting. Big raincloud came over around 9, but kept going without raining; I've been really lucky that the weather's been nice the whole time I've been in the yard. Done by 10:15. Not quite 2 coats; more like 1.6 or so. Great feeling when pulling off the tape at the waterline. Have to get them to move the jackstands tomorrow so I can paint the areas covered by the pads. But the painting is done ! At 11, grabbed the new cutless bearing out of the freezer, went down under the boat, quickly wiped debris out of the stern tube, smeared a little anti-seize inside it, and put the cutless bearing in. A snug fit; had to tap it in gently with a hammer. I think that's exactly right; now the bearing will warm up and expand a little and seat immovably in the stern tube. Down under the boat at 1 and started working. Put the rudder shoe on, put the through-bolt through it with lots of caulk, and put the screw into the forward end of it (didn't grip very well). Put setscrews in the stern tube to hold the cutless bearing in place; I don't think they do much, and only two of them gripped well into their sockets. Put the shaft through the cutless bearing, and it was a much tighter fit than the old bearing. Into the boat, slid the stuffing box over the shaft, and attached it to the stern tube. Sanded end of shaft and inside of coupling a bit, applied lots of anti-seize, and hammered coupling and key onto the shaft. Installed setscrews and tied wire through the heads to keep them in place. Thinking everything through twice to make sure I don't forget anything. Slid shaft in all the way and bolted the coupling together, a tiring, sweaty operation. Installed the collar on the shaft that will keep the shaft from falling out if the coupling separates. Inside work finished, and no parts left over ! Went outside, put the prop and its key on, and installed the prop nuts. Then installed a new shaft zinc. All done around 4:15; off to the showers. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Feeling good: several small things to accomplish tomorrow, but I should be launching after lunch. 5/30/2006 (Tuesday) On the hard in Independent Boatyard, Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Got a WiFi signal ! I've been checking; it hasn't been there the whole time. Daniel came by after 8:15 and moved the jackstands, so by 8:30 I was working on the places they'd covered. Scraped, sanded and painted them. Then used up the rest of the paint, on places the lift won't contact when they lift me. Sprinkled a little rain at one point. Done by 9:30. Everything should be pretty dry by the scheduled lift time of 2 PM. Put cotter pin in end of prop shaft. Chiseled and sanded crust off the prop until 10 or so. Still not very clean, and it's starting to show its age: a few edges are a bit rippled. Good enough; I'm done. To the showers. Threw away T-shirt I'd used to paint in; I threw away another one a day or two ago. Bought flares at the store ($28). Wanted to buy spare prop zincs, but they were all out of my size (but later I found I have one more spare on board). To the office, to cajol them into producing a bill. Eventually they came up with a pleasant number ($1030), but it didn't include Jim's work or the ordered cutless bearing (which hasn't arrived yet, and price is unknown). To the supermarket for groceries. Okay, paid the yard bill (excluding the ordered cutless bearing) just before lunch. Total of $1135. Items are: $528 for haul/pressurewash/block/launch ($12/foot) $264 for sanding labor ($6/foot) $54 for sanding materials $185 for laydays (7 days at 60 cents/foot/day, which is the lower using-yard-labor rate, even though I did some of my own labor, and I was here 8 days, not 7) $105 for shop labor (removing coupling from shaft, removing cutless bearing, ordering new one) Saved about $220 in labor and materials by doing my own painting, and another $200 by buying my paint from a friend a couple of years ago instead of from the store here. Also avoided another $60 or so by not connecting to their electricity or water. Paid $78 for the cutless bearing I bought myself, and bought another $60 worth of materials in the marine store. Will have to come back by dinghy tomorrow to see if the new cutless bearing has come in, and pay for it. I'm guessing $120 for part and shipping. At 1, told them I was ready to go. They brought the lift over about 1:15, and had the boat floating by 1:30. I jumped aboard and looked at the stuffing box; a little bit much water coming in, but that's okay for now. Started the engine and it ran okay. They had the lift nudging me forward out of the bay before I was ready for it; put the engine in gear and got forward motion ! I had been worried that I might have done something wrong and there would be a horrible grinding noise and no propulsion at this point. Motored out about 50 yards and anchored right inside Benner Bay by 1:40 at lat 18.19.166 long 64.52.059 I'll stay the night here. Took in docklines and fenders. Put dinghy down and reattached backstay and mizzen topping lift. Washed yard-dust off the decks. Feels good to be over the cool water again, and getting a few decent breezes through the boat. Kept checking bilge to make sure all is well. Put away tools and painting materials, did dishes, straightened up the boat. So nice to be able to use the sink drains again (in the yard, I had to catch all the grey water in bowls and carry it to the bathrooms to dump). Saw "Babycakes" being towed in by SeaTow around 3. That's the lady who joined us on "Thaleia" and told the pirate joke. She'd just gotten "Babycakes" out of the yard as a new-to-her boat, and they'd done major work on it such as fuel tank replacement, and she'd said she was heading straight over to St Croix. Sounded unrealistic to me at the time. Salad and cheese sandwich and an apple for dinner. Slept well. Only one or two bugs all night. Hot and completely still much of the night, but several degrees cooler than in the boatyard. Nice to have the bathroom five feet away instead of down a ladder and 100 yards away. 5/31/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor in Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Tested bilge pumps. It suddenly occurs to me that when the prop shaft is turning, the entire fore-and-aft force of propulsion is pushing against the two setscrews in the shaft coupling. There's some friction holding the coupling onto the shaft too, but no taper or other physical barrier keeping the shaft from moving through the coupling, just the two setscrews. Now, they're SERIOUS setscrews, 3/8" diameter, and set into fairly deep dimples in the side of the shaft. But it's still kind of surprising. In forward motion, if the setscrews fail and the shaft slides through the coupling, it will be stopped within an inch by hitting the shaft coming out of the transmission, but nothing would stop it in the reverse direction. Strange. [Got this response from Dave Smith: Yes, all the axial forces are taken up by the setscrews, but they are relatively small in magnitude, on the order of hundreds of pounds. The important thing is to make sure that the rotational loads are taken up by the key, not the setscrews. The rotational loads and stress can be very high. ] Tightened coupling bolts a little; they were okay. Started creating a BVI courtesy flag. Put a new USA flag on the flagpole at the stern of my boat. Dinghied ashore and went to yard office. They were vague about how the cutless bearing had been ordered and where it would arrive, but finally I got them to commit to figuring it out and looking for it. Glad I'm not still in the yard waiting for it to arrive. Saw the lady from "Babycakes"; sounds like she had some kind of engine-fuel-system-leak problem that made her get towed in. But later I heard her talking about ordering an anchor windlass, buying chain, and lots of other things, so I guess she's going to be here a while. Got a WiFi signal in front of the marine store and went online. Bought plane tickets to go to NJ. Finished painting BVI courtesy flag. Rebedded starboard power connectors. Dinghied ashore again at 4, and the cutless bearing was in ! Cost $108 ($86 for part, $22 for shipping) which wasn't as bad as I feared. Added water to the batteries. Wonder why my Deka batteries have always needed water, while my new Trojan never does ? Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Finished the bottle of Jamaican dark rum and started a bottle of Cruzan cocoanut rum. Deee-lish ! Suddenly realized I'm kind of low on gasoline for the dinghy; should have bought some today. Likely to be harder to get and more expensive in the BVI's. 6/1/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in Benner Bay, St Thomas USVI. Fuel level 9 inches at engine hour 3970.5 Heading to the British Virgin Islands this morning. Anchor up at 6:40 and motor-sailed out. Right away I can see that I've gained a knot or so of speed while motoring. Let's see: I painted bottom, changed cutless bearing, and sanded the prop a bit. Don't think the prop was improved that much; I'm pretty careful to scrape it well every time I snorkel underneath. I wonder if a very worn cutless bearing would let the prop wobble and ruin it's efficiency ? I doubt the cleaner bottom is responsible for the whole increase. Rough slog straight into wind and swells going E through Jersey Bay. Forecast said E-SE 11-16, but I think it's more like 20+. Several knots of current helped me through Current Cut, then had a fine motor-sail NE through PillsBury Bay and then N to Jost Van Dyke in the BVI's. Checked stuffing box several times to make sure it wasn't overheating, and had a drip of water coming out. Swung by White Bay just to see how crowded it was, and it looks like there's some space to anchor. Into Great Harbour, and snagged a nice spot closer in than all the other boats. About 15 boats here, and looks like about 1/2 charter boats. Finished anchoring at 9:20 at lat 18.26.573 long 64.45.094 Some chop coming in; the harbor faces S, and the wind and swell are E-SE or so. But not bad at all. Took down the USVI courtesy flag and hoisted the Quarantine flag. Looks like there's not much here, ashore. A small govt dock, a Customs dock and building, a well-advertised bar (Foxy's), and some houses and stuff. Tall hills all around, up to 1000 feet high according to the guidebook. Looks like my timing was good; the charter boats seem to start moving at 9 to 9:30. So that's a good time to grab an anchoring spot. Hey, the bikini-quotient here is pretty high ! Some nice-looking women on some of the boats. Got up on top of the pilothouse and washed off the solar panels; they had a lot of yard-dust on them. Did dishes and straightened up the boat, while watching to make sure the anchor was holding well. Then dinghied ashore to check in. Very easy; nice dock right in front of Customs/Immigration office. Filled out a couple of forms (I never can remember which is my "surname"). Paid $20 "harbor dues" and nothing for Immigration (because it's summer / off-season now, I think). The only odd question was "do you have any pets, firearms or jet-ski's aboard ?" Sign on door said "proper dress required", and I've heard the British can be finicky about it, but the guy ahead of me (who's been here before) was barefoot, was checking in a boat with about eight people on it, and had to go back out to the boat several times to fetch more documents. No problem. Took a little stroll through "town". Not much here, just a couple of small grocery stores and several densely-decorated open-air bars, the kind with funky knick-knacks all over the walls and ceilings. Those places must just MINT money when they get several hundred people in there gulping down the drinks. This place seems to exist just for the Friday night beach party. Some goats wandering around, several grazing in a very steep front yard of a house built on the hillside. Walked on the beach, splashing my feet in the water. I think the last decent beach I was on was back in Boqueron. Back to the boat, hoisted the BVI courtesy flag, and decided to leave. It's a little too exposed here, holding is uncertain, and there's nothing to do. Anchor up at 11:45 and motored out. Boats pouring in to have lunch at the beach bars. Lots of charter boats out sailing, and unfortunately several of them are headed for the same destination as I am, White Bay. Slowed down outside the entrance to let a chart cat go in and get out of my way. But he faked me out: went inside, did a loop to the right, then came right back in front of me after I went in. Very crowded here, and now I'm in a bad situation: right behind him, he keeps slowing down, and a tailwind. If he stops, I could be trapped. Fortunately, he went far enough that I could turn left into some open water near the reef. Put the bow practically onto the reef, and put down the anchor about 5 feet inside it. Then let out chain, but it made me swing right off the bow of a charter cat, with about 80 feet of chain out. Raised anchor and moved 30 feet east, put anchor down 10 feet inside reef, and let out 95 feet of chain. Okay, now I'm between and ahead of two chart cats. A little close for comfort, but that's the rule here. And it's shallow water and protected by a reef; should hold okay. If I have to shorten up to 80 feet at night, that'll be okay too. Finished at 12:20 at lat 18.26.514 long 64.45.783 Nice here: there's a beach, lots of people walking or swimming or sunbathing. A big 3-masted windjammer-type boat anchored outside the reef. Boats leaving and arriving constantly. Reading guidebook, I find I should have asked at Customs about buying a mooring permit to use Park Service mooring balls. And of course they didn't volunteer that info when I was checking in. Went for a snorkel. First under the boat, and everything looks fine. Then to the nearby reef, and it's pretty boring. A few nice fish. Lots of propeller sounds in the water from all the boat traffic; a bit unnerving. Then dinghied ashore and walked on the beach. Quite nice, and a fair number of women in bikinis. There's no town here, just some guest-houses and simple beachfront boutiques and bars. Around 5, a party catamaran came in and anchored a bit close to be, a little behind and off the starboard side. Then another came in, obviously their buddy, and tried to raft off to them on the side nearest me ! They kept coming VERY close to me, and kept trying again and again, before finally giving up and anchoring a little further back. Crazy. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Young girl playing a violin on the foredeck of a nearby catamaran. 6/2/2006 (Friday) At anchor in White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands. Happy Birthday to me ! I'm 48 years old today. Was going to wait until 8 to leave, to arrive at 9:30 or so, but then realized there was no wind, so I should leave earlier. Of course, 5 minutes after I started raising anchor, the wind suddenly came up. Raised anchor at 7 and motored out and straight into the wind, straight east. Very pretty area, lots of steep green islands rising straight up out of the water. Partly cloudy this morning, and smoke from a fire on the island nearby. Went by Great Harbour, and was surprised to see it full ! 30-35 boats in there. Of course, "full" is relative; I bet in prime season there are 80 boats in there. Surprisingly hard to discern Cane Garden Bay on the W side of Tortola; distances were a bit deceptive. But got there via GPS, and got in easily. First anchoring left me a little too close to the reef, but second try was good. Done by 8:50 at lat 18.25.576 long 64.39.691 A couple dozen charter-cats on moorings here. Looks like a nice place, with beach and bars and houses. Well sheltered from the prevailing E wind. Lots of biggish guesthouses or B+B's built up on the hillsides and nicely painted; pretty. Got a free WiFi signal long enough to upload my log file. Nice, since internet seems to be about $20/hour around here. Boat is still dusty everywhere I look on deck; need a good hard rain to wash it off. Did some more WiFi, but it's one of those strange connections where I can read and delete email, but not send or respond to messages. Each message-viewing page says "done with errors". I've run into this before. Lots of grey clouds and wind very gusty and shifty later in the morning; anchor chain shifting loudly and alarmingly over the hard coral bottom. Pretty dead here during the day; most of the boats left in the morning, and started coming back in about 2 PM. Often blowing pretty hard from the south today. Dinghied ashore and strolled around. Got a bunch of cash at an ATM. No gasoline here, so I'll have to go to Soper's Hole tomorrow. A couple dozen people on the very nice beach; had a nice walk on the beach. More of a town here than at Great Harbour, but that's not saying much. Looked at the mooring balls; they're $25 per night. Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Suddenly realized that my courtesy flag is the wrong color; I copied the national flag, not the courtesy flag. Will have to make another flag. 6/3/2006 (Saturday) At anchor in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, BVI's. Cloudy and some rain sprinkles. Painted a new courtesy flag and hoisted it. Anchor up about 8:55, and motorsailed SW to Soper's Hole. Turned the SW corner of Tortola and had to motor against a 2.5-knot current up to the harbor. As I expected, it's deep (50+ feet) and crowded. The only shallow part, at the E end, turned out to be crowded with sunken or listing fishing boats, and a sailing school with several small sailboats with young kids tacking back and forth. Eased up to the stern of a half-sunken fishing boat and put down the anchor about 20 feet from it, in 23 feet of water. Worked out fine; swinging 50 feet or so from a moored boat behind me and an anchored boat next to me. Okay as long as nothing goes wrong. But there's no way I'm staying the night here; time to change plans. Finished anchoring at 10:20 at lat 18.23.195 long 64.42.017 Dinghied to Customs, and what a fiasco ! It would be nice if they had signs on the doors of the building; took a while to get directed through the plain white door that was hiding the actual main desk. Explained that I'd already checked in, and just wanted to know where the Park area was and how the moorings worked and if I needed a mooring permit. Total Keystone Kops routine; they have no official maps of the Park area, so tried looking in a tourist magazine. Two officers disagreed about whether I needed a permit. No one could tell me how the special $6 to enter the Baths is to be paid. Finally I realized that I'd talk them into charging me something if I stood there any longer; said "thank you" and left. To Soper's Hole marina, and bought $15 of gasoline. Gasoline $4.05/gallon, diesel $3.80/gallon. To one store and bought bread, then to a bigger store and bought meat and fruit. Lots of cutesy boutiques, and a couple of waterfront bars, and it all looks expensive. Back to boat. Anchor up at 11:40. Out of Soper's Hole without hitting anything, and around the corner and up the W side of Tortola. Unfurled the main and motor-sailed, very close to the wind. More than an hour up the W side, listening to Car Talk on the radio. Lots of patches of grey clouds, but it never did rain. Another 90 minutes or so across the N side of Tortola, then through gap south of Guana Cay, along N side of Beef Island, and past airport. Lots of strong wind nearly on the nose the whole way, but the water here never seems to develop a large swell. Maybe that's why it's considered such great sailing territory. Into Trellis Bay, having a little trouble deciphering a whole bunch of yellow airport-flight-path buoys, some red and green channel buoys, a wreck, and a yellow-black buoy near the wreck, and the remains of a squashed red buoy. Went through the mooring field and found lovely shallow sand bottom with plenty of room in the NE corner. Finished anchoring about 2:50 at lat 18.26.854 long 64.31.793 Lovely harbor; sheltered and calm and spacious. A few wind-surfers. Lots of big captained charter cats mooring here. 20 or so private boats too, many looking like they haven't moved in a while. The airport is fairly busy at times. Salad and cheese sandwich and an apple for dinner. Finally had 15 minutes of decent rain, at 3 AM. 6/4/2006 (Sunday) At anchor in Trellis Bay, Beef Island, BVI's. Good snorkeling several miles away in several different directions, but I was tired and felt like loafing. So that's what I did. Around 2, dinghied ashore to De Loose Mongoose restaurant and bar, and walked around the edge of the harbor. A couple of artist studios and shops, some more bars and resturants, and a pretty decent grocery store. They had today's Sunday New York Times newspaper, for only $12.75 (not a typo). I guess it's a fair price since it must have come in by air this morning. A dozen or so people sprinkled around, but it's pretty dead on a Sunday afternoon. Chatted with a couple at the dinghy dock, then headed back to the boat. Re-attached the shelves inside the engine compartment; I had removed them to get at the transmission coupling. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. 6/5/2006 (Monday) At anchor in Trellis Bay, Beef Island, BVI's. Anchor up at 8:05 and motored out of the bay. Raised the mainsail and motor-sailed out into wind howling across the Sir Francis Drake channel. Lots of swell and chop coming up the channel, too; a rough ride. But I was going a bit north, which put the wind and chop on my starboard quarter, so not too bad. Radio says a tropical wave is coming through the area today. Made my way across to The Dogs islands. I swear, I still don't understand this place. Supposedly this is part of the "Park Trust", so I expected to find plenty of govt moorings. Instead, a grand total of four, and none at George Dog, which I'm told has the best snorkeling. [Later, looking at tourist magazine, it seems maybe only N side of West Dog is Park territory ?] So I ended up anchoring off the north shore of Great Dog, at 9:25 at lat 18.29.090 long 64.27.299 Sheltered from some of the swell, and some of the wind. Straight across from the area of George Dog where I want to snorkel. Dinghied across the rough, open channel to the E side of George Dog and anchored the dinghy off a sandy beach, facing into stiff wind and chop. Over the side, and the snorkeling here is great ! Huge field of very varied coral, lots of types and sizes. Plenty of nice fish, including my favorite kind: a school of 6-inch-long dark purple fish that school very densely (I think they're "Blue Tang"). About 500 fish in the school I saw. Snorkeled up and down the entire E side of the island. Water a bit rough for comfort, but still very nice. Back into the dinghy, and across the channel and past the boat to anchor off the N side of Great Dog. Snorkeled again, and it's also very nice. Coral not as big or interesting, and not quite as many fish, but water calmer. Saw a couple of thousand of those small silvery fish schooling in the sheltered grottoes. Very pleasant. A couple of sailing-school sailboats came and anchored pretty close to me while I was eating lunch. Anchor up at 12:10 and motored ESE over to the W coast of Virgin Gorda. Blowing hard, and lots of boats out. 4 miles or so south, down by The Baths, there's a forest of masts of moored boats; it's a VERY popular place. Into Savannah Bay and anchored by 12:50 at lat 18.27.657 long 64.26.049 Anchorage is smaller than I expected, but nicely shallow with a good sand bottom, and the island shelters me from wind and swell, so it's nice. A couple of beach resorts and a restaurant here, with lots of thatch-roof cabanas on the beach. And at least one pretty woman in a bikini on the beach. Should have this place to myself; it's not a mainstream anchorage, and there's a lot of reef. Lots of small water-taxis and dive boats coming in and out. At about 3, went for a snorkel. Not much interesting here, and all the snorkeling this morning chafed a blister on the side of my foot. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. Reading the guidebook, it slowly dawns on me that I've ended up in Little Dix Bay, not Savannah Bay. My charts for this area are crap, and the guidebook omits Little Dix Bay, and neither of them specifies the size of either bay. But suddenly I see that the feature I'd keyed on, a hotel pier in the middle of the bay, also exists in Little Dix as well as in Savannah. And the heights of the hills around here seem to match LDB. [Later, I read in a magazine that rooms at Little Dix Bay Hotel start at $450/night during the winter season. The top rate is $3,600/night.] Very gusty wind all night, going from 2 knots to 20+ knots very suddenly. 6/6/2006 (Tuesday) At anchor in Little Dix Bay, Virgin Gorda, BVI's. Anchor up at 7:25, and motored out of the bay and south down the W side of Virgin Gorda. Heading to the most popular area in the whole country, The Baths. Arrived at 8 or so, and almost all the moorings are taken already. To my surprise, they have only 20 or so moorings; they could use another 30. Also, it's very rough and rolly here; a well is coming around the corner from the SE. Found an unoccupied mooring very close in, but it's pretty close to another mooring with a big catamaran on it. And it's different from the other moorings: this one is small and bright red, the others are big and faded pink. Circled a couple of times, debating, and asked the guys on the catamaran if it was okay to take it, and they said yes. One of them offered to help me picky it up, but that's not what I was asking. I picked it up, overrunning it a little and having to muscle the bow around a bit. Done at 8:10, at lat 18.25.764 long 64.26.805 Very rolly here, so decided to get right into the water, before anyone could come by and tell me I couldn't use that mooring for some reason. Lowered the dinghy down; hope the rolling doesn't damage the davits. Swam from the boat to the shore; they don't allow you to leave a dinghy on the beach here. Later did find some dinghy moorings close in; guidebook didn't mention them. Snorkeled for about 90 minutes. Very nice place, except the surf is a bit rough. Huge boulders, up to 30 feet in diameter, with deep canyons and grottoes and some sand beaches among them. Plenty of nice fish. Always interesting to find a little pool of calm water with fish slowly circulating in it; several of those here. Went ashore on several beaches and explored a few trails, because the guidebook says something about having to go on a trail. But I think it's misleading; it's turning out to be not a very good guidebook. Didn't find anything interesting up any of the trails. Back into the water. Swam using my arms more than usual, because the fins are chafing the blistered spots on my feet. And I want to do more snorkeling in the next couple of days. Back to the boat, and hoisting the dinghy with the boat rolly wildly was a real adventure. Got it up and lashed, toweled off and got a drink of water, and decided to get going. Boats are circling, looking for moorings, and the rolling makes it very uncomfortable here anyway. Mainsail up, engine started, slipped mooring a little after 10. This is my turn-around point: from here on, I'm generally heading back to Puerto Rico for hurricane season. Should be mostly downwind and down-current from here. And territory that I'm familiar with, so less anxiety involved. Nice motor-sail WSW down the Sir Francis Drake channel. A little rolly at times; the swell is from the SE. Then turned the NW corner of Salt Island and headed across the Salt Island Passage to the SE corner of Peter Island. A long, slow slog with wind and big swells on the port quarter, and current against me. So rolly that I started feeling a little nauseous by the end of it. Didn't help that it was getting past my normal lunchtime. Made it around the corner and motor-sailed downwind and down-current along the N side of Norman Island. Into Benures Bay, and found four boats here, and one occupying the only charted shallow water. Had to put the anchor down in 30 feet of water. Finished by 12:50 at lat 18.19.375 long 64.36.314 Nicely sheltered from the wind and swell, and a great view out to the NW, looking over Pelican Island and to the south side of Tortola and the east end of St John. Had lunch, took a nap and a couple of headache pills. A bit of a swell making it into the bay and causing a slight roll. About 3:30, lowered the dinghy and went for a snorkel, without wearing fins. Got much more exercise that way, and let the blisters on my feet heal a bit. Surprisingly nice snorkeling here, with a kind of vertical tube-coral I haven't seen before, and plenty of active fish. No large schools, but lots of couples and dozens all flitting about purposefully. Visibility about 50 feet, and fairly sheltered. Quite nice. Felt like I was flying as I swam back out to the boat, since the water is 30 feet deep and so transparent. Lots of small fish schooling around my boat, too. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Threw a chicken bone overboard, and almost instantly a fish seized it; only the second time that's ever happened to me. Trimmed main topping lift; the boom has been swinging a bit too close over the solar panels when I'm furling or unfurling the mainsail. Six other boats spending the night here with me. 6/7/2006 (Wednesday) At anchor in Benures Bay, Norman Island, BVI's. Lots of boids choipin' at dusk and dawn; very nice. Anchor up at 10, and motored NW over to Pelican Island. A little trouble finding a free mooring; the first two I tried had no pennants on them. Finally took a nice red one that was quite a bit farther in than the occupied ones. But it's in 14 feet of water and is new and the right color, so I guess it's okay. Had to dash for it a bit because another boat was starting to come in and look for a mooring too. But a minute later a boat left, and the boat behind me got a mooring. They really need three times as many moorings as they have at the popular spots. Done at 10:25 at lat 18.19.992 long 64.37.712 A bit rolly here. Lowered the dinghy and went snorkeling, again without the fins. Lovely place, call The Indians because (I suppose) it is several reddish rocks sticking up out of the ocean. Plenty of fish, and lots of fronds and fans and stuff waving around in the current. Got some good exercise swimming against a 1/2-knot current on the E side. Bottom dropped off to 50-60 feet deep, with visibility about that much, and lots of 12-inch fish lazily circling in the water. In the shallower water, plenty of neon-blue fish; plenty of fish of all types. I'm running out of ways to describe the snorkeling I've been doing; it's all pretty nice. Back to the boat after 40 minutes or so, and had a bite of lunch. A powerboat came in and anchored near the island, bewteen it and the Indians, so I guess it's not prohibited after all. Or they're just being illegal. Slipped the mooring at 11:40 and headed SE to The Caves on Norman Island. No problem finding a mooring, and picked it up like a pro. Done a little after 12, at lat 18.18.883 long 64.37.462 A pretty woman in a nice bikini on a commercial boat behind me. Into the water and snorkeled for about 45 minutes, swimming the whole length of The Caves up to the very tip of Treasure Point. The caves themselves are disappointing; could swim into only one of them, and it was small and dark. Much more interesting outside, where the snorkeling was good. Lots of very nice fish, including some brilliant half-and-half purple and yellow ones I don't remember seeing before. Front half purple and rear half yellow. Got lots of exercise. Slipped the mooring at 1:45 and motored around Treasure Point and into The Bight. They've tried to fill the place with moorings, but I found a spot to anchor, all the way at the E end in 16 feet of water. Finished by 2:10 at lat 18.19.050 long 64.36.861 Had to pull in 20 feet of chain; was swinging a little close to a powerboat when we swung differently to the wind. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Almost all of the moorings are full for the night. 6/8/2006 (Thursday) At anchor in The Bight, Norman Island, BVI's. Fuel level 8.0 inches at engine hour 3988.0 Tightened fan belt. Cleaned engine intake strainer. Anchor up at 6:45 and motor-sailed out. Lovely trip along the south coast of Tortola, with wind and current in my favor, and pretty islands on all sides. Fun to do 5.5 knots with the engine barely at fast-idle. I'd sail, except the jib still needs a pennant before I can use it. Around the corner of Frenchman's Cay, furled the mainsail, and motored up into Soper's Hole harbor. Found a big catamaran where I had planned to anchor, but I squeezed ahead of them and just gently put my bow aground just short of the beach. Dropped the anchor into about 1 foot of water, then the wind blew me off the grounding, and I let out about 50 feet of rode and ended up about 40 feet ahead of the catamaran. Done at 8:20 at lat 18.23.198 long 64.41.997 Lowered the dinghy and pumped up it's tubes a bit. Dinghied ashore and took books to a book-exchange. To the market for a few groceries ($5.28 for a half- gallon of milk ! Should have put it back on the shelf when I saw the price come up on the register, but that would have been awkward.). Stowed the groceries on the boat, then to Customs. Paid $1 departure fee, lots of stamping of papers, and done. Lowered the BVI courtesy flag and raised the Q flag. Chatted with a guy taking a swim in front of my boat; he has a boat in the small local-only boatyard at the NE corner of the harbor. He loves cruising Haiti, of all places. Anchor up at 9:45. Tricky to ease out without hitting beach, listing fishing boat, two floats, or catamaran behind me. But I get out and motor-sail out of the harbor. Another lovely motor-sail with wind and current in my favor, down between Great Thatch and St John, then through Durloe Channel and down to Cruz Bay. Now I'm SURE it's off-season: I was going to anchor outside Cruz Bay, but there's actually some empty room inside ! So I go in and grab a spot that's not good for overnight, but just fine for a quick stop. Anchor down at 11:25 at lat 18.19.990 long 64.47.774 Dinghied ashore, did Customs, and was back at the boat by 11:50. The only real question was "what kind of food do you have on board ?". I said "supermarket stuff, nothing fresh or from farms", and that was all. One odd thing: I didn't receive any paperwork saying that I'd checked in to the USVI's. Lowered the Q flag and raised the USVI courtesy flag. Ate lunch, and got a fleeting WiFi signal just long enough to upload my log file. Wind-shift put me very close to a nearby boat once, but I'll be out of here in half an hour. Watched a charter-cat come in and anchor right in the middle of the north fork of the channel; and I had been worried that my stern might be sticking out slightly into the channel. Raised anchor at 12:45 and motor-sailed out. A bit rolly across Pillsbury Sound, happened to meet a powerboat making an enormous wake right in Current Cut, then more rolly straight downwind along the S coast of St Thomas. Into Charlotte Amelie harbor, and it looks slightly empty. Only 15 or so boats at anchor. Half a dozen small sailboats sailing a racecourse inside the harbor; their spinnakers all say "Huefer" on them, I think. No cruise-ships at dock today. Finished anchoring at 2:40, at lat 18.20.225 long 64.55.546 So, my fourth harbor in one day ! Salad and spaghetti and rum-and-coke for dinner. Rolly all night; what a lousy harbor. 6/9/2006 (Friday) At anchor in Charlotte Amelie harbor, St Thomas, USVI. Cruise ship came in at 6:45. Dinghied ashore a little before 8. Brief chat with a woman at the dinghy dock; she's heading for Venezuela for hurricane season as soon as she can find crew. Walked to KMart. Bought a mountain-bike for $94; a few months ago they were on sale for $60. Paid for itself right away: fun to glide down to the supermarket, and then whiz back to the dinghy dock with heavy groceries hanging from the handlebars. Lots of fun wrestling the bike up from the dinghy into the rolling boat, but I've had a lot of practice at that. Ditto for hoisting the dinghy up into the davits with the boat rolling heavily. Added water to the batteries. Raised anchor by 9:30 in windy, rolly conditions. Motored down to and through Haulover Cut, avoiding racing sailboats. Past Crown Bay and over to anchor off Honeymoon Bay, at 10:05 at lat 18.19.134 long 64.57.575 A bit rolly here, too. Did some internet, catching up on email. Heard from my friends on "Exuma Grouper"; they've escaped from Luperon and made it to Boqueron, but they're having engine problems there. Anchor up at 12:15 and heading west to Culebra. Ate lunch underway. Going straight downwind, and swells and current hitting me on stern port quarter, so a pretty rough and rolly trip but good speed. After a few miles, started thinking a bit, and decided to go to Culebrita instead of Culebra. I've heard it's a very nice place, and I missed it on the way east. Technically, it's illegal for me to go there before checking in with Customs at Culebra, but I'm sure no one will notice. Into anchorage at Isla de Culebrita and picked up a mooring at 3:30, at lat 18.19.137 long 65.13.718 The mooring is missing its pennant, but I put my line through the loop on top of the mooring ball. A couple of sailboats and several powerboats here. Two more powerboats came in later. A little bit of the swell is bouncing in, but generally it's a great anchorage. Several women in bikinis. Salad and cheese sandwiches for dinner. 6/10/2006 (Saturday) On a mooring at Isla de Culebrita. NOAA says another tropical wave is coming through Tuesday/Wednesday. Might interfere with my passage to Salinas. I need to do Customs in Culebra on Monday morning, then go to Vieques to break up the trip, then a day's passage to Salinas. Might end up waiting a day or two in Vieques for the weather to settle down. The strong wind and swells behind the wave will be in a good direction for me, but the swells may be up to 12 feet, I think. Not much of a problem, since my flight out isn't until the 22nd. But I need to get to Salinas and arrange my ride to the San Juan airport. 4 or 5 more powerboats came into the anchorage over the morning, all but one bringing in a nice big wake to roll us. At noon, counted 29 powerboats of various sizes. The two other sailboats have left. Listened to Car Talk. Then dinghied ashore and hiked up to the old lookout tower. Trail was very overgrown, with plants and vines scraping my legs most of the way. And the view at the top was limited because it's also overgrown up there, so you get a view only in one direction at a time, and it's hard to find anywhere level and clear to stand. Couldn't find the trail down on the other side, so came back the same way I went up. Got some good exercise. This boat life is pretty sedentary much of the time, unless you make an effort to get off the boat. Too easy to sit and read and listen to radio and eat. Then dinghied out to the NE corner of the island and had a brief snorkel. Fish were fewer but bigger than in other places. Saw one I'd never seen before: his skin looked like one of those white cotton gardening gloves with the black rubber dots all over them, except his background was grey instead of white. His face was blunt and wide, sort of bulldogish. Very ugly. (Can't find him in any of my fish books. Skin similar to a Puffer, face like a Cowfish, but neither of them.) Back to the boat. At 3 PM, the powerboat count is 42. Lots of activity in the water and on the beach. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Radio says there's a tropical depression forming. Not sure if it's the thing in the NW Caribbean I've been hearing about, or something new in the E Carib. 6/11/2006 (Sunday) On a mooring at Isla de Culebrita. 12 of the biggest powerboats and one other sailboat spent the night here with me. Weather forecast sounds like strong weather here Tuesday through Thursday at least; I may have to hunker down in Culebra. I think it's associated with the tropical wave that's coming through. There's also a tropical depression in the NW Caribbean that will head across Florida and north of the Bahamas, I think. The radio descriptions of these things are hard to decipher sometimes; will have to see if I can get on the internet his afternoon and get a clearer picture. Rain at 8:45. Then LOTS of rain at 9:25. Stopped at 10, then started again at 10:30. Stopped at 11. Caught about 5 gallons of water. FM radio says tropical storm "Alberto" is in the Gulf of Mexico; first named storm of the year. Slipped the mooring at 12:15 and motor-sailed out. Not much wind. Went down E side of Culebra and around the S side, and into the main harbor, Ensenada Honda. Approaching the Ensenada Dakity anchorage, was hailed by Dave on "Fidelis", who warned me about a mooring with a bad attachment to the bottom, and directed me to a different one. Done by 1:25, at lat 18.17.498 long 65.16.861 "Fidelis" is heading to Salinas too, but they're in no hurry; they'll wait until a hurricane chases them. Chatted with "Fidelis" a bit. They were in BVI's for a couple of weeks, overlapping with my stay; they might have been in Savannah Bay while I was next door in Little Dix Bay. They saw "Serendipity" in Nanny Cay. They anchored most of the time in the BVI's as I did; paid for a mooring only one night. Dave says the tropical wave coming our way might have 30-knot wind; guess I'll probably sit it out here. Loafed. Rain at 3:20. Listened to the latest weather forecast, and I'm wavering; maybe I'll go to Vieques tomorrow. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. "Fidelis" invited me over for a chat, so I went over. Lovely long conversation from 6 to 9:30 or so. Talked about all the people we knew from Luperon and where the ones who left Luperon are now; half seem to have headed for Trinidad or Venezuela, but the two of us are headed for Salinas, a couple are working on St Thomas or St Croix, one fast cat is still cruising and planning to outrun any hurricane to a hole. Dave and Annie mentioned that ash from the volcano at Montserrat was getting all over their boat a couple of days ago, and suddenly I realized that is why my solar panels were so dirty, and why I saw red-brown mud in the bottom of one of my rain-catching buckets. I'd thought it was just leftover boatyard dust. Stuffing box dripping a lot in the middle of the night; tried to adjust it, but I'll have to repack it. 6/12/2006 (Monday) On a mooring at Ensenada Dakity at Culebra. Listened to NOAA weather and local weather, and decided to stay here and wait for the tropical wave to pass over. It is supposed to hit late Tuesday, and be followed by a couple of days of E 25 wind and swells up to 10 feet. If I went to Vieques today and Salinas tomorrow, I could arrive in Salinas ahead of it. But if anything at all went wrong, I'd be stuck in Vieques, or drifting in the ocean halfway to Salinas, working on the engine or something in 10-foot swells in the middle of the night. Better to wait. Probably can go to Vieques on Saturday and Salinas on Sunday. Tropical storm "Alberto" is heading for W coast of Florida, maybe Tampa area. Keys getting up to 5 inches of rain; W coast might get 8 inches. Big raincloud at 7:30. Rain and plenty of wind at 7:40. Added 1/2 quart of oil to the engine. Slipped the mooring about 8:05 and slowly motored up towards town, stopping a couple of times to try to catch a WiFi signal; no luck. Anchored by 8:35 at lat 18.18.415 long 65.18.019 Put a different seat on the bike and adjusted brakes. Pumped up tires. Put bike in dinghy and went ashore. Greased bike chain on dinghy dock. Biked to airport and did Customs; no problem. Didn't even have to fill out any forms. Then to ferry dock, just to see if anything was happening. To a gift shop that has a book exchange, and exchanged a bunch of books (scored a copy of "The Da Vinci Code"; I must be the only person on the face of the Earth who hasn't read it). To grocery store, back to dinghy, and back to boat. Nice to have a bike again. At 11, radio says "Alberto" is near-hurricane-strength. Glad I'm not in Florida any more. Anchor up at 1:15 and motored back out to the Dakity anchorage. Wind howling (well, 25 or so) from the ESE. Picked up a mooring at 1:40 at lat 18.17.489 long 65.16.824 Picked a mooring very close behind the reef, so the strong wind coming won't be able to whip up the water too much before it hits me. Feeling tired all afternoon, and my neck has been very sore for a couple of days; can't turn my head very far to the right before the muscles tighten up and hurt. Wind eased a bit, down to SE 20 or so. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Strong wind much of the night, and some rain. 6/13/2006 (Tuesday) On a mooring at Ensenada Dakity at Culebra. Listened to NOAA weather at 6 AM. Finally caught Chris Parker's weather report; haven't been able to hear him for months. Agrees with what I thought; tropical wave will pass over us this afternoon or evening, followed by strong wind and swells to 10 feet through Thursday, including some 40-knot squalls maybe Wednesday. Will start settling down on Friday or so. Wind ESE 25-30 or so in the morning, and lots of low clouds coming through, with occasional rain. Heavy surf noises on the reef, and lots of swells on the horizon. Glad I stayed put here; if I had left here yesterday, I'd be stuck in Vieques today or heading east in this from Vieques today. Wouldn't have been fun. Just after 11, gusts up into the 35-40 range. Wind generator of "Althea" next to me starting to howl. Other boats have their wind generators shut down. At 12:40, a smallish powerboat that had been on a mooring here left the harbor, heading W or maybe around to the W side of Culebra. Can't imagine why they went out there; they were rolling strongly as soon as they got out. Listened to radio traffic about sailboat "At Last" in distress somewhere, maybe north of NE corner of PR. Also something about one boat towing another, then someone got in a dinghy and then the dinghy got blown away from the bigger vessels. Hard to tell, and USCG is having trouble communicating with them. Later, SeaTow also involved. Maybe with another vessel in distress; hard to tell. Not a good day to be out there. At 1:45, a huge blast of wind, 45+ knots, and then lots of sustained 35+ after that. Suddenly decided to do something I'd been thinking about all morning, and went to the bow and lowered the primary anchor followed by 100 feet of chain. So if the mooring suddenly fails, the anchor should grab before I blow onto the shore 400 or 500 feet back. A better bet than hoping I'd be able to realize the mooring had failed and get up into the cockpit and start the engine in time. Should have put the anchor out, using the dinghy, yesterday. Horizontal light rain. A little later, noticed that the guy on "Althea" also has put down an anchor off his bow; I think he copied me. "Fidelis" has their anchor hanging free off their bow, ready to deploy; that's what gave me the idea of putting mine down. At 3:15, catamaran "Nina del Sur" left the harbor and motored west. Madness ! Pitching and rolling wildly. Salad and cheese-and-crackers for dinner. Wind slowly eased through the evening, down to E 25 or so. 6/14/2006 (Wednesday) On a mooring at Ensenada Dakity at Culebra. At 4 AM, wind was ENE 10 or so, very light. But by morning it was back up to ESE 25 or so. Grey and warm and humid. Still can't get a WiFi signal here; last time I was here, the signal was stronger. Tried to re-pack the stuffing box, but got caught up in a problem I think I've had before: should the stuffing be 1/4" or 3/16" ? Tried to put in nice new Gore-tex GFO 3/16" dripless stuffing, and it didn't seal. Put the old stuff back in, and think I need to buy 1/4" stuffing. But that's always a very tight fit; usually have to flatten it a bit to get it in. Later, went back and put a new section of 1/4" packing in the stuffing box (didn't have enough to do the whole thing). Seems to have helped quite a bit. Still blowing fairly hard all day. Salad and chicken-onion-rice and rum-and-coke for dinner. Just as I finished cooking dinner, Steve from "Nonesuch" came over. He wanted to chat about the south coast of Puerto Rico, so I told him what I knew. Turns out we both worked for AT&T sort of, and we talked about computers and such for a while. Also talked about hurricanes. 6/15/2006 (Thursday) On a mooring at Ensenada Dakity at Culebra. Wind down to 15+ range. Considered leaving for Vieques today, but the sea looks a bit rough, and all the weather info says the seas will be a lot better tomorrow. So I'll wait one more day. Saw a bunch of powerboats heading east, and a big freighter heading west. At about 9:30. saw a sailboat that was leaving the harbor, heading SE in the channel, rolling a fair amount. No sail up; that would have reduced the rolling. Then they turned E, and it looked like they were h aving a hard time of it. That's the best way to see how rough it is out there: watch a sailboat. Their mast is a nice indicator of the motion of the boat. Some NE wind in the afternoon. Salad and cheese-and-crackers and rum-and-coke for dinner. 6/16/2006 (Friday) On a mooring at Ensenada Dakity at Culebra. Heading to Vieques this morning. Wind E 15-18 or so. Added water to the batteries; Trojan took a little. Slipped the mooring at 7 AM and motor-sailed out. Immediately checked the stuffing box nut, and it's too hot. Loosened the nut while underway, and got water coming out. Nut stayed warm but acceptable. Trip started out okay, a bit rolly, heading dead S to E end of Vieques with SE wind and swells mainly from SE, but a couple other directions too. Making 4.5 knots with engine at low throttle. But the current pushed me W, and the last few miles to the E end of Vieques were agony. Hit almost a 2-knot opposing current as I slogged SE to get around the end of the island, so it held me in the roughest water off a nasty lee shore in the middle of nowhere for as long as possible. Finally got to the corner at 9:45 and around it about 10. I was wishing I'd gone to the other end of the island to anchor at Green Beach; would have been an easier trip and a little more direct to Salinas. But I've never been to that anchorage, and it looks unprotected on the chart. Going WSW down the S side of Vieques, had about a 1-knot favorable current, but wind and seas from the stern, and lifting the stern and slewing the boat all over the place. Pretty rough out here. Feeling a little unsteady from all the motion and now diesel exhaust fumes. Saw a catamaran "Sea 130" going the other way, and they were pitching and rolling pretty well. Think I've seen that boat in St Thomas or somewhere. Made it to Esperanza and anchored by 12:40 at lat 18.05.514 long 65.28.193 Only a slight roll in the anchorage. A couple of people on the beach, one kayak, otherwise pretty quiet. [Next log file is http://www.geocities.com/bill_dietrich/Magnolia/MagnoliaLog2006Late.txt ]