Atlantic Passage

So I wasn’t sure I would actually post anything here after I “swallowed the anchor” and got back home.

There are a few things I think that should be included though.

John has posted a fantastic map of our trip on his blog. He had a pocket GPS with him that recorded our location at noon everyday. He exported all the data into an application that let him generate a map. He also has exported the data to Google Maps that allow you to zoom into every place we went.

This is, as they say, a COOL THING ™!

You can check out John’s post here:
http://atlanticrounds.blogspot.com/2009/05/daily-waypoints-and-ports-of-call.html

Here is a much reduced version of the map:

It is really odd being back home after all the time away. I am very happy to be back home with my family and, now that it is warming up a bit (it snowed here last week!), I’m actually enjoying doing yard work instead of deck wash and rust busting

However it is strange to be here where things are both totally familiar and yet slightly different. I imagine it as being a bit like experiencing a parallel universe. Not sure how long that feeling will last but it’s still strange nearly 3 weeks from our arrival in Lunenberg.

Work is a good example, my office was almost identical to the way it was when I left, there was even the same items on my to do list on the white board! However the economic situation is such that the company has had to do some belt tightening so some of the consultants I used to work with are gone. Walking around in the office leaves me with a similar “Temporal Shadow” feeling like I had in Martinique.

On the plus side they want me to do a “show and tell” on Thursday to give them a feel for how my trip went which should be fun. So I get to spend the next few days going over my 3000 some odd pictures trying to put this trip into a 45 minute slide show.

Wish me luck!

I may post more stuff here as I’m not sure I’m exactly finished with my Atlantic Passage just yet. Check back every now and then and, as always…

Thanks for reading.
KJ

Today was the first day ashore since I returned to Grenada that wasn’t going to be followed shortly by going back to the ship. That is a bit strange to me.

Last night the Dory Shop hosted a BBQ and party that went on to the wee hours The highlight for me was the live entertainment. There were initially 2 fiddlers, a standing Bass player, a banjo player and a mandolin player. Eventually they were joined by the fiddler that played at the party a year ago! The resulting 4 hour jam session was fantastic!

The B&B that my daughter is staying at is very nice and quiet and my bed was soft and actually “big enough to roll over in” I got a very nice relaxing and calm sleep, once I got back there about 3:00am

This morning after a fine breakfast of waffles, fresh fruit and coffee, I walked over to the ship and started packing all my gear. I ended up using my new sea bag because it was bigger than my second duffel bag.

It was cloudy and rainy today, more typical of Lunenberg at this time of year I think.

This evening was the official end of the trip with an “awards” ceremony that started at 7:00pm at the Ice House bar which is attached to the Fisheries Museum here.

John has created a 2 hour slide show of pictures from the whole trip which was really cool. The Captain gave a speech and Bruce read out his carefuly collected statistics. Everything from from how far we traveled, 17,756 nautical miles if I remember correctly, to how many sheets of toilet paper we used , a number I have mercifully forgotten.

The “awards” were carefully setup for each person which was really neat. I got the award for the “most sailor looking” of the crew. Heh.

Each member of the crew also received a print of a painting of the Picton castle done by William Gilkerson.

Tomorrow at 9:00am there will be a group crew photo on the deck of the ship followed by getting the lines and tackles rigged to move the wood from Grenada over the side.

My Daughter and I leave for Halifax to fly back to Calgary at 4:30pm tomorrow. Then the fun starts.
I think…

Thanks for reading.
KJ

This is a fascinating, but expensive, place.

Bermuda is celebrating their 400 year anniversary this year. Amazing to think that this island has been continuously under British control since 1609. There are lots of buildings that date from that time as well. The architecture here is quite different than the other islands we have been to. The buildings are massive with smaller windows and heavy concrete(?) roofs. The roofs are whitewashed and have a unique washboard pattern and gutters to collect rain water. The buildings are brightly painted or whitewashed although the colours are a different tone than the colours down south.

Yesterday (the 14th) Nicko and I were on galley duty. It went pretty well we only had to cook lunch, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. YUM!. We went on a shopping trip to get supplies for dinner which was a great beef and Guiness stew that Lynsey cooked up.

I guess my blog has attracted some attention as I was interviewed by Lisa Monforton of the Calgary Herald for an article in the Travel section of the paper.

Hi Lisa…

Today David, John and I are going to head across the island to the Maritime Museum which is at the old Royal Dockyard. Should be interesting.

More later…
Just returned from our expedition to the Royal Dockyard and the Maritime Museum. We took a high speed ferry from St George’s direct to the Dockyard and spent the day wandering around and looking at the exhibits. The museum is built into the primary fort known a the Keep. There are a surprisingly large number of forts and gun emplacements here, very reminiscent of Gibraltar actually.

After lunch we took a bus back to St Georges which took about 2 hours and went through the main city of Hamilton. Bermuda is a very prosperous place! Hamilton is very busy and looks like it is booming.

Pictures to follow anon

Some of them are here.

So tomorrow morning we will leave Bermuda for our passage to Lunenberg. We will arrive there on Saturday May 23rd sometime. Strange to think that in one week I will be back in Canada having crossed the Atlantic and the Equator under sail “before the mast”. Hmmm…

Thanks for reading.
KJ

There are pictures from our stay in the British Virgin Islands and the passage to Bermuda here.

Enjoy
KJ

Spent a very lazy day yesterday.

Went ashore on the 10:00 skiff and then wandered along the beach and up over the ridge and down to another bay.

This was White Bay where the world famous “Soggy Dollar Bar” is. They also had the only available WiFi signal. The bar gets it’s name from the lack of dock in the bay. Early cruisers would just swim ashore and pay with whatever they had in their pockets.

The place was crawling with pale day trippers, charter yachts and bikini clad beauties… very pleasant scenery indeed.:-)

After hanging around the beach in the shade of some coconut palms I wandered back over the hill to have dinner at a restaurant called Corsairs, which today has WiFi go figure.

Looks like today is going to be another lazy one.

Tomorrow we will head over to a deserted island, Sandy Cay, nearby for a last bash in the Caribbean then it’s “all hands to the windlass” to head North into the Atlantic Tuesday morning.

The passage to Bermuda will take 8-10 days and is the second last passage of the trip.

Much of the conversations on board now revolve around that nasty word “after”. Not sure I’m ready for “after” just yet myself.

More later maybe…

We arrived in BVI and anchored off Spanishtown on the island of Virgin Gorda (fat virgin).

Our arrival was pretty exciting. As we were sailing uptowards the island the Canadian Barkentine Caledonia was approaching the anchorage from the other direction. For us to get in we had to tack and we did so just as Caledonia was motoring past. From where I was on the quarter deck it looked like we were really close to them. The people on Caledonia were all taking pictures as we swung through the wind directly abeam of them.

The island here is marked by very large granite boulders some 50′ or more in diameter all piled up along the waters edge. Apparently they were originally enclosed in a lava flow of some sort and once the softer lava eroded left them lying around on top of each other. We up anchored after clearing in and motored over to the National Park that covered the corner of the island and spent the afternoon climbing and scrambling around these giant balls of rock.

Then we up anchored again and motored back to anchor off Spanishtown again. Got a good workout today

After dinner I went ashore and spent th evening doing Internet stuff and chilling.

More later…

I’m in a little restaurant drinking coffee and waiting for my laundry to finish. We will be heading for Jost Van Dyke around 11:00am this morning and we will be there for 4 days then it’s on to Bermuda which should take 10 days or so.

I’m actually looking forward to another long passage, and this one will be the second last of the whole trip.

These 6 months are nearly over and I have crossed a great ocean and passed through Neptune’s Court and felt the power which is the Sea itself. So much beauty, hard work and fun. The next 20 days will be bitter sweet as we head North back to the cold but also back to the warmth of our loved ones.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

We were supposed to leave for BVI today but when the Captain went ashore to clear out there was nobody around to do it. While we were waiting we worked on several small projects including the Grenada Boat, now known as “Mr Bones”, and getting stuff in the hold lashed down ready for sea.

Just after lunch the Captain came back and announced that we would be shifting over to the largest island in the Saints, Basse Terra, for the weekend then clear out on Monday.

Our watch was off today so David and I went ashore and had a quick look around. This is a very quiet island! The town is very small with only a couple of bar/restaurants and a couple of souvenir shops and a small grocery store. No ATM, or Wifi to be found

Unfortunately in my rush to catch the skiff I forgot my camera so I doon’t have any pictures of this quaint little place.

We arrived jut as a funeral was being conducted so everything was shutdown completely. Just to add to the atmosphere it poured rain, in those huge drops only a tropical rain squall can bring. I tried to shelter under a tree but got soaked anyways, I also forgot my rain coat, blah.

Bill found a small hotel for the night which also had a restaurant so we were able to have a nice dinner, which as an added bonus was pretty cheap.

The anchorage here is a bit dicey so we may have to move the ship in the morning.

Thanks for reading
KJ

Went ashore on the first skiff run of the day.

After getting some Euros from the Atm David and I went to the hotel where Rick was staying. We then rented some scooters for the day and tore off down the narrow roads to explore the island of Terre De Haut.

Went up to Fort Napoleon which commands the heights above the town and harbour. The fort is pretty well preserved and a good example of French forts from the mid 1800s. The museum there had a good display on the Battle of the Saints between the British fleet under Rodney and the French fleet under Bouganville. They had couple of nice ship models of vessels in the battle.

After the fort we decided to do a beach tour so we picked up a baguette, cheese and a bottle of cheap wine and headed out to see the sands.

The beaches here are really small, with the exception of one they are all only a couple of hundred feet long. But theyy are usually in nice coves so are fairly picturesque.

The weather was hot and sunny but there was a fairly strong Northerly wind blowing which made sitting the shade quite pleasant.

Our watch is on tomorrow but we get Friday off so I think I will do a bunch of Internet and chilling for the day

Thanks for reading…
KJ

Here are some photos from my day ashore.

Had a great day racing on board the Charm III captained by Richard West. We actually beat the one schooner the skipper was most anxious to beat which was the Astor.

I have never been in a sailing race before so this was an interesting day.

The schooner Charm III is a staysail schooner, this means that instead of a gaff rigged foresil she has a staysail on a boom. Above this she carries a Fisherman’s Staysail. The advantage of this rig is that it is essentially self tending in tacks and is supposed to be marginally faster upwind. This schooner was designed and built in 1923 so she is a bit older than the Picton Castle actually. She has the distinction of having the oldest masts still afloat on their original hull

She sails really well and ha a very friendly and fairly laid back crew. Which was good cause I’m not sure I was all that useful a hand. Shackle and Sarah and I were the Picton Castle crew that were aboard for today’s race.

We headed for the starting line about 9:30 this morning. We got the sails and lines sorted and ten tacked back and forth waiting for our class to start.

One of the schooners in our class is called “When and If” I believe. Her owner planned to sail her around the world when and if he had chance. He died before he could do it. His name was George Patton.

We crossed the starting line bang on time which was met with much rejoicing. This is not an easy thing to do apparently.

The race was on a course that had two downwind legs and a couple of up wind slogs, very cool, lots of room for tactical sailing.

On one of the downwind legs we set a massive sail called a “Gollywobbler” that fills the space between the fore and main and is used as a downwind sail like a spinnaker. Setting this monster is quite a process. We first had to douse the Fisherman, un shackle and stow it, then set the Golly and take in the staysail. When we rounded the bouy we had to do the opposite.

During the race the giant “J” Class boats roared by. They sail like giant fish more than boats. They are very impressive and they create quite a wind shadow as they go.

Watching all these classic yachts, gaff riggers, schooners of all sizes all churning along in the beautiful tropical blue seas was wonderful.

The last leg is upwind and here the tactics get tricky. Our skipper elected to do a bunch of short tacks really close to shore and this made all the difference. Although we got very close to shore at one point.

Once the race was done we motored into the dock and stowed away the sails. A couple of Gin and Tonics to celebrate our victory and a nice lamb dinner prepared by one of the crew ended a fabulous day.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

There are some photos of the race here.

Had a very interesting day today.

I went ashore expecting to spend a quiet day surfing annd chilling while everybody else went racing. The first half of the day went exactly like that but just about 11:30 John came by. He had rented a car the day before and driven Spencer to the airport so he could go home. After a bit of Internet surfing we headed out in his car, with blessed AC, and found a local bar for lunch which was wonderful and CHEAP!

Then we headed down to the shore near Rendezvous Bay and watched the all the boats racing. It was a fabulous panorama of great sailing vessels like the “J” class sloops, schooners and ketches all the way down to our brightly coloured brave little dinghy ” Sea Never Dry”.

After the race we went back to the harbour in Falmouth to meet our crewmates who were sailing on some of these vessels.

I have been shanghaied into sailing on a staysail schooner named “Charmed III” which is an Alden designed Malibar 5(?) ship. Deb, Bruce and Charlotte sailed on her today and it appears that I will be sailing on her in the racing tomorrow.

Hmmm…

Should be fun, I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m off to get in on the free food and booze action down on the docks amongst all these expensive yachts.

Wish me luck.

For tonight and tomorrow

Thanks for reading.
KJ