Nervous anticipation

Tomorrow's forcast is for storm conditions, with winds in the 30s and gusts to the 50s. No weather for old men, and yet...

My new 6 M kite is in the foyer, and my new board is ready to rock. We are planning a dawn patrol to our favorite wave spot,  Horseneck Beach. I hope to then travel to one of the better slicks, Pleasure Bay for an afternoon delight. 

The nerves stem from the strength of the gusts and tbe new equipment.  Each one is a strike. You see, I have a three strike policy.  Three strikes and I don't go.  Doubt about a piece of gear is a strike.  Cold water is a strike.  Offshore breeze is two strikes.

Tomorrow I have two strikes, new equipment and strong gusts,  so I am a little nervous.  A 6M kite is soooo small, and so fast. To give you an idea,  I sometimes ride a 17 on summer days.

Back Home

Boy, the trip back home is a lot easier when you take a jet.

We spent our last day touring on foot and by bus around Bequia. If you ever get there, be sure to investigate Industry beach. It is a beatiful spot, as pretty as any I have found in the Caribbean so far, with lots of nice looking villas on the hillside, some of them for rent. We stopped at a restaurant "Dawns Creole Beach Bar" for refreshements and thought it was as nice as any to date.

On the the sea turtle sanctuary for a tour, then a long walk back to the boat for our last night and a meal of Barracuda. Sweet.

We left Bequia at 6:30 AM and took a ferry back to St Vincent. The old vessel was pretty much what you would expect, rough but serviceable with threadbare upholstery, minimal lifesaving equipment in view, and a smoking old deisel, but she got us there just the same. We were in teh company of many locals, mostly middle school students in their clean pressed uniforms on their way to mainland St Vincent for a better education.

From there, a LIAT flight over to San Jaun, and the rest is pretty much mainland experience. It was interesting watching the progression from rustic to polished as we headed back to the US. It was snowing in Philly when we passed through, and there is a light snow falling here as I write.
Thanks for following along. I may blog again later in the spring if I help Alan get Unabated back up north.

ttyl

Back in Bequia

We are back in Bequia for the last day of the Bequia music festval, and to stage ourselves for or return to St Vincent. and on to Boston by air.

We left Clifton harbor for a short sail over to Chatham Harbor (still on Union Island). Chatham is a very quiet spot in the lee of the island with a few local beach bars and one development by outsiders. The development has the look of Herman Mouk's (sp?) play, "Dont stop the carnival" in which the protagonist had great ideas for improving the island, but is confronted by obstacle after obstacle, mostly cultural, until the projects grinds not to a halt, but to island time. Which may as well be a halt. The development has a couple of LARGE titki huts with a nice bar and upholstered lounge chairs surrounded by a dozen or so cinder block structures that are barely started. No progress at all in the weeks Dawn and Laure have been around.

We went to a local beach bar for dinner, When you arrive, the boat boys come out and solicit your business for buying their fish, lobster, or coming to their bars. If you do want to come to diner, they take your order right then, I guess that allows them to know what fish to keep, and which they are free to sell on the local market, Or maybe that tells them what they have to go catch.

No need to worry about getting frozen fish, there is no electricity on this side of the island. This particular bar is lit by LED lights off of batteries. Technology that was doubtless imported by the visiting yachts.

At Vanessa and Seckie's place, Happy hour is from 3 to 6, with all drinks half price. At 6 they go up to regular price which is OK since they become twice as large. Dawn and Laure swear that they saw print ads ad heard radio adds for a bar that offered 3 beers for $10EC and 4 for $15EC. The stupid tax takes many forms.

We snorkeled and read, and the next morning we sailed for 4 hours back to Bequia for the music festival. We just caught the end of the festival, and really enjoyed only one of the 3 acts we saw. But it was cheap and a nice scene for hanging out, and we ran into old cruising buddies from SV July Indian for pleasant conversation. The music was mostly popular, and we would have preferred local forms; they have become one and the same..

Dana has become the fishing soothsayer, She successfully predicted each of our two catches this trip. True to her second prediction, we caught a nice little barracuda on the way, and will have it for dinner tonight. You don't think of Barracuda as an eating fish, but we all like it's nice white flesh with a flavor of scallops.

More pictures will be posted on http://corbettgonesailing.blogspot.com

ttyl

Union Island, Clifton Harbor

For pictures, go to Dawn's blog: http://corbettgonesailing.blogspot.com

We had a good, quick sail over to Union island, with strong winds well behind the beam. We had the lines out, but no bites.

Union Island is a wonderful spot. I had misgivings when I got here with regard to the kiting, but they were unfounded. It has blown 20 kts consistently since we got here. I am working on backroll transitions and making the biggest possible splash. I am in flat water for a change, and liking it. If I want surf, I just tack out a narrow, shallow channel in the reef.

The rest of the crew are enjoying a relaxing time reading a snorkeling. There were a few good finds in the book exchange at the local yacht club. (yes, there is one, and it s pretty nice..
The town is quaint and colorful, supplies are available and Dawn spotted a few lobster in a nearby reef a week ago, and we need to try to catch them.

Salt Whistle Bay

The Swedes were around for a couple of great sessions yesterday at Salt Whistle, I was sunburned and exhausted by10:30 AM. We had 20 kts of breeze and waist high kickers inside the reef, and chest high over the reef. I re-acquinted myself with backrolls and jumping on relatively flat water.

We headed off to a nice little restaurant on the hill for a nice lunch of red snapper and conch for lunch, which served as our dinner.

I waited for 4:30 to set up the kite for a sunset session. I was very disappointed when I crashed the kite hard after just a few minutes, and on relauch saw a 6" tear in the kite. On inspection, it was clear that there had been a small tear from beach trauma that opened up more on impact. I tried to fix it on the beach, but with 25 Kt winds, that wasn't going to happen. I did not think to just go get my 9 meter and continue, so the session was over.

The hell here never ends.

We retired to the boat for a very nice evening of dominoes and rum punch, and watched the monohulls sway in the swell. At this point in the game, Dana is slightly in the lead. We quit around cruisers midnight (8:30) and will continue tonight.

We spent a lot of time talking about what boat Dawn's sister and brother in law should buy to begin their planned trip south. My big conclusion after having spent more time on a Cat is: I would not do another trip here on a monohull unless I had something to dampen the rolling in these (relatively) unprotected harbors. The nights can be just too long when the northerly roll sets in. On the Cat it is not problem, the motion at harbor is very nice. I do prfer the motion of the monohull at sea, and Cats are very expensive; so I would try to find out all I could about "flopper stoppers" before I ponied up for a Cat. I have talked to mono cruisers that said it was the single most important piece of gear they carried. This morning, the crew of Unabated was exhausted, and we were well rested.

Sorry for the typos, This keyboard is skipping letters and there is no spell check.

I was up at 6:30 and patched the kite with the emerency kit I brought. I though I would do a morning session before we moved on, but the crew was read to move by 8:00. We were underway in a flash, and secure on two anchors in Clifton Harbor Union Island by 9:30. This is a great chan of Islands - Line of sight sailing like the BVIs but wihtout the annoying British Customs and immigration people.

Off to explore. BTW - I have not been able to get my email, so don't feel ingnored if you have replied without acknowledgement.

Salt Whistle Bay - Dana's new desktop image

We woke up to a pretty windy frontal system passing through. It was blowing about 25 knots and raining, and I had to be restrained from heading to the beach for some kiting.

There was some excitement in the morning when a charter boat dragged anchor and ended up on the rocks. She was holed and taking on water. Lauri quipped “Gee, it is a shame that the first boat you bought had a hole in it”, referring to the likely response of the charter company when the found out where the charterers had anchored the boat. (They were not in a location that was likely to meet with the approval of the charter company.)

In spite of the strong winds, I was shanghaied into crossing over to Salt Whistle instead of rigging the kite. It all worked out quite well though, as the wind held all afternoon, and I was able to exhaust myself trying to get back to my skill level of just a few months ago.

Herve and Gwen also sailed over, so I had some company kiting. I found out today the they are on sabbatical and bought a catamaran to cross the Atlantic and cruise the Caribbean. Later we met Alex, Caroline and Maria, who are very good kiters that pushed us to try more than we might have otherwise. This other group is here from Sweden on a chartered boat for a few weeks.

I hope they will be here tomorrow.

ttyl

Tobago Cays

After fixing the mechanical challenge on Unabated, we had our dinner of Bigeye tuna, salad, rice and pigeon peas and retired contented.

The next morning, we headed out to check out the kiting spot and the local reefs, When I say local, I mean that they were right there next to the boat.

The snorkelling was very good, with sightings of a white eel, cow fish, juvenile and adult angels of the French and Grey varieties, damsels, red lipped blennys, a 5-6 foot nurse shark, lobster, etc. etc.

The kiting was pretty good too, but with weak winds, only 13-16 kts, but enough to get a session in. I did befriend a nice Frenchman, Herve and his wife Gwen. We did some downwind kiting by launching a kite, putting the kiter on a dinhgy, and delivering him out to sea for a run back.
The boat has been visited by a small parade of boat boys (I am not sure that this moniker is politically correct, but it is the accepted local term) selling their wares to the tourist. They offer bigeye and yellow fin tuna, Florida lobsters, local jewellery, tee shirt and the like. I think they can see that Cat Tales is a long-term cruiser, and not a likely buyer for their wares. They focus more on those who are her for a week, and on a vacation budget. They may have been pleasantly surprised when Dana demonstrated that we are on vacation by buying some tee shirts.

Tomorrow we head for Salt Whistle bay, a short sail to the west.

ttyl