2/14/06 Cold Fronts, Windy Nights, Play Time

Cruisenews

2/14/06 Cold Fronts, Windy Nights, Play Time

This is Rike in a good mood. . . Don't bother clicking on this one to get a bigger image.

Darwinism at Sea

Yes, we are still alive. Computer woes kept us from sending any news. . .

For those who have not heard of the website, Darwinism Award.com is about the dumb things people do that get them killed. Men are very well represented in that collection of stories. Well, the other day, we were candidates for an entry into that website due to a decision that I made.

We crossed over form the Virgin Islands to the island of St Martin January ninth. The night trip over was uneventful and pleasant. The trip back to the Virgin Islands, about a week ago, was truly a one hundred and eighty degree turn. The forecast called for a cold front and winds were predicted to be NE at 20 kts with gusts to 30 kts in squalls. The front was also only supposed to arrive around 4AM, time by which we would be close to finishing our crossing.

No such thing happened. At 11 PM the first blast hit us with 40 knots. We had just taken two reefs in the darkness. A slight hunch I guess. Maybe blind hunches compensate somewhat for wide eyed idiocy. The wind never dropped below 30 knots for about five hours. Cénou's natural penchant for speed kept the wind forward of beam in chaotic and nasty waves. Lots of banging, lots of flying spray in the darkness and buckets of water drenched us along with the rain. We passed a couple of sail boats so fast we barely saw them, and on we marched west with a south west setting current, forcing us to keep the apparent wind forward of beam, where it is stronger and harder on the boat.

Rike, with her German stoicism took it all in. At one point, while I was trying to nap inside, a large wave, at a ninety degree angle to the wave train, broke off our bows and kept going over the boat. I walked out to find Rike so wet that her foul weather gear was sticking to her skin. She had that baffled look which said everything. Why are we here again? I guess Darwin had that answer two hundred years ago.

Well, as always, Cenou served us well, dealing with the chaos impeccably. The experience taught me what I already knew: do not sail into a cold front unless the route is south.

The past few weeks were spent home schooling, doing a little visiting and mostly avoiding swells from the weather we experienced. The succession of cold fronts brought us plenty of squalls and heavy winds which created large ocean swells. Although the anchorages were not directly exposed to these swells, the waves "bend" around the islands and make Rike uncomfortable. Yes, Rike still gets sea sick, especially when we are home schooling. We had a few days in St Barth with the wind between 25 and 30 knots during the day and at night gusting well into the 40's and 50's. So, a couple of nights were spent pretty well sleepless.

Not all is discomfort though. We liked St Barth even if the prices made it a hard place to hang around for long. It has one of the most beautiful beaches we have seen so far called Anse de Colombier, and when the weather abated some and we could get to a beach, the surf gave us much needed play time.

The girls in Anse de Colombier

The family taking a walk along St Barth's Anse de Colombier. Celine took that shot.

Now that we are back in the Virgin Islands we will have a better choice of protected anchorages and that will make everyone happier.

We have been on the boat over six months. I wish I could say, "Life is great, we are having a wonderful time, the girls have a permanent smile in paradise." The reality is more tame though. The girls still miss the familiarity of home, their friends, our dogs (who are dead) and our cat. This was particularly true around Christmas. The boat is confining to them as some of the anchorages we have been in were not conducive to swimming (dirty) or the weather made it too dangerous to swim off the boat.

That said, there are some notable improvements. The girls are now avid readers with Anouck, who is six, reading Harry Potter. The only problem is where to find books for them around here. Home schooling now takes two to four hours a day. When we first started we were looking at five to seven hours, albeit most of it was spent locking horns with Celine, our oldest daughter. It's not just Celine who has succumbed to reality. Rike is finally washing herself by climbing down the stern, soaping up, getting back in, and rinsing with fresh water as we all do. We have given up on finding cheap food or cheap anything in fact. We go to sleep at 8PM or so and wake up with the sun, without an alarm clock at about 6:00. It takes winds upwards of 30 knots to get me out of bed at night. We see charter boats hustle as they get in in the afternoon and leave in the morning while we sit at anchor for days, and realize that we are developing our own rhythm as a family.

Rebecca, a friend from Charlottesville, will be visiting us in the Virgin Islands in late February. That will be fun, as we will get to share with her what we have experienced here. She will be our first visitor since our arrival in the Caribbean.

We spent four days high a dry in a boat yard, doing maintenance. We originally came out thinking we had rudder bearing problems. A local shipwright told us we needed to drop our rudders and change our bearings. Luckily his mechanic, who was getting paid 6,50 an hour while we paid his boss 65 an hour, was more honest than the boss and told us there was nothing wrong. Philippe Tournier at Tournier Marine, the builder of the Freydis, was also very responsive and helpful in helping us diagnose our problem as was Olivier, our friend back at the farm. Although unrelated to the rudders, we did find we had a loose prop, a vestige from Georgetown Yacht Basin. We were also able to do other maintenance on Cénou as well as give the boat a good clean. We had not been at a dock in two months.

The girls loved being "on the hard" where they have the freedom to roam around and meet friends at their leisure. Hence the biggest problem for children on boats, their lack of independence.

In mid-march we will be making the decision of whether to sail offshore to the Turks and Caicos or sail the south coast of Puerto Rico on to the Dominican Repulic and then hop to the Turks and Caicos. The first option means three to four days at sea, the second means spending more time juggling moving the boat and doing home-schooling.

In the meantime, we are anchored off the Bitter End Resort in the North Sound of Virgin Gorda. Zia is here and so is Jaimie, another catamaran with two more girls of the same age as Anouck and Celine. So, all six girls get to run around the resort in blissful independence while the adults get some play time in the form of full moon Hobie Cat races inside the reef and family races. Jaimie also has a larger dinghie that allows us to pull the girls up on water skis which has been a prized activity.