Adventures on Beannacht

Trellis Bay full moon party

The full moon returned to us last night, and we returned to Trellis Bay in the BVIs to dance the night away with Mark on Opal, Walter and Ilanka on Sheherazade and as a last minute surprise Mike and his friend Nick on Gaia. I’ll save you the trouble of listening to me complain further about the seemingly endless capacity of charter boats to create chaos in tight anchorages, if you want a revision look back to July 09′s writings.

Two boats did manage to cut so closely to an anchored boat near us to pick up its anchor line on their keel, take it for a ride and then flee the scene without checking if they’d set it free to roam the bay without a pilot. But aside from that we’ve no complaints. We’re actually feeling very pleased with ourselves having masterminded a two anchor off the bow setup to slot into a little space between some boats on moorings and save ourselves the $25 per night tariff on the mooring balls liberally dotted all over the place – again further ranting can be found in the archives.

A shark-sucker bonded with our boat in Little Harbour. Our guide books say they are not harmful, but may try to attach to us in which case a swift pull forwards releases them.

We’ve had a blast in the BVIs this time round, and found an amazing bay, one of many I’m sure, that is absolutely devoid of mooring balls, and hence charter boats. Little Harbour is on Peter Island 5 miles south of Roadtown, Tortola. Opal and Sheherazade were planning to be there for a couple of nights and invited us to join them. We headed across not expecting to be surprised, and were just amazed by the beauty and protection of the spot. Boats stern-tie in the bay because it can be quite tight and you can fit more in, so I rowed to shore with our secondary anchor, complete with chain and rode and tied up to a tree on shore, Kel winching us in nice and snug.

Anchored in Little Harbour.

Snorkelling in Little Harbour was fantastic. Schools of young fish, some as small as a few cells hanging together in a clear gel, and some up to about 4 inches swarm around the shallows trying to avoid predators. We swam for hours through the schools causing them to explode away from us in synchronised silver balls, immediately filling the space just vacated once we moved through them. Small troops of jacks and tuna would dart in and out of the balls scooping off the unlucky, and then the big fellas, 3-5 foot Tarpons collect the rest.

Tarpon swimming in the bait ball in Little Harbour

Our work schedule got back on track in Little Harbour too. Kel cleaned the bottom from front to back, getting down to what must be our last two millimetres of antifouling paint. We fitted a new zinc on our propeller, a sacrificial anode for the salty electrolyte we sail in, and I completed the mother of all upgrades on the boat, adding a new 160 amp secondary alternator to charge our batteries. The alternator project has been a bit of a drag. It was a complicated installation and I had to fabricate two brackets, source a pulley in a country that doesn’t speak the Queen’s English as its first language and find a belt that fitted my apparently odd sizing. I left Luperon with all the components ready to go, but didn’t want to risk an install there when we were just about to leave on bad terms with the local hoods, I mean navy.

My first attempt was a little bit of a failure as the pulley on the alternator wasn’t tight enough and so started slipping once it heated up and expanded. But after a trip to Roadtown on Monday I picked up an extra washer and it’s working perfectly. Our little alternator which now charges our starter battery could muster 54 amps at full throttle for the first 5 minutes before it heated up and its efficiency tailed off to about 45 amps at a fast idle of 1300 rpm. The first numbers I saw from my new friend was 136 amps! After a few minutes we dropped to 1000 rpm and were making 110 amps. Of course I understand if all these numbers are irrelevant or uninteresting, but to give you some perspective this is the difference of running our diesel engine for 2-3 hrs per day to keep up with our energy needs, to running it for 1. On windy days our renewable friend drops it even lower.

Our new whopper 160amp alternator. Stu fabricated the brackets with the help at Moreno at Luc's factory in Luperon. Dave kindly donated the bottle screw for tensioning. The pulley is from an old Ford and does a fine job!

Our amp meter showing an amazing 116 amps going in from our new alternator - not a small thing!

At the top of the hill overlooking Little Harbour is an abandoned house that George Orwell apparently owned or stayed in. The house has an enormous main room with mosaic on the wall, outbuildings, servants quarters and a large deck that took in the view towards Tortola. Kel and I hiked up the hill and walked around the buildings imagining our reconstruction project. We also found some amazing caterpillars all over the place, black with neon green stripes and an antenna on their tails. Locals call them Frangipanni worms and the give birth to the most enormous moths in the second stage of life. The bay was also covered in beautiful yellow butterflies, some small lizards and snakes.

One of the crazy caterpillars on land.

The British government surpassed themselves on Monday, telling Kel that they couldn’t possibly hold a citizenship ceremony just for her and that she would have to wait until the next one ‘later in the year’. This is after they failed to collect their email in September and Kel missed one that she could have attended. We were then assured that they would be in touch about the next one that would take place in the new year. We went to their office last week and discovered that there was actually one the week before that noone had contacted us about. ‘You’re very hard to contact’ seems to mean ‘we’re just not too sure how to use email’. We’re not sure yet what the consequence of this incompetence is, but it may well have effected Kel’s ability to work legally in St Martin, and if they can’t get themselves together by the summer Kel will have to fly home to the UK to keep her current visa status. All of this really begs the question to we actually want to carry UK passports anyway, perhaps the Irish might be more cooperative?

This week we hope to make the 80 mile passage to St Martin just in time to catch the beginning of the 6 nations.. I mean just in time to find some work and begin saving for the Pacific trip. We think that the work prospects this year are likely to be below the normal so what work we can find is an unknown. What we do know is that there’s normally casual work on the mega yachts that come in to the marina on the Dutch side of the island, polishing stainless and varnishing. If we’re stuck and there’s an opportunity we could also crew on a larger boat and put our boat in storage for a while. Of course the question of Anzuelo would factor there, not sure he’s cut out for life on a multi-million dollar vessel, he’s making a right balls of our 50k one as it is!

One of the good things about spending 4-6 months in St Martin is that we’re in a place where friends can come visit! St Martin is a hub for international flights in and out of the Caribbean, and there are regular scheduled flights from both Paris and Amsterdam, with regular connections through London. So put your pennies in the bank people and get your butts out here. You can even check out parking at Heathrow airport here if you need it: parking heathrow.

Finally, we noticed that 10 Irwin Avenue has just gone back on the market for about 50k less that we listed it for two years ago. We loved that house and were reluctant to sell it, despite it funding this little adventure. If any of our good friends would like to make an offer on it we would happily come visit them frequently, particularly on winter nights when the fire is lit! Check it out here.