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.

So, suffice to say Luperon had got very old, and we were both relieved to finally pick up our anchor. In the end my work there dragged on for a full month more than we anticipated, and friends left the anchorage ahead of us themselves on eastern courses. We did of course maintain the normal Christmas customs, pancakes in the morning, big feed in the evening. Gifts tended towards the creative, rather than the valuable! I bought Kel a 2000 piece jigsaw for her 32nd birthday (right old bird), not knowing anything about puzzles, and we spend the best part of two weeks trying to get it done without success. In the end we packed it up in chunks and will restart it when we’ve stopped moving.

In record time we made it to Puerto Rico, where we pulled in to pick up an extra 20 gallons of diesel, before rounding the south western tip of the island and motoring though the night to the Spanish Virgin Island of Los Palominos off the eastern coast. The next day we motored the final 20 miles to the US Virgins, and pulled into the port of Charlotte Amalie, dropping our anchor just beside Alicia and Brian on Sarabande. We had an amazing time with the guys and also caught up with Mike on Gaia, and Sussura.

This week we arrived in the BVIs, and became legitimate citizens again. We’re currently anchored by Village Cay Marina in Roadtown. We were here in July with mum and dad, and it’s been nice to get some familiar drinks, and chinese food – what a luxury! We’ve got online and touched base with the families, and generally relaxed knowing that we’ve done the hard part already in getting this far.

Our next plan is to move to St Martin, the next island down the chain, to look for some more work. Sadly our work in Luperon didn’t turn out as planned, both of us earning less than we agreed at the beginning of our contracts, and we don’t have enough in the kitty for our planned trip to New Zealand. So we’ve re prioritised and plan to work for the next 4-6 months in St Martin in preparation for an 18 month cruise to New Zealand. Our boat needs a few extra pieces of equipment before we cross the Pacific, so our budget includes a mix of those things along with our living expenses – we’re currently managing to live off about $700 a month.

Kel and I remain astounded by the incompetence of the British Government’s naturalisation department. Kel applied to have her citizenship ceremony in the BVIs last summer and was given a date at the end of September. She was due to be in Panama at the time and was unavailable for the ceremony, but was told swhe would be contacted in the new year when a new one was scheduled. She went to the office this morning to discover that they had one last week and didn’t contact her! Hopefully they are going to provide her with one on her own next week to get it finished. We’ll believe it when it happens.

So we’re planning a weekend of snorkelling and reading, followed by a citizenship ceremony and then a trip to St Martin. Beats Luperon anyday.

Stu and Dave 'surfing' in the harbour

Bloody awful is the only way to describe Bryan Habana’s showing at the weekend. His mustache I mean, though his rugby talents weren’t nearly as prominent as that rat hanging below his nose. Add the entire Aussie team in and you’ve got a full display of bad facial hair. November, as I prefer to remember it, capped an excellent year for Irish rugby, played 11, won 10, drew 1. Kel and I listened online at the weekend and then caught the highlights on iPlayer, four seconds at a time. Sadly the internet in Luperon is pretty patchy.

The end of Movember marks a significant milestone for us, our first year on the water! You may have noticed a few updates on the blog recently, some design modifications and the addition of a Google maps image of our trip here, and here. I’ve really enjoying going through our ship’s log, which my captain faithfully completes (up to the BVIs anyhow), reflecting on our progress so far, remembering friends on land and sea along the way. You can check our progress to date, which today is all the way to West Palm Beach. Soon I’ll have got us all the way to Luperon and it’ll be ‘live’ from then on.

We’re grateful for the generosity of others that’s carried us through thus far. We started out with a small, but we thought sufficient amount of money to get through the year, and very quickly realised how expensive this sailing lark can be. Friends and acquaintances have stuck their necks out along the way to help us solve problems with gaffer tape and hose clamps, or just fed us when we were low on morale.

Morale has been a little low of late. Luperon has become a fairly depressing place, and one that we and our friends are keen to get out of. Last time I wrote about the corrupt officials, which is a pain in the ass, but the truly depressing aspects of life here are much more related to sex work and alcohol. Two weeks ago I was sitting in one of the two gringo bars in town, Shaggy’s, and overheard a hideous, and yet so typical conversation. I’ll disguise the names for the sake of confidentiality:

Gregorio was talking with Jimmyorio about the recent visit of his girlfriend’s (read sex worker’s) fourteen year old nephew to Luperon. He came for the weekend, and was excited to visit Luperon as he had never been here, and also to stay on a boat. The three of them were out in a local Dominican bar restaurant where the ladies of the night, and morning and afternoon, meet clients. Gregorio’s girlfriend disappears for a few minutes and comes back with a lady for her nephew and the two of them disappear for the evening. Sentences like “I just had so much respect for her” and “ I mean, imagine if your aunt bought you a piece of ass when you were 14” were among the most notable. Auntie Jacqui did bust out a few tricks that mum doesn’t need to know about, but buying ass was not on the list.

These guys are hanging out on the edge of reality, dying to believe their allure lies anywhere but their wallets. Mum just emailed having returned from Thailand, sorry Padraig Thy-land, and it sounds like a very parallel culture. The girls in town are astute, and sadly realise that the gringos present them with a much more lucrative revenue stream than any jobs in the area. And judging by the physical condition of the average gringo, and the recommended daily alcohol consumption in Luperon, they aren’t troubled too often to maintain their half of the contribution. Quite a few gringos who’ve been in Luperon harbour for more than a season have developed considerable alcohol problems, two I’ve met have severe liver problems and are off booze altogether, its a dead end town for some people, particularly older men.

The most damaging aspect of this gringo intervention is how Dominican men view their women. The prostitution that is essentially encouraged and facilitated by society as money makes its way to the families of the women overtly or through unspoken transactions. At the same time the women are dismissed as whores. It is not uncommon for Dominican men to have multiple girlfriends simultaneously, and to make no effort to hide it, resulting in an instability in relationships that women respond to by putting their wares on display to provide for themselves. Prostitution is perhaps too strong a word for what occurs among Dominicans, but it is certainly trading ass-ets.

Of course I wouldn’t want to comment on all this sexual activity without sampling it myself! Not quite, but a funny occurrence none the less. I’ve had a couple of humorous mix ups with my friend Moreno who works at the factory, one of which occurred recently and was reminded of as we went out to dinner with Yasmin and her family in Las Maras, a few miles outside of Luperon. Moreno and I communicate in pigeon Spanish often, and for a while I really felt like I was making progress. When Moreno invited me to attend his graduation ceremony for the George Washington school of English as he was being presented with a certificate I of course obliged, very happy to be included. I arrived at the prearranged time only to discover that I was actually the equivalent of a prom date for his 15 year old friend. We paraded up the street arm in arm captured on videos and cameras throughout the town, and I got on stage with Yasmin for a photo when she was presented with her certificate.

On Saturday night we were treated to dinner with Yasmin’s extended family from gran to cousins. They were fantastically hospitable, a big spread of pollo, papas fritas, huevos, kayote, berejenas, zanahoria, cerveza, jugo de chinola (check out Google Translate if you’re lost). We were totally stuffed. The whole evening proceeded in limited Spanish, Keli’s capacity being vastly superior to mine, and we took our photo album to show them some images of us from Ireland and Canada. Next year we’ll come back so that I can take Yasmin as my second wife. And sometime shortly after I predict that I will magically become a eunuch.

In a bid to lift the mood in Luperon Dave and I got the surfboard out a few days ago and tried some watersurfing, or is it surfskiing off the back of the dinghy. We had a laugh cruising round the anchorage and waking the boats nearby. It was great to get physical again in the water. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that that water is full of 18,000 people’s excrement on outgoing tides, and just to confirm that there are indeed fertile organisms in there I had a headache for three days and felt like my sinus’ were exploding. Some good bugs got flushed up there when I wiped out. We’ll get out there again though, it made me pine for clear waters again.

Today we celebrated Karmen’s birthday! First mate, cook and Captain Fun on Ellida, Karmen’s been an excellent friend to us since we first met in Georgetown, and pancake breakfast was a good way to usher in the day. Ellida are probably heading out of Luperon a little ahead of us, but we’re really excited about catching them further down the chain. We may indeed coordinate a passage to Hawaii at some stage. It’s not written in to Plan A yet, but in sailing we learn that an alphabet of plans can be overwritten with the slightest change in circumstance.

Dave and Danielle have been performing some heroic feats aboard Beannacht of late. Danielle and Keli have spent many hours in front of the sewing machine working on our dinghy cover and some dresses for Kel. Dave and I checked the alignment of our engine and transmission, and adjusted our PSS drip-less shaft seal. They’re also headed for St Maarten, hopefully ahead of us, and we’re excited about hanging out with them in future.

Muma - the town goat.

So this week we’re changing gear. It’s 25 days till Keli’s birthday, 26 till Christmas, and we’re injecting some urgency into our game. We’ve made some real improvements to the boat while in Luperon, not least by the efforts of Dennis and Pat during their visit, but it’s time to finish the projects that are open and postpone the rest for the New Year. I’ve a little more work to do for Lucas at the factory, but ideally we’ll leave Luperon before Christmas and make our way to St Maarten.

And that’s about it for now.

We’re growing tired of Luperon really. As our friends leave and others make their final preparations we both wish that we could join them in their voyage east. The D.R. has certainly proved an interesting place to hang out, we’ve both enjoyed learning Spanish, eating local foods, and picking up some of the history of the place, especially the Columbus voyages. During Dennis and Pat’s visit we spent three nights in Santo Domingo visiting museums and walking round the Colonial district, soaking in the old stories.

The D.R is also very corrupt, and we’ve become increasing weary navigating the various interactions with officials, all attempting to extract a few dollars from our limitless bank account (ha)! On route to the waterfalls in Imbert with Dennis and Pat we were stopped at a police checkpoint. I showed them all the papers they required, licence and insurance, and then was asked for a donation because the police are poor you know. These checkpoints increase in frequency towards the end of each month as their coffers empty before payday.

Luperon in particular is grating because the local officials have become expert at screwing money out of the boats at anchor. At the minute we’re visited about once a week for a reminder that we owe them harbour fees, which no one can really confirm are legitimate, and any time Kel has to deal with them for immigration or boat related issues they’re always asking for a little extra ‘tip’. We’re holding out for now, but I imagine that can’t last forever.

Sadly the yachties themselves have contributed to establishing this extortion culture.  Cruisers on bigger budgets than ours tip $20 for very small services,  creating the belief that anyone who arrives on a boat has such surplus cash.

In the last few weeks Kel and I have been coming to terms with the sad realisation that we will be leaving Luperon to go find work somewhere else as we haven’t managed to save what we needed to continue cruising next season. It’s unfortunate in that whilst we’re of course not fantastic with money, we did actually arrive here with a plan, and the plan was scuppered by other people rather than us. Firstly Kel got screwed on her delivery job and was only paid 50%, and then the guy I’m working for ran out of money and cut my job by 30%. This happened after we had spent the money we budgeted to do the upgrades on the boat.  So we’re learning, and we’re hacked off at the same time. We haven’t decided where to go for work yet, but it’s likely that we’ll head east from here as the work is where the tourists are.

It has been fantastic to spend some money on the boat though! We bought a new ham radio to enable us to communicate with other boats, and other geeks, over long distance. Last night I hooked it up for the first time and managed to make contact with a ham net in Texas, by this calculation that’s about 1500 miles – who am the best?

We bought an Air X wind generator from Dave and Danielle. We first met them when we got back from the Virgins, but in the last 6 weeks we’ve become really close. Dave has been at sea for about 40 years, delivering boats, running charter companies, as a dive instructor, running a salvage company.. he’s got a lot of energy! Danielle went back to school a few years ago to become a chef and now works on yachts. We’ve spent quite a few nights up late playing cards and laughing.

Rugby intermission…we’ll be back.

Some moody skies over Luperon

Second coffee of the day,  just sitting in Capitan Steve’s place ruminating on what has been an amusing two months in Luperon since our return. Actually I’m punching the keys of my new Asus EeePC netbook which is proving to be a fantastic investment, super-portable for the pocket, no more fighting over which movie to watch, and we’ve got a dedicated Windows machine to run our navigation and communications software on that doesn’t pollute our beautiful Macbook. Sadly the Macbook’s beauty is beginning to fade after just 12 months, grey screens every other day, arrow keys that don’t work, and a few bruises here and there. It seems that $2000 laptops do not belong on sailboats regardless of how pretty they are.

For the last week we’ve been partying like it’s our last night in town because several of our friends in the harbour are getting ready to move on at the first opportunity. That looked like it was opening up 10 days ago, and then every day since there’s been another squall line coming through, or a northerly swell, keeping people in port. I’m starting to feel like I can’t keep up with it… It’s also been great to have Tom from Ellida back, although Karmen doesn’t return for another month, and we’ve picked up some great friends in Dave and Danielle from Azure Mist (aka Loopy), Mark from Opal, and to reconnect with Mark and Karen from Sussura.

Leaving well has definitely been the hardest aspect of our sailing life to come to terms with. On land you concentrate on choosing the date and time, you pack your bags (for us 5 mins before departure) and then jump in the car. We rarely worried about traffic even in Belfast because it’s such a small city. On the water the weather dictates 90% of your decision-making, and the boat makes up about another 5% – some days she just doesn’t want to go, throws a fuel filter at the last minute or you notice a damaged component, and you are reminded that you’re the third in line in this relationship.

Hurricane Bill moving towards us...as Kel was planning her passage north from Panama!

So for the last 10 days we’ve been socialising in the evenings, open mic night in Shaggy’s Bar, sundowners on other boats, sundowners on our boat, karaoke… and during the day we watch people get their boats prepared and do the final fuel and provisioning runs. My musical talents are somewhat stagnant, but these piano lessons will hopefully pick things up a bit Rocket Piano. What’s emotionally difficult is that you can work solidly every day for  a week to be ready, and then when that day arrives your two senior officers (weather and boat) can veto your exit. It’s really hard to stay in a state of readyness without just wanting to get going regardless of conditions.

Alicia's 30th birthday party

Team Sarabande (aka Brian, Alicia, Louis and Stevesy) found themselves in exactly that situation last night. Some of our finest cruising friends, and people we desperately hope to stay intouch with forever, they’ve been working really hard for over a month to leave D.R. bound for the US Virgin islands to pick up some work. Brian and I have a 7am coffee date every day to listen to the weather forecast and talk crap. Last night they came to visit us at bedtime to say goodbye for the last time, due to leave at 3am. I woke up this morning and saw that they hadn’t left in the middle of the night as planned as the boat had taken longer to ready than they’d expected. Good on em I say, it’s so hard emotionally to ‘go back on your word’ once you’ve said your leaving, but it’s considerably worse to head out when you’re not feeling ready and get a hiding. I’m slowly learning to just not say when we’re leaving, until the anchors up and we’re motoring out to sea.

Having fun at the waterfalls.

Another lesson I’m learning is not to have an opinion on where this ship might be going.. not for weather, nor the ship herself, but for the captain who overrules me anyway. Whilst the generic ‘you’ is third in command, the ‘I’ in this case is most definitely fourth! Sailing is slow travel, and cruising even more so. In the last year we’ve had so much fun in places we really didn’t expect it, and little fun in places we had high expectations, so in firming up the plans for the next season of cruising we’re approaching it with new eyes. The first fresh perspective is how fast we like to travel, and contrary to life on land (Kel has now two outstanding speeding tickets in the USA) we like to go slow! So in the spirit of go slow we’ve provisionally reduced the scope of our travel plans for next season to just the south western corner of the Caribbean, Columbia to Guatemala.

We’ve a fresh perspective on the budget too. We’ve both managed to earn some lovely pennies in Luperon that will help us extend our trip for another year. But what we found during this year is that our money tended to vanish when we were near civilisation, or at least Walmart, and didn’t run away too fast when we weren’t. So we’ll avoid Puerto Rico (Walmartville) and we’re giving up the credit cards in lieu of cold hard cash.  We were not only astonished by some of our Visa bills this year, but also screwed by those sharp suited currency traders on a number of occasions, cash just can’t catch you out in the same way.

Anzuelo's still trying hard to be the cutest cat on the block.

Keli spent the month of August in Panama attempting to deliver a boat from Panama to New York for a guy we met through Luc called Alejandro. A charasmatic Spaniard who knew little about sailing, and it became clear later was a little light on the facts about the boat’s condition. She can tell the story for herself, but basically the boat left Panama three weeks behind schedule because Alej was still moving out of his apartment, registering the vessel (that he had owned for a year and that is a legal requirement), fitting an autohelm (that was promised before Kel arrived) and a host of other jobs including moving on a full sized desk! Kel and our good mate Mike from Gaia gave it their best shot but ultimately Sawasawa, a 1976 Del Rey 50, was not seaworthy and they had to pack it in. It’s for sale at the minute, but we’d advise against it even if Alej paid you his asking price to take it!

In Kel’s absence I concentrated on learning some Spanish and work at the factory. We’re still taking lessons, and just last week started meeting with Pierre and Florence from Venus and Natalie from P’tit Louis for 2hrs of Spanish conversation. Today we learnt that insults in Spanish are a little different.. my personal fav was ‘I defecate on your mother, who incidentally was a commercial sex worker, and who birthed you from her bottom’ – nice huh?

Only Brittney elicits this level of passion.

Dennis and Pat arrive this weekend for a two week visit so boat projects are in full swing. I’ve been working on installing the new alternator on the engine and am about half way there on the bracket, with the belt and pulleys to come. We’ve fixed the backstay tensioner – the backstay holds the top of the mast ‘back’, and the tensioner allows us to manually control the tension (this sailing lark aint hard). We modified the storage under the sink to allow for some additional order in the cleaning products department and to keep our ziplock bags in one place – ziplocks might just be my favourite invention. D & P will not only bring us a suitcase or two of goodies, but their arrival prompts us to get the boat ready for sailing and reminds us of the tasks that need to be completed before we leave Luperon. We plan to sail up to Turks and Caicos for a week or so with them and then spend another week traveling in D.R.

We haven’t really got stuck into tourism in the D.R. yet, but we did have an amazing trip to the waterfalls near Luperon when our excellent friend Andrew Iverson was in town. Brian and Alicia (s/v Sarabande) joined us and we hiked up over, under and through 27 waterfalls with our two Dominican guides before turning around at the top and jumping and sliding our way back down. Absolutely invigorating, we’re going to do it again with D & P next week. Other than that we’ve travelled to Santiago and Puerto Plata, two cities about 40 km from Luperon, and spent two nights in Cabarete, a tourist-orientated surf resort down the coast. I did pay $245 RD (about $7 or £4.50) for a can of Guinness when we were there which was more than a little excessive, but it’s been a while and felt worth it.

The Good (read: mad) Ship Brian: he's smokin'

So that’s an update. I’ve got most of October off from the factory which is great. I’m really not at the stage where going back to 40 hrs a week is appealing. We’ll keep at the boat projects this week and then enjoy our time with Kel’s folks before I get back to that. Kel has been teaching Thai massage to a couple of friends in the anchorage two days a week which is cool, and she’s also exploring a couple of options for delivery jobs in the next 6 weeks or so.

She also wanted the world to know that her hair is it’s own natural colour for the first time since 1987.

One of our best routines in Luperon so far is Tuesday morning’s fruit and veg market. Even a small town like Luperon has plenty of great fresh food for sale and at excellent prices, but Tuesday morning’s are even better. Something akin to the Friday market at St Georges in Belfast, with some small differences.

Staff from a local farm arrive in a rusty old pickup at 5.30am, empty their products onto the pavement under the shade of a tree, and until 9am you can get a whole range of tasty fresh goodness for amazing prices.

Kel went on her own this morning while I did a little tidying on the boat, and came back with avocados, eggplant, cucumbers, peppers, pineapple, tomatoes and bunches of fresh herbs. The prices are great too, along with eating out it’s the cheapest part of life in D.R. 60 cents for a pineapple, avocados for 30. Surely the avocado must rate as one of the finest vegtables, or is it a fruit? Our favourite is a healthy dose of salt and loads of lime juice over it, we eat at least one a day at the minute.

Fresh meat is similarly plentiful. One shop on the mainstreet sells chickens killed freshly each morning, if you arrive early enough he might even let you wring their necks.

All of this leaves us plotting our next adventure, subsistence farming in Nicaragua… but that’s not for this year.

The cultural museum in Santiago, DR.

We arrived in   Luperon on Sunday afternoon in jubilant mood having enjoyed a very smooth three day passage from Jost Van Dyke, BVI. The passage had a little drama to keep us engaged, with bad fuel killing the engine on Saturday afternoon just shy of Puerto Escondido. I got down below with a bucket and a tin of coke, it’s funny how a coke placebo still soothes my stomach when feeling queasy, and set to work changing the two filters. Fuel filters in boat have a dual purpose, removing any particle contaminants as well as separating any water in the fuel preventing it from getting to the engine. Despite having changed our primary filter before leaving Puerto Rico, there was considerable buildup in the bowl.

Changing the secondary filter, or more specifically bleeding air from the fuel line after changing is difficult on the Perkins, they’re renowned for hiding little pockets of air in their pants that takes hours of work to expel. So I got the shop manual out to keep me right and after about 90 minutes had the job complete. Time to start the engine to prove my competence.

A beautiful church on the way to El Castillio, DR.

Starting the engine is a little bit of fun these days too. One might conclude that I’ve been neglecting our precious diesel. In Puerto Rico our starter motor threw its toys from the pram, and would only cooperate if we were extra nice. When supplied with clean fuel the Perkins normally fires up first time, ‘on the button’ one might say. Now it could take us anything up to a minute of key turning back and forth just to get the starter to engage the engine, although once it cranked the motor picked up quickly. I knew that Nigel would know what was wrong, but with parental arrivals and Padi dive courses in the schedule we opted to pamper the old girl and deal with it later.

In Jost Van Dyke it gave up for the last time. Dear Nigel was of course my oracle. Even if you don’t own a boat, or even don’t care about engines or electricals a little bit of Boatowners’ Mechanical and Electrical manual might just change your life! A quick work through his troubleshooting guide, jam a screwdriver in the right place and whoosh.. we’re back in business. So for the last two weeks we’ve been melting our screwdriver – literally – shorting the solenoid to fire it up. Nigel says it must be the points, that’s fixable, we’ll just need to find the parts.

So back to the fuel filters… Kel turned the key, I shorted the solenoid and we were back in business. It takes about 10 minutes for my faith in my own ability to come up to temperature, but after 15 she was still alive. Good work.

We stopped in Puerto Escondido at 2pm and got the anchor down. On our passage east in May we stopped at this beautiful deserted anchorage for a swim and a wash before crossing the Mona Passage. It was all about rest, relaxation, hygiene..

Anchor up at 6pm and on to Luperon with the wind in our sails we were feeling very relaxed and excited about arriving in the early morning, catching up with friends and settling down for a few months of earning money and developing the boat. In the early hours the morning the wind dropped and we turned on the motor to keep our speed up. At about 6am it all went to shit.

The engine died again, nightmare. I woke Kel from her sleep and climbed back into the engine bay. After two hours I wasn’t getting anywhere and we were getting pretty close to Luperon so we decided we would fix the problem when we arrived. With our drifter flying our boat speed had picked up to 6 knots and by noon we were within sight of the entrance to the bay. Without an engine though we would struggle to manouvre in the anchorage if there wasn’t much space, so we launched the dinghy from the bow, put the outboard on the back and lashed it to the side of the boat. I then jumped in and fired up the motor, assisting Kel entering the channel.

There’s nothing like having friends around to lend a hand, and having hailed them on the radio a couple of hours out, Brian and Alicia of Sarabande motored out in their dinghy to give us a little extra muscle. Alicia hopped into our dinghy taking over power duties while I went to the bow to prepare the anchor. Brian roamed in Sarabande’s tender nudging our bow to get us through the wind, and pulling our stern as we set the anchor.

Beannacht at anchor in Luperon, DR.

Anchor down, drama over. Within 10 minutes we were standing on P’tit Louis with a host of friends..Luc, Olivier and Natalie, Karmen and Tom, Alicia and Brian, Mike and Alyssa.. We couldn’t have imagined a more encouraging and supportive bunch welcoming us in our return to Luperon. We feel very fortunate and much more excited than we imagined we ever could about spending the next 5 months in a bay so filled with 1s and 2s that we can’t swim off the boat.

The last week has been a blur of activity. I started working in Luc’s factory the day after we arrived. Our friend Andrew from Vancouver was with us and was an excellent guest, tolerating everything from a lack of shower onboard to Anzuelo pissing on his bed (this is one jealous cat). Kel left for Panama yesterday to start her delivery from there to New York. We’ve partyed in Luc’s house twice… It’s really fun to have a social life again.

So blogging in Luperon will look a little different, with an absense of beach side photos and fish hunting tales to recount. But I expect a few interesting things to happen in the time that we’re here so we’ll try to keep on top of it and make it fun.

The BVIs have not impressed us in terms of how they cater to any boats that aren’t attached to the extensive charter industry located throughout the islands. Charter boats are boats that anyone can hire for a holiday, normally a week or two, and can be either bareboat (i.e. you just get the boat and take care of yourself) or skippered. The BVIs are literally full of charters probably because the entire island chain is very close together and doesn’t demand long passages between anchorages.

Kel and I are both reading Naomi Klein at the minute, we’ve just swapped at the halfway point and I’m now on No Logo, Kel’s on The Shock Doctrine. I think No Logo has heightened my awareness a little. Klein’s now 12-year-old book is a study in how companies hungry to perpetuate their brand gobble up spaces that used to be public (schools, parks, town centres) and turn them into branded corporate spaces. The BVIs have sold their soul to the charter companies.

We’re in Virgin Gorda Sound, surrounded by gormless holidaymakers on their 40 and 50 foot sailboats and catamarans carving up the anchorage. The seabed has been capitalised by mooring balls, 100 feet apart in every direction throughout the sound, and yours for a mere $25-35 per night – did I spend a grand on a anchor and chain for nothing? And beyond that every inch of beachfront in the sound is owned by a resort that sells you beers and bar food for half a week’s wage.

We’ve been laughing about how acute our charter radar is at the minute, and how deep our desire to distinguish ourselves from the crowd. I’m thinking of getting a nice big flag with We do own this boat you know written on it. Are we boat snobs? If so we can handle it.

So in an ode to charter boats, here are our top four pet peeves:

1. Herd mentality.

We spend our sailing life attempting to travel from one isolated protected anchorage to another, meeting other cruisers as we choose, but often just keeping ourselves to ourselves. In Cane Garden Bay, by far our least favourite anchorage in the BVIs, we picked a spot admittedly in the mooring field but well away from any other boats and leaving lots of free balls for late arrivals to pick up. Gin and tonics poured; cheese, crackers and guava paste on the table; we were set for the evening. Of course after 30 minutes our pleasant little spot is rudely interrupted by the first charter boat to arrive. Target fixation, the reassurance that another boat is anchored in the vicinity, this mooring field really must be safe. They (predictably) select the closest mooring ball to us despite a bay full of options. Retards. Such a pain in the arse, and it happened to us again today, as I write I’m sitting 30 feet from a catamaran that had 15 other options, but chose this one.

2. Fear of the dark

A curious quirk of the charter kids, half of the boats that we’re anchored beside tonight are lit up like Blackpool. Anchor light, navigation lights, steaming light, spreader lights, all putting out max lumens. Kel and I are pulling our hair out about our fridge using 5 amps virtually all the time and these guys are consuming three times that while they sleep in their pits. Of course when you’re not cruising long term you don’t necessarily need to worry as much about fuel bills, but these dudes remind me of Mo’s neighbour’s Christmas display. Belfast class.

3. Full throttle

I’m not one to criticise people for speeding generally, I’d have a Gixer 750 in my shed in a heartbeat, but the charter kids seem to have only two speed settings as they manoeuvre in the anchorage looking for a mooring ball: full steam ahead or full steam in reverse. And whilst bikes are built to be ridden fast, it’s very difficult to get a boat to manoeuvre precisely in tight spaces. Caution doesn’t appear to be high on the charter kids skill set. Ironically the specific boat that caused us the most anxiety was the same catamaran that moored beside us in Cane Garden. Motoring into Trellis Bay on Tuesday they nearly drove straight into us at 6 knots. They were so concerned with hooking the mooring that they almost didn’t notice us and Kel had to take evasive action to avoid. Boats don’t stop like cars, we weigh 15 tons and have no brakes, water resistance is all we’ve got. All of a sudden I’m starting to miss all those hyper-organising wankers from Georgetown.

4. Pilot required

Finally, on our way into Roadtown last week we found ourselves on a collision course with a charter boat moving at speed towards us out of the harbour. Naturally as skilled sailors we have an in-depth knowledge of the international collision avoidance regulations – or at least we know enough of to get out of the way of super tankers. The boat promptly did a u-turn and then slowed down, crawling down the channel ahead of us. Make up your mind. You wouldn’t know it round here but it’s polite to allow the vessel ahead to enter the port or anchorage and do what they need to do before you come in behind them to avoid pressuring them, so Kel stood off to give them room. To our amazement a dinghy arrived with a staff member of the charter company, boarded the boat and then took over the helm to motor the boat back to the dock. They must have amazing insurance policies round here if people can’t even motor the boat up to a dock.

So a little rant. These things wouldn’t annoy more saintly types, but we’re clearly not that. Our first six months of cruising was spent in ignorance of the charter side of the business, and we’d both be happy if the last three weeks were our lot in socialising, or rather avoiding, the would-be Butlins vacationers. Although we are scheming a Mullan-extended-family charter in the Med in the future, once Neil and Claire make Joe and Paddy honest. Or at least legal.

Trellis Bay full moon party

A typical Sunday morning today, if we were living in Belfast. Well not quite, but it had a few of the ‘typical’ things about it… woke up to a screaming cat telling me it was time to feed him at 5, 6 and 7am. Got into the kitchen and put the kettle on for some Suki tea (courtesy of Tom and Hazel). Opened up the Observer (courtesy of Willow) and spent the morning reading the review and sport sections cover to cover. Lovely.

We motor sailed up to Virgin Gorda Sound yesterday lunchtime to enjoy a few days of holiday before we up anchor and make the thankfully downwind passage back to Luperon. Last week we got an email from our friend Luc in Luperon with not one but two job offers for the pair of us. Amazing, we feel very blessed by Luc’s vision and trust in us, he’s a champ. I’m going spend some time working with him in his catamaran business and Kel is hopefully going to deliver a boat from Panama to New York for a friend of Luc. We’re both over the moon, both to have some income possibilities in the next few months, but also to be back with our friends on Ellida, Sarabande and Gaia. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of mischief to be had while we sit out the hurricane season and top up the kitty.

Aren't we hot? Maybe it's just the fire.

Our last few days with mum and dad were fun. Dad got a touch of sailing close to the wind with a beat from Sopers Hole up to Great Cane Bay. Reminded him of dinghy sailing, it was fun to heel Beannacht over and stretch the sails a little. Our last night was the monthly full moon party in Trellis Bay. A local artist’s studio lights huge fireballs in the water, and people dance, drink and shop by the beachfront. Trellis Bay seems to be nothing but a tourist trap, a Granville Island or Portstewart kind of place, but the party was a fun night out. Mullans senior didn’t get naked, at least not to my knowledge, but team Mullington managed a couple of skinny missions off the boat.

Came out of a can, but still tasted pretty fine! My first Guinness in quite a while.

The BVIs continue to be very relaxing, and very expensive. We had a plate of wings, a Guinness and a Caribe (local beer) for $26 last night in a marina bar on shore. Wowsa, way to kill the cruising budget. So we’ve enjoyed time on the boat, and swimming off it, and getting through the mountain of magazines that T&H left with us. In one week I’ve read two copies of Bike and a copy of Motorcycle News – heaven! We like guests. Especially those who arrive bearing wonderful gifts, as well as stories of how things are at home. Our good friend Andrew Iverson is also coming out this month, he’s flying to DR to meet us for a week or two which we’re very excited about.

Anzuelo had such a good time with Tom he wanted to fly home in his luggage!

I logged onto the web last night to get a catch-up on things in Belfast, given that today is the 12^th July, but it sounds like all was calm. Still owning a house in the Village does cause partial anxiety during the 12^th fortnight, not helped by the racist incidents that were happening in Belfast a couple of weeks ago. Sounds like Esther Ranson made some very helpful and insightful comments about the whole thing on TV though, those teeth alone should give us all cause to consider selective (compulsory) euthanasia.

Snorkelling in the BVIs has been incredible. It’s hatching season and schools of fish are everywhere. This morning our paper reading was interrupted by a feeding frenzy right underneath our boat. A school of juvenile jacks were dashing and darting through a cloud of literally thousands of young scamps that can’t have been a few weeks old. The prey became airbourne swarms for a moment before crashing back into the turbulent water. Gulls flocked to the scene swooping to gobble up unwitting fish that were too distracted by the threat below to notice the aerial assault.

This Friday is our 5^th wedding anniversary. It’s hard to take in actually; we’ve both been laughing about how time moves quickly, and how lucky we feel to be out here already after such a short time of ‘working’ life together. We might be in the middle of our crossing to DR on Friday, but we’re going to take ourselves out for some grub to celebrate at some stage during the week.

It’s time to get back in the water…tough life. We’ve been concentrating on scrubbing our bottom this week – just one bottom belonging to Beannacht, not three – in preparation for our departure, getting rid of all the nasty cling-ons that slow our progress.

The Mullans and Mullingtons out for dinner in Roadtown

Amazingly tomorrow is the last day of Tom and Hazel’s visit, the week flew by, and so far it’s been a fair success. Boats are small places, or at least ours is, so we were both keen to make it feel as spacious as is possible, utilising the cockpit and decks, and our own personal playground the sea. Lots of snorkelling, BBQs in the cockpit and a few walks onshore. The BVIs have proven to be the perfect sailing location for visitors, an abundance of beautiful protected anchorages short sailing distances apart, making each day a simple 1-3 hour passage that ends just in time for lunch or evening drinks depending on our departure time.

Tom and Hazel swimming off the boat

It’s been great to get back to some sailing, and introduce the rents to our life afloat. Old Tomo slotted in on the helm like 40 years had never passed since Granda Bob built him his first wooden dinghy (he wished). Mum settled in to life aboard with a small deposit in a bucket on our first passage, before getting her sea legs and taking to life in the cockpit rather well. Nothing like a pill once a day to toughen their constitution when you’re stuck, they narrowly missed having to resort to our suppositories, their stash ran out today.

Hazel at the helm

It’s a challenge to fit a year’s worth of parental spoiling into one week, but we’ve had a good crack at it with some great meals out and trips to the chandlers and supermarket!

There have of course been some comedy moments in keeping with the Mullan tradition. Tomo did an excellent impression of one much less gifted in entering a dinghy from the water, and Hazel’s legs developed Turrets at the moment her feet were adorned with flippers. Not sure we’ve quite hooked them on snorkelling just yet, but gallant efforts have been made.

Tom on the helm

Anzuelo has definitely been the one who’s gone out of his way to extend a good old Mullington welcome. On day one he shat on dad’s swimming shorts, and he’s managed to piss on mum’s bed three times since their arrival. The common denominator is the colour yellow, so we’re hopeful that a life of magnolia will cure his ails. He’s by no means a permanent member of crew just yet, more like one misplaced function away from inclusion in the next load of laundry.

Tomorrow they head to for Barbados for a week of resort relaxation and we get down to thinking about our next move. At this stage it’s likely to be Luperon, but we’re talking to people here to see if there’s any work around. It would certainly be nice to be free to take breaks in these anchorages with ease during the hurricane season, weather permitting.

Beannacht at anchor in Savannah Bay

Kel and dad winched me up the mast yesterday to take down our radar reflector which had broken loose en route to San Juan. It had been flapping overhead attached by two of its four strings for a while causing considerable anxiety. Kel and I both looked up at it during passages and pondered the likelihood of decapitation should it have come off entirely. We also managed to get the alternator fixed in Roadtown last week and dad gifted us some cabling to finish installing the new battery bank. It’s been quite the luxury to have a working fridge again, we even had ice cream yesterday!

This little sucker just jumped on my hook!Â

Before leaving San Juan we spent over an hour diving on the hull to scrub sea life off the bottom, in particular the rudder and propeller. We estimate having lost over a knot of boat speed on the way to San Juan due to growth while anchored in Luperon. The shear volume of shit in the bay makes for very fertile growing conditions. On Saturday evening we spent another hour diving to finish the job, and our hull is back to her shiny blue self. There was over an inch of growth on the bottom of the keel, and patches of thick barnacles everywhere else. The final instalment is some mild scrubbing to expose a new layer of antifouling paint to delay re-growth.

Mum looks out to sea on the windward side. A little more lumpy than our cruising ground so far.

Torrential rain on Sunday afternoon made for perfect deck cleaning conditions. We threw boat soap over the deck and then spent a while scrubbing some of the rust stains and general grime from the gelcoat. Erno and Freda, a Dutch couple we met in San Juan, tipped us off on the power of muratic acid to remove rust stains on deck so I’m going to mix up a little squirt bottle and work my way round our stanchions, life lines and rigging removing the nasty stuff.

Always endearing. I shit on your shorts, piss on your bed, chew your sandal. Who's your daddy?

The rugby unfortunately wasn’t broadcast anywhere in Roadtown on Saturday and the marina wifi was so slow we couldn’t watch it online. Instead we were reduced to Matt Dawson’s commentary on Five Live, including expansive coverage of all the day’s top performers – Worsley, Shaw, Monye… it was apparently just the English lads who turned up?

Food in the cockpit, doesn't get much better.

So one more afternoon of lounging and one more meal out…it’s a cushy life. Oh and the small matter of the Trellis Bay full moon party tonight…I’m sure the firedancing will resume.