The Rest of the Story

Well....

I don't know whether this blog still has any subscribers, but in case I do, sorry about those eight months without updates. I got busy at the end of last season, figured I'd catch up the blog over the summer, and then it turned into the busiest summer of our lives (which itself will require a pretty big post). Those who know us or follow us on Facebook or Instagram or read my columns in Flying Magazine likely know the tale, but for those who just read the blog, I have some serious catching up to do. So first off: here's the Cliff Notes version of the last month and a half of last cruising season.

I left off in St. Lucia, where Dawn and I ended up staying for 14 days in Rodney Bay, Marigot Bay, and Soufriere, and which we left on April 1st. It was a beautiful downwind (finally!) sail to Blue Lagoon, St. Vincent, where we stopped only to check into St. Vincent & the Grenadines (SVG) and move on to the Grenadines. In fact, we could have checked in at our first stop of Bequia, but we had to make Piper a Legal Beagle with the official government vet. SVG is a notoriously tough place to import a foreign pooch but with some persistence and an extra unplanned vet visit we were able to make it happen, 100% legal, and it's a good thing we did as we were queried by policemen and other locals several times down the chain to make sure we weren't sneaking an unsanctioned dog to shore. There are (admittedly second-hand) stories about cruiser's dogs being shot for lack of paperwork. SVG is deadly serious about keeping rabies out of their islands.



 







 

After one night moored in Blue Lagoon, we made the short sail over to Bequia, which we quickly fell in love with; it became one of our favorite islands in the Caribbean. It helped that several of our cruising friends caught up with us there: Brian and Shelly on Aria, Gary and Niamh on Freed Spirit, and John and Belinda on Be As You Are. We also met "cruiser celebrities" Ann & Steve on S/V Receta; Ann Vanderhoof is the author of two fantastic books, "An Embarrassment of Mangoes" and "The Spice Necklace," which were two of mine and Dawn's first reads after we decided to go cruising. Bequia has a large fairly protected anchorage (albeit with variable holding), a cute main town with decent provisioning, good walking and hiking, a rich boatbuilding and whaling tradition, good dog-friendly beaches, plenty of dinghy docks, and a fantastic walkway around the main harbor that connects a ton of great bars and restaurants. Plus, shortly before we arrived, the floating "Bar One" was launched and quickly became a cruiser happy-hour favorite. All in all, Bequia is one of the most cruiser-friendly destinations we've found since Georgetown.

We stayed in Bequia for a week the first time, then moved on to Canouan - which is considerably less cruiser-friendly - and Mayreau, which is quite small but quirky and friendly. We spent several days in the Tobago Cays, which are a lovely little slice of the Bahamas transplanted to the eastern Caribbean, and a couple days at Union Island and one night at the private island of Petit St. Vincent before backtracking north back to Bequia on my birthday, April 17th, just in time for the Easter Regatta weekend. I did a wreck dive with the Aria and Freed Spirit crews that Saturday, and on Easter Sunday our friends Brad and Amber Phillips arrived from Portland, OR. After an additional day showing them the charms of Bequia, we sailed down to the Tobago Cays for two nights, then Union Island for a night to check out of SVG, and the short sail over to Carriacou, where we checked into Grenada. In all, we spent three and a half weeks in SVG, and really loved it. It was the highlight of our season.



After two nights at Carriacou, we sailed the 40 miles to Grenada and down the east and south coasts to Prickly Bay on the southwest side of the island. Brad and Amber left the next day and we set about exploring Grenada. After a few days in Prickly Bay / Lance aux Epines, we moved over to the Hog Island anchorage, where we were able to cover the south coast by dinghy from Mt Hartman Bay to our west, Woburn Bay and the town of Lower Woburn to our north, and Le Phare Bleu to our east. Eventually the need to make water and Hog Island's green mangrove water drove us to the Calivigny Island anchorage in eastern Woburn Bay. While there we met up with our friends Simon, Kim & Sienna on S/V Britican, who were at the Le Phare Bleu marina. During the last few days in Grenada Brian and Shelly on Aria caught up with us as well, as did Steve on S/V Alkemi, and a few days before we left we all attended a benefit concert at the popular West Indies Brewing. While we were on Grenada, we also rented a car for several days to explore the island, and went on a night-time expedition to the north coast to watch leatherback turtles lay their eggs, which was really cool. 

In the meantime Dawn and I had picked up a temporary crewmember, without really meaning to. Word had got around via the coconut telegraph that we were headed west, and Matt Ray was newly without a vessel as the boat that he had been crewing on since Australia (!) had just completed her circumnavigation and was going on the hard. Matt needed to get to Panama to complete his own circumnavigation, all done crewing on other people's boats, and was planning an intermediate stop in Bonaire, right next door to our own next destination of Curacao. Matt called us during the daily VHF net, we met up, he seemed like a cool guy and a capable sailor, and we agreed to take him on to Bonaire. He moved aboard Windbird the next day, and was with us for about a week since we left for Bonaire a few days later, after moving over to St. George for one night. It was our first time taking on crew we didn't know, and it worked out really well. Matt was a cool guy with a lot of great stories, a good cook who didn't get seasick below, a keen musician with a guitar, and a good sailor that afforded us a relaxing 3 on - 6 off watch schedule on our 4-day passage.

I think I have to back up a little bit. Originally we were planning to spend hurricane season in Colombia. Our late start to the season due to our repower, plus the fact that some good friends invited us to go sailing with them in the Seychelles in mid-May, made us abandon that plan and find an earlier hurricane season hideout. We considered Grenada, and once we got there we wished we'd gone with it as it's a great cruiser destination that we really liked. But, Curacao is considered safer from hurricanes, we could leave Windbird in the water there, and it would put us halfway to Colombia to start the 2019-2020 season cruising the Western Caribbean. We have cruiser friends who have summered in Curacao in  the past and said our intended marina was a good safe, protected place to stash the boat, and the price was quite reasonable. All of which led us to leaving Grenada before we would have really liked to, after only 10 days or so.

The 450-mile downwind passage to Bonaire was a nice one, albeit with somewhat light flaky wind  the first day out and quite a lot of wind the last 24-hours. The only real happening of the passage was routing my spinnaker halyard wrong the first day, leading to it chafing through after only a few hours of flying the kite. The mainsail was down so the boat stopped dead, and it was fairly easy to get the soggy kite back on board. We sailed northwest the first 150 miles, dead downwind/west the next 150, and southwest the final 150 miles in order to stay well away from the Venezuelan islands due to the risk of piracy. No pirates were sighted and we arrived safely in Bonaire on the afternoon of May 11th. We stayed for only 14 hours, just long enough to drop Matt off and have dinner at his Kiwi/Canadian friend Donna's beautiful oceanfront house and walk around downtown a bit in the morning. We really liked what we saw, and resolved to beat 30 miles upwind at the start of next season to enjoy Bonaire more.

On May 12th we sailed the final 30 miles to Spanish Waters, Curacao, where we spent the next couple dayings stripping Windbird for hurricane season. Curacao historically is south of the hurricane belt, but with climate change storms are becoming less predictable; better safe than sorry. We took our slip in Seru Boca Marina on May 15th, and on May 17th Dawn, Piper and I all flew to Miami and then Atlanta on American Airlines. Piper handled the flying well again. I flew a 4-day trip while Dawn visited her family as they vacationed in Pigeon Forge, TN, and then we left Piper at a DogVacay and flew halfway around the world to go sailing in the Seychelles. But that's getting into our crazy summer, which is a subject for another post.