March 2017

Date: 24th Feb 2017

Position: Anse de Columbier, St Barts

Hi Land folk and Salty Sea Dogs,

Captain Bonzo here. Time for an update from the Caribbean sea!

We left the adventures of Ari B just before Christmas in Antigua when friend Thomas had left and we were eagerly awaiting Wild Bird’s arrival, with Tim just out of the hospital. Gayle’s parents joined the team in Antigua for a couple of weeks and I have been told that Dad was so excited (or shortsighted) that he promptly missed the end of the pontoon and sampled some harbour water on the first night.....

Whilst Wild Bird were parent sitting the team decided to explore the north coast of Antigua, North Sound. We tacked up the Boone channel and carefully avoiding the reefs tied up to one of three marine park moorings off of Great Bird Island, a desert island. Lovely, and only two other boats there...

Back in Falmouth the Wild Bird woofs decided to take Alex and Carla for a walk and pulled them all the way up to Shirley  Heights.... and back down the other side- they were exhausted after that! Imagine pulling Alex up a mountain – good grief......

Meantime - and quite quickly - the 2 parent weeks were over (time does not pass at the same speed for everyone during parents visits apparently). I wouldn’t know, I was made in China by an underpaid child labourer and am not aware of parents.

Shorty after, a new boat joined the team, Sisu with Terry and Fiona just arrived in Antigua after an epic Atlantic crossing. Congrats again for making it over in one piece!

A party was to be had and since neither Sisu or Wild Bird had a Christmas to speak of, we all sailed to Green Island, Non Such Bay for Xmas celebrations (roughly around the middle of January, but hey). Traditional Xmas dinner with roast chicken & stuffing, roast potatoes, mince pies etc etc. And even presents. Even the woofs on Wild Bird got a Xmas dinner and presents. After seeing Pip tear into the squeaky stuffed toy she got I have decided to definitely keep my distance. She’s cute but not that cute! Celebrations continued into Boxing day with a bbq and bonfire on the beach. We even had live music with Gayle on the guitar and Fiona on bagpipes - not at the same time thank God! - and Carla and Fiona providing backing vocals.

Carla got her fix by catching a sizeable crab and Alex brought home some squid – apparently the only type of fishing he’s interested in – it’s so easy even he can get them J

While in Green Island the chain stripper pin on Ari B’s windlass broke again – this was the 5th time or so and after a day of trials with different chain etc, the crew concluded that the windlass installed simply is not the right type due to the nature of the installation (replaced by previous owner, not original). Nothing wrong with the unit, it just created too much friction for rusty chain and piled up to break the pin.

The crew decided to not put up with it any longer and install a new one of the right kind. Purchased online in the UK on Tuesday, the windlass arrived in St Martin (tax free) the following Monday, and despite the courier costs was still US 1,000 cheaper than the local price!!

So, we set sail to St Martin (caught 5 Barracudas and one Tuna – Barracudas had to go back, they are not safe to eat this far north), picked up the windlass from UPS, hired a mooring buoy in Marigot lagoon for a week and got to work. Alex estimated 3 days for the job, but did not plan on spending 2 days to get the old windlass out – the shaft was corroded onto the gearbox and we had to employ bigger hammers, pulleys, blow torches and brute force to pry it off – at a tenth mm per sequence (hit it hard 10 times, tighten the pulley a quarter turn and so on) – all of that inside the forward locker – a lovely job!

Finally it was out and we could get on with reinforcing the deck, removing any bad wood, making a deckplate to compensate for the curvature and so on – as I said, it took 8 days in total. At least it’s working better now – not perfect, but much better!!

Shortly after finishing the job, Wild Bird arrived and we took advantage of a weather window to visit the lovely, but very exposed Saba. No harbour there, so conditions have to be settled, as you pick up a mooring some 300 meters out and the swell and waves essentially toss you around. So not very comfortable, but the island is crazy pretty and very wild and unlike the other islands. It’s part of the Netherlands and boasts the highest peak in the NL-870 meters (now that’s not soo hard) – as well as the worlds shortest commercial runway at 400 meters only!

On the way to Saba, the relative lack of fish from the previous months ended – with a bang! The crew hooked and landed a sailfish – total length 205cm, weight 19kg – the biggest fish we ever caught. Photos are on Facebook, and we are still enjoying the lovely meat from the fish even though we gave half of it to Wild Bird. Thank you Neptune!!

Unfortunately, at the end of a hike Carla slipped, fell and sprained her ankle (fortunately quite close to a road where they could hitch a ride). Back at the boat with Carla's ankle strapped up and one fin they went snorkelling with Tim, Gayle and Gem. She is now nicknamed Nemo. Tim lead everyone to an innocent looking arch that they could snorkel through. Unfortunately when Carla and Gayle went through the largest wave of the day also decided to go through sweeping them helplessly along in white water and raising them very close to the top of the arch! Just as Tim was thinking I hope they don't come through now, they appeared on the other side, fortunately unscathed.

The next day both boats sailed back to St Martin and met up again with Sisu before heading back to Saba for another hike. The next day we said farewell to Wild Bird and Sisu who decided to take advantage of a low producing west wind to head back to Antigua. We headed for St Barts and are currently in the lovely bay of Anse de Colombier, catching up with a long list of boat jobs and waiting for the ankle to get better –next stops are Statia, Nevis and hopefully Montserrat, all with nice hiking trails, so the crew need to be fit!

Marigot Bay, St Martin, 19th March 2017

Hmmm, Shouldn’t we be on our way south via Statia? YES, but.....

Remember when I mentioned the operation of the new windlass was better but not perfect? Well, it isn’t. I’ll save you the ramblings of my stuffed dog brain and won’t go into details, but the short story is that the new windlass has a “safety-feature” to protect the decks – so if you try and lower the anchor and the pull on the chain required is more than 13kg, the system stops – apparently to avoid any deck damage (in the up direction, working load is 190kg and max load 750kg, so this is clearly b***shit). Since this feature (design fault) is not documented anywhere and even the UK distributors tech team did not know the exact details, it took 2 weeks in talking to the factory to establish, that- in essence, because of this feature, this windlass is not suitable for this boat. If it would have been documented, Alex and I would have noticed and decided against this type.

Fortunately, the UK team have been good at helping us to rectify (but it all takes time) and a new windlass arrives tomorrow. Needless to say, Alex is very happy that he can now put his recent installation knowledge into practice again, and suffer the associated costs again....

At least we can return the other windlass against a full refund, unless we can sell it first. If any of you in the Caribbean know of anyone who wants a Lofrans Tigres 24v windlass for a bargain price let us know.  So we are back onto a buoy again for a week in the same place as before and the swearing (that goes along with windlass installations) shall commence shortly.

On a positive note, this meant that we had time to had time to heal Carla’s ankle ,explore Anguilla (which we didn’t manage last year) with friends Terry and Sarah on Libertine and even a catch up with Graham and Joan on Karma who joined us in Road Bay for a bit of chilling. Anguilla must have some of the best beaches in the world (even though I am more interested in trees), so check out the pictures on the website – the team hired a car and probably drove on every bit of road Anguilla has to offer (in a day) – it’s not large, but stunning (and quite expensive) and has a great music scene with live bands of a high quality playing in the shore-side bars in the evening – a really nice place.

So hopefully in a few days we can look for good weather to visit the islands that are still on the to-do list.

Thomas Chudoba helming