Statia

at the top of the volcano

posted by SSB

Statia - The Quill

The dominant geographical feature of Statia is the enormous cone of the Quill, a 1968 foot high volcano that last erupted sometime back in the 1600's and is now considered extinct. Instead of diving while we're here we decided to check out the view from up top so we packed a lunch and set off up the hill. It was a pretty relentless slog upwards. First, just getting to the foot of the cone took about 45 minutes, and that was the easier incline. From there it was another 50 minutes of steady climbing to get to the edge of the crater. But the forest was shady and at times there was a good breeze going, so it wasn't too bad. We saw all kinds of wildlife: snakes, soldier crabs, hummingbirds, feral chickens and tons of lizards. There were also some cool looking bromeliads growing out of practically thin air in the branches of trees. Supposedly the Quill is home to a wide variety of orchids as well, but unfortunately we didn't spot any. The view of the crater was pretty spectacular, it was covered in dense foliage and some of the trees were enormous. We didn't hike down the crater because by this time it was midday and we were so sweaty that practically all we could think about was getting back to the boat and in the water for a swim. Besides, heading back downhill to town was the easy part!

When we got back to the boat we put our snorkels and fins on and did a little more snorkeling around the anchorage. We saw one of the weirdest sea creatures I've ever laid eyes on. It's not in any of our fish identifiers, but I'll describe it in the hopes that somebody knows what it is and can email me. It was maybe as long as my forearm, had a face like a frog, and was using its two front fins almost like hands to dig at the bottom for food. Underneath it's body were spindly legs like a lobsters, and it also had these sort of winglike fins that it dragged behind it but occasionally it would fan them out like a fly. Then it had a tapering tail and it's whole body was covered in sort of iridescent spots, and it had kind of an antenna/lure like thing sticking up off its back. It was scuttling along the bottom, not swimming, and it used its front fins to scare up a small fish, which it then ate. Our divemaster back on Saba was talking about something called a "frogfish" which we didn't see on the dive so it's possible that this was one of them, but I'm not sure. I swear it was one of the ugliest looking things I've ever seen. I wish we'd thought to bring the camera so I could've snapped a photo. It seriously looked like something the editors of the "National Enquirer" would've dreamed up, kind of like the Bat Baby only real.

Statia - America's Childhood Friend

After a couple days relaxing on the boat in Saba we left this morning for Sint Eustatius, another tiny Dutch island about 20 miles southeast. The island is more commonly known as Statia (STAY-sha) and has quite a history. It was once the most prosperous Caribbean island, earning itself the nickname "the Golden Rock". It was a major free port during a time when some countries weren't allowed to trade with each other due to various wars (Spain vs. England, England vs. France, and eventually England vs. the Colonies). So instead Statia became the middleman for commerce, and foreign merchants could buy or sell anything they wanted here. Everyone got rich. But that all changed the day the vessel "Andrew Doria" came into port and fired a salute with her guns. The Statian Governor returned the salute, not realizing until it was too late that it was an American rebel navy ship. So Statia goes down in history as the first sovereign power to recognize the fledgling nation. The British were none too pleased, and retaliated by confiscating all ships and valuables and sacking the island. And, as if they weren't already involved in enough wars, the English also declared war on Holland for good measure.

Anyway, we arrived just ahead of a flash rainstorm (we are getting used to it being completely clear one minute and pouring rain the next), so we waited until it cleared to go check in with immigration. Being Sunday, everyone had gone home for the day so we took a quick tour of the island instead. There's just one town here, Oranjestad, but it has some cool points of interest including Fort Oranje which has been restored and overlooks the bay. The island is still a duty-free port but now there is just one main commodity being traded: oil. Huge tankers lie at anchor in the bay and the northwestern half of the island is completely given over to a dock with a pipeline and big tanks to hold the stuff. The island promotes itself as being ecotouristy, but it is hard to take it seriously when the oilworks take up half the western shoreline.

Where we are:
Location=Statia
Lat=17 28.921
Lon=62 59.475

Saba Sea Turtle

posted by SSB

Amanda Snorkeling in Saba

posted by SSB

Saba

[Kevin's Post]Believe it or not, we picked up another Saba Marine Park mooring yesterday after dragging one a half mile. The water is too deep to anchor without getting really close to the rocky shoreline, so we decided to give the moorings another chance. They're free and I guess you get what you pay for. The one we are on now appears to be screwed into the bottom, we think the one we were on yesterday was just attached to a big concrete block. Today we were going to go back and snorkel the mooring we dragged to see exactly what kind of brilliant design it was, but by the time we got there the park had already removed the mooring ball so nobody else would tie on to it. At least they responded quickly, I have to give them credit for that. They didn't stop by to say 'Hi' or refund our park fees or anything though. I don't think this is the first time this has happened, the park chart shows all the moorings evenly spaced along a straight line north to south, but in reality they are all over the place.

After nearly having our boat smashed to bits, we decided it probably wasn't a good idea to leave the boat unattended on these moorings. We had hoped to hike to the top of the island, but decided it just wasn't worth the worry. If there were some other boats here we might have asked them to keep an eye on Solstice for us. But there is only one other boat, and we dragged right past him yesterday. He either didn't notice or didn't care. So today we just took it easy relaxing on the boat, did some laundry, read, and went for a quick snorkel nearby. The new underwater camera housing works great. We've used underwater disposable cameras before and the pictures always came out really bad. So it is fun to be able to get some decent underwater photos. Most of the pictures are of Amanda though, since everything else swims away. Amanda swims away sometimes too.

Scubamanda

posted by SSB

Saba -- Dive Excursion

Here in Saba, the entire island is surrounded by a Marine Park and you are not allowed to dive without a guide. So yesterday while we were in Windwardside we made arrangements for a dive boat to pick us up and take us on two dives today. The first dive was about 62 feet deep, in an area with lots of patchy corals and some lava rocks. We saw all kinds of sea turtles having lunch on the reef, and we even saw a tiny seahorse clinging to a soft coral. The second dive was a little shallower, but was truly spectacular. We were in wide canyons of coral, with fans and soft corals sticking out everywhere and the place was just teeming with fish. There was even a swim-through passage where you were completely surrounded by walls and a ceiling of coral. The colors were amazing, and Kevin brought the camera along and snapped some great photos, although as you go deeper the color spectrum fades so in some of the photos all the colors wash to blue hues. We'll upload some when we have an internet connection.

When the dive boat returned to our boat we were alarmed to see that the boat was not where we left it! Our hearts stopped. We were still tied to our mooring but it had dragged more than half a mile, literally across the bay! Where the boat ended up was dangerously close to the shore, which was lined with rocks and breaking waves -- we were only about 2 boatlengths (~100 feet) from total disaster. If the boat had dragged any further (and it was still dragging when we got to it) it would've been pounded against the rocks. Luckily the bottom around the island of Saba drops off steeply; we were still in about 20 feet of water. So needless to say we got aboard in a hurry, fired up the engines and dropped the mooring pendant. This is the 2nd time that we have dragged due to a mooring dragging (the other time was in Farmer's Cay, Bahamas). According to the Marine Park handout, these moorings are intended to handle boats up to 60 feet/50 tons. Solstice is a mere 40 feet/7 tons. And it's Murphy's law -- we spend the first 24 hours aboard the boat and we were fine/in the right place according to our GPS/chartplotter. But we leave the boat for less than 6 hours and all of a sudden the boat drags half a mile, even though the wind and swells were considerably calmer than the previous day. It is unbelievable, and we were unbelievably lucky that we didn't lose the boat.

Saba

posted by SSB

Wells Bay, Saba

The Doyle cruising guide puts the Leeward Islands into three categories: "The Renaissance Islands" (Anguilla, St. Maarten, St. Barths), "The Islands That Brush the Clouds" (Saba, Statia, St. Kitts/Nevis, Montserrat), and "The Islands of Mountains and Mangroves" (Antigua/Barbuda, Guadeloupe, Marie Galante, Iles des Saintes, Dominica). As we approached Saba (SAY-ba) this morning (after a fantastic 30-mile sail. That's right -- look ma, no engines!) we found the guide's description pretty spot on -- the island is an extinct volcano that rises steeply up from the ocean below to the clouds above. There are no beaches here, most of the shoreline is just a spectacularly high wall of volcanic rock. There are also no great anchorages here, as the ocean floor drops off very close to shore, but the country's Marine Park has installed 7 or so moorings for traveling yachts to pick up. After the crowded lagoon in St. Maarten we are now sharing the peaceful anchorage with only four other boats -- we are definitely off the beaten path.

We dinghied in to the tiny harbor to check in with immigration and the marine park (there's a fee to use the park and moorings) and picked up a taxi to take us to the other side of the island. Saba has two main towns: the Bottom, and Windwardside. They are connected by "The Road", as there is pretty much just the one road on the whole island. Prior to 1943 the residents here walked or rode donkeys on small mountain paths. Engineers from Holland surveyed and determined that there was no way a road could be built on the island, but one determined Saban took a mail correspondence class in road construction and over the course of 20 years the road was designed and built by hand. All the locals helped build the thing using cement and wheelbarrows -- no modern equipment. The end result is a twisty, curvy, hair-raising road that is just barely wide enough for two cars. It makes for a pretty dramatic cab right, that's for sure.

Windwardside is a sleepy little town that seems like something out of a foreign film. First of all the island is so small that everyone knows everyone else (there are only 1600 residents), and secondly there must be some sort of town planning committee that only grants building permits to people who want to build quaint stone cottages and gingerbread-like shops. We walked around the town for while and after having a drink at Scout's Pub we decided to head back to the boat and call it a night.

Where we are:
Location=Wells Bay, Saba
Lat=17 38.251
Lon=63 15.425

St. Maarten - Phillipsburg

We ran a few more errands this morning (marine store, groceries, picked up laundry, gassed up the dinghy) and after lunch we hopped on a jitney bus over to Phillipsburg to see what there was to do there. Phillipsburg is a huge duty-free shopping destination -- lots of cheap liquor, fancy jewelry, fine perfumes, and electronics. The place was pretty quiet, since there weren't any cruise ships in port, which suited us just fine. We had most of the shops all to ourselves. The main purpose of the trip was to find a decent underwater camera. Kevin's Canon is too nice to take underwater, and my Fujifilm won't take good photos in low light. So we made the rounds of all the electronics stores and found a camera with a watertight housing that we liked. Then of course the real work begins -- you have to bargain with these guys. The first guy quoted us a price and we said "well, we'll think about it" then he knocked $25 off and we said "no, look, really -- we have to think about it. We're going to walk around and talk it over" which of course prompted him to knock another $25 off the price. "Special price for you", he said. Sure. So we hit a couple more stores and Kevin really started getting into it. "Tell you what," he said to one guy, "you keep the carrying case and knock $25 off the price and I'll buy it right now". He drives a hard bargain. After getting all the quotes we ducked into an internet cafe to look the price up on Froogle and realized we were being quoted a slightly better price than what you'd find on the internet. And we wouldn't have to pay shipping and could use it right away. When it's in the waterproof case, the camera actually looks a little like a child's toy, but it should get the job done (can be submerged up to 130 feet) so hopefully we'll soon have some good underwater shots to post.

One other highlight (for me, at least) was that in our wanderings we passed a shop called "The Yoda Guy Gallery". Being a total star wars-ophile, I was intrigued and we had to go in to see what it was. The "Yoda Guy" is actually a guy named Nick Maley who worked on the original animatronic Yoda for the Empire Strikes Back (also on the movie "Krull" for any of you children of the early 80's). He retired from the movie business and now sells artwork alongside movie memorabilia. He happened to be in the store at the time and was very personable, giving us a nice spiel about what everything was even though it was clear that we weren't going to buy anything. Plus, he had one of the original animatronic Yoda models on display. How cool is that? Or as the Jedi Master himself would say, "Cool, it is, yes?"

St. Maarten - Diving and Dining

Ready to Dive

While we were in the Virgin Islands we spoke with a couple friends on other boats who have their own scuba gear on board. After spending over $200 to dive the Rhone with a dive shop we realized we'd have a pretty quick ROI if we bought our own equipment. So here in duty-free St. Maarten we've been investigating prices and brands, trying to figure out what we should buy. We headed to the scuba shop and bought everything we'll need except the tanks. We figure somewhere down the road we'll be able to find some used tanks for sale, and the next two islands we want to go to (Saba & St. Eustatius) require you to dive with a guide anyhow so we can just rent the tanks when we get there. Having bought all the gear we rented a couple of tanks and decided to try it out on a very shallow wreck in Simpson Bay. With all our gear set up and loaded into the dinghy, we set off into the bay looking for the buoy marking the wreck of Tugboat Annie. I was up in the bow scanning the water and not seeing any kind of buoy marking; we were worried we wouldn't be able to find it (the clerk at the store gave us a blank look -- she'd never heard of the site). I pointed out a piece of garbage floating in the water, one of those one liter water bottles, and Kevin realized it was tied to something. Sure enough we could see a big dark shadow under the water so it had to be the wreck. It turned out to be a pretty decent dive -- the wreck was resting right side up and there was a swim-through passage through the pilot house. A huge stingray swam around the wreck, keeping an eye on us while we dove, and we saw a little eel peeking out of his home in a piece of pipe. So even though it was a pretty shallow dive (only 20 feet) we had a good time, and it was nice to know that all the equipment worked properly.

In the evening we decided to give the French side another try. We got to Marigot and decided to take a jitney bus over to Grand Case, which Lonely Planet bills as "the gourmet capital of the Caribbean". How could we pass that up? Walking down the main street in Grand Case we could see how the place had earned its nickname. Almost every restaurant was right on the beach with a great view of the ocean and there were places serving everything from West Indian cuisine (barbecue with peas and rice) to fine Italian and French dining. We decided to splurge on one of the really well-reviewed pricier French places: L'Hibiscus. We were one of three American couples there and it was funny to watch the other two couples arrive. Both of them threw our French waitress for a loop: the first couple brought their two year old and were disappointed that the restaurant didn't have a high chair or kids' menu and the wife of the second couple announced that she was lactose intolerant and did the restaurant serve anything without a cream sauce. The waitress got confused and thought the lady specifically requested to eat something with dairy and started listing all the dishes that had cream and butter in them. Meanwhile our appetizer arrived and only in a fancy French restaurant can you order a $10 shrimp appetizer and get only two shrimp. But what an appetizer! First of all, it looked amazing -- the chef had wrapped the shrimp in vermicelli and flash-fried it so that it stuck straight up in the air like a delicate sculpture of pasta (I'll post a photo when we have internet access). And more importantly, it tasted fantastic. As did everything we ordered; Kevin had the roast duck with mango sauce and I had the beef filet with gorgonzola. It was a heavenly meal and a nice dining experience for us considering that the other night I made grilled cheese and baked beans, or as I call it "frommage grillee avec legumes de Boston".

St. Maarten - Goldilocks and the Three Beers

With all our work on the generator done, we decided we'd head over to the French side to do a little sightseeing and sample some French cuisine. We got all dressed up (for us, this means wearing a t-shirt with no stains or holes) and dinghied over to Marigot, the capital on the French side. There was a pretty boardwalk surrounding the marina with lots of shops and restaurants. Only problem was that everything was closed! So much for our fancy french lunch! There was one restaurant open, a creperie, so we had a meal there and ordered beers. Although they were the same price Kevin made the mistake of ordering a Heineken. When the waiter brought out his beer I almost mistook it for a jar of tabasco sauce, it was that tiny! Something like 7.5 ounces. It's surprising because we see everyone drinking Heineken, paying the same price as other beers and getting much less for their money. It made me very curious -- I know Heineken is a premium beer but it's not THAT good. Over lunch we decided that since fate didn't want us to take a day off to sightsee, we would spend the rest of the day running errands so we headed back to the Dutch side of the island.

The first stop was finding a laundry. We found one but of course it was closed on Sundays. Then we stopped by the market to pick up some bread and produce. By the time we got there it was closed, having only been open a few hours in the morning. We were able to fill up some jerry jugs with fuel and water, but by this time it was nearly 5pm and we'd barely accomplished anything. But at least the bars were open so we stopped in at Shrimpy's and ordered beers (both Carib this time). Another boater stepped up to the bar next to us and ordered a Miller lite and a Heineken. Curiosity had gotten the better of me so I asked the bartender why the Heinekens were so small and she said she didn't know, to her it seemed silly to just order a "sip of beer". Then she said "let me show you something" and pulled out a bottle of Presidente (12 oz). Next to the big Presidente our 10 oz Caribs looked like a momma bear portion and the Heinekin was clearly baby bear-sized. I finally solved the mystery when I asked a French guy why the Heinekens were so small. It's very logical really. The Dutch brewers have figured out exactly how much cold beer an average person can drink before it starts getting warm. So smaller bottles means you never end up with warm beer for the last swig. So that mystery is solved, but here's one for you: does Heineken come in bigger bottles in the US because Americans drink faster than the Dutch?

St. Maarten - Done!

So have I mentioned that my husband rocks? Well, he does. The new oilpan arrived here on Thursday morning and since then we have been working from dawn til dusk fixing the generator. Kevin has been the brains (and brawn) behind the entire operation -- first tearing out and re-installing the mylar/foam insulation in the locker (the old stuff was torn to shreds and making a mess), then building a new mounting system for the generator out of marine lumber (which is like plastic and doesn't absorb water -- the previous owner mounted the generator on a piece of plain ol' plywood, which got saturated with saltwater and is why the oilpan got rusty in the first place), and finally hoisting the generator and putting the oilpan back on and then guiding it into the locker and attaching it to the motor mounts. And of course today he spent another ten hours just reconnecting all the hoses and electrical wiring. So this evening at 5pm it was showtime and after a few false starts (air was in the fuel line) the thing roared to life and we were back in business. Now we can charge the batteries on cloudless/windless days, run the air conditioning, do laundry on the boat, have hot water whenever we want -- basically all the things most other cruisers live without but hey, we like our creature comforts!

We still have yet to see much of St. Maarten but this was a pretty big project and it is good to get it finished. We plan to do a little sightseeing sometime in the next couple of days. So this has probably been a boring week for those of you reading the blog, but for us it has been a lot of blood (did I mention I got a small shard of metal embedded in my foot? Glad I got that tetanus shot before we left), sweat (all of the work was done outside, baking in the tropical sun), and tears (of joy, that is. Because it is finally done!). Time for a rum drink.

St. Maarten -- A Little History

For those of you who are interested in such things, I thought you might want to know a few facts about the island. At 37 square miles it is the smallest island in the world to be divided by two countries. The larger northern territory is a foreign department of France while the south half of the island is Dutch and was once part of the Netherlands Antilles but according to Lonely Planet is now an independent country in its own right within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Confusing, isn't it? Local legend has it that when the two countries divided the island they each sent a man to march in opposite directions around the coast of the island. Wherever they met up, that would be where they drew the line across. The story goes that the Frenchman quenched his thirst with wine while walking but the Dutchman drank gin instead and got so drunk he had to stop to sleep it off, which is why the French have the larger area.

As is the case with almost every island in the Caribbean, the first inhabitants here were Arawak Indians, followed by the cannibalistic Carib Indians, who tended to attack the peaceful Arawaks and enslave their women and children. Then Columbus came in 1493 and put the kibosh on that, conquering both tribes and enslaving everyone. Over time, pirates of various nationalities called this place home until the Dutch founded a settlement here in the 1600s. The Spanish didn't like that and immediately kicked the inhabitants out, so Peter Stuyvesant (who later became governor of New Amsterdam/New York) and some Dutch and French colonists fought back but were not successful. Poor Peter lost his leg, earning him the nickname "Pegleg". (I am not making this up). Unbelievably, the Spanish government rewarded the Spanish soldiers by giving them permission to leave the island, and a few of their Dutch and French prisoners got left behind to settle the island again. So if the Dutch had just bided their time they could've avoided the bloodshed and just waited until the Spanish got bored and left. I'm sure Peter Stuyvesant was kicking himself over that mistake (with his good leg, of course).

The 1600s also brought slavery to St. Martin, and the plantation system was in effect until the late 1800's (slavery was abolished in 1848 on the French side, 1863 on the Dutch). Interestingly, in 1918 the Dutch side asked to become part of the United States but that never materialized and the place was pretty quiet until after WWII (during which the Nazis overtook the Dutch side of the island), when an airport was built and tourism started picking up. So now French, Dutch, Spanish, German, and American tourists are able to congregate together in a spirit of international peace and harmony on Orient Beach (the island's clothing-optional, and most popular, beach).

St. Maarten - Lady C

So Kevin finally got the oilpan off the genset on Sunday, just before the sun went down. Basically it involved him wedging two screwdrivers between the pan and the engine and then hammering the crap out of it until it came loose. Sometimes you just need to use brute force. We did see at least one pinhole in the bottom of the pan so that is almost certainly what was causing the oil leak. Kevin put in an order to have a new one shipped from the US, hopefully it will arrive this week.

To celebrate we took the day off on Monday to explore a little bit of the area around here. The Dutch side of the lagoon is a popular spot with megayachts; there are hundreds of them docked here. Everywhere you look is a ginormous luxury yacht, some of them are so wide they barely fit through the bridge opening(which is 55 feet wide). On one of them we saw a helicopter on the top deck, I kid you not. Show-offs. We like to keep our helicopter parked below decks so as not to appear too full of ourselves.

St. Maarten has a duty-free port status, which means that all goods sold here are not marked up as they are in some other countries. So you can find some great bargains (a 1.5 liter bottle of Bacardi = $8). We wandered in and out of a few stores looking for more deals but I think all the really good shops are over in Phillipsburg. At the end of the day we headed to the yacht club where we'd heard they had $1 beers at happy hour. Unfortunately the bar was closed but there was a very surly guy (who probably knew right away that we weren't yacht club members) who advised us to "try next door". Next door was the Lady C, a somewhat shabby 1930's-era sailboat turned into a floating bar by her owner Michael. Happy hour beers were $1.75, but as a bonus it was all-you-can-eat rib night. So that sealed the deal for Kevin (a rib aficionado), and we bellied up to the bar. I think we were the only non-locals there, since everyone else seemed to know each other and they were all obviously Dutch. We could tell not only by the accents but also if you ignored the modern clothes, every guy at the bar looked like he had just stepped out of Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" (I think that's the name of the painting, anyone who didn't sleep through Art History class can correct me if I'm wrong.)

Simpson Lagoon - Zen and the Art of Diesel Maintenance

Kevin spent all day yesterday and most of this morning down in the genset locker (a workspace about 4 feet wide by 6 feet long by 4 feet tall) taking apart as much of the generator and engine as possible so that we would be able to haul it out through the 14-inch opening at the top of the locker. When it became obvious that the anchorage in the Baai (Bay) was too rolly to actually hoist the thing out, we decided to move inside the lagoon area. The lagoon is fully encircled by land, the French half of the island is to the north and the Dutch side is to the south. We went through the bridge on the Dutch side around 11:30, anchored, had lunch, and then proceeded to tackle the generator problem.

Kevin continued working while I played the role of Step N' Fetchit, trying to bring the correct tool when requested. It was a long hot afternoon, and Kevin determined that there was no way to separate the generator from the diesel engine; so instead of lifting a 120-lb block of metal, we were going to have to lift a 230-lb block of metal. Kevin rigged up a solution involving the jib halyard and another block and tackle to hold the genset steady and we were ready to begin. Kevin guided the engine up out of the hole as I cranked the winch to lift the thing. The operation went perfectly; it was our moment of triumph -- getting it out and onto the deck was much easier than we had thought. Unfortunately everything else was downhill from there.

The oil pan is so corroded that it doesn't even resemble metal so much as dirty particle board. We had hoped to find that it just had a crack or something that could be welded and thus solve the oil leak we've been having. No such luck -- the outer layers of the pan crumble to the touch. It was held in place by something like 14 bolts and of course four of them were so corroded that Kevin had to shear the bolt heads off. One of last four bolts just wouldn't budge at all and Kevin spent two solid hours and broke three tools (drill bit, screwdriver, vise grips) trying to get the damn thing off. On the upside, he did MacGyver a new way to power the cordless drill: instead of using the batteries which only hold a charge for 30 seconds, he just wired it straight to our house battery bank (six paralleled car batteries). Go, drill, go!

Anyway, as I type this he is still trying to get the oil pan off of the engine (all the bolts are gone, but it is still stuck for some reason). We have yet to explore any part of Sint Maarten, but hopefully we will get to see some of it after we get the grunt work taken care of.

Where we are:
Location=Simpson Lagoon, St. Maarten
Lat=18 02.444
Lon=63 05.568

Anegada Passage

Anegada da vi da, baby. We left Spanish Town in the BVI's at around 5pm and had a pretty uneventful passage. Well, there was one event. Our speedometer, which is a tiny paddlewheel on the bottom of the boat that tells us our speed relative to the water, and which has not worked since we were in the United States, spontaneously started working again. I guess when Kevin hacked away at all the encrusted barnacles on the thru-hulls with a screwdriver, it loosened up whatever was preventing the wheel from spinning. We'd been getting along just fine for the past 9 months using just the GPS to tell us our speed, but it sure is nice when things on the boat miraculously fix themselves for a change. Cool.

So it is 7 am and here we are in Simpson Baai, Sint Maarten. That's a lot of A's. Will write more laater, aafter we taake aa naap aand check in with immigraation.

Where we are:
Location=Simpson Baai, Sint Maarten
Lat=18 02.165
Lon=63 06.028

Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda BVI - Checking Out

We woke up this morning to a very strange sound. Hundreds of tiny little "thumps!" against the hull. Looking outside we could see that there was a huge school of small silver fish and they were jumping all over the place, and our boat just happened to be in the middle of the mosh pit. This went on for a good five minutes, hopefully the fish weren't hurt, but that's what they get for listening to speed metal while swimming. We left Leverick Bay around 10:30 this morning and motored a few miles over to Spanish Town, which is the only place on the island of Virgin Gorda where we can check out with Customs and Immigration. We dinghied ashore and walked over to the customs building and were in and out of there in only a few minutes, so it was a pretty painless check out procedure with no bribes required (like we had to do in Luperon). Although the charge to clear out was $5.13. Not sure how they came up with that amount.

We picked up some diet coke at the grocery store (we'll need the caffeine for the night passage) and headed back to the boat to grab a quick nap. It's now 4pm and we are getting ready to leave. We should arrive in St. Martin (or Sint Maarten, as the Dutch side of the island is called) early Saturday morning.

Where we are:
Location=Spanish Town, BVI
Lat=18 27.275
Lon=64 26.368

Leverick Bay, BVI

Well we've been anchored here in Leverick Bay for a few days and we've been doing...well...a whole lot of nothing, actually.  We went ashore yesterday to check out the resort - they have a small but pricey grocery (2 peppers + 4 tomatoes = $12.50) and an even pricier restaurant (entrees start at $35 -- guess we'll be eating on the boat!).  But it is a pretty spot and it is great to have some anchoring room a fair distance away from the moorings and any other boats.  Yesterday we jumped in and scrubbed the hull, it had been a few weeks and more new and mysterious creatures were trying to make their home on our boat.  We've also been using the fantastic internet connection to catch up on news and stuff we've been missing out on (including watching the Chad Vader shorts on youtube.com as well as the trailer for the next Pirates of the Caribbean Movie.  The internet is a wonderful thing.)

Mostly we are just hanging out until the weekend, when we plan to make the 80 mile trip to St. Martin.  We are especially anxious to get there since we have recently discovered that the oil reservoir for our diesel generator has nearly rusted through and has started leaking.  We ran the genset for a half hour today just to see how bad it was and half of the oil leaked out creating a huge mess!  We're hoping to be able to get it fixed while we're in St. Martin, although it's going to be a tough job -- the oil pan is bolted underneath the diesel engine and the only way to get at it is to haul the 117-lb engine up out of the forward compartment through a 2ft by 2ft hatch in the ceiling.  Kevin is looking forward to it.

Leverick Bay, Virgin Gorda, BVI

[Kevin's Post]After a relaxing day doing nothing in Trellis Bay, we decided to find a new spot to relax and do nothing. Trellis Bay, like most of the BVI is packed with mooring balls leaving no room to anchor. If you want to stay on a mooring ball, it costs $25/night. So we were determined to find someplace decent we could anchor for free for a few days and just read, swim and relax. Our friends on Iguana Dance had marked up a few spots on our charts that they liked, so we headed for one of those. We motorsailed about 12 miles to North Sound on Virgin Gorda and anchored in a great spot just off of the Leverick Bay Marina. The anchorage is huge, has great holding and isn't too deep. Everything you could want, and the icing on the cake: free super fast wi-fi. We're waiting for a weather window for the 75 mile passage to St. Martin, so we'll probably be here a few days at least.

Where we are:
Location=Leverick Bay, BVI
Lat=18 30.025
Lon=64 23.307

BVI - The Wreck of the Rhone

Sorry there have been so few posts this past week or two. We've had a great week with my dad -- we spent a night over in Little Harbour and had a great dinner at Harris', home of the potent Bushwhacker -- as the owner/bartender Cynthia was mixing the concoction I lost count of all the alcohol she was putting in: vodka, Bailey's, Amaretto, and a couple others I didn't keep track of. Somehow she managed to blend it with Coco Lopez so that you couldn't taste any booze at all, it just tasted like a milkshake. Deadly. I only drank two.

Later in the week we headed over to Norman's Island to the Bight, for dinner and drinks at the Willy T. The Willy T is a floating restaurant that is usually the scene of some really wild parties, judging from their photo albums. (When we chartered here a few years ago, there were people jumping buck naked off the top deck into the water). But we were there for a fully clothed and relatively tame night.

The highlight of the trip was definitely diving the wreck of the RMS Rhone. This mail steamer sank in a hurricane on October 29, 1867 as she was trying to ride out the storm. The hurricane struck the ship and forced it into the rocks just off Salt Island where it broke in two and rapidly sank to the bottom in about 20-80 feet of water. Our dive guide took us through a large open hatch into the belly of the bow of the ship, which was remarkably intact. You could see small air pockets shimmering above us like a river on the ceiling; these were other divers' air bubbles that had become trapped inside the wreckage. Swimming through the wreck was probably the coolest part, but there was such a huge variety of fish and colorful coral that I could've probably stayed in one spot and enjoyed it just as much. We did two dives to explore the deeper bow section first, and then the shallower stern section where we were able to swim between the blades of the massive 16-foot propeller resting on the bottom.

So now we are back in Trellis Bay, and for my dad's last night we stopped in at the Last Resort to see the band again (Yes, they recognized my dad from last week. No, he didn't have to do five shots this time.) We saw Dad off on his 7 am flight this morning and today we are just relaxing and straightening up the boat before moving on to the island of Virgin Gorda.

Beef Island, BVI - Pinball Wizard

The past couple of days we have been on a mooring in Trellis Bay on Beef Island. Our airhorn has had quite the workout. The first afternoon, we were sitting in the cockpit and were talking about how all the moorings were taken and that boats coming in were circling trying to find an available mooring but nobody was leaving since the weather was kind of rainy and blustery. Then an hour later I look up and I said "Hey, that boat looks like it's leaving. But wait -- there's no one at the helm or on deck...". Sure enough the boat had broken it's dock line that was tied to the mooring and was adrift and heading straight for another boat. Kevin blasted the airhorn and the owner of the drifting boat (neither boat was a charter boat) quickly got to the helm but not in time to stop the collision. There was some minor damage to the teak rail of the other boat but it could have been a lot worse. A couple hours later, another boat broke loose only this was just a dinghy. Kevin noticed it drifting back and of course the owner of the boat came up on deck a few minutes too late and just helplessly watched his dinghy float toward the beach. Another boater hopped in their dinghy to bring back the wandering dinghy to its owner.

On Saturday night we dinghied in to the "Last Resort", a restaurant/bar on a tiny island in the middle of the anchorage. They had a live band that was pretty fun to watch. They had mounted two bottles of tequila on the front of the drum kit and were handing out shots to the crowd like they were candy. One of the games they played was "name that tune". They would play a few bars of a song and everyone had to hit an imaginary buzzer in the middle of their table and guess the name and artist. If you guessed right, you got a tequila shot. If you guessed wrong, nothing happened. But if you shouted out the name of the song WITHOUT hitting the imaginary buzzer you got not one but five tequila shots. Of course my dad knew every song and he'd had a few beers so sure enough he forgot to use his buzzer and shouted out "Pinball Wizard!" when they played the Who song. So the lead singer invited him up to not only do the shots but also to accompany the band as they played the rest of the song. Everyone was rolling with laughter every time the band went completely silent so that my dad could shout out "sure played a mean pin BALL!" a cappella. Dad was able to give away two of the shots to the band members, but then he "earned" another one for having sung with the band, so he still ended up doing four shots. Yikes. After "name that tune" the band played a few more songs and then announced that they were playing the "new newlywed game". Unfortunately Kevin and I were the most recently married couple in the room so we had to go up on stage and then they put Kevin in the soundproof chamber (the refrigerator of the restaurant) and asked me two questions, with the prize being a bottle of wine. The first question was what beverage would your spouse order on a long haul flight. I answered diet coke but Kevin responded beer. So we got that one wrong. But at least we got the second one right which was "which actress would your husband be most likely to want to sleep with?". So the band gave us the benefit of the doubt and we walked out of there with a free bottle of wine anyway. So it was an embarrassing, but fun, night out.

Just for the curious: the answer was Jennifer Connelly.

Where we are:
Location=Beef Island, BVI
Lat=18 26.890
Lon=64 31.881