Very few people outside Holland and the Caribbean have heard of the ABC islands. Together with Statia, Saba and St Martens, further North, they used to make up the Dutch Antilles. They were Holland’s contribution to the colonisation of the Caribbean, but were mostly trading islands instead of the great sugar estates that made Britain and France so wealthy in the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth Centuries. Nowadays they tend to concentrate on tourism for their living, especially Bonaire and Aruba. Aruba was our next port of call after our second stop in Curacao. We left Curacao from our favourite area off Santa Marta, which is a deserted lagoon to the north of the island.

After 60 miles, a thunderstorm and nice gentle following wind we arrived at Orangestadt and the Renaissance Marina. First of all however, we had to tie up to a very rough concrete wall, in the docks, to clear Immigration and Customs. The Immigration Officers arrived at the boat almost immediately and cleared us in without leaving their car! The Customs Office was a short walk away and nicely air conditioned. Will had to visit them to clear in, but was pleased about the air conditioning. Obviously so were the Customs Officers. The temperature in Aruba is generally around 31 degrees C, which is too hot for most work outside. Perhaps this is what attracts the tourists to Aruba, together with the gambling and the small attractive tourist beach.

It certainly isn’t the architecture or the various ‘attractions’ which are badly signposted and lack even a basic description of what you are looking at when you arrive there! The shopping centre, just outside the cruise liner terminal, is pink, and appears like a wedding cake with its fancy cornice work.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) this is just about the only interesting piece of architecture on the island, with perhaps the exception of a reproduction of a Dutch windmill, used as a restaurant.

The rest of the island is composed of multi-storey hotels and single storey concrete houses. (Shacks would be a more appropriate word for some of them). Of course we did not see Aruba in its best light, since it rained most of the time we were there.

Indeed the storm that turned into Hurricane Omar started very close to Aruba with strong southerly winds and even more torrential rain. The sky was overcast for at least three days, which probably didn’t worry the tourists who came to gamble, but probably worried the tourists who came to sunbathe. We heard that the storm created terrible damage in Bonaire, even sweeping away the small pier where the loud music had been situated! We haven’t heard whether the music is back again. It was certainly a great shame for the rest of the small town though. Hurricane Omar caused considerable havoc in Antigua where the rainfall caused such flooding that two helicopters, properly tied down, were swept away and wrecked. Fortunately our houses in Jolly Harbour survived in reasonable condition, although some leaks did occur. The flooding seems to have been contained to the gardens and not to the houses. Our friends and ourselves were indeed fortunate.

Our time in Aruba was not all gloom however. We were fortunate to have as a neighbour in the marina one Morgan Jones, who had a handlebar moustache and who was from Texas. He was living on his catamaran. He kindly lent us a book which had been written about one of his forebears of the same name in Texas. His ancestor had built about six thousand miles of railways in Texas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The original Morgan Jones came from a small farm in Wales and ended up owning railways by dint of hard work and effort.

It would be nice to think that it is possible to be as successful nowadays, although all the taxes that the labour government wish to suck from those who do work, seems to make that very difficult. It appears the United States is going the same way in order to pay for their oil war. Perhaps the ordinary people of the world should rebel, or maybe ‘twas ever thus’. Will has just finished reading an excellent history of the Mediterranean Sea by John Julius Norwich. A first class read, but only proving that the general population of all countries in all ages worked, paid taxes and went to war, all for the whims of a very, very few, very selfish and arrogant, opinionated men ( and the occasional woman)! Why did we do it!!? Are humans really so gullible? It seems so.

We hired a car on Aruba for a few days. Quite a good deal for a small, air conditioned, Japanese car. It cost just under $120 for the three days plus petrol which we thought was quite reasonable.

Two days were enough to see all the island and all the tourist spots although the holes and ruts in the road did prevent us from reaching the ostrich farm on the first day. The second day however we found a paved road that went almost all the way there. We had lunch there, which was perhaps a mistake. Will’s sausages were almost too tough to eat and when this was pointed out to the waitress another one (nearly equally tough) was brought along, well after the rest of the meal was finished. If you visit an ostrich farm our advice is not to eat the sausages. Omelette had been on the menu, although apparently the ostriches had not been laying due to the wet weather. An ostrich egg is about 30 times the volume of a chicken’s egg.

The omelette must be very exciting when the ostrich hens are laying. Unfortunately we were charged tourist prices in US Dollars, which range from twice as much to ten times as much as a local might pay for similar services. The tour was good though. Did you know that ostriches could live for about 80 years, and that their knees bend the other way from ours; watch out for their forward kick! They only have two toes on each foot though.

Our guide was a colourful character, but expected a tip on top of the large fee we had already been charged. The American habit of tipping 20% is not good for anybody else in the world, neither recipient nor giver!

This was most obvious on the private island which was attached to the hotel and to which the marina was also attached. The private island for guests of the hotel and marina only, was delightful. There were many iguanas and flamingos there, mingling with some of the guests on the adult (topless) beach.

The service seemed reasonable, at least the waiters and waitresses didn’t spend all day talking to each other, and the food was adequate. When the bill came however there was an obligatory 15% service charge. This was bad enough, but at the bottom, provided for all to see, it said “the 15% service charge is spread throughout all the employees of the hotel, equally. Please feel free though to give extra to your personal server if you think you have had good service.” This was printed on the bottom of the bill!!! We didn’t feel free!

Perhaps one of the tourists attractions in Aruba epitomises the island. ‘Visit the natural bridge’ the advert says. The natural bridge has collapsed!

Granted there is a small natural bridge adjacent, but nobody tells you about that one until you get there. The bridge in the adverts is no more

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Besides the helpfulness of the marina staff, and some of our marina neighbours, the only saving graces for Aruba are the dancers and musicians who perform every Tuesday evening (when it is not raining) in the old fort, which dates back to the eighteenth century and is very small and very Dutch.

The performers were first class and the dresses beautiful. The musicians were excellent and most of the music had been written locally and was part Latin American and part Afro Caribbean. Dance music with a swing and a beat. We cannot praise the performers too highly. They were lovely.

We were not sad to leave Aruba however, apart from our swims before breakfast in the Renaissance Hotel swimming pool.

However it was an experience in being a tourist

rather than a traveller. The word ‘cruiser’, which determines our status in American English, raises other connotations in proper English and we tend not to use the term. Sailor and traveller are perhaps more accurate but we are definitely a ‘turista’ at times!

Especially in Aruba and to a lesser extent here in Cartagena. Our voyage to Cartagena took about eight days. We had two overnight passages and a total voyage of about 400 miles.

All the passages were delightful with a following wind. All except for one day, when we were passing off shore from the very large Rio de Magdalena which changed the colour of the sea to a muddy brown and acted as a partial breakwater to the waves kicked up by 35 knots of wind from the north east. We hand steered Atlantia at this point, surfing down the waves and crashing into the one in front. Very exhilarating and just what our cruise is all about (when we are at sea!) Atlantia behaved beautifully, and handled like a dinghy. We only had a reefed mizzen, no mainsail, no staysail and only half a genoa (the rest was rolled up) and we were still going 8 knots. Terrific!

Our first evening we stopped at a rock , Monjes Del Sur, just off the coast of Venezuela. We were in company with Lou, a single handed sailor in a C&C 42, and helped him tie to the rope that was stretched across the harbour. Fortunately he spoke Spanish, since the coastguard and navy, who keep the island as a look out post, didn’t speak English, and we ‘no habla Espanol’. They wanted to know all sorts of information about the boats, and about an hour after we started, sitting on the quay wall, they had to copy all their answers onto another piece of paper, (by hand of course) We were ordered away from the island the next morning by a man with a rifle. He pointed to his gun and then out to sea. Although it was obvious what he wanted us to do, we did not wish to leave until the late afternoon! Lou kindly explained to the Capitan of the island by radio that we did not wish to leave; whereupon we were ushered by a very friendly soldier up to the lighthouse;

for our own safety you understand; whilst the coastguards and navy had firing practice with their rifles and a rather large machine gun. Fortunately they were aiming away from the boats and we spent a number of very pleasant hours watching the masked boobies (from the gannet family)

and ospreys (they get everywhere!) wheel around the top of the rock. We don’t know whether any of the birds in the firing area were hit, although the official secrets act prevents us from saying how good the soldiers/sailors were at their target practice!

We left in daylight in early evening for Columbia. There is no official pilot guide to the coast of Columbia and such large scale charts as there are, are deficient and inaccurate. We were very fortunate to have been given a part guide on a disc made up by a yacht ‘Pizazz’, a few years ago, and updated to 2006 by other foreign sailors (cruisers). This gave bays with indications of where to anchor and distances between. Anyone travelling inshore on the Columbian coast really requires to have this disc and we would be pleased to help if required. Contrary to popular opinion there has never, to our knowledge, been a serious piratical incident on the Columbian Coast. This cannot be said for the Venezuelan coast next door where ‘open season’ seems to have been declared on Americans. We are pleased not to be there. The coastguard on the Columbian coast seems to be very vigilant with plenty of instances of making sure that yachtsmen are safe. We even had to file a ‘float plan’ to the coastguard in Cartagena before we left Aruba to say when and where we would be. Our only contact with the coastguard however was in Santa Marta when we tried to report in. ‘English is the language of the airwaves’, but not in Columbia, where very few people speak English, and certainly not the coastguard in Santa Marta. There was, therefore, blissful silence on our radio! (We now know what a dumb blond must feel like; happy!) Our night sail past two oil rigs was uneventful and we rounded the corner of the coast, going southeast with 20 knots of wind and had a wonderful sail. We anchored in the morning at Cabo de la Vela (Cape of Sail)

and met some very friendly fishermen who sold us a fish for a $1.00.

Some yachtsmen were sold lobsters for a very reasonable amount. .

The bay is very beautiful and we were sorry to leave it to set off on our next overnight sail to five bays. This area is a national park and has high sided bays, a little like a miniature Loch Huron with trees on the hillside and a sandy strand with palm trees at the top of the bay. This is where the Andes ends, and Will was sure he saw Condors wheeling high in the sky above the distant mountain tops. There were certainly eagles, ospreys and chulos at a lower level. We are going to buy a bird book!

A small dash of fifteen miles through a very narrow gap,

a little like the entrance to Loch Moidart, was our next days sail to Santa Marta where we met up with Lou again, and anchored in the harbour area. There was a man snorkelling and we think he was picking up lobsters. We also met the ‘Dive Master’ who offered us water, fuel or anything we liked! Since we had the yellow flag up to say we hadn’t yet checked in, and were voyaging from early next morning, we declined.

The following day we sailed for Punta Hermosa, past the Rio Magdalena, as previously described, and making landfall just off a spit of sand not shown on the charts! Considering the spit is about three miles long, and growing, one would have thought it might be mentioned, although it is shown on Google Earth. We anchored safely behind the spit however, and had a very restful nights sleep with only half a metre of water under our keel.

The last day of our voyage was spent motor sailing in a slightly rolly sea to Cartagena. Cartagena is set in a bay, again guarded by a sand bank, which probably moves at its north end. The vista as we sailed past the last headland was surprising. A view a little like Manhattan, rose up before us although more spread out.

We had been expecting a massive headland nearly surrounded by water with a large fort on top. It is nothing of the kind. The old town walls still exist, but instead of water surrounding the town, which is about 1 metre above sea level, there are now concrete roads. This is sensible since traffic is not allowed within the old fortified walls. More about Cartagena next time!

Hope you like the pics

Love Atlantia.

Letter from Atlantia October 2008

We are back in Curacao after 3 weeks in Bonaire. We can really recommend Bonaire for a diving holiday. The water is crystal clear, and the diving relatively easy, since the coral bank which closely fringes the island is about 40 feet deep and is populated by an enormous amount of corals, sponges, fish, crustacean, and lots of other beasties, whose names escape us, but one of the worms is called the ‘social feather duster’, which is exactly what it is, and looks like.

The snorkelling was wonderful and we went to Margaret’s reef, (actually the concrete from a small old bridge that had been dumped in shallow water), twice a day, to see the moray eels and a scorpion fish which was so well camouflaged against the rocks that some times we couldn’t find it.

We did see a small lobster there as well, although it had disappeared the following day. Hopefully it didn’t end up as somebody’s tea. On a northern reef we also saw a Caribbean spiny lobster that was nearly as long as Will, from tail to tip of spiny snout. It must have weighed in at over 25 lbs, which is large for a Caribbean lobster. We did see a very similar one at the restaurant that night. They said it was fresh. We couldn’t have eaten it that day after seeing its brother crawling about in its natural habitat of rocks and Coral. In fact our taste for lobster has declined!

Will made friends in Bonaire with a passing swimmer, his name was Patrick. Patrick and Hettie have an apartment right on the waterfront and our conversation with water borne Patrick ended with an invitation to drinks and to meet Hettie and their dog Sparky that evening. A nice way to make new friends!

They kindly took us to the National Park, in the north of the island, in their car. They sometimes help out there counting parrots (lora is the local name in papiemento) and watching iguanas, so they are very knowledgeable about the area.

The cacti forests appeared impenetrable even although the park had at one time been a farming estate. The principal produce here seems to have been goats, and the type of cacti on the island can be made into fences to keep the goats from where they were not wanted.

We went snorkelling on the reefs of the park and the French Angel fish there were so friendly we could almost pat them on the back.

That was also where we saw our large lobster. Obviously Bonaire is the land of large and friendly creatures. We saw no sea monsters there. However we did see some enormous parrot fish. The biggest we have seen. Pink flamingos are also abundant on Bonaire.

Regretably it is not very noise friendly when you use one of the moorings, which you are required to use and pay for! The privilege of having a mooring, which is essential since the bank for anchoring between the deep water and the beach is very narrow, is that you are subjected to blasting music (all night at the weekend) from the bars in the town centre. The most culpable bar is written up as being friendly to sailors but nowadays is in fact the very opposite. It is fortunate that this was just about the only (although very substantial) thorn in the side we encountered during our stay on this beautiful and friendly island.

We managed ten dives whilst we were there, costing only 3 dollars each for the air refills and were lucky that our rubber dinghy and outboard could take both of us plus all our diving gear. This of course includes Will’s weights at 20 pounds of lead! You can imagine the two of us putting on wet suits, weight belts, buoyancy control devices, fins and tanks, all in the confines of a small ten foot long rubber duck! It took half an hour to get in the water, after we had arrived at our dive site, and half an hour to finally prepare to go home again to Atlantia, when we surfaced. The part in between was well worth it though. It is a different world down there, a veritable octopuses garden. We didn’t see any octopuses this time unfortunately but the turtles made up for it.

We were pleased to assist Patrick in his quest to produce magazine articles about Bonaire. He has completed an article on the two sea going tugs in Bonaire which help the tankers and salt barges to load and offload.

Salt mountains are quite a sight on Bonaire.

He has also had published an article about a beautifully restored fishing smack from Holland which is enormously beamy and very wooden.

Patrick took a number of photos of Atlantia from the shore and then interviewed the ‘crew’. He will have the article published in ‘Sailing’ magazine, probably in the Spring of next year. Apparently the editor is very excited about the ‘quotes’. Will wondered what he said to Patrick! We have used a couple of Patrick’s professional photos of Atlantia here, which he kindly donated to us on a disc. Please don’t download these without e-mailing us. It is nice to have pictures of the boat under sail taken by a professional. Atlantia looks so much better with a palm tree in front of it! One day we may make this one into a poster.

Will is writing this from the comfort of being at anchor in Spanish water, Curacao. We leave on Saturday for Aruba, which is also a Dutch island, and at one time part of the ‘Dutch Antilles’. It has as its currency, the Gilder. This is exactly the same value as the Florin of Curacao and Bonaire (1.77 U.S .Dollars), but they do not interchange guilders for florins. Of course Holland now has the Euro as its currency, but that isn’t accepted in Aruba, or in Curacao or Bonaire. They all accept the U.S. Dollar of course. Very Caribbean. Their statuses are all changing, although they have all agreed that Holland is to be their motherland. Nowadays that means the EEC of course. How much of the bad parts of the EEC have been negotiated out of the association with Holland and how much of the good parts (money?) have been negotiated in, will only be known in the future. Clever people the ABC islanders!

Just a short narrative this week since we are stocking up tomorrow for our voyage to Aruba and Cartagena.

We hope you like the mixture of Margaret’s and Patrick's pics.

Love from Atlantia

CURACAO

To think that outside this lagoon the waves are five feet high, with white crests, leaves us a little bewildered about an anchorage in the Caribbean, since most anchorages are quite rolly. This anchorage, Spanish Water in Curacao, is more like being in a lake. Indeed the entrance from the sea is only about fifty yards wide and is nearly half a mile long between conglomerate rocks surmounted by mangrove bushes. The winding channel is sometimes forty feet in depth and sometimes only eleven feet and some fair sized yachts, (up to 70’) seem to make it into the anchorage.

The ‘lake’ consists of a considerable number of low sided fjords,( 20 to 30 feet high) each about a third of a mile long by 150 yards wide, surrounded by beautiful low rise houses. Each of these has a lake frontage of about 100 feet and usually has a concrete walled, painted, Dutch style, house perched just above the water, with a dock to the front. We are fortunate enough to be tied to one of these docks at the invitation of Cor and Marjolein Von Aanholt who live here and who have been very hospitable. We met Cor in Antigua two years ago when Will and Cor served on the international jury together for Antigua Sailing Week.

While Cor and Marjolein and their four children were away on holiday we have been looking after their three dogs, two Red Setters and a Jack Russell Terrier. Of course the Jack Russell rules the pack! Now that Cor and Marjolein have returned from their months holiday, we no longer walk the dogs, which is a shame.

. The buildings look Dutch because indeed they are. Curacao is part of the Dutch Antilles and, although independent of Government , still operates under the crown of Holland, and has done so for four hundred years. The main town, Willemstad, has a very Hanseatic League feel to its water front and was a great trading port and slave entrepot during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It has a wonderful floating bridge which is pulled aside when one of the many tankers or container ships wishes to pass a mile inland to the huge oil refinery and Freeport contained within a large lagoon in the interior.

There is an excellent museum here dedicated to the sophisticated and war like nature of African Culture during the eighteenth century, as well as to the abhorrent slave trade. Fortunately the slave trade is no longer with us, but Africa still seems to be at war with itself. Perhaps it is about time that mankind realised it is much more profitable to educate, and live by consensus, than to maim and kill. Perhaps our younger generation can do something about this. Certainly our present politicians appear to be ignorant of the fact.

The people of Curacao are every colour people could be. Although Curacao was a large slave market, not many Africans were slaves on the island, the past population being mostly Dutch or Dutch Jews escaping from persecution in Europe. Willemstad has the oldest practising synagogue in the Caribbean or South America. (275 years old). The Government of the country therefore appears quite balanced, although some of the Opposition parties talk of total independence from Holland. This has a number of the population wondering whether there will be any further money from the European Community for roads and infrastructure, and other things. They are right, there wouldn’t be, which is probably why the population voted in a recent referendum for autonomy for the island under the Dutch crown, and they are still discussing the money! Sensible people on Curacao! We have just had a power cut which seems to happen with great regularity. Perhaps the European Community isn’t putting the money in exactly the right places!

Curacao is a beautiful island about 35 miles long by 5 miles wide. The sun shines most of the time and the puffy trade wind clouds, and occasional thunderstorms, flow by overhead. The winds are almost always between 10 and 25 knots from the east, although very occasionally the Tropical systems and land mass in South America cause a light south westerly airstream for a few days. There have only been two hurricanes near here in the last hundred years which apparently puts it out of the hurricane belt. Certainly none of the cruising yachts here seem to be concerned. There are perhaps two hundred cruising yachts either at anchor or in the small marinas around Spanish Water. At least half of them are local boats, including one dragon, Deva, which sits in a marina.

There are over a hundred optimists, originally inspired to race by our friend Cor, and thirty sunsails (a bit like an older longer laser) of which Cor used to be World Champion. The inland water is ideal for small dinghies and there seems to be a considerable amount of coaching going on for the weenies! No wonder Cor’s daughter has just become Ladies World Champion in the ‘Splash’ Class (a little bit like a more modern, smaller, laser). It really seems that Spanish Water in Curacao is almost idyllic from a yachtsman’s point of view. Some people stay here on their yachts the year round.

We are allowed 90 days stay by immigration without seeking an extension to our welcome, but we are in fact leaving on Friday. We are going to Bonaire for the diving (it is apparently one of the best dive islands in the world) and although we will return here it will only be for a day on our way back from the east, westward towards Aruba and Cartagena. We have been reading about cruising the coast of Columbia and, in fact, how safe it is since 2005, when a new President came to power there. Both the American and the Columbian Coastguards patrol the coast, and as long as they know you are there, they keep an eye on you, which is very gratifying when one is a stranger to such a region. They are more than happy for you to submit a passage plan to help look after you, but it is not obligatory! Sounds good, and we will probably call in on the Columbian Coast on our way to Cartagena. More of that another time.

The snorkelling on Curacao is very picturesque.

We have seen trunk fish, pipe fish, cuttle fish mating (they flash with silver stripes when they get excited), squid, drum fish, surgeon fish, doctor fish, blue tang, barracuda (small ones!), angel fish, four eyed butterfly fish, sergeant majors (some in blue because they are mating), tarpon, jacks and blue wrasse. Also squirrel fish and spanish grunt and a host of parrot fish which have beaks like parrots to feed on the coral.

Margaret has even stroked a nurse shark and been kissed by a sea lion, although this was in the Sea Aquarium, where they also train dolphins and have children, some adults, and handicapped people, swimming with them.

We even have a loggerhead turtle that swims off the boat here.

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Bird life (the feathered variety) on Curacao is myriad. The national bird is the yellow oriole which is about the size of a British starling. It is yellow all over with a black chest and black wings and tail. A very pretty bird, even if its call is more like a caterwaul.

The yellow oriole has a most unusual nest.

A much more melodious call wakes us every morning at present. It is from the troupial, which is like a large British blackbird, but has very orange markings along its side and neck and over its rump. It is much more common than the yellow oriole.

It is the first time we have seen parakeets properly. They make a screeching racket as they fly away from our presence, mostly in pairs, but sometimes in flocks.

There is only one type of parrot on the island but we haven’t seen this yet. The major raptor on the island is the caracara Bird ( dear one,dear one!) Which doesn’t look at all dear! It has a fierce red face with a large buff bill and black crown over a pale nearly white neck, with body and legs brown and black and similar to a young British buzzard, whose size it is comparable with. It does a lot of strutting, a bit like the Griffin in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as he takes Alice to hear the Mock Turtles story.

The american kestrel is a pretty bird and quite small, about the size of a merlin. It can be seen perching on top of the cactus waiting for its prey. Of course we have the magnificent frigate bird flying overhead with the occasional brown pelican flopping into the water for its lunch.

Believe it or not, we have the common house sparrow hopping about the restaurants trying to cadge a crumb or two. It was introduced as a caged bird here (as an exotic!) about thirty years ago and has escaped its captivity. No doubt one day it will take over the Caribbean and South America! The pink flamingo is indigenous here and can be seen in a number of the shallow lagoons. They are very graceful as they sift the water for krill and other small crustacean. There are always two or three on the outskirts of a flock who are not feeding, and who have their heads out of water watching for danger.

Most vegetation here is scrubby and low with the occasional manchineel tree standing to perhaps 60 feet in the lee of a bluff or cliff although generally much smaller. The manchineel tree, or bush is poisonous, and brought Margaret out in a rash on her elbow as she brushed past one in the wet one day, when we were walking the dogs. Fortunately the blisters didn’t last long, but the trees/bushes are all over the place! The fruit is also poisonous.

Mangrove trees abound around the five lagoons. Similar places to Spanish Water. They used to make a lot of salt on the islands and some of the original salt pans are still to be seen. They still make salt in this way in Bonaire, our next port of call.

The higher ground (up to 300 feet!) is dotted by the long high cacti similar to the ones seen sometimes with John Wayne in his Westerns, although the high bushy type, rather than the two armed variety, which we believe is Mexican. The birds and parakeets are particularly fond of the cactus fruits.

Overall Curacao is a particularly civilised island and puts out a very friendly welcome to visitors. The exception is perhaps the bus drivers who seem to be as arrogant here as they are in London. Do not take a taxi here, the cost is exorbitant. Despite these small drawbacks we have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and can recommend Curacao to anyone taking a diving holiday, or even a holiday on one of the occasional beaches. Provided of course you speak Dutch, English or Spanish. They speak all three here, constantly and fluently!

We hope you like the pictures.

Love Atlantia.

LANDFALL

A cruising sailor prepares for the worst and hopes for the best. This is often our mindset before we set off for a voyage, although there are obviously conflicts in the head when we have prepared something that does not appear perfect (so we hope for the best!) We are often asked what it is like to make landfall after voyaging on the ocean for days or weeks. Firstly one has to examine what the feelings and emotions are like prior to the voyage. Apprehension is one feeling, as if an important examination was impending. All the preparation (no longer entirely mental!) that has to go into ensuring the boat is seaworthy, and ‘home’ for weeks, means long ‘to do’ lists, and hurrying against deadlines. Then, of course, the chandlery doesn’t have the part you require, and so it has to be ordered in, or you take the bus, or cadge a lift, to another town for further search! The smooth flow chart is disrupted, but you can still make the departure date if you juggle this activity with that one. (maybe!). Of course in tightening the odd bolt, the odd bolt shears under the torque! Many happy hours later, after drilling, and tapping, and muttering, the disrepair is repaired. Another extension to the flow chart. One saying which we learnt in the United States is “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!” What a marvellous way to prepare for a voyage. Full of hope. We heard of a transatlantic sailor with three other crew who hoped that the amount of food they had (enough for two weeks) would last the three weeks it took them to sail the ocean. The last mars bar changed hands at £35.00 the day before they made landfall. The time before leaving is full of turmoil and stress and is not unlike the usual everyday business that is experienced in running a go ahead Civil Engineering Consultancy. In other words Will leaps from the frying pan to the fire! However everything will be alright when we leave and it will calm down. It has to. There will be no one else to rely on 1000 miles from land. We heard of one member of a two man team who suffered so much from the pre depart stress that he literally ran away, leaving his friend very much in the lurch. Needless to say the boat didn’t depart. It is easy to crack under the strain, especially when one is stressed out already and when the whole idea is to leave the stresses behind! People used to urban life, with known stresses, can push such stresses a long way before exceptional strain or breaking point occurs. Not so if there has been no experience of that which is to come. It is a leap into the unknown. Cold sweats break out and the nightmares of waiting for exam results recur as in younger days.

And you have to go! You have said you will go, and you cannot allow fear to hold you back. Why should it? Life is not a dress rehearsal. Go for it. Do we have to?! If we stay longer it will cost more in the marina or at the mooring. Our friends will never believe us again. Confucius said ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with but one step.’ He was right. We can’t walk on water but the theory is the same. We do go. Friends and Relations wave us goodbye and hoot horns. We are off, like a bubble being pushed from the blowing ring, with a bit of help from all our friends. How delightful to be soaring away from the society we lived in, and into the blue yonder. We are on our own for four, fourteen, twenty days. No real hope of help unless the very worst happens, and even then nothing will be certain. Certainly no reliance can be placed on help. Just ourselves. Thunder, lightning, storms, tsunamis, rocks, pirates. All could be ahead of us. Possibly none of these things, and only downwind sailing under puffy clouds and under mostly blue skies with 15 to 20 knots of breeze. The one thing that is certain is we will have to keep awake to ensure we see other ships or bad weather approaching. There were four of us as crew across the Atlantic and we started carrying out watches of four hours on and four hours off, having a companion to talk to. We varied it later on by sliding watches having four hours on standby, four hours on watch, and eight hours off. You could sleep on standby if you wished although you had to be ready for a jump on deck and to work for a living if required. This only occurred once, when all of us were on deck in the middle of the night struggling with the two large genoas of the papillon (butterfly) rig, because a cotter pin had escaped its housing, and the bottom of the forestay, and thus the genoas, were banging around inside the pulpit. It took two of us two hours to take off the genoas and set the main and staysail in a relatively smooth sea. Everything on a boat seems to take twice as long as you think it is going to, and is at least twice as difficult. When there are two of us on passage we stand three hour watches, which seems to give enough sleep to be able to maintain the watch of the next three hours. We always seem to have enough sleep, even if it is just a catnap in between cooking or mending something.

There is no doubt that the general pace of life slows down at sea and that some of the cares and woes of modern life on land are left behind. For one thing there is not a lot one can do to help others from the middle of the ocean except perhaps to talk to land through the satellite phone we have for emergencies, or to say Happy Christmas or Happy Birthday. We do not use the satellite phone usually, since calls cost a pound a minute, but it is good for peace of mind once a day to hear that there is no hurricane or tropical storm forecast. This was particularly true during our three and a half day passage from Antigua to Curacao, during the beginning of the hurricane season in the first week of July, when we spoke to our friend Mogens, in Antigua, for the first two days, and were informed that we would experience no winds over 20 knots and no seas over 6 feet. At least that is what the weather forecast said. They were not quite right since on the front of a tropical wave , which only overtook us after the first two days, having started with us, there is rain, thunder, lightning and squalls of up to 30 knots of wind. Of course this is not too bad if you are going downwind, which we were, and if you have a self draining cockpit to help the unbelievably dense rain run straight into the sea, which we have. Despite the routine of watches, life at sea in a sailing boat is not necessarily all calm and peaceful sailing, and the anticipation of the unknown is always there gnawing away at the pit of the stomach. Coming from higher up in the northern hemisphere we know that the weather can change drastically every half an hour or less. This is not necessarily the case in the trade wind belt where the wind, at least, is remarkably constant between 10 and 25 knots from the east, or thereabouts! This does give some relaxation and sometimes we can pick up a book if we are used to the rolling motion. Admiral Nelson was sea sick for the first four days every time he went to sea. Mind you he spent long periods at sea, up to two years on one occasion, without setting foot on land.

So having left the hurly burly of life on shore, worried ourselves, not quite sick, as to whether we are going to sink or be run over or blown over, or run aground, and yet still survived, we have nearly reached our destination. What is the feeling like? Firstly there is a known entity coming our way. Land. That is a knobbly bit sticking up out of our friend the sea, who has actually looked after us for the past few days or weeks. Assuming we miss the knobbly bit, and this is where the chart plotter and pilot book come in, we will have to find a sheltered place to anchor. Those are the first thoughts. The second thoughts are that just maybe (although unlikely in some places) if we now have a problem we can call for help instead of being totally self reliant. This is not necessarily a good thing since we probably know more about our craft and the way she handles in most conditions than anybody else; nevertheless there is a comfort there that has crept in to reduce the acidity in the stomach. Then there comes the curiosity. What does the land look like? What are the people like? Are they friendly to yachting tourists? Are we going to pay the skin colour tax by being the unknowing underdog? Will the customs and immigration be friendly or will they take themselves far too seriously as a very few have on our travels? After all, this discovery is why we set sail in the first place.

The land looms closer. Sometimes the visibility is such that the landfall cannot be seen until about three miles off the coast, and then we wonder whether the land shown on the chart plotter is just a myth or whether we really are going to land there. Indeed, is the chart plotter(which usually shows exactly where we are in relation to the land) functioning at all, or is the blob close by the boat on the screen a hallucination? They say hallucinations can happen at sea but we have never seen one. Perhaps because all our alcohol is stored away! In the last Century, and before, it was apparently hard to find Barbados, since there is a magnetic anomaly and strange currents that surround it, and also a haze that usually makes it difficult to see from far off. They kept a pig on board the local sailing traders, which they threw over the side when they thought they were near the island. They followed the direction it swam in. We were never informed whether the pig was picked up again or whether it had to make its own way to land. When we first sighted Barbados from the Atlantic crossing we could see the loom of the lights from over 20 miles away at night, it was exceptional visibility. We felt quite elated and relieved by the sight and felt that all the rolling, and being tossed up and down by the sea, for 22 days, had actually delivered a result! We were going to land in another culture.

The problem with pictures of a crossing or lengthy voyage is that on a good day there are puffy white clouds in a blue sky over a blue sea, with the odd dolphin and petrel, and on a bad day of rain you can’t see anything. There is no doubt that coastal weather and scenery is more photogenic with its crepuscular rays and mountains. Except of course for the shapes in the trade wind cumulus clouds. Sometimes a dragon, sometimes a castle, sometimes little miss Muffet. Of course there is also sometimes the great dark and foreboding thundercloud that creeps up from behind. So the pictures are limited for this posting.. We hope you enjoyed making landfall with us though.

Love Atlantia

We are sitting in the house once more but this time on someone else’s furniture! Our new tenants for the north house are Nick and Kaye and we are delighted that they are taking the house for at least a year. They are providing their own furniture and are therefore renting from us unfurnished. They run a business taking charter guests sailing on Jabberwocky and will therefore be pleased to use the jetty which goes with the house. Altogether an idyllic life although charter guests can be quite tiring sometimes!

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The last piece of the houses to be constructed is happening now. The new jetty is nearly in place for Vic and Lizzie in the south house and should be finished next week.

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Next week we depart for the ABC islands and the continuation of our voyage around the world. We have heard of various difficulties on our trip, such as a six week wait for the Panama Canal and no fuel for foreigners to Ecuador, but no doubt we will meet these problems when we come to them. We have also heard that Colon at the mouth of the Panama Canal lives up to its intestinal description! But we will see. Our route, leaving on Wednesday night will be directly to the ABC islands about 500 miles southwest of here. Hopefully we will see Cor there. He will have just finished running a major Optimist Championship and could probably do without Atlantia dropping in on him! After the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) which are Dutch, we intend to go to Cartagena. Drake sacked the city a long time ago and apparently its Spanish defences are still in place and formidable. We look forward to showing you the pictures when we get there.

We had intended carrying on our travels after the Rum Cruise, but somehow it has taken an extra month to legally separate the houses, and to put in new, separate, meters for the electricity and water. This was done very efficiently by the Jolly Harbour maintenance team. A joy to be on the receiving end! Below is a photo of a night heron on our forestay:

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The Rum Cruise was wonderful and we were very sorry that none of our friends from Europe or the United States wanted to join us! Four boats departed from Jolly Harbour at the beginning of May. Atlantia, two Beneteaus and a beautiful Island Packet.

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There were ten crew in all and very smart we looked in our matching t-shirts.

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The close reach to Guadeloupe was most exhilarating with a sparkling sea and many flying fish scattering on either side as our bow crashed into the wave in front. We met up with the dashing Lady Commodore of the Antigua Yacht Club at Deshais on the North end of Guadeloupe for a lobster meal at a cliff edge restaurant overlooking the anchorage.

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Paul and Marguerite Jackson in their yacht Mackenzi led us off the following day to a superb snorkelling site at pigeon island.

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This is the Cousteau National underwater park and the underwater scenery is beautiful. Will saw an octopus that crawled back into the tiniest hole under a rock. It really squeezed itself into a hole about an eighth the size of that which the octopus looked capable of reducing into! Amazing animals octopi. Tests have shown that they have a degree of intelligence and their chameleon like skin changes, mean they can be all colours of the rainbow when required. Will’s octopus stayed brown however, the colour of the sand and surrounding rocks.

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From there we went south to the Isles Des Saintes and Marguerite caught a 30 lb Dorado en route. This fish is also called a Mahi Mahi or Dolphin fish and really is very good to eat. The crew of Mackenzi tried to sell the fish to some restaurants at our anchorage but regrettably they were full of fish since there was a fishing competition on at the time!

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After a good wander around the streets of the main town of the Saintes the next day we enjoyed a Ti punch at a small restaurant. You are right we helped Mackenzi eat the first of a number of meals of various parts of the Dorado. The standard of cuisine from Kathy and Marguerite in Mackenzi was so good that it cured Will of a slight aversion to fish which has crept in over the last couple of years. The rum probably helps as well.

A Ti Punch? You cry! Rum! To be more exact:- One fifth of sucre de canne ( sugar cane syrup), four fifths Rum Blanc Agricole (as rough as you can get but not more than 80% proof!) and the juice of half a lime together with all the bits of lime pulp. The important part is to mix it all together with your swizzle stick. We bought one just to show you how exactly to aerate your ti punch. The ‘ti’ is actually short for Petite, but since Hans and Will made them rather large this seems somewhat of a misnomer.

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The following day we motored upwind to Marie Gallant to a beautiful palm tree lined white beach. Possibly the epitome of the Caribbean shoreline.

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The object of our trip to Marie Gallant was the distillery at Bellevue. We reached the distillery on hired scooters, which are eminently suitable for travel out here as long as you don’t encounter a load coming the other way which takes up the whole road! One such load that nearly side swiped Will was a very wide piece of welded steel mesh to be used on a building site. It would have been rather ironic had such a load put him out of action.

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The distillery was wonderful, although not working at the time of our visit. The primary source of power is a very large single cylinder steam engine.

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The boiler, which produces steam for the distillation, as well as for the engine, is fired using crushed sugar cane. The crushed cane is the product after all the juice has been squeezed out to make the fermented potage which is then distilled into rum. A very energy efficient system. The sample room was however open and although only a very small libation was taken, it was extremely good.

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Unfortunately later that day, Christine from the island packet fell and broke her leg, and although the local hospital was very good, nevertheless Marx took Christine and the island packet back to Antigua the next day, with the expert help of Hans, who deserted Mackenzi for the day, to rejoin her in Dominica. Although one might expect a few thrills and spills on a rum cruise we can assure you that rum played no part at all in Christine’s bad luck Indeed, being deprived of Marx and Christine’s company for the rest of the cruise was bad luck for all of us!

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In Dominica, which was our next island, we had an excellent dive on a reef which had some beautiful coloured corals

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We were also expertly driven round the island by Paul, after hiring a minibus and visited the Macoucherie distillery. A very agricultural affair after the swish distillery in Marie Gallant. This distillery was again not in operation but, had it been so, we would have watched the undershot waterwheel whizzing around to produce the power for the massive wheels of the cane crusher.

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They were trying to mend the crusher when we were there as well as the boiler. They do however produce very good rum when they get their act together. We sampled quite a lot of it!

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On the way back we picked up freshly fallen mangos, had a paddle in the river and saw a snake, which we couldn’t identify although it looked dangerous!

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During Paul’s guided tour we swam up a gorge high in the mountains to a waterfall, and then showered under a hot natural spring when we had stopped playing with the rushing water. The whole place smelt slightly of sulphur which is perhaps why the people in Dominica live to the ripe old age of 120 or so.

If you come to the Caribbean you must go to Martinique and the distillery at Depaz. Although it was only started in 1920, after a catastrophic volcanic eruption that killed 30,000 people in 3 minutes in 1902, the distillery is a model of both managerial and energy efficiency.

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The steam engine that runs the place is magnificent. With a great whooshing sound the single cylinder drives an enormous flywheel, which in turn drives four cutters and crushers and then a generator at the end of the line which in turn can drive the conveyor belts and pumps for the cane syrup.

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One is directed to follow the red road which takes you past the overshot water wheel that used to power the plant,

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And gives you very good views of the chateau, elevated above the distillery, which used to house Monsieur Depaz and his 12 children.

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At the end of our tour we were fortunate to meet Christine, the marketing director, who came to lunch with us and then gave us a tour of the chateau. The chateau is used for weddings and the original period dresses on the various manikins around the chateau give the house a lived in feeling.

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St Lucia was our next distillery. This distillery has just been taken over by Angostura from Jamaica. Although we were taken from Marigot Bay Marina (an excellent base) by a very cheerful and economic taxi driver, we were slightly disappointed by the distillery despite their pot still for special batches.

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The molasses which is fermented and then distilled into rum, was imported. They also exported some of the refined but unmixed liquor, direct to Tesco in Britain, where they do their own mixing and matching. More a distillery of expediency than the honest start to finish product of Depaz in Martinique. What a variety, however, of some very fine rums and what a delightful set of people to travel with!

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We haven’t mentioned Brian and Pippa from the other beneteau who were also part of the ‘team’ .Brian has been the Commodore of the Jolly Harbour Yacht Club for the past two years and has set up a very successful youth training scheme for the local youngsters. This has been a great success and hopefully will introduce sailing to many more people than were able to sail previously. It was an honour to travel with him even if he did drink more vodka than Rum! His one saving grace was that Pippa, his partner and crew, spoke nearly fluent French, which was very useful for all of us!!

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Christine came with the cruise to St Lucia and then came back on Atlantia to Martinique.

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She kindly hosted us to an excellent dinner in her house next to the chateau and introduced us to her companion, a rotweiler called Brownie, who had a very nice character, when you got to know him!

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Our cruise finished back at the Iles Des Saintes with a dinner together with our old friends Jill and Mike from Altair, who were sailing down south to leave their boat in Trinidad for the summer. It was great to see them again.

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We hope you like the pics.

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Love from Atlantia.