January 2009

January 18
In French, cruising translates as « plaisance » (a pleasant activity ). When I decided that I wanted to spend a year in the boat, I was thinking in terms of « plaisance » (gentle breezes, just strong enough to get you from point a to point b, sunshine, warm sandy beaches and turquoise water). What we had experienced until now had not been in that category. The rough weather and tight deadlines made our trip from France to Madeira feel like a job more than an enjoyable adventure. I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did enjoy, at least, parts of it. It was highly cultural and the people we met were interesting. However, the actual sailing part left a lot to be desired. Having been in the Caribbean now for almost three weeks, I’m beginning to rediscover the « pleasant » part of sailing. The girls and I arrived on the 31st of December in St Martin. The boat had suffered a bit during the Atlantic Crossing (Both autopilots needed to be repaired , as did one of the sails and a number of smaller things). Sébastien also returned to France for personal reasons. We therefore finally « set sail » once again on the 12th of January (although we had moved a little around the Island of St Martin before that time). We decided to head for Angulla, because it is nearby. We now have one autopilot, which doesn’t work very well, but its better than nothing. The other one is still being repaired, and although we had a repair guy sighting on Monday, I‘m not going to hold my breath. Anguilla is about 2 ½ hours away from St Martin. There is only one harbor where you are allowed to dock. When you arrive, it doesn’t seem very welcoming. However, appearances can be deceiving. I think that Anguilla is one of the Caribbean’s beast kept secrets. It really depends what you are looking for. If you want long white sandy beaches, turquoise water, few tourists, good food and friendly people, Anguilla is the place for you. I only found two places on the entire island to buy postcards. Only a half a dozen shops even sell t-shirts, etc. for tourists. The first day, we took the tender to the beach, so the girls could run around. When we arrived, a very nice person helped us to dock and offered us a hand out of our boat. He gave us a quick rundown of the good places for food and music. Ok, it was a way to greet the tourists, but it wasn’t pushy, just nice. At first we were suspicious, because people aren’t usually nice, unless they want something. Well, in Anguilla, they are. The customs officials also served as tourist information board. The beach was gorgeous and over the next few days we met a number of Americans, including a couple who has been coming there for the last 17 years, for winter, and a woman from DC who is married to an Anguillan. She said that her mom didn’t like to visit because there wasn’t enough shopping. As I said, this is not a island to « do « , it is a island just to « be » and relax and enjoy. The evening before we left, we had what I could consider the best ribs in the world (voted best ribs in the Caribbean )….but I will say that they are probably equal to Cincinnati Ribs King ribs, just to make sure that my family is still on speaking terms with me…. Anyway, we had these ribs from Sammy’s in Sandy Ground sitting in the cockpit of the boat while watching the sunset….as I said, I am now finding the « pleasant » part of sailing again. The next day, we rented a car and went on a tour of the island. One day is enough, as there just isn’t that much to see. We went to a gorgeous beach, Shoal bay ,to go swimming and snorkeling. I bought a post card, and it looks exactly as it does in real life. This is one of those beaches dreams are made of. We then visited the capital, The Valley. As the island only has 12,500 inhabitants, the Valley is very small. Probably about the same size as downtown Rockton, my hometown. We went to a market and bought a papaya, a mango and two avocados…Yum! I made a fresh fruit salad with the papaya and mango and guacamole with the avocados…who says you can’t eat well on a sailboat?? We then went to a restaurant, called Tasty’s. Once again, the description was low key (it had been recommended by the American woman whose husband was from Anugilla). It seemed like a nice place, but we didn’t expect anything fancy. We were amazed. The food was fabulous. I had coconut crusted whitefish, with a spicy mango, coconut sauce and excellent accompaniments, and tequila key lime pie for dessert. We have vowed to take Sébastien’s parents there when they come back at the end of the month.

Now we are back in St Martin, in Grande Case, docked a little way from one of my favorite places, the Calmos café, where you can sip your cocktail on the beach while watching the sun set. Tonight they have a band which was playing soft jazz and there is a nice breeze in the air.

January 22
We spent a few days in Marigot (the French capital of St Martin), because we needed to replace the batteries in the boat and stock up on food. Its funny, as we are not working this year, we figured that we would have a lot more time to do interesting and intellectual things. Well, its not working out that way. First of all, a boat is like a house. There are always things to fix. I call it our « big hole in the water into which you pour money » (thanks, Dad, for the expression)…secondly, when you don’t have a car, things just take a lot longer. It took us over two hours to go get the batteries (about a 15 minute car ride), because our dingy is just a step above an old riding lawnmower in terms of speed. Also, when we go on foot, we have the girls with us and therefore, we have to stop and check out everything in our path way (branches, rocks, sand, etc.) and the trip inevitably takes about three times as long. In addition, we have school for the girls, laundry in public laundry mats, etc. So basically, our days disappear before our very eyes, and indeed, even though we aren’t working, we still can’t seem to figure out where our time goes. However, I would have to say, that life is a lot less stressful (unless I’m spending time trying to figure out the CNED, the national French education system….). Sometimes we have to wonder if we are getting as much as possible out of this year. The answer is yes and no. A year is short, and we still need to deal with things from our regular lives (taxes, car insurance, etc), so this, when abroad, can sometimes be stressful and frustrating, and sometimes we let our regular life impinge on our happiness of this year because that is how we are used to living. Tonight, I realized, however, that we are getting some amazing time with the girls. We actually see them 24/7. This can be a lot, but they teach us many things too. They make us take the time to appreciate the things around us and ask questions that we wouldn’t even think to ask, and thus expand our horizons. One of their favorite things at night is to go up on the deck with Sébastien to look at the stars. Tonight Marie saw a falling star….she was so excited. Her awe is a gift for us this year. We also get to see them learning new things with school (although school is frequently the bane of my existence, it is worth it to see that the effort is paying off and I’m actually able to teach something to my children). They are also speaking fluent English (even amongst themselves when they play). Tonight, after the prayer, they decided to « call Jesus« , and I heard Marie say to Constance… »I have Jesus on the phone…he can talk to you now…. ». The conversation tickled me, even more so because it was in English.

January 22
Today, after three weeks, we found out that the auto pilot actually died during the trip across thee Atlantic and we didn’t know it. All attempts at trying to revive it have been futile, and so therefore, as of tomorrow, we will be able to give it a proper burial at sea once we are the owners of a new autopilot. The good news is that this one should last us the rest of the trip. The bad news is that we have yet another expense. As I said, boats are expensive, even when you have your own handyman on board. Tonight we are in Grande Case, and we went to one of my favorite places on the earth, called the Calmos Café 5 I just realized this is the second time I‘ve talked about them!). You get to sit in lounger lawn chairs, with your feet in the sand and a cool drink in hand, while your children play in the sand and the waves crash nearby and you get to watch the sunset….pretty amazing! And today, we had no rainstorms, which was nothing short of a miracle, but highly appreciated. Yesterday, it rained about 15 times. It never lasts long, but when you are sleeping with your window overhead, and rain starts falling on your face, its never pleasant. Or when you have just set the table outside for breakfast, lunch and / or dinner and it starts to downpour, its frustrating…. I know that I shouldn’t complain, as at least the rain here is warm…..

Once the autopilot is installed, we are going to head to St Barth’s. Its about 3 hours from here and the wind should be right tomorrow. We wanted to go to St Kitts and Nevis, but without an autopilot it would have been a long trip, and now we really don’t have the time if we actually want to see something when we are there. St Barth’s is supposed to have superb sites to anchor and snorkel, so it should be enjoyable.

January 29th
We returned from St Barth’s yesterday. We got the autopilot today. It hadn’t arrived when it was supposed to and we were tired of waiting so we decided to head to St Barth’s instead. I even got to « barre » (steer the boat?) for an hour, and I did a pretty good job. I had a little help from the motor but the waves were high and the winds were relatively strong, so I‘m proud of myself. Anyway, the trip to St Barths wasn’t too bad. We enjoyed being there. The local people were very friendly (and very chatty). The mega yachts were, well, huge. For the first time in my life I saw someone washing a garden hose (no not using it to wash something, but actually washing the outside of the hose with special cleaner….I personally can’t imagine ever being bored enough to wash my garden hose…or rich enough to pay someone to do it….). We spent the first few days discovering the capital , Gustavia, and the surrounding areas. Our boat was to the West of Gustavia, out in the harbor (far away by tender…especially when the motor stopped working). The area was called Corossol, and it had the International Ocean Museum, which happened to be the biggest museum on the island, and turned out to be someone’s personal collection of seashells. It was charming, with beautiful shells from all over the world. What was even better is that the man who started it gave us a personal tour. In addition to telling us all about his seashells, he also told us about life growing up in St Barth’s. He was 87 years old and had been the son of a fisherman, in a family of 8 children. He said that everyone fished when he was growing up and the quality of life was terrible, because there were too many fishermen and not enough people to eat the fish. The country was highly underdeveloped before France came in to help (relatively recently, from what I’ve understood). He started his seashell collection when he would go fishing with his father and his brothers, and has now made it his lifetime passion. It was fascinating and it was wonderful to learn more about the island and its people.
The day before we left, we rented a car. Many of the places we wanted to see, as in Anguilla, were part of a Natural Marine Reserve and therefore it was difficult to get near them by boat. Renting a car allowed us to truly discover the island at our own pace. We had done a quick « drive by » in an hour, when we had visited a few years ago, but it was nice to revisit and to be able to spend time in the places that interested us. We hit all of the major beaches, except one, because we simply couldn’t figure out how to get there (short of parking at the end of the airstrip of the airport….). We did see it from afar, however, and it looked beautiful, but crowded , which isn’t that surprising given the number of hotels which hid it from the public eye. We did find a number of gorgeous beaches which were exactly what we were looking for with few or no people on them (definitely my kind of beach). We ate lunch in a little restaurant, very off the beaten path (but apparently known to tourists), called the Santa Fe. The food was excellent and the view was magnificent. The torrential downpour which fell just before the coffee was served was the only downside.
We left yesterday, with high winds and slightly high seas, but no forecasted rain. It only took three hours to get back, and although the captain was tired, it went well. This morning we got the autopilot and took care of customs clearance, and then we headed to another quieter spot. The first place we went to was called Friar’s bay. The beach was lovely, as was the free internet. The rain was frustrating, but it came while we were swimming, so we figured wet for wet….not a huge deal! We then moved on to Grande Case (yes we are back) and watched a gorgeous sunset, and had tomato soup and homemade bread (I made it, even though it was from a packet…it was very good). Since we arrived, we have had another two rainstorms…just one of those days, I guess. It’s a good thing that we put two anchors down.

November 2008

Last time I wrote, we were in Alicante, Spain. We have moved a great deal since then. The weather has continued to not cooperate. Basically, since we left France, we have been hiding from the storms. We ended up spending 5 days in Alicante. Nice city, but 5 days was about four too many. I did meet some interesting people though. I met one woman while I was doing laundry (you see my life is very glamorous!). She came in and started speaking to me in pigeon Spanish, and I responded in a mixture of pigeon Spanish, with an occasional word of German (completely unintelligible), until we realized that she was French and that we had a language in common. She was trying to figure out how to use the washing machine, and wanted me to explain it to her. You see, she, of course, had a washing machine on her “boat” ( a 19 meter power yacht….) but the item she wanted to wash seemed a little heavy for her machine. My guess is that her machine is usually operated by one of the crew on the boat, and not by her personally. Anyway, we started talking about life on the boat. They had actually come down for the weekend because they are trying to sell their boat. I mentioned that I noticed that there were a number of boats for sale, and said that perhaps it was due to the increasing fuel prices. She said that it cost them 5000 EUR to fill up their gas tank! Yikes!!! That would do it for me! Its funny…people who live on boats come from all different walks of life, and the relationships you form transgress all normal social boundaries. I guess that it is because everyone is equal before the sea. No one really has an advantage over another, and the sea is always stronger. I think that it is also because those who choose to live on their boat have experienced something so powerful that they feel a bond with others who also understand it. It is hard to explain to someone who has never navigated before. I know that I definitely have an impassioned relationship with sailing and my current home. There are times when I love it, and feel that it is magical, and there are times when I hate it, and would rather be anywhere but in the boat. Anyway, I’ll get back to that later…I have transgressed from my narrative….
Once we were finally able to leave Alicante, we worked our way down the coast to Cartegena. Our new challenge was that our GPS maps had not followed the rapid expansion of the Spanish coast (and in particular its expansion into the sea…in the form of landfills and artificial fish havens). We arrived in Cartegena on November 1st . . We arrived on Saturday night, in the pouring rain (once again). Our portable VHF was not working once again, as it was wet, so we were unable to contact the port authorities to find out where to dock. A Russian guy came out on the dock from his boat and motioned over to where we could dock and helped us tie up. We ended up staying in the spot we originally pulled into. The harbour was small and quaint, and cost only a fourth of the price we had paid in Alicante (very good news). The city of Cartegena was lovely. The people were very kind and we enjoyed wandering through the streets soaking up the ambiance. We continued to eat our way through Cartegena as we had with the rest of Spain. It was here that we eat our first paella, had fabulous pastries and discovered white garlic soup (gazpacho with almonds and garlic…yummy!!!). The city is currently working on major restorations, including a roman theatre. The restorations throughout the city have been done with taste and respect the original feel of the city. This city was charming and definitely merits a second look. We left Cartegena on November 3rd and continued to make our way down the Spanish coast towards Gibraltar. Our next stop was Almerimar, next to Almeria. We were able to anchor a little bit on our way to Almerimar, which was nice as we were tired of being in harbours. As we had a lot of distance to cover in a short period of time and as we had very unstable weather, we were unable to go ashore in any of the places we anchored. We arrived in Almerimar on November 5th. The harbour was charming. It looks a little like Hilton Head, SC (or Disneyland…..). Apparently there is a very large English community in the area, and we met a number of English speaking people. The city is a great place to stop if you are sailing. We met a lovely Irish couple who were also living on their boat, in the harbour while trying to decide where to go next (Ireland, Canada, or Portugal). We had cocktails and “chips” (fries) with them one evening in an English bar (we missed the fish part of the meal, because we got carried away chatting, and there was none left by the time we got around to eating). We were also able to see them for an “apero” (French for cocktails) in our boat the evening before we left. Jim had sailed across the Atlantic a number of times, including one time solo…I’m impressed. Beatrice had only started sailing a year before when Jim fell in love with this boat, on what should have been an “inexpensive” weekend getaway (ah…the things we’ll do for the men we love and the boats the love!!! J ). Anyway, we really enjoyed their company and hope to meet up with them again some day in our travels… While in Almerimar, we also rented a car to see the surrounding area. We rented a Fiat Panda, which is very minor step up from a smart, in terms of size and a step down in terms of quality of motor (for that it’s a step up from a homemade go-cart in a card board box). I shouldn’t complain, as it got us where we needed to go. Our first stop was Almeria. We visited Alcazaba, an ancient Arabian military fortress which has been beautifully restored, including magnificent gardens, and which gave us a gorgeous view over the entire city. The next day, we headed to Grenada, and the Alhambra, a beautiful palace and military fortress. To get there we drove through the Sierra Nevada mountains, with their snow capped peaks. I’ll be the first to admit that I really dislike snow, but I was in awe of their beauty.

We left Alermerimar with the intention of going directly to Gibraltar. Unfortunately, the weather was not with us, so once again we ended up anchoring to avoid rough weather at night, and once again we realized that our GPS map wasn’t quite up to date. We finally made it to Gibraltar on the 13th of November, near mid morning. I’m actually quite pleased that we decided to head into Gibraltar in broad daylight. One reason was that the arrival is complicated, because the bay is filled with oil tankers, cargo ships and military ships, and it was complicated to weave in and out of the different vessels. Another was that a less fortunate vessel had actually sunk right in front of the rock and despite the fact that it was broad daylight, we almost ran aground on the wreckage. If the tugboat hadn’t called out ‘French sailboat, French sailboat’ and told us that we were actually heading through the disaster zone, we might have joined them. We couldn’t get into the harbour initially, so we ended up anchoring right next to the airstrip. Luckily there aren’t many planes that actually fly into Gibraltar …a few at noon and a few at 6:00 pm. The rest of the time, it was quiet. Sebastien’s parents joined us in Gibraltar for two days, along with two new crew members. Gibraltar is a very tiny…uh …country. Its really just a city. It is very English (My mother in law and I were both thrilled to go to Marks and Spencers) and members of our crew were excited to get fish & chips and ale. We were able to see the monkeys that Gibraltar is famous for (thanks to Jeb for the suggestion) and we were able to take our first real shower in 2 ½ months (thanks to Denis and Claude for letting us use their hotel room for an hour!). Showering on the boat (and or in Public showers) is one of my least favorite parts of this whole experience. Most of the showers we had were cold (even when it was also cold outside) and I get the extra bonus of showering with the girls who have long conversations about the color of my underwear, my various body parts and their various body parts, much to the amusement of those nearby. Anyway, back to the cruise.

You probably wonder why I haven’t actually gotten around to putting this on my blog before. Well, the trip from Gibraltar to Madeira was actually one of those things I would actually probably prefer to forget. I had already told you of our trip to the Balearic islands. Well, that was a walk in the park. This trip made us realize that I am indeed not meant for any kind of « crossing« of a body of water in a sailboat. We picked up two additional crew members in Gibraltar : Thierry, who continued with Sébastien across the Atlantic and Michel, a colleague of Sebastian’s , who wanted to get his first real taste of sailing. Well, we had an adventure. The trip was scheduled to take 5 nights. Sébastien assured me that we would catch the tradewinds and that the first two days might be a little rough, but that it should be realtively smooth sailing for the entire crossing. Well, to make a long story short, it was never smooth sailing. Our two new crew members were very seasick for the first two days (the girls and I were medicated, and Sébastien, although a little green around the gills, was ok). The winds varied between 25-30 knots and the waves were 6-8 meters high, with a crossed current. The full moon which was supposed to guide us, came out for an hour or two per night (when it wasn’t hiding among the clouds), usually around 3 am (when my shift ended). At one point I came on for duty at midnight and Sébastien was giving me an overview of the situation, so I could take over. It was as follows « Well, a huge wave just came up, and in addition to almost falling overboard, I also almost laid the boat on its side in the water…uh…goodnight! ». It was pitch black, with no moon, strong winds (avg of 28 knots) and 8 meter waves. I am not a sailing goddess, in fact I don’t know that much (although this trip made me realize that I know a lot more than I give myself credit for). I told him that if he felt that was responsible story for a captain to tell his first mate, that he could just keep her company for another hour or so on deck - he learned his lesson well and the following night, he explained the situation better (although the conditions remained the same). I have never in my life been so happy to see land as I was when we finally saw Madeira. Frankly at that point I wasn’t sure that I ever really wanted to get back on the boat. I was quite looking forward to getting home to the states, dry land and a warm showers and bed that didn’t move. I realize that I did learn a number of things on that long and grueling (not to say horrendous) trip. First, as I said before I probably know a lot more about sailing than I give myself credit for. Secondly, Hiss He Ho, the boat we are on, is a very safe boat (which was reassuring as my husband would be crossing the Atlantic with it a few days later), and lastly, I am really not meant to sail more than 24-36 hours. Anyway, this is not a surprise to anyone. Anyway, after our arrival in Madeira, we rented a car to visit the Island. Sébastien had always told me that he wanted me to see Madeira and now I understand why. I was enchanted by the people and the landscapes.
The girls and I left on November 26th, to be able to be home in time for Thanksgiving and Sébastien left on the 30th of November, after the arrival of his final crew member.

We spent the Month of December mainly in Rockton, with my Dad and Verna. We also went to Iowa to visit Michelle, Jens and Baby Luke and to Cincinnati to visit my mom and her family. I’m not going into more detail because if I do, January won’t get published until March. Needless to say, I had a fabulous time, but I was ready for some warmth after non-stop snow!