Los Haitises national park

A sail across the bay brought us to what our cruising guide describes as the best anchorage in the Caribbean, if not the world. Well, it ain't half bad anyway.

We're the only yacht. The soldier guarding the park showed no interest in our despachio, despite the time and effort we'd put into securing it. Nearby is a tiny island, or a big rock, full of birds - big white egrets, a grey heron, a couple of turkey vultures, a couple of frigate birds, and an osprey. Swifts that nest in the nearby caves flit about the trees on the rock. Quite an eclectic collection of birds! The osprey picked up a large fish in front of the boat, and spent much of the day flying about.

Willy's cave close by:

Willy was a hermit who lived in these many-roomed caves. Couldn't work out when he was there, but the various rooms are handily sign-posted as living room, kitchen, etc. The living room had a nice view:

Paddling by the mangroves:

Aren't those roots just great?

More caves that way, this time with drawings on the wall. Though I think I've done better than this one:

And I remember getting into trouble at school for drawing like this:

Were they painted by cave-children I wonder, and did they get into trouble for it?

The place was too beautiful and peaceful (Dominican towns are very noisy!) to leave in a hurry. Near dusk, the guard shouted across to us, and we raised anchor and left. But we sailed just around the corner to another perfect little shelter (except for the 4 am invasion of sand flies) and slept there. We sailed back early next morning and checked in again with the Commandancia. The officials were friendly enough, but the procedures were ridiculous. we should have just sailed where we wanted, without saying a thing to any officials.

Dominican Republic

Santa Barbara de Samana, Dominican Republic.

We left Tortola at dawn for what we hoped would be a 48 hour sail. An early departure would allow for an early morning landfall, and a whole day of leeway should we be delayed for any reason.

We were very much delayed by light and shifting winds, and little of the usual following trade wind. After 48 hours, it still looked like a long day's sail ahead of us to make land across the Mona Passage, but a strong wind from the north came up and I kept the boat moving as fast as the waves allowed for in an effort to arrive during daylight. Sometimes we were hitting 12 knots, on a reach, which is pretty good for a 9m boat, but I was always on the edge of reefing further, and the day wasn't exactly relaxing. Flying fish took off in front of the advancing boat, and far off, I saw the spouts of humpback whales, who have come to Samana Bay to give birth. In the late afternoon, we saw one closer up, but there was no breaching or tail slapping and so on. Just a glimpse of the back of a whale amongst the waves and foam.

We arrived at dusk, and found the Navionics charts I'd just installed on my phone to be more detailed than CM93 charts I have on my laptop. We sailed in and anchored near the town at the end of the bay. What a noise! We were anchored too close to a very noisy bar - half a mile away? - but too tired and shook up from the day's sail to move. We slept through it, and moved up the bay to where it is quieter in the morning.

Our Dominican Republic cruising guide describes the Samana Bay as some sort of cruiser's heaven, unspoiled, clean and authentic. The guide hardly mentions the whales, which are here for three months of the year and are a big tourist attraction. We've found this anchorage to be the most uncomfortable in all we've been in in the Caribbean. It is open to the east, the direction of the prevailing wind, so I'm not sure why we allowed ourselves to be convinced by the book that it would be anything but rough. The water is dirty enough that we don't swim in it - and this might be the first anchorage in the Caribbean that we've been put off that pleasant activity. The administration is many layered, but every layer is pedantic, extremely slow moving, and barely literate. Dollars were extracted from us, over a hundred by the hustler in immigration alone (we're used to handing over trivial sums on all the other islands we've visited).

After a week here (waiting for our latest crew member to fly in) we decided to move on, spurred on when we saw a huge cruise ship anchored outside the bay. We were anchored by the jetty where the cruise ship people land. The town is transformed. The townspeople are dressed in their best and there are bands along the pavements playing what I guess might be traditional music, but we haven't heard any of that in the previous week, so it's hard to tell. The shopkeepers have their stalls out selling all the usual tat for tourists, much of it made in Vietnam, the same stuff we've seen on sale in many countries wherever cruise ships dock. The pavements are lined with hustlers and blocked by large, slow-moving bewildered-looking mostly pink people.

We visited the Commandancia del Porto to get a 'despacho' - a permit to visit Los Haitises national park across the bay from here. We arrived at the office with enough shopping for four people to survive for a week comfortably in that wilderness, only to be told that we would not be allowed to spend a night there. We could leave the following morning, but we would have to be back by the same night. This was a great disappointment - the park was the main reason we'd come here. We fancied some time away from the incessant music and traffic noise and all. A week walking about in the forest and swimming on the reefs sounded just about right, but it's not to be. We also found that we wouldn't be allowed to anchor anywhere else in this huge bay, despite our dodgy guidebook informing us that we'd find one anchorage after another, each more perfect than the previous one. The officials were very pleasant about insisting on our limitations, and I did manage to squeeze one concession from them. I told them that out boat was so slow that it would take all morning to get to the park, and all afternoon to get back (it's 10 miles) so we'd have no time to look around. So we were allowed report back the following morning. These limitations are for our own security, though we have wandered about here for a week without feeling the slightest danger, and I pointed out on my charts on the phone the various places - between islands and mid-ocean - where we'd comfortably slept without the need for security. They understood - that I was a strong man! - but couldn't change the rules for us. They spent nearly an hour copying our names, and passport numbers onto a sheet of paper - a job anyone familiar with writing would do in a minute or so - in order that the paperwork would be ready the following morning. I've arranged to be at their office at 5am tomorrow to collect the paperwork so that we can sail off at first light. Might as well make the most of it.

Tortola

West End, Tortola

We sailed the 90 miles from St Maarten to Tortola overnight, leaving in the afternoon, and arriving around dawn. Wind was F3-4 all the way, from dead behind. Many people tack downwind in their cats in such conditions. I prefer to sail directly dead downwind, with as much sail up as will keep the boat going at a decent speed. In this case, the genoa poled out at one side, and the big jib on the other. I hank them to the one forestay, interleaving the hanks which I have numbered with a marker pen so that they go on in the right order. On the end of the halyard, I attach a block, with a short piece of rope over the moving part. I tie the heads of the two sails to each end of the short bit of rope, and hoist the sails. The block ensures I can tighten the luff of each sail evenly. We sailed that way the whole night, without needing adjustment. It's probably as much sail area as a spinnaker, but it has the advantage that I can drop all sail within a couple of seconds by opening the halyard clutch if a squall came.

I was woken at midnight by a shout - my daughter had spotted dolphins. I was in a deep sleep, and have seen dolphins many times (though none at all coming across the Atlantic, and very few in the Caribbean) and might have preferred not to have been woken. But it was my daughter, who was clearly delighted, and I indulged her. Good job! The dolphins were very large and slim, I think a species I haven't seen before. But we could only see their silhouettes, because the sole source of light was a crescent moon approaching the horizon in front of us. So the dolphins were leaping high - 3-4 feet out of the water - in the silvery yellow reflection of the moon in the sea. Quite beautiful.

On arrival, we found the anchorage full of moorings, and the charge written in the mooring balls as $30/night. We are used to anchoring for free now, and we eventually found a good spot, right at the end of the bay. Taking advantage of our shallow draught and the fact that this bay is so sheltered there is virtually no swell, we anchored pretty much on the beach, setting a stern anchor to keep us off in case of a wind shift.

Don't need to dive to check this anchor. It's fine.

Clearing in was a long and tedious process - 5 copies of one form - and three other long forms, and a charge of $20.19 for the privelege. We had to specify a date of departure too, though we hadn't settled on that, and of course, the weather always needs checking before choosing a departure time. I said we'd stay 2 days, though the place is very attractive and we could do with more time off sailing, but we have someone to collect in Dominican Republic soon, so we need to crack on. And the reason we are here in this port is because it is a very short ferry trip from the British Virgen Islands to the US Virgin Islands. I need to take that ferry, as in the process I will get a 3 month entry permit to the US, which will allow me into Florida later on the trip (We are not allowed to simply sail into America, the Land of the Free - we have to arrive with a commercial carrier). When I was asked what we would be doing here, I laughed, and only just managed to refrain from telling the official that we had sailed hundreds of miles to this beautiful place, and I would be spending most of my time here dealing with clearing in, clearing out, and getting a visa. I found out that the very short ferry trip - a couple of miles - is $55!

We had official difficulties at St Barths too. We cleared in using their self service computer system programmed by an idiot. When we came to clear out, we found that inputting our username/password didn't pull up the details we'd already put in, and we needed our passports to repeat the process. The passports were on the boat, and it would have taken over an hour to get them, so we gave up, and sailed out without clearance (which we have done on some other islands usually without repercussions). But in St Maarten, we weren't allowed to clear in because of the lack of clearing out papers from the last port. So we sailed out of the Dutch side of the island (which was a cruise ship dock, taking up to 4 ships a day, filling the streets with lumbering tourists being targetted by the local huscksters selling all sorts of crap at high prices and filling the anchorage with jet skis and trip boats) and round to the French side which was much pleasanter. There we met the most officious official so far, who only let people into his office one at a time, locking others out and telling them to wait. Inside, he filled in the same computer form we'd used in St Barths, until he asked for our clearance papers for the last port. Not having them brought proceedings to a halt, until at last he called his superior, who told him to clear us in anyway. Phew! I see what the Americans mean when they complain about government officials, though if we had a bigger more integrated government involvement we might get what we have in Europe - the freedom to come and go across most of a continent without any forms to fill or charges made.

St Barths

St Barths is full of super yachts, motor boats up to 5 stories high, exclusive shops and the rich and famous. We found something more interesting on the west end of the island.

Up in the hills, in the forest, a moving shell, a hermit crab!

We picked it up for a good look at it, and then put it back on the ground and waited for it to come out of its shell. I lost patience, saying it was as bad as waiting for a tortoise. I turned around, and there was a baby tortoise by the path!

We didn't know there were any on the island...

It wasn't the only one.

Much more fun than shelling out in those exclusive shops (sorry!).

:)

Laminating the hulls after drying them out.

Back in Antigua in December, I set about fixing the hulls, after they'd been sitting stripped of gel coat for 6 months. The yard had washed the hulls several times to remove the solutes. There is so much advice around about the treatment of osmosis, and much of it contradictory, I eventually settled on this interpretation of the problem, and did my best to implement the recommended solution.

There were some obvious problems with the laminate:

The pale area in the centre is an area where the original glass wasn't wetted out sufficiently. The whiteness is caused by air in the laminate. Fortunately, this was the only area I found like that.

And here is a badly implemented repair. The lighter area of laminate near the bottom of the hull was still sticky! So the resin had never gone off - I guess whoever did the repair forgot to add the catalyst.

These problem areas were relatively small and easy to repair. However, the both hulls showed cavities between the gel coat and the chopped strand mat:

Under all the blisters, this was apparent. The white areas are where the resin hasn't filled the glass properly. After sanding, those areas looked like this:

I'm convinced that these voids between the gel coat and the glass was the cause of the blistering. Water gathered in the voids, and osmotic pressure resulted in the blisters. I'm hoping elimination of the voids will fix the problem.

I sanded both hulls, removed any damaged glass or glass that hadn't been wetted out properly, and replaced it with glass and epoxy. I then sealed the hulls with a coat of epoxy, and spent many days filling and sanding to fill all those cavities. Apart from the unpleasantness of sanding glass fibre in tropical heat, there were mosquitoes, sand flies, and the noise from the islands generating station which is next to the yard to contend with. The weather was kind until I started laminating. I did a small area one day, and despite the difficulty of sticking on sheets of glass onto the bottom of a hull in the heat and the wind, I was pleased with the result. The following day was all blue sky - not a cloud in sight - so I set about laminating a bigger section. All went well till I'd nearly finished, and the sky went dark and the wind kicked up, and a terrific squall ruined all my work within 10 minutes. Not only was my work spoiled - I had to pull off all the glass I'd stuck on - but it meant I'd lost a lot of the specially slow hardening tropical epoxy I'd imported. Well, I had'nt lost it all. Quite a bit ended up on my skin. After clearing the mess from the boat, I went to the shower block, and doused myself in vinegar - the only safe way to remove epoxy from the skin. Boy, that caused those mosquito bites to sting. So, rubbed down with vinegar, I turned on the shower to find the water was off! I eventually found a stand-pipe in the yard that worked, and in desperation, abandoned modesty and washed the mess off.

I did no more laminating until I had the boat moved indoors. This was much better. No sun and no wind to complicate things, but the mosquitoes preferred the lack of wind and were pretty relentless, day and night.

One good aspect of having a catamaran is that it is easy to adjust and change the propping arrangements. The whole boat can be supported by just the beams, so the hulls can be worked on from end to end without supports getting in the way:

Note the kitchen waste has been connected to a hose, so that water from the sink doesn't dribble down the hull.

I worked 40 days non-stop to repair and re-laminate the hull. Sometimes my eyes would wander...

Somewhere, under the rainbow.

At last, the work was done.

Ready to go...

Splash, and within a couple of hours, we were anchored off Great Bird Island, and had the island to ourselves:

On to Barbuda:

And now in St Barts. Tomorrow, St Maarten...etc

Osmosis!

I'd been hoping to tie the boat up amongst the mangroves somewhere for the hurricane season, and go back to the UK to work for the summer. But the appearance of blisters below the waterline persuaded me to have the boat lifted out in Antigua instead.

One of the last jobs I did on the boat before leaving the UK was to paint on 4-5 layers of epoxy paint to prevent osmosis, followed by £700's worth of Coppercoat antifoul. I had measured the moisture levels in the hulls with my moisture meter soon after the boat had come out of the water. It seemed fairly dry to me. Not as dry as I would have liked, but dry enough to risk leaving the gel coat intact. There were very few blisters anywhere. A bit of epoxy would be enough to prevent osmosis I figured.

That was wrong. It doesn't take much moisture for osmosis to start. And it seemed the epoxy wasn't much of a barrier coat - I used epoxy paint, but not paint especially formulated as a barrier coat. That, I appreciate now, is an important difference. I've heard also that osmosis often begins when a boat is first taken to the tropics.

Well, however it began, and whatever miscalculations I'd made, I figured the sooner I stripped it the better.

Read all the websites about stripping gel coat, and they all say it is definitely a job for the professionals. This wasn't an option for me, as there was only one gel coat peeling machine on the island, and the price the fellow gave me for the job was far too high. And he wouldn't let me hire the machine from him. So I imported another machine from the US, did the job, and sold the machine on to the boat-yard. That fellow's monopoly on gel coat stripping is bust!

The job really wasn't that hard! It was a bit difficult under the flares of the hull, but the rest was straight-forward. Under the gel coat is a layer of chopped strand mat, which isn't really structural so it's not that important that sometimes the machine removed a bit of that. Still, it was best to leave that in place as it provides a bit of leeway when it comes to sanding and faring in the hulls again. What made the job harder and quite unpleasant was working in the heat. Overalls were unbearably hot and quite impractical, though mask and eye protection and ear defenders were essential. The fiberglass dust soon coated sweaty skin until the itching became unbearable. Even a cold shower wouldn't stop the itching, but eventually I was informed that scrubbing myself with a scouring pad in the shower would relieve me, and so it did.

Removing the wooden beaching shoes. I'd glued them on with some mastic that bonds less strongly than the gel coat is bonded to fibreglass. Strong enough to keep the wood in place without any bolts, but easy enough to pry off with mallets and wedges without causing damage.

Antigua with the heat, sunshine and wind is a fine place for the fibreglass to dry out. As the boat dries, salt and soluble parts of the resin are brought to the surface, and this stuff needs rinsing off occasionally. I've arranged for the yard to rinse the boat once a fortnight for the first few weeks.

I hope to ship a pallet of glass, epoxy and all I need to finish the job over to Antigua. It will be cheaper buying the stuff here, and will save a lot of running around trying to source things. I plan to give it a couple of coats of epoxy, a layer of new biaxial glass, then fill and fair till I've had enough, a couple of coats of epoxy barrier paint, and then more Coppercoat.

The Coppercoat was good! It needed scrubbing every week or fortnight, which at first I thought was a bit much, but I saw other people having to scrub more often, and to the point where they'd scrubbed through their antifoul.

So, this blog will go even quieter than usual for the next few months, till the British summer and the Caribbean hurricane season is over.

A bit of fibreglassing, and then off to the leeward islands, and Cuba? Florida?

Last anchorage in Guadeloupe

At our last anchorage in Guadeloupe. I expected the smoke from the volcano in Montserrat to give us a nice sunset later.

Here's a 360 degree view of the anchorage:

  

and here's the sunset, with Montserrat on the right and Scrumpy on the left (a bit hard to see).

Unfortunately, as idyllic as this anchorage looks, it wasn't as great as we'd hoped. Amongst miles of coral reefs in a marine park, we expected the best snorkelling. There were coral heads still standing tall, but they were mostly dead and covered in algae. The sea floor was littered with broken dead coral branches. There were some beautiful fish still, but against the backdrop of the almost uniformly brown coral, it was difficult to extract much pleasure from amongst the devastation. The lack of any new growth anywhere suggests that the damage wasn't caused by some local phenomenon from which the reef is recovering. I guess the warming of the water or the increase in acidity is likely to be the cause.