Circumnavigation Complete!

We left Guadeloupe and headed for Georgetown, Bahamas where we would finish our circumnavigation.

We estimated that it would be an 8 day sail and our chosen course would take us within 5 miles of the west coast of the island of Montserrat. We set out at sunrise and within an hour, we noticed there was some weird clouds forming over Montserrat. As we got closer, we realized that the volcano was ejecting a huge cloud of volcanic ash. We had no intention of stopping at Montserat so we had never done any research on it. We didn’t know if this was a regular occurence or if she was just getting ready to blow. We changed our course to pass east of Montserrat so that we were upwind of the island and Toboggan wouldn’t get covered in ash.

Two days later, when we were passing by Turks and Caicos, we heard a cruise ship on the vhf radio talking to the US Coast guard co-ordinating an air lift for one of the passengers. As we scanned the horizon, we saw the helicopter hovering over the cruise ship to lower down the basket to evacuate the passenger. We did not hear how they were injured. I’m sure there are a million ways to get hurt on a cruise ship...not the least of which would be the extensive buffet.

There were no further incidents for the rest of the trip which went very smoothly. We arrived at Georgetown after 7 days and dropped anchor officially completing our circumnavigation. After we popped the cork on a bottle of champagne, words failed us for a toast. It had been an amazing adventure and I was overwhelmed by emotion.

We spent our time in Georgetown, Bahamas visiting our favourite spots. We had cold beers at Chat and Chills bar and conch salad made fresh by the guy at the water's edge. We played volleyball on the beach then cooled off by snorkeling in the crystal clear blue water.

After 5 days, we hauled up anchor and headed towards home. We plan to make landfall in Fort Pierce, Florida where we will take down the mast and ship Toboggan back to Ontario by truck. Steve will be returning to The Walter Fedy Partnership at the beginning of March and I look forward to a finding a challenging sales position. We are very much looking forward to returning to the Kitchener area, seeing our friends and family again and starting a new adventure on land.

Guadeloupe

It was a day and a half sail from Barbados to Guadeloupe. We had not arrived by dark on the second day so we decided to anchor in the lee of Marie Galante island and sailed the remaining 12 miles the next day then anchored in a bay off the capital city of Point-a-Pitre. On the second night, we heard a marching band on shore and decided to take the dinghy in to see what was up. To our surprise, it was a carnival-type parade with over 20 different marching groups representing different towns and villages on the island. Although the sun was just going down, it was still quite hot but the groups danced up a storm dressed in bright coloured costumes and elaborate head dresses.

The next day, we rented a car and drove into the mountains to the national park. We had wanted to hike to some waterfalls that looked beautiful in one of the tourist brochures but when we arrived at the park, we were told that the access had been destroyed in the earthquake in 2004 and had not been yet repaired. We still hiked as far as we could through the lush green forests to a lookout where we could see the two waterfalls off in the distance. After working up an appetite, we had some grilled chicken on the side of the road where birds landed on the branches just feet from our table and 3 little weasel looking creatures skulked in the bushes next to us, no doubt waiting for us to drop them some crumbs.

The next day we sailed up the west coast of Guadeloupe to a small bay called Anse de Barque. There wasn’t much there except palm trees and little fishing boats which was just fine by us. We walked up the road and flagged down a bus which took us 10 miles up the coast to the Jacques Cousteau Marine Park, a protected coral garden with a statue of Jacques on the bottom in 30 feet of water. We didn’t go visit Jacques. We just sat at a café overlooking the water and watched the dive boats come and go.

Our last stop on Guadeloupe was Deshaies which is a really cute little fishing village with lots of restaurants serving French and Creole cuisine. We stopped in for lunch once day and had delicious grilled red snapper with spicy Creole sauce. Yum… We also ran into some old friends in Deshaies. One boat we had met in Menorca, Spain. One boat we had met in Los Palmas, Canary Islands and the other boat we had met 3 years ago in Bahamas. This world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Next stop… Bahamas.

Barbados

There is only one protected anchorage in all of Barbados and that is Carlisle Bay just south of Bridgetown on the south west of the island.  When we first arrived, there were about 15 yachts anchored who like us, had just crossed the Atlantic.  We met cruisers from all over the world and swapped stories about the crossing,  compared crossing times, weather, injuries and broken boat bits. 

Our first priority once we went to shore was to get to the Canadian High Commission to renew our passports.  Although we had 10 months left before they expired, we had run out of pages for countries to stamp us in and out.  The renewal process went smoothly but we were told the passports would take 4 weeks to complete due to Christmas holidays and New Years. 

The Bajans are really big on Christmas.  There were decorations everywhere and Christmas music blaring from the stores.  In the square downtown, they had shipped in 20 evergreens from somewhere and decorated them with lots of lights.  The ground was covered with pure white gravel to look like snow.  It put us in the Christmas spirit, despite the 30 degree heat.

On Christmas day, we went snorkeling with some friends on three wrecks that were sunk nearby in Carlisle Bay.  I’m not sure how long they have been down there since the coral was just starting to take hold but there were tons of bright colored fish, the likes of which we have not seen since the Red Sea. On Christmas night, we went over to their boat for mulled wine and Bajan Great Cake (like our traditional Christmas Cake only gooier and more rum).

We did some sightseeing by bus and visited St. Nicholas Abbey, one of the island’s oldest surviving plantations.  At the centre of the plantation is a  17th century Jacobean mansion and a working Rum Distillery.  The bus ride to the Abbey was just as interesting, first following the west coast of the island then cutting through the interior of the island that is covered with sugar cane.

For New Year‘s Eve, all the boats anchored in the bay were invited to the local sailing club for a BBQ.  We sat on the deck overlooking the bay and watched the sunset while we munched on our shrimp kabobs and fish kabobs.  At midnight, there were two fireworks displays within ¼ mile each side of where Toboggan was anchored so we took our dinghy back to Toboggan, made some popcorn and watched the fireworks from the deck. 

One night, we took a bus ride to Oistin which is famous on the island for it’s Friday night fish fry.  Right beside the fish market which is very busy during the day, there is an area with lots of brightly painted picnic tables surrounded by 20 shacks which cook up a wide range of seafood.  Steve ordered the shrimp kabobs and I had the grilled snapper.  Our meals came with two Bajan classics…macaroni pie and “peas and rice” but we still managed to stuff down a side order of fish cakes.

Another day, we took a bus ride to Bathsheba which is on the East Coast of Barbados.  It is known for the best surfing waves on the island.  The day we went, there were lots of surfers and we sat for a couple hours watching some good runs and some spectacular wipe-outs.  A couple days later, the beach was closed since the winds were up and the surf and undertow became too dangerous.  Of course, the surfers still wanted to go out so they had to have policemen patrol the beach to keep the crazy surfers away.

After a fabulous three weeks in Barbados, our passports were completed and we were free to leave the island.   We said goodbye to our new friends and prepared to set sail for Guadeloupe.

Atlantic Crossing

We timed our crossing to coincide with the end of hurricane season in the Atlantic.  We had calculated that the 2711 mile trip would take us 21 days at an average speed of 5.5 knots.  This was our 3^rd big ocean crossing (already having done the Pacific and the Indian Oceans) so we were not at all nervous.  In fact, we were looking forward to the trip.

The first 2 days were light winds and we struggled to keep the spinnaker full.  This was not unexpected.  The seasonal winds didn’t really kick in until around Cape Verde which was 500 miles south of us so we just concentrated on going south for a couple days before we turned west.    After only 2 days, the winds picked up and we had ideal conditions for  almost 2 weeks.  We had moderate winds (15 – 20 knots) from a consistent direction (north east), no squalls and only 6 foot swells (which is about as small as you will get in the Atlantic).

We saw lots of dolphins.  A large pod would show up every couple of days and swim with us for 10 – 20 minutes.  My favourite part is when they can be seen coming from some distance away at high speed, jumping over the waves.  They look like the cavalry coming to the rescue.

We also had a few flying fish end up on the deck each night.  Usually we can hear them when they hit the deck and they frantically flip about, I assume trying to launch themselves back into the water.  This tends to leave a lot of scales and slime on the deck but it also alerts us to their presence so we can often flip them back in the water while they are still alive.  Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t hear them and only find them days later hidden in behind some fuel jugs or lines on the deck rotting away and stinking up a storm.

We only saw one whale and very few ships on this trip.  We saw a couple of freighters in the first two days when we were within 200 miles of the Canary Islands and then no more until we approached the Barbados 19 days later.  On day 8, we passed a “tall ship” and Stephen called them up on the VHF radio for a little chat which was the highlight of our day.

In the past, we have lost a lot of weight on our passages due to difficult sailing.  This trip, we gained weight.  I had prepared lots of things in advance like chili, and pasta sauce and curries.  Plus, the trip was so smooth, I did some baking on the way and we ate really well.  After 2 weeks, we were thinking “this is way too easy… Anybody could do this”.  I think we jinxed ourselves.

On day 15, the winds rose, the skies clouded over, squalls came at us from several directions.  We would get the swell from one side and the wind driven waves from the other, which created an extreme rocking motion.  Cans in the cupboard and books on the shelves banged back and forth.  We had to stuff towels and socks etc. in the cupboards to stop the noise and potential damage.  This went on for 5 days and was particularly troublesome at night because you can’t see the squalls coming.  If it is a really big squall, it will show up on radar but a small squall sometimes doesn’t show up and so you get a few surprises. During the night, the squalls often brought rain which blew horizontally through the cock-pit and we would get soaked.  (The photo below is what a squall looks like.  The next photo is what a nice day at sea looks like.)

After a couple days, the waves and the swell had increased up to 10 - 15 feet so we could no longer sail our course.  We had to head off course by at least 20 degrees and then tack back and forth along our path which added many extra miles to the crossing.  In the end though, we completed the crossing in 19 days and 8 hours which was less than the 21 days we had estimated so we were pleased. 

We arrived in Barbados in the late afternoon and checked in through customs, immigration and quarantine in the commercial port of Bridgetown. After completing all the formalities, we left the port and dropped anchor in Carlisle Bay just before dark.  We were too tired to inflate the dinghy and lower it into the water in order to go to shore so we spent our first night in Barbados watching the sunset from the cockpit, sipping a glass of wine, while we listened to the reggae music coming from a beach bar on shore.   I think we are going to like it here.

Las Palmas, Grand Canary Island

Last weekend, Las Palmas hosted WOMAD which is a festival of music, art and dance from around the world. For 4 days, three stages featured different performances from 8 pm until 3 am in the morning (not that we old folks ever made it past midnight). Our favourite performance was a high energy group from Zimbabwe called Siyaya.

It has been rainy on and off here in Las Palmas for weeks but the other day, we had a downpour. The anchorage filled with mud and and sticks and leaves and other run off from the land. After a while, a huge slick of bunker oil (which is really thick like tar) covered the surface of the water in the anchorage and very quickly adhered to every surface including the hull of our boat, our dinghy, our anchor chain, not to mention the beach. We took the pictures shown right away but the damage actually got worse. Tthe anchorage was very rolly so as the boat rolled, the tar that was still on the surface of the water spread further up the hull of the boat, about 1 foot.

After 2 days, the oil dispersed in the anchorage (sadly it probably just washed out to sea). Steve tried many different methods to remove the tar. First he removed the thick tar with a razor blade. Then he had to wipe the hull down with bilge cleaner that has a degreaser to remove the remaining slime but the oil still left behind a yellow stain. He tried several stain removers but we are at this point still left with a yellow stain along the water line of Toboggan.

Many of the 50 boats in the anchorage at the time submitted a claim to the port authority for the damage to their boats. We received notification from them that they are trying to determine who exactly is to blame so that that entity will be responsible for compensation. Unfortunately, we do not want to wait for the slow wheels of bureaucracy to turn so we are going to keep to our schedule to leave the Canary Islands next week and head out across the Atlantic.

Lucky for the port authority, the oil slick never seemed to enter the marina beside us which was at the time filled with 250 huge international yachts in addition to hundreds of local pleasure craft and fishing boats. The yachts are here for the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) that is scheduled to cross the Atlantic as a group leaving today. We will wait a couple of days until after the ARC leaves so that we don’t have to weave our way across the Atlantic through hundreds of boats which is especially annoying at night. (not that we could keep up with many of them that are 60 feet and more and therefore much faster than Toboggan).

It has been interesting being here in Las Palmas over the past two weeks to watch some of these gorgeous yachts arrive. There have been lots of events planned for the participants which we could only watch from afar but we did enjoy (from the comfort of our own cockpit) the demonstration that was put on by the local marine rescue service where they lowered two men and a basket from a helicopter into the water to rescue a person off a boat and lift the body back up to the helicopter. Personally, I didn’t find it that reassuring. If it looks that difficult in calm weather, I wouldn’t want to try it in rough seas. Here’s hoping for another safe and injury free passage for our last ocean crossing.

Unless something truly blog-worthy happens in the next couple of days, this will probably be our last entry until we arrive in the Caribbean just before Christmas but once we leave, you can track us daily on our website on the “Where are we page”.

Updates to Our Website

Steve has simplified the “WHERE ARE WE" page on the website. It is now much easier and faster to see where we are. The page now has an web embedded map in it. We will update our position using our SSB radio as we move along on our journey including during our ocean passages .
Steve has also added a “Google translator” button to the blog page since we have noticed we are getting visits to our web site from all over the world. In addition,  "Photographs", the budget info -"Our Allowance", as well as the map indicating the last leg of our journey has been updated to reflect recent changes.

Thank you all for visiting our website. Remember, when you make comments on the blog pages, we can not see your email address. If you would like a response, please leave your email address or email us directly.