RIDERS ON THE STORM

I spent most of January cruising in the British, U.S. and Spanish Virigin Islands. Even though the Jonas Blizzard/Nor' Easter that hit the United States east coast last week was 1500 miles away. My cruising trip in the Caribbean was affected by it's formation over the Atlantic. The easterly winds we had been enjoying since we started sailing on January 12th suddenly started to veer out of the south. As shown in the video below. The X on the video shows the approximate location of the boat I was on:



I was feeling pretty good as I first heard of the storm approaching the northeast area.   I had recently left the northeast to spend a few weeks cruising in the warm Caribbean to escape part of winter. I did not expect the storm being 1500 miles away for it to impact my travels on board. But, when the winds switched to the south and started to feed into the storm the waves also picked up. When the reefs along Culebra  were hit by waves it made for very poor visibilty for snorkeling for several days. Though on the plus side we did have a nice sail over to Fajardo from Culebra. Though it was a sobering lesson on how powerful these winter storms can be.

A SAILOR LOOKS BACK AT 2012

It's New Years Eve hard to believe how fast this year has gone by.  I did not put as many miles (a little over two hundred) under the keel of BIANKA  this year compared to years past but, I did have a wonderful year of cruising. Though work and some unexpected maintenance issues did get in the way. I also bought 200 feet of long overdue replacement anchor chain. I also installed AIS on board  which I will write about in the new year. I also installed  a new battery instrumentation panel  at the helm. Which made monitoring the battery current and voltages much easier. All in all it was still another great year as I look back on it.

January found me in the Leeward Islands starting off in St. Thomas, St. Johns  and then sailing over to the Spanish Virgin Island of Culebra for a nice little warm water  break from the winter.


This was also the month that the Bianka Log Blog reached over one hundred thousand page views. So it was time to celebrate too.

In February I found one of the batteries in the 48 volt propulsion string was no longer taking a charge.

I spent the next several months investigating the issue and finally figured that a parasitic load from one of the battery meters was the cause of the problem. With careful charging and test the battery is once again up to snuff and worked fine all season. I was glad I did not have to purchase a new battery.

March found me in Ocean City Maryland. After seeing a nice little warm weather window my gal and I drove from DC to a beachfront hotel with an 11th floor balcony view of the Atlantic Ocean for a few days.

 We had the beach to ourselves and were able to dine without making reservations. The smell of the sea also gets one thinking about getting the boat back in the water.


April 12th was the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. It bought back memories of when I was living on board BIANKA at pier 59 in New York. That was the pier  that the rescue ship Carpathia bought the lifeboats from the ill fated Titanic and was only a few piers north of the peir where the Titanic was supposed to dock.

May found me and my gal in the Bahamas. The Exumas specifically via stopovers in Nassau.  A new area for me and one of some great memories and interesting sights.



I also worked on my first major repair of the electric propulsion system in five years by replacing the shaft coupling. Replacing the original steel one with stainless steel.

June was all about getting BIANKA ready for the season and launching. The battery issue had been solved the mast lights checked. The prop cleaned and polished and finally BIANKA was splashed.

In July work reared it's ugly head  eating up two weeks and my gal's beach vacation ate up another week. But, BIANKA was in the water with 200 feet of new anchor chain ready to go when time permitted. Also I worked on some finishing touches on the solar bimini.

August was another two weeks of work followed by another week on the beach. But, I was finally able to get back on board just in time to see another full moon a real treat.

September is usually the end of summer for many but, I view it as a new beginning. Some become melancholy with the end of the Labor Day weekend while I look at it as the time of less crowded anchorages  So I was looking forward to making my annual cruise to New York.

September 11th was also the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Since BIANKA and I were docked in New York then and actually felt the impact of the planes and witnessed the collapse of the buildings I felt somewhat of an obligation to try and be back in the harbor on the anniversary. But, it was not to be,  A broken pull cord and some frozen screws on the Honda 2000 generator soon put an end to those plans. Still I got to see another full moon on board so it was not all bad.

October had some of the highs and lows of the season. I saw a nice weather window and finally took BIANKA on the cruise to New York. I did something different regarding my electric propulsion system on this cruise. Which was to electro sail using about 10 amps to effectively negate the prop drag and actually propels the boat along a two knots when there is no wind. This technique worked really well and since EP is so quiet it does introduce the noise fatigue running and vibration that running a diesel would introduce.



After a night anchored by Ellis Island  it was a nice sail up the Hudson River:





where BIANKA and I anchored for a few days off of Hook Mountain enjoying the fall colors.



Two days after returning back to BIANKA's mooring Hurricane Sandy hit the area:


The storm surge lifted BIANKA and her mooring and dragged them across the channel. I found her over a thousand feet away across the harbor. Still floating and relatively undamaged. I was very lucky.  Since BIANKA had power available from her solar panels and wind generator I decided I would move back on her until power was restored back on the mainland. Which is where I spend most of the my time anyway during the season.  I had all the comforts of home even more so as I had power available.

The beginning of November still had the area recovering from super storm Sandy. Gas shortages had boat owners coming down to the docks draining there boat's fuel tanks so they could keep their home generators running. I recovered the Honda outboard that went to the bottom of the harbor when the dingy flipped during the storm. It will be a winter project to try and get it running again. There were a lot of  lessons learned from Sandy by me and many others too.

December was another month of a few weeks work that came my way. Just in time to pay some of the boatyard bills. Also it was time for holidays and looking back and also planning for the new year. I'm also way behind in some posts here on the Bianka Log Blog. So I will use the winter to catch up and publish about some of the projects I've been working on. Days are already starting to get longer and soon it will be time to starting thinking  the new year and season.

SOUVENIRS

Memories, they can't be boughten.

They can't be won at carnivals for free.

Well it took me years to get those souvenirs

                                                                          -John Prine

 

 

When I travel I'm always on the lookout for souvenirs of the trip. I might buy something on occasion but, only if I know I will be able to use in my day to day living.   I don't need something that is just going to sit around on a shelf  and become part of ones "stuff" taking up room and serving no useful purpose in my life. But, if I know I can really use something I might buy it. For example a number of years ago I bought a bag of salt from one of the then local residents of Salt Island in the British Virgin Islands while on a cruise in the area. I still have some left and use it when cooking along with memories of that trip.

Though my favorite type of souvenir is something I find myself either snorkeling or walking along a beach . Best of all they are free and free is good! I have a small stainless steel sugar spoon that I found snorkeling near Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands years ago. It's on board BIANKA being used. Though I wonder how it came to be on the sandy bottom where I found it. What kind of boat did it fall off? Who dropped it? It will always be a mystery but, will also trigger a memory for me of the day I found it. My most recent trip to Culebra was no exception. While swimming around one morning I spied this souvenir laying on the bottom:

I know it's just a cheap plastic clamp. But, I found it near the boat on the bottom of the harbor in Culebra. It still works and I'll use it on board for something. When I do, it will bring back memories of the trip to the Windward Islands. At the very least it's better to have it on board BIANKA than to have it remain just a piece of plastic on the harbor bottom in Culebra. It's just my kind of souvenir.

CAPT. MIKE IN THE LEEWARD ISLANDS PART FOUR: CULEBRA

"I mixed a drink and went out on the balcony to sit down. The town still looked deserted. Far out on the horizon I could see the neighboring island of Culebra, and from somewhere in that direction came the shuddering thump of explosions. I recalled Sanderson telling me that Culebra was an aerial

bombing range for the U.S. Navy. Once it had been a magic place, but no longer."

-Hunter S. Thompson, THE RUM DIARY 

Hard to believe that this peaceful little island was used for target practice by the U.S. military but, it was for many years. I had heard about the demonstrations against the practice on nearby Vieques but, had never heard about Culebra. The practice started in 1939 in preparation for World War II. It seems the topography of the island and it's beaches were excellent training grounds for the invasion of the Pacific Islands by U.S. forces. By 1971 the people of Culebra had had enough and started protesting. In 1975 operations were switched to Vieques.

Culebra to my mind has once again become a magical place and one that I hope to get back to soon hopefully with BIANKA. The magic on our second morning started for me as I awoke a little before dawn and witnessed a real nice sunrise to start the day:

Capt. Billy and Pat went into town looking to provision up with some ingredients for salads. Being an arid island most produce comes in by ferry from the Puerto Rico mainland. Though there was some mechanical problem with the ferry and it did not operate the previous day. Things were a little up in the air and the island suffered an economic hit because the Puerto Ricans from the mainland were not able to get the Culebra for the weekend as they usually did.  So the island was pretty quiet even though it was a holiday weekend.  We decided to take a  two hour tour around the island with one of the local taxi drivers. He took us up into the hills where we enjoyed some real nice vistas:

and traveled down to the other side of the island to visit some of the lovely beaches including Flamingo Beach. Which is just as pretty from the air:

as it is from the shore:

The next morning the magic continued as just before breakfast a beautiful rainbow seemed to emanate from the middle of the harbor:

Since this harbor was a known hangout for pirate ships it was very easy to assume that some pots of gold plunder might be located on the bottom of the harbor at the end of the rainbow.

Culebra has just about everything a cruising sailor might need especially those who don't need the nightlife of a San Juan or St. Thomas or some of the British Virgin Islands. There is a grocery store and a farmers market with a fellow who comes over by ferry one day a week. There will soon be two places where one can get fuel. But, a lot depends on whether the ferries are running. So one needs to be aware that schedules and supplies do not always coincide.  But, there are a few bars where one can go to mingle with other cruisers. Including one appropriately named The Dingy Dock:

A restaurant and bar with a great waterfront view. You can easily tell when it's happy hour by all the dingies tied up to the dock:

There is a convenient cut across the island with a lift bridge that is opened once a year to make sure it is working. It's height and water pipe prevent most cruising boats from using the cut.

It is however convenient to take a dingy to the other side of the island to visit some of the very beautiful snorkeling and dive sites around Culebra. Which is why we came here in the first place. Here are some videos I took with my GoPro camera snorkeling some of the reefs off of Culebra:

Though the videos do not really do justice to how nice most of the reefs around the island really are. Our original plans called for us to stop at Culebra and then head off to Vieques and finally sail the the Puerto Rico mainland and getting off the boat at Farado. But, once we got to Culebra the feel of the place and beauty of the reefs made us decide to just stay here for the rest of the charter. Culebra is certainly a place I will want to come back to.

CAPT. MIKE IN THE LEEWARD ISLANDS PART THREE: HEADING TO CULEBRA

It's been many years since I was in Charlotte Amalie harbor St. Thomas. We picked up a charter here on a 44 foot monohull back in the 1980's named Valkerie and another time when we had a weeks vacation on board one of the Windstar cruise ships in the 90's.

We left the St. John area bound for St. Thomas in late afternoon with a favoring trade wind and tied up to a mooring for the night near the old Navy submarine base area in St. Thomas. The area now houses a marina and some cruise ship docks. The shoreline nearby was littered with the wrecks of boats whose owners failed to reason with the Hurricane season and other storms:

The next morning we dropped off the mooring and headed out West Gregerie Channel for Culebra:

We passed Sail Rock. A uniquely shape geological form that is said to have fooled many pirates to appear to be a ship under sail.

They would sometimes fire a warning shot at it. The sound of which would echo off the rock surface and make it sound like return fire. Only when they got closer would they see that it was only a rock and not another ship to be plundered.

Things were moving along nicely as OPUS towed the twenty foot dingy:



We were breezing along when all of a sudden there was a crash at the stern. The dingy had crashed into the boarding ladder and smashed it up pretty good:

Well that's sailing! You are cruising along fine and then something happens not always in a positive direction. Capt. Billy scrambled and was able to save the bottom half of the ladder but, were were never able to quite get it back into shape to use. After about three hours we were in the channel heading into Ensenada Honda Culebra's major harbor:

 After we cleared the reef at the entrance we turned to port and picked up a mooring in Ensenada Dikity.

There were a few boats already there when we arrived:

Including this boat which seemed to have something missing:

CAPT. MIKE IN THE LEEWARD ISLANDS PART FOUR Click here.