Heading for Bermuda

Leaving St Martin

We are now anchored on the French side of the island and leaving later today for Bermuda. Some of the warranty work has been done on Octopus; some parts have still not yet arrived. The G2 upgrade has been done and we will be interested to see how it has improved the motor’s performance once we our on our way.

The radar is now operational and the AIS is up and running, which will make night watches easier.

We have a new crew member called Phil who has settled in and already feels like a member of our family.

I will write again when we next reach land…..I must now go and have my last swim in the warm Caribbean Sea.

Arrive St Maarten – Monday 28th April

So far a don’t think much of St Maarten, not that we have been anywhere apart from the chandlery and a very small supermarket. We are stuck here until the work on the boat is complete. We arrived in the dark even after our 2am start; the winds got lighter as the trip went on and we were reluctant to use the motors until necessary. We sailed right into the anchorage and anchored just off the channel which leads onto Simpson Lagoon (the windlass is now working). The next morning we passed though the swing bridge and anchored as soon as possible in the Lagoon. We then went off in the rib to find a marina and make arrangements to get some work done. We have picked the wrong week, carnival is on today and tomorrow and St Maarten is closed until next week, not a good start. We end up mooring in Simpson Bay Marina. We spend a few days clearing out lockers and putting away all the kids clutter ready for the crossing. Octopus has her first good hose down for a long time and looks nice and shiny for it.

The Onan generator man came to mend the generator and finds the sender unit needs replacing; that should be an end to our problems. The jib has gone to the sail maker for repairs and the Lagoon dealer has now been in contact to do the warranty work. We will have to move to the French side of the island to get the work done and I am looking forward to leaving this place. The only plus side I can find is the Bar/internet café has a very small swimming pool that the children want to spend all their time in. Still no crew, I will look locally today, although I think James, Susie, Lizzie and Katie are more than capable to crew Octopus during the day, leaving Chris and I to do the night watches between us.

Wreck of Tirla, Green Island

As we were approaching Green Island we could see a catamaran ‘anchored’ very near the reef. As we got nearer and the waves were crashing over her we realised she was on the reef. Sailing around here, a reef is one place you definitely don’t want to end up! When we arrived it took us a few attempts to get the anchor to hold in the soft sand and the two boats in the anchorage seemed a bit jumpy about their anchors, so we guessed there holding isn’t great. Is that why the catamaran is on the reef, we asked ourselves. Did she drag? But there had been little wind for the last few days?

The next day Chris went to investigate and met two men unloading stuff from ‘Tirla’, for the owner they said; the owner had apparently been taken off the boat the night before. Chris was on the outside of the reef and didn’t want to get too close so didn’t find out any more. Next day he took Susie in the rib into the lagoon behind the reef and then Kayaked up to Tirla. They discovered all the anchors on board were stowed and not used so she hadn’t dragged her anchor. Things on board her had been turned over and Chris guessed more things had gone missing. Slowly she was being pounded by the waves and being pushed farther onto the reef. A couple of days later Chris and Susie went back again to see if she had broken up any more. Chris wanted to rescue her; it seemed such a shame to let a good boat go to waste. While they were there the owner turned up on another boat with some helpers. The owner looked very sick, one of the guys said they had been sailing by in the night and hadn’t seen the reef. They were going to try and get her off the reef with floatation bags, Chris offered the use of ours and any help if they needed it. We never heard any more, later that day we saw them leave and when we left Green Island the following day Tirla was still sat filmy on the reef. Who knows if she will ever leave in one piece or if she will be pounded into little pieces as the weather changes?

Green Island

We sailed to Green Island on the 21st of April. Green Island is a small private island almost surrounded by reefs with a couple of beautiful little anchorages. It is the sort of spot everyone dreams of, a few little sandy beaches with a back drop of tropical plants of all colours that look just like they had been specially planted, yet you know they weren’t, lizards running over the sand and hiding in the plants, a sea, warm and blue, with the odd turtle popping its head up to say hello. We could have stayed here a long time and it will be one spot I know will draw us back.

Tabasco arrived shortly after us and the children enjoyed getting to know one another again. The following day the other yachts in the anchorage moved on and for four days it is just the two of us. We decided to get both the kayaks out as this is an ideal place to let the children go kayaking on their own. We spent lots of time snorkelling over the reef; there are some beautiful corals and wonderful, colourful fish. On Wednesday evening we all got together on the beach for a beach Barbeque. The children had great fun playing with fire (supervised of course) and toasting marshmallows. On Thursday we all went over to Tabasco for August’s 6th birthday party, Lena had prepared a feast of sweet delights, consumed surprisingly quickly by all the children and helped by the adults. Our generator had been playing up that morning, Chris had changed the oil again and serviced it but it was showing low oil presser so we thought it was best if we leave the following day go somewhere more populated in case of problems.

Next morning the Generator was still being erratic and Chris had another look at it. We decided if we could run the generator long enough to give us the battery power to get out of the anchorage and passed the reef we could then sail all the way to Jolly Harbour and even anchor under sail if necessary. Everything was ready, off we go, or not, for some unknown reason the solenoid on the windlass had decided to stop working! We had a lot of chain out and I didn’t fancy bringing it up by hand. Chris shorted-out the solenoid, which meant Chris sitting down in the storage hold next to the junction box while Susie shouted out when to lift the anchor, while I took the helm.

The sailing became slower as we moved to the more sheltered side of Antigua. A few miles from Jolly Harbour we decided to try to motor-sail and the generator behaved its self all the way. We motored into Jolly Harbour as night fell with the main sail still up just in case and managed to pick up a buoy in the half-light, which saved messing about with the windlass.

Chris wanted to get to the Onan dealer in St. Maarten’s to sort out the generator as soon as possible. The winds were good for Monday and Tuesday, but then dropping to nothing for quite a few days so we knew we had to get going. We did a big shop on Saturday and decided to stick around on Sunday just in case ‘Norn’ managed to make it around, so we could all say our goodbyes. We ended up saying goodbye over the internet, but hope to meet them in the Azores. We left Antigua at 2am to sail to St Maarten.