March 10^th

7:00am sharp we were up for the lift out. Lance, the South African who operated the hoist and managed this branch of Bobby’s was good at his job, out she came to reveal a forest of coral. No wonder the log didn’t work! I had cleaned the log itself but where it stuck out of the hull, it was surrounded by so much coral that it was in a little eco-environment of its own, where no current could penetrate.

All of this growth was scraped off fairly easily and then she was travelled to her resting place for bottom sanding and painting. I decided to make the most of this time by doing some varnishing inside the boat. Becky moved out to Windancer IV.

The boat yard was populated by numerous dogs, that were all loved and cared for and several cats that lived in harmony. Molly was very popular but a little daunted by the reception committee, however she soon fitted in.

For our first night on board Windancer IV we were joined by Maris and Jan from Vrijgezeilig. They were staying on to sail her to next regatta in BVI, hopefully she would be repaired in time. Her forestay had broken just 50 metres from the finish with full sail up, this was a dramatic end to an otherwise very good race for them. By emergency tacking head to wind they prevented the mast from coming down. However as they were sailing close to the wind all the crew were lined up on the rail balancing the boat, as they came round the boat put that rail under the water. All of the crew went under the water momentarily then popped up as the boat righted itself head to wind.....a dunking for everyone but the helmsman!

We bunked down on Windancer IV.

March 8^th & 9^th

The Heineken party was topped by the Walers, of Bob Marley fame. By the time they came on it was gone midnight and of course they were a backing group to Bob M who was the real star. Ironically they had on this occasion a white singer on the whole though it was a bit disappointing, however the evening for both Becky and I was stolen by the DJs, these were the top DJs in the Caribbean doing their show pieces on stage. There was lots of very clever mixing aided by Apple Mac, as one song was faded into another, and a bass that you could fell vibrating your chest. The music was varied and the very fast changes meant that the very mixed audience always had something to cheer.

No3 in the Caribbean was accompanied by four girl dancers who did things that I had not previously believed possible! At one particular frenzied moment I was convinced that if she carried on wiggling it like that her bum was sure to fall off! The No1 in the Caribbean was a complete surprise, he was white, short and in access of 250lbs! He had a green T-shirt on with Sexy blazoned across it, well each to their own I suppose. About half way through his excellent session, he shouted to the crowd that he was hot, hot, hot and at that point ripped his green T-shirt down the middle and onto the floor to reveal a mass of white flesh daubed with Heineken across his more than ample stomach and Caribbean colours on his chest. At this point the music really took off and he leapt up and down on the spot, defying gravity and in serious danger of suffering concussion from his stomach that was still on the up when he was on the down.

All in all a great night

The following day we finally left FKG marina and set off across Simpson bay to find Bobby’s marina where the boat was due to be hauled out. This was a slightly hazardous journey as we knew we could be scraping the bottom in places, we followed the buoyage and got there OK but a boat was in the hoist so we had to stand to for about 30min. When it was our turn to go in, it was blowing 20 to 30knots across the haul out dock. I manoeuvred her around to get her into the dock but as I turned we went aground, there was a lump of sand just at the point I wanted to be to get her to drift back into the dock. A lot of gestulation came from the shore as to what I should do,  the howling wind turned this performance into an extravagant mime. Eventually I got her going backwards quickly enough in a straight line to squeeze her in and avoided the rusted piles just downwind of the entrance. These were of great concern to the travel lift operator, I guess a few boats had come to grief here.

We spent the night in the travel lift dock, surrounded by boats that were of a ‘owned by single male’ nature! We entertained Karel from Bombardino, Becky cooked him a curry to the recipe of Ian from Mikado, it was excellent.

A good day.

March 6^th & 7^th 2009

Two more days in St Martin relaxing, we decided to stay on the dock at FKG as the weather has been very warm but squally and generally very windy, also the surrounding anchorages are overcrowded with visitors because of the Heineken Regatta. The rain however is always warm and when the spray from the dinghy hits you the sea is warm too. We have braved the journey out to Ziggy’s cat a few times and got soaked each time, Molly in such situations has a change of tactic, instead of standing proud at the front of the dinghy, turns and faces the engine and hunkers down in disgust at all the spray.

Over the last two days we have watched the casualties coming back from the Regatta: so far at least 7 broken masts, numerous sails completely blown through, forestays snapping, one boat left on the reef at the north of the island, a T-boning resulting in lots of damage (a chartered Beneteau 51’ thought he was on a starboard tack and had right of way, a J122 on a starboard tack knew he had right of way and so the Beneteau rammed the J122 midships. The latter, a much lighter boat was badly damaged), finally some poor chap seems to have suffered numerous breaks, including pelvis and ankle and was air lifted off his boat. The crews party all night after the races and then go out and do it again the next day! Bombardino, our friends from Holland have a ripped main sail. Karel the owner has offered to take Jordan racing in Antigua, let’s hope he gets through it OK, but very good experience for him. 

Ziggy finally ran out of water on her Cat out in the bay so we helped her bring it in to the dock to fill her tanks. The Cat is a Lagoon 440, she had two anchors out. Ziggy and Becky took the anchors up while I took the helm. As I stood on the fly bridge, pleased to help, I did think this was not the most ideal time for my first experience of helming a cat: 20 to 25 knots of wind in a very crowded anchorage. The anchors came up and we were free, we got into Simpson Bay Marina, the wind dropped to 15 to 20 knots and there was the refuelling dock where we needed to pick up water. Ziggy said that John always liked to bring her in starboard to, so I had to turn her around to present her starboard side to the quay. In a cat this is much easier than in a monohull, you reverse one engine and drive the other forward and it spins round. Of course you do have to remember which one to reverse and which one to drive forward but with that figured out we came alongside peacefully, albeit with fenders a little high but no damage done. Leaving was even more fun as the wind was blowing us onto the dock and cats have a lot of windage: we left without incident but had to do a very sharp ‘to port’ to avoid hitting a docked boat on the opposite pontoon. Because of the wind I had to come off the dock straight and only when clear could I turn.

Our trip back to the mooring was literally full of froth, the wind was now gusting 30 to 35 knots, we tried one or two more places to anchor, looking for more sheltered spots but it was so crowded we always ended up too close to another boat. SO we went back to the original spot that she was in before, down went the anchor, it held for a while and then we started scooting backwards toward the boat behind as we dragged the anchor across the sea floor. I ran to the helm and sent her forward. Up came the anchor again and we moved forward, this time Ziggy put down a full sixty feet of chain in 9ft of water, it held. We then took the second anchor out in our dinghy and put that down too. The wind howled around us, the only one really appreciating was the dog, who likes to stand on one bow of the cat like a statue with hair streaming wildly back in the blow. We left for the comfort of the saloon, Mollie stayed up front in the wind!

When we were content that the boat was not moving, we went ashore; Ziggy treated us to a late lunch that got later as we lingered on. In front of the hotel restaurant Connor and Jenny played a made up game with a bottle top, which they seem to enjoy much more than any electronic toy game and as it required physical effort was probably better for them. They then became instant rock stars on a deserted stage also in front of the hotel; they were observed by a frenzied fan club of one i.e. me! Even that fan deserted them when the lack of talent began to show!

As so often happens while we have been in St Martin we rounded the evening off in Jimbo’s at happy hour, where several Heineken crews were well on their way to alcoholic oblivion: male, female, young and old it matters not; the beers, the cocktails slip down one after the other.  We retired back to Chilli Oyster for a relatively early night.

March 5^th & 6^th 2009

These two days we planned to do very little, we were going to anchor in the bay (free of charge) on the 5^th but the problem is simply our davits, after one up and down they started to fray the new webbing that had been put in. The three invoices from FKG came to c. $2,900, these arrived with immaculate timing, just as I unwound the dinghy off the davits they popped up on the email, of course at $79 an hour it all adds up very quickly! So now has FKG been a value for money experience.

Well let’s see:

1.       We have two working winches with seals in place, something I probably could not have done myself, certainly not alone and Flyn, the mechanic worked hard and was easy to have on board. On the other hand I will have to take the second winch apart again as the repaired shaft inside, which FKG repaired, was warped during the brazing process and now is a little noisy in the casing, so not so good there.

2.       The davits, I just wanted the pulley wheels replaced, they suggested changing the wire to braid as it will not damage the pulleys long term. The braid did not work, it frayed at the first attempt, and now after some discussion we are going back to wire, but this extra work is not going to be charged for........so should have working davits by the end of the day.

3.       Dockage, it is the custom in the Caribbean that while your boat is being worked on you pay dockage, this is a bit of a catch 22 as if they delay the work on your boat, and this has happened to us several times as other urgent jobs have taken priority, then they collect the extra dockage. I reckon this is one of those heads you lose and tails you lose too.

4.       People at FKG, the staff who have worked on the boat have been courteous, polite and friendly. They have always taken their shoes off on the boat. One manager, who walked across our boat after rafting another up to it, did so in filthy soled trainers. This may sound picky but you would be surprised at how the grime beds into the teak deck when people walk straight onto the boat. So the management has been a rather different experience. The slightest of challenges to any charges, such as the dockage charge relevant to the delays, was met with open anger and hostility............customers first eh! The davit experience was mixed when the manager arrived to ‘discuss’ but was amicably settled after I protested that it was getting unnecessarily confrontational. I am not sure what has caused this sensitisation, perhaps others have shouted much before me!!!!! Although often known as the customer from hell myself, I was surprised to be the calm one on both of these occasions, the former much more than the latter. For all Fox’s outrageous charges in England we never had this kind of hassle or any dock charges!

Frost refrigeration, on the other hand, were incredibly helpful when I went in with the circuit diagram puzzled about the installation of the mother board in the third air con unit (in preparation for Mother in Law arriving!), they were very helpful. They promised to come out to the main cabin unit to top it up with gas, they did, they noticed a faulty connection, corrected it, which solved the gas problem and then said ‘no charge’. Then we had a chat about business in general. It turns out that this place is full of super-yachts because none are being chartered. Two have been repossessed and sheriffs have come from the US and taken them! Six have gone to the Mediterranean to try their luck there and two more are about to leave. Some crews have been sacked en masse and replaced with a cheaper skeleton crew, to mind the yacht in the dock. The Moorings yacht charter business is said to be 50 to 60% down and so it goes on! The recession is beginning to make inroads into the corporate entertainment world, some might say about bloody time as tax payers bail these people out across the world.

On the afternoon of the 6^th we went to the Hotel Pelican, to sit by the pool with Ziggy and the kids, we dinghied round to the Hotel, past all of the super yachts, they are huge testaments to individual wealth. We sunned, or rather shaded by the pool and then dinghied back, on the way back we saw Bombardino fresh back from racing and waiting for the bridge to open, we boarded stopped for a drink, and said our fair wells to 8 or so tired and perhaps a little disappointed Dutchmen.

March 4^th 2009

Today I need to replace the mother board on the air con for the cabin that Lesley is going to see when she comes to stay. Got to keep Mother in Law coooool.  I started out confident as I had a circuit diagram and the other units to copy in the main cabin and our cabin. Unfortunately the circuit diagram was not exactly the same as the unit I had in my hand and the unit in the other air con units had slightly different mother boards.............oh dear. There were 15 wire connections to be made and I ended up with two wires with no home: one was of the wrong colour and not on the diagram the other was a recognisable colour but because of the colour I thought I was being told to attach it in the wrong place: it was green and mostly these are earth wires and the connection on the diagram was a live connection.

I went to Frost refrigeration off the dock. They were puzzled too! In these situations do you feel pleased that you have not been a complete idiot or are you disappointed that they are equally puzzled. I need to do a bit of wire tracing and circuit board interpretation. The former I have limited skills at, the latter less than zero skills! After some brain teasing and with great trepidation I started the generator and connected the mains (240volts).......I waited for the bang, no noise that was good, I went forward to the unit, there it sat in splendid lifelessness. I tested for voltage nothing! Back to wire tracing, the fuse box it turned out had a dead terminal in it, I placed the fuse in a live terminal and now with greater trepidation turned it on. I ran back to the forward cabin, again the unit sat there in splendid lifelessness. This was getting too much for the nerves; need a beer to think about this. Head cleared with a Piton, the local brew, I searched around the unit, underneath the unit was another three pronged supply to an external wall unit. I pulled the one that I had put in the unit out and put the new found one in. Back to the fuse box to turn on, run back to the unit, lights music and dancing girls it is working! Cold air flowing out of the vents, I smiled at it; it shut down and gave an error message! I looked up the code ‘lack of coolant’! Under the floor boards, I checked the pump, it was running but the filter was empty, it seems once drained the pumps will not self prime, so I filled the filter bowl and started the unit again......it ran and ran and ran and ran. Lesley will be cool!

In the evening we had a meal on board Chilli Oyster with Ziggy and the kids: pasta with pesto, dried tomato to start, tempura fried large coconut prawns, chicken, 5 sauces: chilli, passion fruit and coconut, caeser, thousand island, wasabi and salad for main. Key lime pie to finish up, all washed down with copious amounts of wine. Plenty of rather raucous fun, lots of music and 12am came and went!

March 3^rd 2009

The morning was spent ‘sorting’ then we had a light salad for lunch: our new porky status needs to be corrected!

In the afternoon, Becky went shopping and then to the Pelican hotel by the pool. I, on the other hand, went with Karel’s son to pay the ‘ridiculous’ fine as the Dutch keep calling it. Luckily a friend of his ran the marina and so he lent him a car to do it in.  We had to drive from Simpson’s bay to Philipsberg and find the Prosecutor’s Office, instead we found the Federal Paymaster’s Office where we knew we had to pay the fine, we went in. ‘No we could not pay the fine until the prosecutor decided on the fine and we close at 3:30pm’, it was now 3:10pm. Parking is a nightmare so we decided on Shank’s pony for the dash to the Prosecutor’s Office. You do not dash anywhere in the Caribbean, you break out in an undignified, copiously flowing sweat well at least I do. We got to the Prosecutor’s Office where a clerk looked up our fine on a card and wrote it down on our summons (why couldn’t the Federal Paymaster’s Office have the card!). We ran back, my flip flops, squelching in my own sweat and threatening to slide off my feet sideways with every stride! At 29/30mins past 3 we arrived and they let us in! We paid the lady behind the mirrored glass screen with a tiny hole cut in it. We were free to go, our guilt absolved and our afternoon wasted!

A night in Jimbo’s on two for one cocktails helped to right the injustices of the day: I spent some of the evening doctoring Connor with the magic cold flannel on the forehead after his day out sailing with Maris and the boys. Lots of sun, lots of fun, lots of excitement and a big headache through dehydration in the evening.

March 2^nd 2009

We are back on board Chilli Oyster on the FKG pontoon. A loud knock on the deck at 7:50am rudely gets us out of bed; they are here to fix the winches again. So as access to the underside of the winches is in our bedroom it is up quick and let them on board.

At lunch time Tony and Gill popped round from Nychea. We had met them in Rabat, Morocco. We had a very civilised light lunch which finished at about 3:00pm! Nice to catch up with their experiences: they had more than 30knotts of wind with huge seas all the way across the Atlantic! One wave came from behind and literally broke on top of the boat, for a moment they disappeared under the wave! Thankfully they had routinely kept their weatherboards in place on the hatch way so when they popped back up out of the wave, water had not gone below decks; such a different experience to ours.

In the evening we went to meet Bombardino as arranged. We had a beer at the race meeting Heineken tent and then set off in the dinghies to the restaurant. We were but 40 metres from shore when everything lit up blue! The coastguard arrested us for having no light on our dinghy, in a marina!!!!!! We were made to go to the coastguard landing and despite protestations were taken through the fine process. This required more form filling, no we could not pay the fine there, and we would have to go to Philipsberg to answer the summons. When I complained about the lack of warning notices, they told me I would be fined again for being uncooperative: I protested that I had been totally cooperative but considered them to be very heavy handed.....a nice welcome to St Martin, another money making from tourist exercise. You do get the impression that the Caribbean has got used to those who can pay...............they may need to rethink this at times get hard.

After getting our torches we proceeded to an excellent, but again expensive dinner, and a very pleasant evening with Karel and his son, who plans to build a 75ft yacht!

March 1^st  2009

Today we will sail the 3 to 4 miles to Marigot bay, we again made this into a much longer trip by sailing out past Anguilla, a flat featureless island that is said to be populated by the rich and famous.

The fishing was intense; at 2 a piece it was now sudden death. At first there were lots of eager lure changes but time went by and interest began to wane. Then I got a bite! In fact I did not notice that I had got a bite, Ziggy did. She sportingly started to pull my line in, as I had joined John up top at the helm station. In it came, there were lots of shouts proclaiming: wahu, no another Spanish mackerel, in fact it disappointingly turned out to be another barracuda. With teeth snapping away it was brought onto the sugar scoop. John jumped in, his speciality to get the hook out, as he was struggling to do so, the fish struggled free and then in a last defiant gesture chomped at the line. The sharp teeth went through the line and my lure was lost to the depths of the ocean! So it was one up to me but one to the fish as well.

For the rest of the afternoon my tenuous lead looked certain to fall, one edible fish would outdo me, but in the end no more fish were seen that day and so the Brits were declared the winners and we headed back to Marigot through the French bridge.

The French bridge is much smaller than the Dutch and Windancer IV squeezed through with but a foot to spare. This is also a very tricky entrance because it is shallow and you have to stay in the channel. We noticed several keeled boats start to do the familiar pirouette that they do when running aground, but it is only soft sand and mud and the heavier ones powered their way through the lighter ones wriggled their way back to deeper water. At one time John had but a foot under his 4ft 3ins draft, Chilli Oyster would have stuck fast.

We settled Windancer down at anchor and then all set off for Chilli Oyster and Jimbo’s. The plan was to drop the kids and girls off at Jimbo’s while John and I went back to Chilli Oyster with our bags. As we entered Simpson’s Bay Marina, where Jimbo’s is, we ran out of fuel right in front of the now closed fuel dock! There was much shaking of the fuel can supplying the out board and pumping of the bulb to get what little fuel there was into the engine. By this time our plight had become a spectator sport, but John squeezed the last few ounces of her and not only got us to the fuel dock where we dropped the children and the girls but also across to Chilli Oyster where I had some fuel on board.

Chilli seemed very cosy after the big expanses of the Cat; unfortunately a quick check demonstrated that little work had been done by KPG while we were away. We would be here for another few days. So we went back to Jimbo’s for happy hour and a few Margaritas to console ourselves. We met Maris again who had sailed across with John and Ziggy and her partner Michel, he is a Dutch dentist working in Italy! We also bumped into Karel from Bombardino and his son and arranged dinner for Monday night. It was good to see our friends who helped us across the channel.

We left merrier than when we arrived, another great day in the Caribbean.