24 March 2012 Key Bay, Peter Island, BVI
It was a very blustery night with heavy rain squalls coming through, but the morning was much sunnier. This is such a quiet anchorage that we decided to stay another night.
Our generator has been running unevenly recently and it seems to be when it gets hot after running for thirty minutes. The speed of the engine is slowing down every couple of seconds, which sounds like it is starved of fuel. I first bled the injectors of any air, which made no difference. I've had a similar problem before and so I cleaned the fuel pump relay socket with WD 40 and replaced the relay. This seemed to sort the problem out – touch wood and whistle. The old relay had diesel on the contacts, but nothing inside - it's probably a bad connection on the relay pins.
While running the water maker, I noticed that the sample valve is leaking, which means that some of the water that we are making is coming out of a plastic tube and going straight down the drain. I've tried to fix it, but it looks like something is worn inside the plastic valve, so I’ll have to try to get a new one. In the meantime, I’ve come up with a cunning plan – I've clamped the end of the plastic tube with a small pair of mole grips, which stops the dribble of water.
After lunch we chilled out for a while, went for a short walk on the island and then went snorkelling for an hour. The weather is still very variable with rain showers coming through, but it stayed dry enough to have dinner in the cockpit. After our meal, we watched a film down below on my laptop.
25 March 2012 Key Bay to Buck Island, Tortola, BVI
We motored east directly into the wind to find a place to go diving. The seas were a bit too high to do the more exposed dives, so we ended up diving on the stern section of the RMS Rhone, which was very good.
We nipped around to Salt Island Bay and anchored for lunch and then had a leisurely sail across to Buck Bay on Tortola. This is a lovely isolated anchorage in the lee of a private island. A little bit of swell hooks around the corner, but it just makes a pleasant rocking motion. There was nobody here until just before sunset when a catamaran came in and anchored a long way from us. Goodness knows why people crowd into The Bight and Manchineel Bay when there are lovely anchorages like these.
The other great thing about this anchorage is that I was able to get Internet access for the first time in a week. After filling the dive tanks, I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on email and working on the new diving section of our web site.
26 March 2012 Buck Island, Tortola, BVI
I woke up feeling pretty grim and with a stomach bug. We motored around to Road Town and anchored just outside the marinas. A three foot swell was coming in from the south making it a very exposed anchorage, so we rushed to get off the boat.
We went into Village Cay Marina, dumped four big bags of rubbish and Glenys dropped off the laundry which will be ready at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. I asked at the marina office if they had received our package with the exhaust gasket, but no sign of it. I was surprised because it was sent on the 13th by airmail. The lady was a little vague about the process, but I eventually deduced that it would probably be held at the post office and a pink slip would be sent to the marina.
We decided to walk to the post office and see if they had any record of it arriving. This turned out to be a long 20 minute walk in the beating sun to discover that they have not received it. Dismayed, we walked back to town and wandered around aimlessly, but couldn't find any centre to the town – it's a sprawling mess. Goodness knows what the cruise ship tourists do when then land here.
Glenys dragged me around the supermarket, where I was starting to feel decidedly dodgy after the dehydrating walk to the post office. We went back to the boat and motored back to Buck Bay, having lunch on the way. Once anchored, I went to bed for a couple of hours, while Glenys took advantage of the good Internet connection that we've picked up.
We had a quiet night and I went to bed early.
27 March 2012 Buck Island to Monkey Point, BVI
I felt much better this morning. We motored back to Road Town to pick up the laundry, but typically it wasn't ready. Glenys had made the fatal mistake of telling them that she’d pick it up at nine o'clock today instead of five o'clock last night. In their island minds, this means that they didn't have to start it until today…
The mail still hasn't arrived, so we spent an hour wandering around town while the laundry was finished off. We found Main Street which is a bit nicer than the rest of the town with old buildings and small shops.
After we picked up the laundry, we motored across to Deadman’s Bay on Peter Island, had lunch and then went for a dive called Painted Walls, which was very good - going into canyons on an exposed headland. It was very calm today, but there was still some surge. We were both excited to see a Reef Shark that cruised past, checking us out.
We motored over to Trellis Bay, which was packed with moorings and nowhere to anchor. We looked at Marina Cay which was the same. We went around to Lee Bay, which had four boats in already – the bottom seemed to be broken coral & rubble and after two attempts, we couldn't get settled. We went around to White Bay and found that the bottom is all broken coral & rubble, so we gave up and picked up a Marine Park mooring at Monkey Point. We felt like nomads, but a nice cold beer soon got our spirits up.
Glenys started up the water maker and noticed that the amount of water coming out was less than it used to be. I had a quick look and decided that I need to strip down the sample valve. We turned it off and I’ll look at it tomorrow.
28 March 2012 Monkey Point to Manchineel Bay, Jost Van Dyke, BVI
I didn't sleep well, waking up at four o'clock in the morning wondering how I was going to sort out the water maker. I was up at seven o'clock.
I stripped down the leaking valve and found that a lug on the plastic ballcock has been worn away, so it’s turning too much. I managed to reassemble it in the correct position and hopefully it will last until I can get a replacement. It took me ninety minutes to sort it out and I was very relieved when the water maker worked. We made water for over an hour - happiness is having a week’s supply of water.
We sailed down to Jost Van Dyke and anchored in Manchineel Bay with one other yacht, which was a fifty metres away. Two hundred metres to our south is a lovely sandy island called Sandy Spit which is heaving with charter boats all packed close to each other – it’s obviously a place on the cruising itinerary. We've become weary of charter boats and crowded anchorages filled with moorings, so we’re planning to move onto Puerto Rico the day after tomorrow.
We chilled out for the rest of the day. I had a practise on my clarinet which didn't take long because my lips turned to rubber after ten minutes. I must practise more.
As we sat with our sundowner beers, we formulated a theory that boats travel around at a speed that is inversely proportional to the angle of the sun above the horizon. People are quite happy to drift along at 3 knots in the afternoon, but when the sun gets lower in the sky, it turns into a frenzy of “Gotta Getta Mooring” and yachts come hurtling into the bays at great speed.
29 March 2012 Manchineel Bay to Key Bay, Peter Island, BVI
It was a rock and roll night as the wind picked up to over twenty knots and there was a big swell coming in from the north, which was hooking around the corner into the anchorage. The narrow cut between Little Jost Van Dyke and Sandy Spit, which was 50 metres in front of us, had impressive three foot high breakers this morning.
We sailed downwind to Great Harbour, where we were able to clear out of customs and buy some bread. This bay has the largest settlement on Jost Van dyke, but is a real one horse town. The main road is a sand filled dirt track that runs along the edge of the beach. There are a plethora of bars who pander to the hordes of tourists that arrive on the charter boats and the small power boats coming across from the US Virgin Islands. It’s a quaint little place, but there are a few old Jimmy Buffet wannabes wandering around in flowery shirts with their long, grey hair tied up in pony tails - quite sad really.
We sailed over to Key Bay on Peter Island, so that we'll be protected from the north swells that are supposed to get bigger tonight. The plan is to sail along the southern coast of St Thomas tomorrow to shelter us from the north swells which could make the 40 mile trip unpleasant.
The afternoon was spent chilling out and getting ready to sail tomorrow. Our beer fridge has been gurgling again, so I topped it up with refrigerant. I must find someone with a Freon detector and find this damn leak.
30 March 2012 Key Bay to Isla Culebra, Puerto Rico
The alarm went off at half past six and we left half an hour later. We sailed past The Bight avoiding the procession of charter boats going out to The Indians to pick up a mooring before they’re all taken – “Gotta Getta Mooring”.
The sail down the south coast of St John and St Thomas was uneventful - sometimes we had enough wind to sail and other times we had to motor-sail. Once clear of St Thomas, we had a pleasant downwind sail to Sail Rock, which sticks up 100 feet out of the sea, half way to Isla Culebra. We caught a 3lb Rainbow Runner before we reached Sail Rock and a 10lb Amberjack between Sail Rock and Isla Culebra.
As we were approaching the tricky, reef strewn approach to the main bay in Isla Culebra, the skies darkened and it didn't look too good to the south of us. We thought that the rain squalls had passed us, but the winds increased just as we approached the first navigation buoy. I decided to continue sailing up the channel and we did a rubbish gybe, allowing the main boom to slam over from 30 degrees over to starboard to port, which for some reason, sheared the rivets attaching our Rod Kicker to the mast – bummer…
I gybed the jib and rolled it away, while Glenys put on the engine and headed up the channel. I went forward and tied the foot of the Rod Kicker to the mast to stop it gouging holes in our teak deck. As the rain started to fall, we turned into the wind and I danced the light fandango on the foredeck putting the main away. It was lashing it down for the next fifteen minutes as we motored through the approach channel – thank goodness for the navigation buoys, otherwise we would have had to sit out at sea for a couple of hours while the rain squalls went through.
The rain was getting heavier as we entered the bay, so we temporarily anchored just to the west of the entrance in the approach to Ensenada Dakity. While waiting for the rain to pass, we were called on the VHF radio by “PR2” – Robby and Peter know Sergio, the previous owner of Alba, very well. Robby told me that the customs people are really fussy about correct procedure and that I was supposed to ring them as soon as I arrived in their territorial waters.
I rang the Customs and spent ten minutes giving them the details of our boat, passport numbers, etc. - this cost £10 on my UK phone. They then told me that I had to ring another number to arrange to go to see the customs and immigration at the local airport, which made it all seem like a waste of time. However, I rang the local customs and, after a small discussion, they have allowed us to delay our trip to the airport until tomorrow, which saves us rushing around in the rain.
The rain slowed down at four o'clock, so we motored to the anchorage off the main town of Dewey. We put up the rain covers and I then spent thirty minutes filleting the two fish that we had caught, before collapsing with a nice cold beer.
Fortunately, the rain stopped before dark making the place look a little more like the Caribbean rather than northern Europe in the winter. We've spotted a couple of boats that we know, so hopefully this will be a good place to stop for a week or so.
Glenys cooked the Rainbow Runner for dinner. We've put the Amberjack in the fridge until I can make sure that the species of fish is okay to eat – we don’t want to get poisoned by Ciguatera.
31 March 2012 Isla Culebra, Puerto Rico
We were feeling a little apprehensive as we walked to the Airport to clear in, hoping that our new US visas were all correct and we wouldn't have any hassle. Memories of getting a deportation order for our children back in 1995 when we were on Glencora were still vivid. The officer for Home Land Security was wearing body armour, had a huge gun in a holster and looked very threatening, but turned out to be a really nice guy. We now have cruising permit for one year which also covers anywhere in the USA, which means that the boat can stay in the states until next March which is great news.
We wandered around the town of Dewey, which didn't take long. There's a few restaurants, a supermarket, a post office, a ferry dock and that's about it apart from a very impressive lifting bridge that isn't used any more. I went over to a sports fishing boat and showed them a photograph of the Amberjack that we caught and the guy said that it wasn't good to eat because of Ciguaterra, so it's going over the side.
We did a few small jobs in the afternoon and then went out to the Dinghy Dock Bar for happy hour with Joe and Mitchell from “Peregrine” and a few other cruisers, who have taken root here. We wandered off by ourselves and ended up in the Zaco Taco restaurant where we had a fantastic meal of tacos and a huge burrito. While we were in there, we invited ourselves over to another table with a large group of cruisers and had a beer with them before all piling out to go to another bar to listen to a drum band. Good night out – I can see how people get stuck here.
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