1 April 2013 Cienfuegos, Cuba
We spent the day on-board and got on with a few jobs. Glenys spent most of the day planning our route when we leave here. The Grand Plan is to clear out of Cienfuegos to go to Jamaica, but we’ll spend a week or two slowly working our way east through the outlying cays, before heading south to Montego Bay. We hope that if we keep away from any towns, we won’t have any contact with the authorities and will stay out of trouble.
I recharged the damn fridges (again) because both were fully depleted of refrigerant and running constantly. It only takes an hour to do the job, but I have to do it every two weeks now and it’s becoming tedious – I must try to make a determined effort to find the leaks.
I then spent a few hours blocking off the 4 inch hole in the deck left behind when the vent in the front heads was smashed to pieces on the passage here. I found a piece of ½” thick polymer sheet that I've been carrying around for eighteen months and cut out a six inch circle. After drilling six holes to match the existing screw holes in the deck and chamfering the edges, I stuck it down with some silicone sealant. It looks such a good job that I don’t think that I’ll bother replacing the vent.
2 April 2013 Cienfuegos, Cuba
We walked into town and wandered around the shopping area, going to the market again and lugging two heavy bags of groceries back to the marina - it’s quite a long walk in the beating sun. We called in at the marina store and bought some drinks – rum, coke & beer. They've not got much else in the shop – lots of empty shelves.
It was very calm and hot in the afternoon, so we lounged about reading and chilling out. The water in the harbour is very murky – I suspect that the local sewers empty into the bay, so we can’t go swimming. We've about exhausted the possibilities of Cienfuegos, so it’s time to move on.
3 April 2013 Cienfuegos, Cuba
I downloaded a GRIB file and there’s a cold front forecast to pass over on the 5th April, which may give us a bit of rain, so we've decided to wait until the 6th to leave here. We’ll be sailing south-east for 45 miles to get to the cays, so the expected north-east winds should be good for us. I hope so, I feel a bit nervous after the pounding that we took getting here from Cayo Largo.
We went for a walk in the morning and discovered a small sculpture park just outside the marina, which was interesting – lots of big metal and concrete structures depicting a wide range of subjects. The marina store has run out of orange juice, so we strolled down to the local dollar shop and bought six litres of orange juice.
Back at the marina, we took the boat alongside the fuel dock to fill up with diesel and fill up our water tanks with water. Glenys took the opportunity to hose down the decks, but again the water pressure was pathetic. I'm constantly surprised how long it takes to do things on a boat – we spent two hours getting fuel and water.
The wind really picked up in the afternoon. There’s a sea breeze that picks up every afternoon and blows from the south, but it’s normally only ten knots. I guess that the general direction of the wind out at sea is southerly and the sea breeze has amplified it. Anyway, it was blowing 25 knots from the south for a few hours.
We went to “Siga Siga” for a few beers, where we met Martin and Franes from “Don Quillote”. Claire was a little too generous with the rum in the Cuba Libres that she served us and we stayed far too long, so we were very worse for wear when we poured ourselves into our dinghy at half past ten...
4 April 2013 Cienfuegos, Cuba
Despite the huge amount of alcohol in our bloodstreams, we still had a restless night. One of the problems in being near a built up area is that there are hotels and night clubs. The Cubans seem to have a propensity to play very loud music after eleven o'clock which is very irritating. I was up at midnight closing hatches and turning on the electric fans above our bed to drown out the thump, thump of the nearby night club.
We were both feeling very dull this morning, so we chilled out for the morning. I took some great photos of a couple of boys paddling by on a home-built boat that seemed to be made from expended polystyrene blocks lashed together. They had a home-made paddle and looked to be heading home after fishing. The inventiveness (and desperation) of the Cuban people never ceases to amaze me.
It was oppressively humid and hot – a cold front is definitely approaching. We couldn't even be bothered to go out for a walk in the afternoon and lounged around reading.
5 April 2013 Cienfuegos, Cuba
The weather forecast said that the cold front will go through later today, so that crystallised our thoughts and we’ll leave tomorrow - it's 45 miles and we're a bit apprehensive about the weather around here, so we want to leave as early as possible.
We talked to various officials about how we could make sure that we could leave at seven o'clock. The Guarda Fonteras wouldn't clear us out today and the immigration officer said that he wouldn't be here at six o'clock in the morning, so we arranged to do the clearance with immigration and customs in the afternoon.
We walked into town to do final shopping and access the Internet in the telephone company offices. As I was reading my email, a local guy came up and wanted us to help him get access to his email. We were very suspicious because we know that the Cuban authorities are very strict on who can access the Internet and you never know who's watching.
However, he seemed so desperate that I relented and let him log on using my Internet card, which had 25 minutes left on it that I didn't need. The guy didn't seem to know how to access Yahoo Mail, so I got him to the login page, but then after five minutes of trying he couldn't log in because his credentials weren't recognised. He seemed to be getting more and more anxious, so I called it a day, logged him out and gave him the Internet card as we walked away. Very odd - I still don't know if he was genuine or a con artist...
We wandered to the market and bought some provisions. Glenys bought some loaves of bread - it was a little stale, but you have to buy it when you can get it. A little later, we spotted some small soft rolls and bought those as well, so we've now got enough bread to feed a family of ten for three days...
Back at the marina, we paid our bill, which upset me again - I really don't see why we should have to pay to anchor... Armed with our receipt, we could then clear out with Immigration and Customs, so all we have to do tomorrow is to see the Guarda Fronteras first thing in the morning - I told the officer that I'd be over at six o'clock.
The cold front hit us at five o'clock The wind veered from south to north-west and we had heavy rain accompanied by thunder and lightning. We had various squalls pass though during the evening, so we cowered below and watched a film.
6 April 2013 Cienfuegos to Ensenada Jobabo, Cuba
We were up at quarter past six. It was still very dark and we thought that the fuel dock was clear, so we put out the fenders and pulled up the anchor. However, there was another yacht on the fuel dock, so we had to go back and anchor again - bummer.
I dropped the dinghy in the water and zipped over to the dock - by this time it was already seven o'clock. A different customs officer grabbed hold of me and it took fifteen minutes to persuade him that I'd already cleared out. He couldn't find the paperwork that I'd signed yesterday, but eventually gave up.
The Guarda Fronteras was a nice bloke, but very pedantic. It took 20 minutes for him to find and fill in the three forms, then another 15 minutes for me to take him out to Alba for a boat search. It was after eight o'clock before we pulled up our anchor.
It was interesting leaving the harbour because a huge tanker was coming into the Harbour, so we were avoiding that as well as keeping a close watch on a ferry that was overtaking us. Once safely out to sea, we had a boisterous reach on port tack in the north-east winds which peaked with gusts of 28 knots in the late morning. Just after lunch, the wind died completely and then veered around to the south as a 12 knot sea breeze kicked in, so we had a pleasant beat on starboard tack for the rest of the afternoon.
We entered the fringing reef through the Canal De Las Mulatas near Trinidad, and motored across to the Pasa Jobabo. It was nice to see the mountains in the distance on this stretch of the coast - its been a long time since we've seen hills.
Pasa Jobabo was a little stressful because there were no buoys marking the channel between the shallows, but we managed by using the colour of the water as a guide and anchored in Ensenada Jobabo, which is very well protected anchorage surrounded by mangroves.
7 April 2013 Ensenada Jobabo to Cayo Magua, Cuba
We had a late start and didn't leave the anchorage until half past ten. We motored over to Cayo Blanco De Casilda and anchored in a patch of sand next to what we thought would be reef. However, after jumping in to go snorkelling, we found that it was all sea grass patches and sand. All was not lost because we spotted a large group of eight Lionfish and I snared a nice 4 pound lobster.
A small fishing boat was chugging around the area dragging a free diver behind on a rope. The free diver was keeping a watch out and then releasing the rope to dive down and catch things. They came by after we'd finished snorkelling and offered us some lobster which we politely declined. It was interesting to see that they had also been spearing Lionfish, which are supposed to be good to eat, although I don't fancy the dodgy task of cleaning off their poisonous spines for such a small fish.
After lunch, we started to sail towards Cayo Zaza De Fuera, but the wind had veered to the south-east, which was directly where we wanted to go. We tacked out to sea for a mile, but when we tacked back towards the reef, it was obvious that it was going to take hours to get to Cayo Zaza De Fuera, so we cut our losses, came back inside the reef and anchored behind Cayo Magua. This anchorage is not mentioned in either of the cruising guides that we have, but is a lovely anchorage with six metres depth just off a small beach and well protected from all directions apart from west winds.
8 April 2013 Cayo Magua to Cayo Zaza de Fuera, Cuba
We were up early and left just after breakfast. The sun was still low in the sky, so it was difficult to see the water colours, but we were safe enough following the marked channel, Pasa de la Machos. The wind was directly against us, so we motor sailed all the way to Cayo Blanco de Zaza. We dropped the anchor just off a nice sandy beach, but the water was murky and there was not much sign of coral, so we soon headed off.
Our course to Cayo Zaza de Fuera was more southerly, so we had a lovely sail for a few hours, tacking into the approach to the anchorage. The anchorage is well protected from the prevailing winds and pleasant enough. There were a couple of other boats in the anchorage, so we went to say hello before we went out snorkelling. "Songerie" is heading east, so we might see them again.
Once again, the snorkelling was very disappointing. The charts seemed to indicate a lot of coral surrounding the cay, but the bottom is sand and weed and the water is murky. The clearest water that we've seen was in the area around Cayo Largo and we sailed past that section of Cuba. I hope that we haven't missed the best bit...
We’ve been living on Alba for exactly two years today, so I worked out a few statistics. In the past twelve months, we’ve sailed 5,852 miles bringing our total to 9,452 miles since we moved aboard, but we’re still only 1,083 miles to the west of Grenada, so we need to start clocking up some more miles if we are going to travel the 25,000 miles around the world in the next eight years – we’ve only done 4% of our voyage.
9 April 2013 Cayo Zaza de Fuera to Cayo Breton, Cuba
We were up early again - this continuous cruising is hard work. It was very annoying that we had to sail in a wide circle to the north of the cay before we could head south east to our destination. It was an hour of bashing to wind, but it looked to be too shallow to pass to the south of the cay, especially with the sun in our eyes.
Once clear of the reef around Cayo Zaza de Fuera, we were able to bear away a little and had lovely close reach to Cayo Breton. We anchored off the south-west coast of the cay in sand and weed, next to "Songerie", who just beat us in here. It's good holding, but we had to anchor a long way from the shore, so we're not very well protected. Once again the water is disappointingly murky and no sign of coral.
I went over to chat to Yaco and Crystalle on "Songerie". Yaco is a very keen spear fisherman, and like me, was desperate to get out on the reef. So he and I went out hunting on the reef which was two miles away - thank goodness that we have a fast dinghy. The sea was very calm, so we anchored outside the reef in six metres of water. The reef was rocky, but lots of fish - we each speared a 4lb Hogfish and I snared a couple of lobster, one of which was an eight pound monster.
Back on Alba, I filleted the Hogfish while Glenys dealt with the lobster. The large one wouldn't fit into the pot until I'd removed it's feelers and legs - not a pleasant thing to do. Even then, Glenys had to hold the lid of the steaming pot down until it had started to cook.
"Songerie" came for a sunset cocktails, they're from Namibia - you don't often see that flag on the back of a sailing yacht.
10 April 2013 Cayo Breton, Cuba
It was pretty grim weather this morning, with strong 20-25 knot east winds and cloudy, so we decided to stay here for the day. After traveling for four days, we were feeling a little weary.
Glenys did a few chores and made some bread, while I kept out of the way. We had a lovely lobster salad with nice hunks of fresh bread for lunch.
In the afternoon, I inspected the generator and tightened the fan belt. We then ran the generator and the watermaker. I was sitting in the cockpit chilling out, when I heard the generator and watermaker stop and restart. I went down below and turned off the watermaker, then looked in the engine room to find loads of smoke and the sound of boiling water – the bloody fan belt had shredded. I turned off the generator and had a quick look, but it was too hot to touch – I’ll have to leave it until tomorrow. The worrying thing is that there is oil splattered around the front of the generator engine.
We had a quiet night in.
11 April 2013 Cayo Breton to Cayo Cuervos, Cuba
I didn’t sleep very well worrying about the generator. We’re so reliant on it because our watermaker is 230V and needs the generator running to operate. Fortunately we’ve still got 400 litres of water in our tanks, but if I can’t run the water maker then we’ll have to go onto short rations and go to Jamaica earlier than we planned.
The weather was overcast and it was fairly windy, gusting up to 20knots from the ESE, which was exactly where we want to go to the Cayo Cuevas, so we decided to wait until mid-morning to see what the wind does – we have 35 miles to go and we should do that comfortably in 7-8 hours. We expect the wind to drop around noon, so we could still leave at eleven o’clock and make it by the time that the sun goes down at half past seven.
I looked at the generator. The freshwater pump and alternator seemed to be turning okay, so I guess that the belt broke because I’d over-tightened it and it was old. It took me half an hour to remove the remains of the fan belt which had wrapped itself around the inside of the fan belt pulley – the rubber had heated up and fused in place. I cleaned up the generator and tray underneath to remove all traces of oil and bits of rubber. While I was working on the generator, I noticed that one of the sea water hoses had a kink in it, so I turned off the seacock and shortened the hose to remove a tight bend.
Once I’d replaced the fan belt, I started the generator and it ran fine for five minutes and then cut out because it had overheated. After a minute of panic, I realised that I’d not turned the seacock on – idiot!! I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to check that I’ve not damaged the sea water pump impellor by running it dry.
We upped anchor at ten o’clock and motored to the north of Cayo Breton and then directly into a 20-25 knot wind with horrible steep waves slamming straight into us. The only way that we could make any head way was to motor sail at 45 degrees to the wind, which we did for an hour until the wind and waves subsided a little. It’s not easy sailing east against the trade winds, but we can rely on the wind dropping in the afternoon around this area. By noon, the wind had dropped to 10-15 knots and we were able to motor directly east to Cayo Cuervos, arriving at four o’clock.
Cayo Cuervos is fabulous. It’s a set of small mangrove cays set in a semi-circle around a lagoon. The water is 5-6 metres deep in the lagoon and the islands have small beaches. The whole cay is surrounded by coral and the water is fairly clear…
For the last five nights, we’ve been putting the mosquito netting up in the cockpit, but this evening we decided not to because the cays look so small that we assumed that there weren’t many mosquitos on them – wrong. Ten minutes after sun down, I had five bites on my shoulder and hand, so the mosquito netting went up and I was paranoid all night.
12 April 2013 Cayo Cuervos, Cuba
It was a lovely morning, blue skies and light winds – perhaps we should have waited in Cayo Breton for another day?
I sorted out the generator. The sea water pump impellor was fine and we don’t seem to have a serious oil leak. I ran the generator for 30 minutes to test everything and then ran the watermaker for an hour. Everything works, so that’s a great relief.
Glenys was doing a few jobs on deck, when she noticed what appeared to be a small cockroach near the gas locker. When she tried to get closer, it disappeared into the gas locker. This prompted a major investigation – we had to find it and kill it immediately. We'd had an invasion of cockroaches on our previous boat, Glencora, and it had taken us months to get rid of the pesky little things. We pulled everything out of the gas locker and killed a long wasp-thing which we found in there. There was no sign of anything else, so we breathed a sigh of relief – mistaken identity and mild paranoia.
After lunch, we went for a trip in the dinghy and finally found somewhere decent to snorkel. It was only shallow, but there were some nice outcrops of coral and lots of fish to look at. We spotted several large lobster, but we’ve still got some lobster left from the ones I caught a couple of days ago, so we weren’t that fussed. Eventually, I decided that I couldn’t leave them behind and snared a smallish one, but it turned out to be a female with thousands of eggs under her tail, so I let her go.
We were back on the boat at four o’clock, so we chilled out reading and playing the guitar. The mosquito netting went up at five o’clock and we were feeling very smug when hordes of the little buggers descended upon us at dusk. These are the most voracious little buggers that we’ve seen for a while – they look more evil because they are jet black with white stripes on their bodies. I was a little too smug because later in the evening, I discovered that I had another line of four big bites on my shoulder where I’d obviously been leaning against the mosquito netting and they’d bitten me through it…
We retired down below at ten o’clock, when one of them managed to crawl under the netting and was buzzing around Glenys’s ear. Fortunately, we have another mosquito net that fits in the companionway to act as our second line of defence.
13 April 2013 Cayo Cuervos, Cuba
I checked the generator this morning and found that we do have an oil leak and there was oil splattered everywhere. I cleaned it all up as best I could and I suspect that there’s a damaged oil seal behind the fan belt pulley which was damaged when the fan belt wrapped itself around the pulley. I put some oil absorbent pads around the engine and ran it for half an hour and I can clearly see that the oil is being sprayed from the fan belt pulley. This is not good news and we’ll probably have to get it sorted out in Jamaica.
We chilled out for the rest of the morning running the water maker and doing a few admin jobs. After lunch, we went snorkelling. We took the dinghy out between two small cays and headed south east, where we found a good section of reef in about 6 metres of water. We saw a beautiful large, White Jellyfish and I speared a nice sized Hogfish, which we had for dinner.
The damn mosquitoes descended on us in force again. Tonight I only had two bites after a mosquito breached our defences.
14 April 2013 Cayo Cuervos to Cayo Manuel Gomez, Cuba
There was absolutely no wind last night and it was very, very hot – we didn't sleep well at all - just lay there sweating.
In the morning, we removed the mosquito netting from the cockpit, but there must have been some of the little buggers lurking around and we both got bitten while tidying up ready to sail. I think that we've just proved that Glenys gets bitten as much as I do, but her body doesn't react like mine - fifteen minutes after the bites, I had a ¼” diameter itching lump and Glenys had nothing…
We motored ten miles to Cayo Manuel Gomez, which is another collection of mangrove covered islands. However, it's a nice enough place to look at and the holding is good in 3 metres of water over sand and weed.
We went snorkelling in the afternoon again, which was very good, but I didn’t get anything to eat. I tried to spear a big Hogfish, but my little pole spear wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the thick scales around its head. I also stalked a huge black grouper and got within four foot of it, but then I hesitated for too long to get a good shot and it evaded me. I also caught a couple of lobster, but both turned out to be female with eggs, so I let them go - not my best day's fishing...
15 April 2013 Cayo Manuel Gomez to Cayo Chocolate, Cuba
It was another airless night and we didn’t sleep well again. We motored over to Cayo Algodon Grande and tried to anchor off the reef to the west of the cay, but we couldn't find any sand patches big enough in which to anchor, so we gave up. There were four boats in the proper anchorage, so we decided that it was overcrowded and went down to Cayo Chocolate, which was only 15 miles away.
"Siga Siga" had told us that this was a nice anchorage, so we had great expectations and was hoping to stay for a couple of days because on the charts it looked like there was plenty of coral around. What a huge disappointment. The water was murky and we had to anchorage least 100 metres from the cay. There was no protection except from the east and we felt like we were anchoring in the middle of the ocean. We didn't see any reef at all - we stayed on the boat and sulked.
At least there was a nice breeze out in the middle of nowhere and it was cool in the evening. After five days of remorseless attack by mosquitos, we had a bite-free evening.
16 April 2013 Cayo Chocolate to Cayo Granada, Cuba
We were up early and left the godforsaken anchorage at half past seven. Typically, wind had picked up from the east during the morning, so we motor-sailed directly into it for three hours. Just before we arrived at our waypoint to sail south-east through the Cayos Drihuela, the wind (of course) veered and headed us, so we had to motor sail for another two hours. Finally, once clear of the buoyed Canal Racho Viejo, we could head south towards our destination and finally managed to sail, albeit only for 30 minutes.
The entrance into Cayo Granada is quite narrow and passes between two shoal areas. There’s also a shallow patch of reef in the centre of the channel which we skirted around – not sure how deep it is. The anchorage itself is a huge semi-circular bay edged by mangroves, but is pretty and much, much better than Cayo Chocolate.
We went snorkelling on the reef next to the entrance, which had coral heads covered with a light dusting of silt. The water was also very cloudy, but I managed to snare a nice 4lb lobster for dinner. We decided to stay here tomorrow.
17 April 2013 Cayo Granada, Cuba
It was lovely breezy night and we both slept well. Glenys checked her provisions this morning and we’re running out of lots of things – we have one knob of butter, no mayonnaise, 1 onion, 1 litre of orange juice, 1 litre of milk and, worst of all, only four beers left. We’ve spent nearly two weeks in theses off-lying cays and it’s time to move on to Jamaica.
I downloaded a GRIB file and the weather looks good to sail across to Montego Bay tomorrow – 15 knots from the east. It’s 130 miles from here, so we’ll be sailing overnight and hopefully arriving at dawn. The plan is to try to sail east to Cabo Cruz (in Cuba) tomorrow during the day and then we’ll be able to sail more or less south overnight to Jamaica.
I ran the watermaker and, although we have an oil leak on the generator, we’re not losing a huge amount of oil and it’s fairly well contained by the oil absorbent pads that I’ve packed around the generator.
Glenys used our aft toilet and found that it wouldn’t pump. I quickly deduced that the output pipework was blocked somewhere and it turned into a three hour marathon repair job to find the blockage, remove the guilty valve, unblock it and put it all back together. Basically it was all furred up, I should have removed the valve when I de-furred the hoses a few weeks ago.
Although it was awkward to remove the valve assembly, I have to admire the thought that Hallberg Rassy have put into their boats – it would appear that everything has been installed with the intention that it will have to be removed at some point in time. This is a totally different philosophy to some of the mass production boat builders who seem to install everything and then lower the deck on top making it impossible to remove some equipment.
After I’d finished the odious toilet repair, we went snorkelling on a small wreck at the east end of the anchorage. It’s only in 5 metres of water, but it was good fun swimming through the holds and there are an incredible number of fish milling about.
We put the dinghy on deck, prepared the boat to go to sea tomorrow and then collapsed with the last of our beers.
18 April 2013 Cayo Granada, Cuba
The wind was blowing hard for most of the night and, when I got out of bed at seven o’clock, our wind instruments were showing 20-25 knots from the east. That’s 5-10 knots more than shown on our GRIB file yesterday. We decided that we would get hammered if we tried to sail today, so we resigned ourselves to staying here today.
It’s Thursday today and we’ve heard that it’s a pain to try to clear into Jamaica outside normal office hours from Monday to Friday. That means that we can’t really leave Cuba until Sunday, so we’ve got another three days and nights to kill. The GRIB files show the wind dropping substantially at the weekend, so that fits in well. There’s another good looking anchorage about 20 miles to the east of us, so we’ll probably go there either tomorrow or Saturday for a change of scenery.
We chilled out for the morning and another boat came in to the anchorage - first we’ve seen for a few days. We went to say hello, but they have to be in Cienfuegos in two day's time so won't be hanging around.
We went snorkelling towards the north side of the island - there were plenty of coral outcrops, but again the visibility was very poor. On the plus side, I caught three lobsters and a small Hogfish, so it's lobster for dinner.
Yesterday, while I was fixing the toilet, I’d dived under the boat to check that the sea cock was clear and, to my surprise, I spotted a two foot long Remora lurking under the boat. When we got back from snorkelling, Glenys jumped in the water to clean off some persistent barnacles from the water line and the Remora was still lurking about. Later on in the evening, she threw some food overboard while making dinner and it shot out to eat the scraps. It obviously thinks that Alba is a huge whale or something - we’ve called it Ronnie Remora.
19 April 2013 Cayo Granada, Cuba
I did some admin in the morning, anticipating that we'll get an internet connection in Jamaica. Glenys read up some more about Panama and Ecuador.
In afternoon, we went snorkelling towards the south side of the island. Again, the water was very murky, but there were some nice coral heads and lots of fish. I took my spear gun on its first outing rather than using my small pole spear, but the rubber tube was perished with old age and snapped before I could use it - another thing to buy in Jamaica. All was not lost because I'd taken my camera, which kept me amused for an hour. We saw some large Atlantic Spadefish, which are only normally seen on exposed reefs.
When we got back to Alba, Ronnie the Remora still lurking under the hull. I eventually got a half decent photograph of him, but he was a little shy and the silt in the water made it a challenge.
There were huge clouds building up during the day and it looked ominous as night fell.
20 April 2013 Cayo Granada to Cayo Media Luna, Cuba
It was a horrible night. Just after midnight, we had torrential rain, so I jumped out of bed to close our hatch and then check that all other hatches were closed. Half an hour later, we started to hear thunder, then flashes of lightning, so I had to get up again. I’m paranoid about getting a lightning strike - with some justification because our 65 foot mast must be the tallest thing for 50 miles. If we get struck by lightning all of our electrical equipment will be damaged – electronics, motors, pumps, engine, generator, fridge compressors, computers, etc, etc. My only plan of action is to put our laptop, chart plotter, iPad and satellite phone in to the oven because I think that it will act as a Faraday Cage and protect the equipment inside.
When the storm had passed an hour later, I got up again to open the hatch and let some breeze in. Unfortunately, I think that I also let in a mosquito, so I was bitten an hour later and had to get up again to spray myself with DEET. I was knackered by the time it was morning.
There was only 5 knots of wind from the east, so we motored around to Cayo Media Luna. It was 30 miles and the seas were flat calm, so I lurked below working on my computer trying out work out the chords for a couple of new songs to play on my guitar. Glenys did a sterling job of navigating us through the reefs to the anchorage and making lunch as well.
Cayo Media Luna is a one mile wide, semi-circular, mangrove island with 10 metre deep water in the middle. It’s not the most interesting anchorage in the world, but it’s a safe enough place with protection from the north through east to south.
On the passage here, we could see huge cumulo-nimbus clouds building to the east of us. By four o’clock, we were feeling the effects of the huge thunder clouds because the wind veered around to the west and increased to fifteen knots as air was being sucked up into these systems. Sure enough, by seven o’clock, we had torrential rain, but fortunately not much lightning or wind.
This bay (Golfo de Guacanayabo) has a bad reputation of producing very intense thunderstorms in the summer months with winds up to 60 miles per hour, so we were a little anxious when we went to bed.
21 April 2013 Cayo Media Luna to Montego Bay, Jamaica (Day 1)
We had a very peaceful night – no more thunder storms or mosquitos. Glenys was forced to make scrambled egg and bacon for breakfast because we’ve now run out of milk, so our normal breakfast of cereal was not possible. We’ve also run out of bread, orange juice, coca cola, garlic, beer, wine, etc, etc – definitely time to go.
We ran the water maker for an hour and then left at half past nine - the oil leak on the generator doesn't appear to be getting any worse.
The wind was 10 knots from the east, so we were on a broad reach as we headed south west to the Canal de Cuatro to get through the fringing reef. I was expecting light winds for this passage, so I dragged out our asymmetrical spinnaker and sorted it out on the front deck ready to hoist. Unfortunately, the wind picked up a little and we were able to sail at five knots without it, so I had to pack my toy away.
By eleven o'clock, we were heading south towards Montego Bay, but the damn wind had come around to the south east and dropped to less than 5 knots, so we had to turn on the engine. To compensate, we caught a nice 2-3 lb Barracuda. We've been throwing these back for the past four months because of the danger of ciguatera, but the agriculture officer in Cayo Largo said that the south coast of Cuba is safe, so we're going to risk it – they’re so good to eat.
Later in the afternoon, the wind picked up a little bit more, but had veered even more and was straight on the nose - typical afternoon on the south coast of Cuba. However, it was very pleasant motoring in the relatively calm seas until dark.
22 April 2013 Cayo Media Luna to Montego Bay, Jamaica (Day 2)
The wind finally backed and pick up at the start of my 11-2 watch so we were able to sail for four hours until it dropped again when we were 20 miles from the coast of Jamaica. By half past seven, we were eight miles offshore and just about sailing in a light breeze. It was exciting to see the coast of another country and it looks to have lot more hills than I expected - perhaps we can do some hiking while we're here.
I went to bed for an hour and when I awoke, we were drifting along at less than a knot, the sea was calm and Glenys was on the front deck taking photographs of a school of Common Dolphins who were slowly swimming around us in the glassy sea. We watched them for ten minutes before I hit on the idea of jumping in to photograph them, but unfortunately, they wouldn't come any closer than 25 metres from me.
We motored into the harbour of Montego Bay and went into the anchorage just off the Yacht Club, but it's a very, very small space mostly filled with moorings, so we went onto the Yacht Club dock. It's a Mediterranean style dock where one has to pick up a bow mooring and then back into the dock - fortunately, there wasn't much side wind, so I didn't make a fool of myself.
The clearance procedure was fairly painless because the officials all came to the Yacht Club. We only had to see Agriculture, Immigration and Customs, so we were soon finished. There was some confusion about a cruising permit for when we want to go around to Port Royal because we want to take a couple of weeks and stop in about six anchorages. It would appear that this is unusual and they normally only give clearances to go from port to port and you're expected to report to customs at every port. We didn't push it because we'll only have to go through it with someone else when we ask for the coast-wise clearance when we leave here.
Everyone is very friendly at the yacht club and it's only $1 per foot, so we've decided that we'll will stay for a few days especially since the anchorage is so tight. As usual we were very tired after the overnight sail, so we bought a couple of celebration beers at the bar (which cost a staggering $5 each) and collapsed in the cockpit.
After an hour's kip, I walked 2 miles to a shopping centre to get some essentials beer, coke and milk - I couldn't bear the thought of paying $5 for another beer, when I only had to pay $1.25 at the supermarket. It was a very long hot walk back, so I was ready for a cold beer when I arrived back.
We treated ourselves to a meal out at the yacht club and chose Jamaican specialities - Goat Curry for me and Creole Conch for Glenys. There's a very good internet connection here, so we sat up later than should have, catching up on emails and surfing the net.
23 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
We’re in a different time zone and the clocks have gone back an hour, so I woke at quarter to six just as the sun came up. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I jumped out of bed to use the internet and published five weeks of articles on our web site.
Later on in the morning, we went to supermarket. The local transport here is done by "Route Taxis", which are cars running on a standard route radiating out of Montego Bay town. The normal one way fare is $1 US, but we wanted one of them to take us to the supermarket, wait and then bring us back. Being white tourist-types, the best that we could negotiate on the street was $15US for the round trip.
We had lunch in a café in the supermarket. We just had a sandwich, which was okay, but I kept making envious glances at people who were chomping their way through a huge plate of Mutton Curry and rice which looked fabulous. We rushed around the supermarket conscious that the driver was waiting outside.
The supermarket staff were very helpful. Beer is mostly sold in bottles here but we don't like to have any glass on board, so we like cans. The only beer in a can was Carib and there were only three cans on the shelf. I asked one of the guys if there was any more and ten minutes later, a forklift truck had dropped a pallet down on the floor and I had six case in my trolley.
We had three trolley loads of stuff to load into the waiting taxi. He’d been sat out side for well over an hour, so I didn't feel too bad when we gave him $20 .
I had a look at our main fridge which has not been freezing properly and found that it was completely empty of refrigerant. I recharged it and we’ll see what it does overnight.
24 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
Once again, I couldn't stay in bed much after half past six. I've got too many things running through my head. It was the start of a new tax year in the UK, so I rearranged some of our investments to take advantage of tax free allowances for ISAs and pensions.
After lunch, I checked the fridge and found that it has lost all of the refrigerant again. I emptied a couple of lockers and pulled up floor boards, so that I could see all of the pipework. A few months ago, I recharged the fridge with refrigerant that contained a dye that fluoresces in ultraviolet light and I managed to spot the leak, which was on one of the quick-fit connectors on the pipework. I confirmed the leak by using good old washing-up liquid and water brushed on the joint - there were obvious bubbles.
I had a similar problem on our other fridge back in Bequia over a year ago and the solution that fixed the problem was to cut out the connectors and simply solder a piece of copper tubing in place. I chatted to David, the Dockmaster, who is going to see if he can get a refrigeration engineer to come out and look at the job in the morning.
I didn't feel very confident that an engineer will be coming out, so I pulled the connector apart and inspected the seals. I couldn't see anything drastically wrong, so I smeared on a little silicon grease and tightened it as much as I can. we'll see how it lasts overnight.
25 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
I was up at dawn again – these six o'clock starts are going to kill me, but I'm finding it hard to staying bed when it's light and there's always the sounds of people talking on the dock, which is unsettling after spending so much time at anchor.
I got on with doing admin on the internet until Glenys managed to drag herself out of bed, then I emptied all the lockers again in the vain hope that a refrigeration engineer would turn up. By half past ten, David was still waiting for a call back, so we decided to go into down town Montego Bay.
As we walked out of the yacht club, a guy called Fenton intercepted us and said that he could take us into town. We had to go to the post office to pick up some mail that has been sent over from the UK, so agreed to pay him $10 to take us to the post office and then into town. I'm glad that we went with him because he was very helpful.
We'd been told to go to a particular post office, but that wasn't the right one, so Fenton drove us to another depot in town and dropped us off there after showing us where we'd be able to get a route taxi back to the Yacht Club.
It was total chaos in the post office with hundreds of people queuing at various windows. I eventually found the correct window and joined the "queue". I use the word "queue" loosely because it was more like a "cluster" with people joining the crowd from both sides of the window. There were six or so people simultaneously trying to attract the attention of the girl sitting behind the counter.
It was mob rule. The poor girl lost her rag a couple of times saying that she could only do one "ting" at a time and if we hassled her then she’d get all confused… At one point, she just got up and disappeared, leaving us bemused for five minutes, then returning and magically handing out beige coloured envelopes to several people.
As I was the only white guy in the whole post office, it only took me fifteen minutes to attract her attention and hand her my slip. Five minutes later, I had our mail in my hand. I told the girl that she was doing a great job and be happy. The others in the queue laughed and loudly agreed with me. As I left, I could hear half a dozen people resuming their cries of "Miss, Miss ..."
It was a huge culture shock to walk around the bustling town after spending the last two months in Belize and Cuba. I was expecting Montego Bay to be a sleepy little place, but it’s a busy large town . There were thousands of people wandering around and not a white face in sight.
We were obviously a target and had several guys walking up to us and being very friendly. They started by asking where we’re from, then saying that they work in the airport or the port - perhaps we’d seen them? They then asked where we wanted to go and started to walk along with us. We shook off three of them before one finally thought that he had a chance to ask us for a dollar. I politely told him no which he was okay with. It’s kind of sad because it makes us distrust everyone which isn’t fair. Some might be genuinely friendly.
We had to have Jamaican Patties for lunch, so we went into a Jamaican fast food place called Juicy Patties. The Red Pea Soup that we had was very tasty and the Patties were good as well, but I the only way that we could tell the difference between the shrimp and the chicken patties was by the spot of food colouring on the pastry - green for chicken and pink for shrimp...
We went to the market and were initially approached by various people wanting to sell us things – taxi, hair braids, aloe cream for the sun, etc. It’s very different to Grenada and St Lucia where they’re more used to foreign folk wandering about - I guess that here the only foreign folk that they see are tourists who are coming to gawk. After ten minutes, they all realised that we were actually going to buy some vegetables and left us alone.
I spotted some odd looking fruit which about the size of a large apple, but was split open revealing white flesh and big round black seeds. It turned out that this was Ackee, which is very popular in Jamaica, but we've not seen it on any of our travels around the Caribbean. The old lady on the market stall opened one for us and told us how to cook it - we bought some of course. I later found out that you should only eat the white flesh from Ackee that has naturally split open. If it is not ripe, then it contains a toxin that can make you ill - commonly called Jamaican Vomiting Disease...
We got a Route Taxi back from town. The locals speak patois all the time and it takes a while to get through to them in English, so it took me a few goes to get him to understand that we wanted to go to the Yacht Club and would only pay 100 Jamaican dollars (about $1). As in most places you have to negotiate the price before you get into the taxi.
We chilled out for the rest of the afternoon and Bruce & Gina from “Dream Catcher” came for a few beers. Glenys conjured up Saltfish with Ackee, which is the national dish of Jamaica.
26 April 2013 Montego Bay, Jamaica
I was up early again. A sport fishing boat tied up alongside us yesterday afternoon and they were getting ready to as the sun came up - shouting an messing about of course. I'm getting weary of this place - time to move on, so we planned to leave tomorrow.
David, the Dockmaster was on holiday, I had no idea if a fridge man was going to turn up or not, so all I could do was wait. I entertained myself by watching guitar lessons on the internet. We had arranged to share a taxi with “Dream Catcher” to go to the supermarket, but just before we were due to leave the fridge dude wandered up the dock, so Glenys left me behind.
I showed him the problem and after a bit of discussion, he agreed that the best plan was to cut out the faulty connector and replace it with a length of copper tubing. Unfortunately, he couldn't do it immediately, but had to go back to the office to get them to give me a quote. This turned into a bit of a saga because we don't have a telephone, but Heather in the yacht club office sorted it all out for us in a couple of hours. The refrigeration company would invoice the club and I'd pay the club.
So by three o'clock, I'd agreed a fixed price of $120 and I had my man Christopher back on board with all his gear. It only took him thirty minutes to remove the leaking connector and solder the copper tube in place, but then it took him 2½ hours to evacuate the system, recharge it and check that it was cooling properly. It takes ages for them to wait while the fridge compressor does it's job.
I went through a similar process with a fridge man in Bequia, but that time I was paying him by the hour at a rate of $50 per hour, so this time I made sure that I was paying a fixed rate. We had a good chat about his life in Jamaica and he was really interested in our lifestyle inboard, so the time flew by. He was very interested in cooking and gave Glenys some interesting Jamaican recipes. We cracked open the beers at five o'clock and he became even more talkative. It was well after six o'clock before we managed to prise him off the boat. Oh, and he seems to have fixed the fridge...
We had Jamaican Patties for dinner - Glenys had stopped off at a Juicy Patties to buy a box of them.
27 April 2013 Montego Bay to Bloody Bay, Jamaica
I managed to lie in until half past seven. We filled up with diesel, bought some petrol, filled up with water and paid our marina bill - a staggering $600US all included. We'd been doing very well for not spending money while we were in Cuba, but we got clobbered here.
We left the dock just after half past ten and had a cracking downwind sail to Bloody Bay, which is a lovely half-circular bay with a white sand beach. We anchored about 100 metres from the beach in a nice big sandy patch. Unfortunately, there are lots of big hotels around the bay with hundreds of tourists. So for the rest of the afternoon, we chilled out as much as we could trying to ignore the jet skis and the loud PA system at the nearest hotel.
Our guide book tells us that in the 1700s, Bloody Bay was a popular harbour for pirates, notably “Calico Jack”, who although ferocious was known for his penchant for soft calico underwear and rum. He was captured here in 1720, along with two women pirates who fought furiously besides him. They were all sentenced to hang and “Calico Jack” was strung up on a Cay outside Port Royal, but the two women received a reprieve because they were both pregnant.
28 April 2013 Bloody Bay, Jamaica
It was Sunday today, so we chilled out in the morning and then went ashore to find somewhere to have Sunday Lunch.
As soon as we pulled the dinghy up onto the beach, we acquired a “friend”, who has a glass bottom boat, runs a taxi and owns a smallholding – do I want to buy some ganja? It’s impossible for a white person to walk around Jamaica without being accosted. We politely declined all of his various offers and walked down the beach, which has lots of stalls selling the normal tourist junk- tshirts, carvings, beads, etc. Unfortunately, there were only two eating places and they wanted $12-15 for a plate of food, so we decided to head towards Negril town about four miles away.
Initially we walked along the road, but it was very boring, passing long walls protecting huge hotel developments, so we stopped a route taxi. He dropped us off at a small local restaurant, where we had Goat Curry and Pork with rice. A couple of Red Stripe washed it down nicely. With nicely full tummies, we wandered down the road looking for the town centre, but it turns out that there isn’t one – just a long straight road. We wandered onto the beach and after walking back for half a mile stopped to chill out for a while at a bar – don’t you just love Sundays.
We caught a route taxi back to Bloody Bay and back to Alba, where we went for a refreshing swim. I went snorkelling around the boat, which was mostly sand and weed with not a lot to see, when suddenly a large Spotted Eagle Ray appeared out of nowhere. With six foot wide “wings”, this was an impressive sight especially since it came over to check me out and swam around me less than 10 metres away. I wish that I’d had my camera.
29 April 2013 Bloody Bay, Jamaica
I had to get up in the middle of the night because I hadn't tied the dinghy down properly on the davits and it was moving as we rolled and making an annoying rubber squeaking sound. While I was up, I took down the cockpit mosquito netting and put up the uber-scoop, so that we’d get a little more breeze in the back cabin. Unfortunately, a horde of mosquitoes must have been lurking around because I ended up with six more bites for my troubles.
It was a very pleasant morning, so we decided to stay another day. As we had an internet connection, I spent most of the day downloading guitar lesson videos and messing about with music.
We also went snorkelling by Booby Cay at the south end of the anchorage. There are many moorings dotted around, presumably put in place by the Marine Park, but the reef is very poor. There's hardly any coral or fish – apparently the locals used to use dynamite to fish in this area and have devastated the reef. We soon gave up and zipped across to Sandy Cay, which is a small rock at the north side of the anchorage and it was better, but the water is very shallow. We amused ourselves looking at all the small fish – it’s like a nursery.
30 April 2013 Bloody Bay to Bluefields, Jamaica
We were up early and motored out into the flat calm sea. After an hour, Glenys spotted a lot of splashing off to starboard, so we went over to have a look. It was a huge pod of Common Dolphins that were in a feeding frenzy - I suppose that they had a bait ball of fish because there must have been fifty or so dolphins rushing around in a very small area. We watched them for ten minutes before leaving them to it.
We continued motoring around South Nigril Point past Rick's Bar (allegedly one of the top 10 bars in the world) and a nice looking lighthouse. Then the world turned nasty. The wind picked up as we started to head east and we encountered big steep waves right on our nose. We tried to sail, but our course was taking us into the reef, so we turned on the engine and gritted our teeth for a couple of hours, until we could finally hold a course and sail.
To make matters worse, there are loads of fishing pots scattered about wherever the water is shallower than 30 metres. These damn things mostly have transparent, plastic bottles marking their position, which are incredibly difficult to see in breaking waves, so one of us had to be on careful watch all the time.
We had a good sail for the last hour, almost straight into the anchorage, but it was pretty fraught because the depth dropped to 6 metres over reef and we still had fairly large waves with white caps. We were very anxious about whether the anchorage would be tenable, but it wasn't too bad when we got there.
Bluefields is a small, shallow bay just around a headland with a small beach, some smart houses and we think there's a couple of bars because we had loud reggae music playing until after dark. We struggled to get the anchor to hold on the weed seabed, but eventually found good holding in a sandy patch in 3 metres of water.
No peace for the wicked, I spent the rest of the afternoon on small jobs fixing a couple of things that went wrong on the way here. The winch for the roller furling on the genoa had started to make an awful squealing noise and was getting very stiff, so I stripped it down and greased everything.
The 12V socket for our chart plotter had also stopped working. This was one of those escalating jobs – a pin had broken off the plug, but had also blown the fuse. I had to remove the compass to get at the fuse inside the binnacle. The fuse holder was very hard to get to and the fuse broke off in the holder. I had to remove the whole 12V socket to get the fuse out of the fuse holder. I then had to put it all back together and then replace the plug.