Avalon: Adventures in Paradise and Beyond.: Sailing into Bequia

Monday, March 16, 2009

Sailing into Bequia

As we were sailing into Bequia we heard a whistle that sounded like a cell phone ringing it wasn't. It was Kenmore, the island's intrepid photographer, cruising along in an inflatable dinghy with a huge telephoto lens wrapped in a plastic bag taking our picture!

So...this is what we look like when we are under sail.

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What do we do?

What on earth do we do with ourselves on the boat?

Folks who have never lived aboard a boat sometimes find it hard to imagine what we might do to keep from getting bored, spending so many hours on the boat. In a lot of ways though it’s not all that different from life ashore, there’s fixing meals and cleaning up afterwards, and a normal amount of “housecleaning.” There are always lots of boat repair and maintenance projects to keep us busy, and frequent trips ashore to shop and just walk around, hunting up free wifi hot spots, grabbing a bite at a local restaurant, etc. Not surprisingly, we do a lot of reading - novels, non-fiction, cruising guides and looking at charts to sketch out our future plans in finer detail. Of course there’s swimming and snorkeling around, a little beach-going, and thinking and talking about everything under the sun.

We have a high frequency/SSB radio transceiver onboard that we use to send and receive short email messages, as well as listen to weather reports and keeping in touch with other people cruising the region through radio “nets.” Keeping tabs on the weather is an important feature of our daily life, because although there are few strong storms down here in the winter, wind speed and direction together with size and direction of sea swells can make the difference between a fun sail or anchorage and misery! Exploring a little by dinghy is fun, and we usually rent a car for a day and drive around each island for some land based sightseeing. Meeting and conversing with locals and other travelers is always interesting, and the blog needs to be occasionally fed too!

We sometimes listen to local AM/FM radio stations to get a flavor for what’s happening on the island we’re visiting, and ask around for restaurants with good local food. What we don’t do: watch TV - well we do have some DVDs we can watch on the laptop, but no CNN, Weather Channel, Discovery Channel, etc., so when (like in St. Kitts) we walk into a place that has CNN playing it can be a little mesmerizing. We also rarely go to big resort hotels, casinos and fancy restaurants, as we’re out here for a few months and want to stretch the cruising kitty as much as possible! So one day flows into the next, and we’re thankful for each and every one!

The Boat

Avalon is a 1985 Tartan 40 fiberglass sailboat, sloop rigged, with roller furling jib and a centerboard. Designed by the famed Sparkman and Stevens naval architecture group, and built by Tartan Marine in Ohio, she’s a little over 40 feet long, almost 13 feet wide, and draws about 5 feet of water with the board up and 8 feet with the board down. We have a 44 horsepower Universal diesel auxiliary engine pushing a three bladed feathering “Max-Prop,” and carry about 50 gallons of diesel fuel and 110 gallons of fresh water. We also carry a 10’ Walker Bay inflatable dinghy with a 15hp Johnson four stroke outboard.

When I first looked at Avalon I thought her pale blue hull looked kind of odd there on the grey, murky waters of Long Island Sound, but she really looks great here in the sparkling blue and green Caribbean! A forty footer is big enough for a couple of people to comfortably cruise on for weeks at a time (many folks do it on much smaller boats) , and to entertain half a dozen on (we could actually sleep 7 close friends), or in a pinch small enough to singlehand. I actually have taken her out several times by myself, and feel pretty comfortable doing it in decent weather, but she’s a happy boat with Emmy and I aboard!

A 23 year old home ashore might need to have a few appliances replaced, and compared to what a house is subjected to, the marine environment is terribly harsh, and worse still down here in the tropics. The bouncing around while at sea and wind, combined with the corrosive effects of salt water and salt laden humid air, along with tons of UV exposure just tends to wear things out. So repairing and replacing bits, pieces and entire systems is an ongoing task, with steady application of labor and money necessary, along with a few tears and skinned knuckles.
Recent changes to Avalon include switching from CNG to Propane gas for cooking (CNG is very difficult to find in the Caribbean, and extremely expensive), and replacing the original single sideband radio with a new one that has email capabilities. Some of our systems are original equipment or several years old (GPS, chartplotter, depthfinder, etc.) but continue to perform well - yay! Downstream we’ll be looking at new refrigeration and probably solar panels to charge the batteries (hmmm…might need new batteries then too).

She’s a good boat, but a demanding mistress!

How the voyage came to be...

I (Brian) moved to the USVI in 2002 while working for a publicly held corporation (which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent). In 2003 I accepted a position on St. Croix, and not long afterwards occasional notations about the idea of buying another sailboat began popping up in my journal. I was a 50-something single guy, who loved sailing, making a decent salary, and living in the heart of some of the nicest sailing waters on earth.

I decided to “start looking” for a boat in 2004, and tromped around on everything from a Tartan 37 to a Whitby 42, Westsail 42, Peterson 44, all the way up to a Hylas 54 (pure fantasyland!). Long story short, I found a Tartan 40 (Avalon) in Connecticut that had a two boat owner; we dickered a little, and she was mine in March of 2005! The delivery voyage to the USVI via Bermuda was spirited, and Avalon and I learned a lot about each other on that trip. I feel quite certain that if I take care of her, and listen to her, she will take care of us.

Several cruises took us throughout the USVI and BVI over the next couple of years, and I kept wishing I could spend a little more time cruising the islands. Then in the summer of 2006 something happened that again “changed everything,” I met, and gradually fell in love with Emmy! Our stories were different but parallel, and intersected in many ways and places. Funny story…I needed to replace the old water tanks on the boat, and had bought and shipped new ones down. I mentioned to Emmy that I was replacing the water tanks on the boat over the weekend, and she asked if I needed an extra hand. I thought it was kind of interesting, and could use the extra hand with the bulky tanks, so agreed. But then when she asked if I wanted her to bring any tools along with her, I realized I needed to get to know this woman better!

Over the next couple of years we did a bit of daysailing and took a couple cruises to the BVI and one to the northern Leewards, and I found myself wishing we had more time to cruise, and get further down island. (Lesson: be careful what you wish for!). For a host of reasons, and with very much mixed feelings, in September of 2008 I parted company with the outfit I’d worked for since 1985. It didn’t take long to realize that a pretty amazing opportunity to take a winter cruise through the Caribbean had presented itself, and Emmy & I decided to jump on it!

After a few months of boat projects, we threw the lines in mid-December. Yay!

Avalon: Adventures in Paradise and Beyond.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Sailing into Bequia

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