Arundel Rum Distillery

While at Cane Garden Bay, Jan and decided to take a tour of a local Rum Distillery. It was about the size of a small Tobacco Barn and was incredibly old and faily run down (an understatement).
We took a tour with a local kid, Mark, who showed us around the place and explained in great detail how the rum was made.

This is Mark


This is Jan and Mark walking through - what Mark called a sugar cane field (there was only about 50 stalks of cane)


This is the still for the rum

Trellis Bay

Jan took this photo from the porch of a really nice restaurant at trellis bay. On full moons, they load the steel ball in the shallow water with wood and set it on fire for a big party.


This photo is taken from our boat while on a mooring in Trellis Bay

Road Town Rainbow

This photo is taken at Road Town Harbour from the Footloose dock.

White Bay - Jost Van Dyke

This is a GREAT photo of Jan at White Bay

Necker Island

This photo is of Necker Island. It's on the North side of Virgin Gorda. It's a private island owned by Sir Richard Branson (from Virgin records, Virgin Air etc.)

Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke

This photo is from the west end of the beach, looking out at our boat on anchor.


This is taken from the bar at Foxy's

Marina Cay

Here's the view from our boat at Marina Cay


The view from Marina Cay - back at our boat

On Bellamy Cay

This propeller was at the Last Resort Restaurant. I thought it was a really cool looking relic. It's very close to the end of the runway at Beef Island

Change in Plans

Cane Garden Bay

Our plan for today (thursday) was to head to Normand Island, but a tropical wave came in last night and gave us a tremendous thunderstorm system that lasted for hours. It was 'rock and roll' on the boat with lightening striking all around. We were on a mooring ball, so we had no real concerns other than a lightening strike and we stayed in the aft cabin of the boat - away from the mast.

Jan was not able to sleep much at all. This morning, we listened to the weather radio and there was a warning of more thunderstorms with Small Craft Avisories, so we're staying put for a day.

Currently, we've taken a cab over the mountain to road harbor (the largest town in the BVI) and checking out the weather on the windward side. Currently, it looks like Norman island is a go for tomorrow.

Wednesday Afternoon

We've had a great couple of days. We had dinner on monday at the "last resort" which is located on a rock in the center of Trellis Bay. It was great - the place has it's own pet Burro that hangs out around the restaurant. It can't go far - unless it's not afraid to swim.

Tuesday morning, we headed to White Bay on Jost Van Dyke. It's a nice little anchorage inside a reef with a 'half moon' shaped bay - beach. It's the mystery picture below. We had a little problem with the anchor holding. After the first try - in 6 feet of water, I dove the anchor and watched it drag slowly. It was kinda skipping over some small rocks on the bottom. We pulled the anchor up and tried again. This time it caught on a large rock and after checking it out - we decided to stay on it for a while.

We swam ashore to the Soggy Dollar Bar (wonder why the call it that?) and had a 'painkilla' - which was invented at this bar. After a while, we walked down the beach to Ivan's "stress free" bar and hung in a hammock for a while in the shade.

In the afternoon, we motored East a couple of miles to Great Harbour and anchored there in 20 feet of water. We had dinner at Foxy's (very famous place).

This morning we read our books in the cockpit until about 9 am and then set sail for Cane Garden Bay. This is a cool little village. Great anchorage (we're on a mooring). We can see St Thomas in the west (Jimmy Buffet wrote the Manana song here - "while the lights of St. Thomas are 20 miles west - I see that General Electric's still doing their best).

Tomorrow, we'll sail around the west end of Tortola - between St. John (America) and Tortola (UK) and head south to Norman's Island. Should be a blast. I'll post photos when I get home.

By the way, we're sailing a Moorings 362 (Beneteau 36). It's a nice enough boat. More about that later.

BVI Update - Monday- noonish

We're having a great time. We left out of Road Town Harbour on Saturday morning and had to turn back after about 1/2 hour because I couldn't get the autopilot to work on the boat. Turns out to be a blown fuse. After 20 minutes at the dock, we're back underway.


We sailed east for a couple of hours (with 3 or 4 tack in there somewhere) to the Baths. This is an area with large rock configurations next to the sea. We anchored there and made lunch on the boat. In the afternoon, we headed back west/northwestward to Marina Cay, where we picked up a mooring and headed in to have dinner at a lovely restaurant on the water on this very small island.

Sunday morning we got underway and tacked upwind to Bitter End Yacht Club in the north sound on Virgin Gorda. We dingied over to a small cafe on the water called the Fat Virgin and had lunch. After luch, we checked out bitter end and Sabal Rock. Dinner on the boat.

This morning, we set sail at about 9 oclock and gybed downwind a few times to Trellis BAy. Currently I'm in a cyber cafe in Trellis Bay after having lunch. We'll stay here tonight and head to White Bay in Jost Van Dyke tomorrow. That was the mystery bay from a few posts ago. Libby was the only person to guess AND she got it right!!

Anyway, I'll try to post a photo or so from the phone (like the 2 below). Good photos, but not much text. I'm not goood at text messaging.

Til later - GW and Jan

Monday late morning sailing to Trellis

Monday late morning sailing to Trellis Bay

Road town harbour

Road town harbour

Off To See The Lizard!

Jan and I are leaving on Friday for the Islands. The British Virgin Islands in particular. We're chartering (fancy word for renting) a sailboat out of Tortola and going to sail counter clockwise around BVI. I'll try to update the blog while from time to time (I have my ways).

Here's a quiz for you:

Name the place in the photo below. I need the Island and the name of the bay. I'll bring back a gift for the first one to post the answer under 'comments' on this blog entry. Here's a hint: "We'll be 'kickin back with Ivan' "

SUCCESS!!

MY ALMA MATER

After 9 consecutive days of intense Sea School, I went to Tampa on Wednesday to take the U.S. Coast Guard Test for OUPV (operator of Uninspected Passenger Vehicle - also known as the 6-pack Captain's license).

I'll say up front, that this course and the test were much more involved that I had anticipated that they would be when I signed up. I was thinking that if you've spent a reasonable amount of time in charge of a boat in a lot of different places AND you have a thirst for general knowledge of the same - it wouldn't take that much to pass the test. I was right AND I was wrong.

The test consists of 4 parts (5 parts if you want to add "towing assist" - which I did). The parts include "charting" - which I happen to be very good at and after going through Sea School - I'm very confident with my skills in this area. Here's a question from the test:

At 1240, your loran set indicates a postion of LAT 36 55.2N, LON 75 33.1W You are on a course 281deg per magnetic compass at 9.0 knots. At 1320, your position is LAT 36 54.8N LON 75 39.8W. What were the set and drift?

They give you a chart for the area covered by these positions and you have to figure it out. It's not hard - but it is quite involved.

Also, you're tested for Navigation knowledge. This tests areas like knowing what the bouy's and day markers all mean - from the numbers - to the letters - to the colors and the lights. These also are not hard - they just require lots of memorizing shapes, colors and such. Here's an example of a Navigation General test question:

You are outbound in a bouyed channel on course 015T. You sight a white liight showing Morse(A) characteristic bearing 359 relative. For safety, you should
A.....change course to 359T to pass near to the bouy
B.....stay in the channel and leave the bouy to port
C.....alter course to 000T and leave the bouy well clear to starboard
D.....check the chart to see where the marked danger lies in relation to the bouy


Then there is Deck General section. It encompasses everything from how to tie knots, how to use the radio, firefighting, how to tie up to a dock, how to anchor in a lot of situations and such.
Here's and example of a question from the Deck General Test.

In the machinery space of all uninspected motor vessels, there must be one type B-II hand portable fire extenguisher for every
A...500 SHP of the main engines
B...1000 SHP of the main engines
C...500 BHP of the main engines
D...1000 BHP of the main engines.

THEN, there's the Rule of the Road part of the test and it's the real doozy. It's the one that trips up more people than anything else (with charting being a close second). Not only is it hard to learn - but you have to make 90% to pass!! It involves your actions when you encounter basically every situation on the water - in 3 separate areas = international (in the ocean), inland (such as navigatable lakes, sounds, bays and such) and Western Rivers (the Mississippi and it's tributaries). Here's a sample of a question from that part:

INLAND You are aboard the stand-on vessel in a crossing situation. You sound a one blast whistle signal. The give-way vessel answers with a two blast signal. You should sound the danger signal and
A...maintain course and speed as you are the stand-on vessel
B...come around sharply to port
C...take precautionary action until a safe passing agreement is made
D... manuever around the stem of the other vessel.

Of course, none of these questions are insurmountable alone, but studying for all the possible answers for all possible questions is overwhelming. Anyway, I passed with a high scores (98% on nav general) and then I got fingerprinted and took the Oath. Now, I just have to spend about 2-3 weeks getting my mountain of paperwork in order to submit to the Coast Guard for issuance of the license.

Captain's Course (Sea School)

Well, I started my Captain's course on Saturday. It runs for 9 days and is pretty intensive. I had signed up for one in Daytona - but it was cancelled due to not enough students - so I'm driving 50 minutes each way to Titusville. Oddly enough, it's about 1/4 mile (and within sight) of where I spent one of my most terrifying nights on a sailboat in May of 2005 - during an electrical storm. You can see the photo from that trip on the BLOG from that trip:

http://gwsails.blogspot.com/2005/05/monday-night.html

That photo barely shows the top of the tail of a 'display' space shuttle - so I went there on Saturday from the land side and took a photo of the thing from a better angle.



The Captain's class is very involved. Currently we're learning chart work - with a lot of plotting and figuring out how to determine where you are and where you should be. The questions on the tests have you come up with formulas to determine exactly - the current direction and speed so you can determine where to aim to arrive where you want to end up. I've learned a lot so far.

Here's a photo of the Cheasapeke Bay chart that we're doing some work on.

More Backyard Critters

Here's a photo of a Snowy Egret that hangs out behind our house. We have a lot of cool birds that frequent our home. We have a bald eagle that comes around about once a week, we have herons, a family of wood ducks, one (what I think to be) red shouldered hawk, a nest of Anhinga (look like Cormorants) and of course some Turkey Vultures. It's always fun to see what's hanging out behind the house.

Cedar Key

Jan and I went over to Cedar Key (on the gulf side of Florida) for a couple of days. Cedar Key is a very small island town of 900 permanent residents. We had a great time - we were celebrating my birthday. We rented a golf cart and checked out the entire town in about an hour.

Shuttle Launch

I went to the bridge over the ICW near our house today and watched the shuttle take off. The one thing you can't get a good understanding of when watching it on TV is it's acceleration. It comes into view just after takeoff as fireball. Then it really starts moving obviously faster and faster as it goes out over the ocean.

The smoke is produced by the solid rocket boosters. You can see in the 'close up' shot - the shuttle separating from the solid rocket boosters. This is easy to see from the ground.

Cool Surfing Stuff

I've had a few days of good surfing in a row. What happened to me this morning however; is beyond cool - it's amazing.
I was at my normal surfspot - Ponce Inlet - on the north side of the inlet. This area is the shark bite capital of the U.S. Nobody ever dies from sharkbites here, but more bites happen here than anywhere else in the U.S. The bites are described as "small dog like" bites. While that's better than getting your arm torn off (or worse) by a Great White - it's still not cool to get bitten by a small dog either- especially one that's underwater that you can't see (if there are dogs like that)

So with this always in the back of your mind - you surf there anyway - because it's the best surf around. Statistics show that just swimming 1/2 mile north of the jetty will reduce significantly your chance of getting bitten - but the waves aren't as good there. Oh well, - what are you gonna do?

So, I was about 75 yards off shore this morning with a good group of guys who had come down for the morning from St. Augustine. We were just sitting on the boards waiting for a good set. We were in less than 5 feet of water - in fact - a couple of guys were standing in chest deep water beside their boards while waiting.

I had seen a 'fin' out of the corner of my eye about 2 minutes earlier, but kinda put it out of my mind (you have to do that if you want to surf here). As I was talking to one of the guys (I had my back to the shore) a large dolphin came completely out of the water no more than 35 feet behind him. Of course - everyone was ooo-ing and aaahing (like a fireworks show). I pointed and said 'look' to the guy I was talking to and as he turned around - 3 more dolphin jumped completely out of the water (just a car length away or so) and did kinda 'half flips'. Obviously, this was a great show for anybody to see - but in the water just a few feet away - it was really cool.

Then, it got better. A set of waves started coming in and the dolphin were lined up in the waves surfing them - coming right toward us. It was amazing and a little scarey at the same time. They were coming FAST. 3 fins - side by side were coming at me at a high rate of speed. There was nothing I could do - so I braced myself for a collision. The fins went under water just a half second before they got to me and 'apparently' reappeard on the otherside of me. Everyone looked at me and kept saying - 'did they hit you?' Are you sure they didn't hit you? It was amazing. They came back around and rode one more wave and then went away.

When I got home, I looked up a photo on line that reminded me of what had happened this morning . I found 3 photos that could have been taken this morning - they are that true to the experience. The only difference is that the waves weren't more than 4-5 feet tall this morning and there were only 4 dolphin together. Otherwise - these photos look just like this morning. It was cool.