Sail Pandora

As I have mentioned, Pandora is on the hard and me landlocked in freezing New England for the winter.   As a result of my “incarceration on the hard” I have also found myself thinking about “summers of old” and the sailing that Brenda and I did together and then later, with the boys, Rob and Chris who arrived on the scene, in that order.

From the time that Brenda and I married in 1977, you can do the math, but it’s been a good long while, we have had a boat, beginning two years after we married and with only a single year break when our second, Christopher was born.  Boating has been a big part of our lives together.

Recently I wrote about the purchases of Tao, our first boat, in the late 70s and since that post, I uncovered this lovely shot of her.  Chris and Pat were aboard for that particular run.    Those were the “pre-child” years and we had a lot of fun.

Note the long bowsprit that I added, complete with a laminated in “hog”, or bend.   The point was to set a small jib on it to get a bit more speed.  It really never worked all that well but sure looked snazzy and was a great spot to hang a CQR anchor.   And, with her “sprit”, what a great looking boat.Anyway, I was speaking of fun, but I won’t talk about the fateful evening that Pat, who happens to be of second generation of Japanese heritage, about how she acquainted us with sake.  No, I take that back, I will tell… 

Anyway, we were anchored off of Norwalk CT on Long Island Sound and somehow, after a cup or more, perhaps a lot more, of sake, we somehow managed to drop the sake-heating pan overboard.

“So, Bob, were you able to get the pot back?”   Actually, I did as somehow I had the presence of mind, in the “heat of the moment”, get it, the pot we “heated” the sake in?,  to drop a “lead line” over the stern with a float, to mark the spot.

Lead line you ask?  For those of you that aren’t “of a certain age”, it’s a lead weight of several pounds that is attached to a piece of line with knots every 6′, or fathom, that is tossed overboard to determine the depth.  Of course, you have to hold the bitter end.  However, nobody carries one of those these days with the advent of electronic depth finders.

Anyway, the next morning I went for a swim to retrieve the pot and probably to clear my sake muddled head.    Over the years we spent many days and nights with Chris and Pat and once they purchased their own boat, a lovely little 23′ Seasprite and we rafted up nearly every weekend.   Of course, by that point we had sold Tao and moved up as well, if going from 20′ to 22′ was really “up”, to our Marshall 22 Sappho. We had many fun weekends aboard and some still involved sake.  So, after perhaps one too many nights afloat, perhaps with more sake, somehow Brenda began to change shape, especially in one particular spot.  How’d that happen?Suddenly, we had babies on board.   Both Rob and Chris were aboard by 3 months old, 25 months apart, of course.

And, speaking of having small children aboard, Brenda recalls a particularly upsetting visit with Christopher’s pediatrician when he questioned her about the mosquito bites that he had “acquired” the prior weekend.   When she told him that he had been aboard a small boat. his reaction was a less than supportive when he said “is that safe”.  In her head she wailed “I, I, I don’t knoooow…”

Go ahead Chris, have a sip of beer, it will take the edge off of those skeeter bites.
Boating aside, we still vacationed up in the Adirondacks for a number of years before chucking that for more time aboard.  Yes, I know that this doesn’t really fit in the post but it’s such a great shot, I had to use it. 
Over the years, the boys got bigger. And bigger still.  And then even a bit bigger.  We fed ducks.  Isn’t that what all kids do?  And always with the most nutritious white Wonder Bread, of course.
Along the way we joined in on a big celebration of The Catboat Association at Mystic Seaport.   There were many catboats, a lot of catboats.   These photos were taken from high up in the rigging of the Charles W. Morgan.   Not by me, I am too much of a chicken for heights and it was a clandestine visit to boot. Those were great times.   Then we were “post-catboat” and onto our much larger at 38′ long, a Pearson Invicta yawl Artemis.  The boys were getting bigger too. Along the way, Chris and Pat decided to get in on the action and had one of their own, Travers, the first of two for them. The too got a bigger boat. a Luders 33, which they still own, to this day. Always a bit of a daredevel, Rob always wanted to go aloft.  This time on a friends boat, a lovely, Alajuea 38, Cimba, owned by our friends Linda and Frank.  Years later they cruised all through the Caribbean, both east and west, staying away for 7 years before “retiring” to Maine.

As an interesting side note, their son Peter, after growing up around all sorts of boats, opted to sail around the world when he graduated from college.  His mother wasn’t amused but he made it back safely. Frank spent time with Rob teaching him some knots.   And yes, Rob was bigger then as well. His brother Christopher wasn’t going to be left out from all that fun up the mast.  Both Chris and Rob were relentless in wanting to be aloft, sometimes when we were underway, to the constant torment of their Mother.    I recall a particularly fun time aloft for the boys as I put them each up the mast while we were sailing near Martha’s Vineyard West Chop,  a particularly bumpy piece of water.   As we bucked along each boy was repeatedly yanked up from the water, by the motion of the boat, and dramatically dumped into the next wave.  They just loved it.

As reported, their mother was not amused.  Perhaps the words of that pediatrician were still echoing in her head “are you sure that’s safe?”  Probably not, but they were wearing life preservers and just loved it.  Safe enough… I guess.

Brenda much preferred it when they horsed around closer to the surface of the water.   At that time we had a lovely little Dyer Dow, a great sailing dink.  However, as we all got bigger, there just wan’t enough freeboard to keep us safe so we graduated to an inflatable, the first of many until I finally got the memo to spend the “big bucks” to get a quality brand that would last more than a few years.  There was even some time for homework, or was it just coloring?
Sure enough, summer turned to fall but that didn’t keep us from the water.   And yes, you can see, if you look closely, that Christopher is wearing a safety harness under his winter coat, attached to a lifeline, to keep him safe, of course.As you can tell, I’ve been digging again through old photos and it’s been a lot of fun thinking back on all those years sailing weekends and on summer vacations aboard a series of increasingly bigger and unfortunately, more complicated and way more expensive boats.

And, as the boats got larger and more complicated, so did the boys.   They are both out on their own now, Rob, with a rapidly growing family, “now they are five”, and Chris so far away, out in Oakland CA, which his mother and I just hate, the distance, not CA.  But they are both doing really well and it’s great to watch them find their way in the world.

Anyway, before I get too weepy, I’ll wrap this up.  For sure, remembering is fun and we sure did have some really nice times aboard with the “boys on the boat”.

Who knows, perhaps soon Brenda and I will be able to take the next generation aboard Pandora and begin the whole process all over again.

But first, we’ll have to convince the mother of those adorable grandchildren that the answer to that question posed by that pediatrician so many years ago “is that safe?” is yes.

Who knows, perhaps one day one of them will decide to sail around the world.

You never know…  And, it would be doubly great if I’m still be around to follow along.  When the time comes, if it does, perhaps I’ll find myself wondering and worrying too if it’s safe.

So often, when we have met folks on a boating holiday, they spend hours up on the bow, “catching the rays” so that when they go back to work they will hear “wow, what a great tan.”

However, talk to a derm and they will tell you, having seen so much sun damage and worse, over the years, that there is simply no such thing as a good tan.    Yes, nearly everyone knows that excessive sun, or at least extra ultraviolet (UV) radiation, sunburn or not, is not good for you.

According to the American Cancer Society, melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, can develop anywhere on your body, even those areas “where the sun don’t shine”.   Interestingly, the risk of melanoma is increasing in people under 40 and understanding what to look for is important before the cancer spreads, leading to better survival.

Unchecked, melanoma is often fatal, in part because even an advanced case often doesn’t look like much, more like a mole with irregular boarders.    This image shows how innocuous it can appear. I am particularly focused on this because Brenda was diagnosed with melanoma three years ago after we got back from Cuba.  She had noticed a small spot on her arm some months earlier,when we were in the Bahamas, that looked a lot like the spot in the photo above but it wasn’t until we returned home in May that she had a dermatologist at Yale Medicine check it out.   Fortunately for Brenda, hers had only progressed slightly beyond stage one, but that diagnosis was upsetting in itself as she was told that a recurrence was perhaps 1 in four, not great odds.

Even though the lesion didn’t look like much, the surgery to remove it proved to be quite extensive, involving the removal of the equivalent of a modest “ice cream scoop” of tissue, all the way down to the muscle.  Even more fun was that they then made an incision from the borders of the excised section that extended in both directions nearly to her shoulder and elbow.  This had to be done so that they could pull the edges of the “ice cream scoop” together without causing a divot or pucker where the incision was the deepest.

Additionally, they removed some sentinel nodes in her armpit for testing to see if the cancer had migrated beyond the lesion on her arm.  Fortunately, these came up negative.  The point of telling you this is that even the smallest melanoma is a big deal and is generally dealt with aggressively, which speaks volumes of the danger that it represents.

When Brenda was diagnosed, we did wonder if our sailing days were over because of the need to avoid unnecessary exposure to the sun going forward.  For us, it was doubly important that we find out how much protection from UV that Brenda would have aboard during the brightest portions of the day, from around 10:00 to 16:00 hrs, when the sun was most intense.

With this in mind, I purchased a testing instrument from General Instruments that would accurately measure both UVA and UVB light waves, the parts of the light spectrum that have been identified as being the most damaging to skin.

According to the instrument maker’s website, “The #UV512C UVC light meter is ideal for applications such as UV curing and sterilization, semiconductor fabrication, offset printing, environmental monitoring and industrial process control.”   Ok, sounded pretty official and scientific to me.The big question was how much UV would Brenda be exposed to at “high noon” in the Caribbean, aboard Pandora, where we spend a good deal of time each winter.    

We’ve also heard, over the years, that you can get a bad burn from “reflected UV” off of the water and this alarmed us as, even with a bimini overhead, it seemed to be an impossible task to eliminate the UV coming in from the sides of our enclosure, reflected off of the water.

In theory, Pandora has better sun protection than most with her hard dodger and fully enclosed cockpit.  As an aside, you may be wondering if being enclosed all the time is too hot in the tropics, it isn’t.   Actually, the full enclosure has proven to be particularly helpful  at keeping the relentless trade winds to a manageable level.  However, up in the NE, where the winds are often light, we need to open things up much more.

When we were in Antigua, and that’s plenty far south with really intense sun, even in the winter months, I took a number of measurements, with the meter, at noon when the sun is most intense.  Here’s what I found, some of what surprised me.

Control:  As a control I took measurements directly into the noon sun, in a cloudless sky.  The reading, and the highest that will register on the instrument, weas 10,000 units.  Deep shade, away from the water, registered between 500 and 600 units, about 5%.

Sunscreen:  Then I put a small piece of plastic wrap over the sensor and checked full sun again that showed readings in the 8,500 range, suggesting that very thin plastic wrap let through most of the UV light.  Next, I put a very light smear of SPF 15 sunscreen and the reading, again in full sun, was about 2,000.  With a thicker spread of SPF 15, half of that.  SPF 60 yielded a reading of 600, a lot less, about the same as in deep shade.

Surprises:  Perhaps the most interesting readings came from pointing the unit toward the sun at 45 degrees off of the water, simulating “reflective light” where I only received a reading of 2,000, only 20% of full sun.  That was much less than I had expected.  Further, in the middle of the cockpit, where the light was still very bright, the measurements were equivalent to deep shade.

Vinyl blocks UV:  I also took measurements through the clear plastic of the vinyl dodger, both new and old material, and the measurement was, again, zero.   Even old and weathered vinyl cut out 100% of the UV rays.  I found that astonishing, however I guess it does make sense as the material is treated to resist UV degradation.

Glass does not block UV:  My hard dodger has large pieces of tempered glass and I was surprised to find that it only blocked 10% of the UV rays.   All of this suggested that during the brightest parts of the day Brenda was very well protected under the bimini, even if it seemed so bright that sunglasses were required.

Clothing protects from UV:  So, what about clothing?  I tried an old white T shirt and found that, even when wet, it blocked about 95% of UV with a dry shirt letting through somewhat more.  I was particularly surprised by that given all the hype about UV protective clothing.  My test suggests that just about any clothing that covers you up works well, even if it doesn’t have a “UV rating”.  I guess that putting a UV rating on clothing is about the same as saying that a particular shirt has “100% blockage against vampires”.   Works for me.

All of this is good news but I guess that the most surprising thing to me was how low the UV exposure was under the dodger and bimini.  And that clear vinyl windows were just as effective as being down below when it came to exposure, and that even the lightest white clothing, “UV protected” or not, provided good protection.

The good news for Brenda is that two and a half years out from her surgery she is doing well and her doctor told her recently that her risk of recurrence now is “very, very small”, which is good news.

His advice to her is that it’s OK to continue spending time aboard Pandora but to always use plenty of sunscreen and to do her best to stay out of the sun when it is most intense.

One way or the other, we are taking his advice very seriously but it’s nice to know that being aboard Pandora we can still manage the risk.

So, there you have it.  reflected UV isn’t nearly as much of a problem as everyone thinks, sunscreen really does work and most any clothing does an excellent job of keeping harmful UV out.

We continue to keep our fingers crossed that Brenda won’t have a recurrence and every year that passes makes that less likely, which is good news.

All and all, this experience has certainly made the phrase “there’s no such thing as a good tan”, means more to us than ever.

Ok, so with our UV exposure in the winter up here in New England so low, I wonder if we will develop a vitamin D deficiency.  Great, something new to worry about.

I can’t wait till May.  Are we there yet?

I have recently written about our plans to visit the Bay of Fundy and the St John river next summer.  It will be our first trip there on our own boat but not our first trip there, “aboard” a boat.

As I have mentioned, I have been digging through some old photos lately and have come up with some wonderful images that conjure up many great memories.

And speaking of old photos and visiting Canada, our last trip there was a REALLY long time ago, way back in 1979.  We had only been married for about two years and hadn’t even thought about buying a boat.

While our trip this coming summer won’t take us across the Bay of Fundy to Yarmouth, I expect that many of the spots we’ll visit will have the similar, otherworldly feel that makes the coastline so beautiful.

Our trip, so many years ago, was by car and began in Portland ME where we caught the overnight ferry to Yarmouth.   We splurged on a sleeping cabin.   No, this isn’t a view of our cabin and I’ll admit that I can’t recall much except that Brenda didn’t eat dinner as she felt queasy.   The bow of the ferry. And speaking of queasy, the muscular build of this Canadian cost guard boat gives a pretty good feel for how rough it can get out on the water there.  We brought along our car on the ferry, then a tiny diesel VW Rabbit.  Remember them?  That car got AMAZING mileage, about 50 mpg, on average.   And, I remember that diesel was $.47 a gallon.   And, during the oil embargo I sometimes bought fuel oil from a place in Bridgeport CT.  I’d pull up to the heating oil place and they’d snake a hose out from the shop and fill me up.  Totally illegal.  Ah, those were the days.  I won’t talk about my income in those years.  About as low, or perhaps lower than the price of fuel.  I was selling advertising for a local free newspaper. We have always loved lighthouses and to this day go out of my way to visit them when we travel.   This one, in Yarmouth is on Cape Forchu is well known and often photographed.    We climbed up to the top to take in the view.   The light went round and round and as it passed, you could feel the heat of the bulb as it passed, like a rotisserie.  Brenda thought it was great too until the foghorn went off.  It was so loud that it made us weak in the knees.  To this day it still takes some coaxing to get her up in an active lighthouse.  We have only camped in a tent twice together, the first time was while we were in college, near Niagara Falls. It rained the whole time and we quickly learned that the tent was not waterproof and that didn’t even include the fact that there was no bottom to the tent, waterproof or not.  Water coming in from above and below.

On this trip we split our time camping and visiting Bed and Breakfast inns.   I still vividly recall our camping near Peggy’s Cove on a bluff overlooking the North Atlantic, with the fog rolling in.    Not a luxury tent, to be sure.Not a great shot but I include this as it features our wok, perched over an open fire.  We filled it with seaweed and added two lobsters.  That wok has served us faithfully for all these years.  We still use it nearly every day.  After that trip it was really well seasoned.    One evening, or was it the only evening we camped there?, we heard someone playing bagpipes in the waning twilight.  It was a remarkable moment with the forlorn music and fog wafting over the campsite.

We really enjoyed the time up there.  We were so young.   Mere kids. To this day I still get a thrill when I see a schooner.   On this trip we went out for a day sail on the schooner Bluenose II,  a reproduction of a classic Grand Banks fisherman laucnhed in the 1920s.   The original Bluenose was the fastest fishing schooner in the fleet and is still regarded as perhaps the fastest ever launched.  The “new” Bluenose is a roving ambassador for Nova Scotia and travels widely. Brenda is a prolific fiber artist, graduating from her early focus on knitting.  I  believe that this may have been her first sweater knitted with “real” yarn.   This particular photo is one of my all time favorites.  When she was younger, but not a lot younger than she is in this photo, she didn’t have access to good yarn, or any, for that matter, and had to knit a single ball of red yarn, probably (gasp) acrylic, rip it out and knit it up again.  She still has to rip things out but not because of a lack of good yarn.    Quite the contrary, her “stash” is prodigious.

I have no idea how many sweaters she has knitted over the last 40 years but it’s probably hundreds.   It’s pretty safe to say that she has been knitting nearly every day as long as I have known her.   Right now she is knitting booties for our nearly new twin grand-babies.   As Brenda would say, in a high squeeky baby voice, “they are soooo cuuute!”

Ok, back to boats:

The Pride of Baltimore was visitinng.   She was a reproduction of a Baltimore Clipper launched in 1977, the year Brenda and I were married.  She a sailed over 150,000 miles as an ambassador to Baltimore MD.   However, while her design was fairly faithful to the original type, that proved to be a problem as she lacked some of the modern safety features now common which proved to be her undoing.  Unfortunately, she sank in the Caribbean in 1986 with the loss of captain and three crew.  Her successor the “Pride” II has watertight bulkheads and was built to more modern safety standards.  Pride II has sailed over 300,000 miles, visited over 200 ports in 40 countries over her now 30 year career.Pride was quite authentic down to her beautiful gig. In the “they don’t make them like they used to” category, how about the hull of this fishing boat?  Not a lot made these days of planked wood.    She’s a beauty, or at least once one as she’s certainly long gone. The tides in the Bay of Fundy are known as being among the highest in the world, as high as 40′.  That’s a lot of water moving in and out of the huge Bay of Fundy, twice a day.   As the tide floods the water surges in, moving a small wave ahead of it.  This is referred to as a “bore” and is pretty impressive to see as the ridge of white water rolling inland across any inlet or bay. Perhaps the most photographed harbor in Nova Scotia is Peggy’s Cove.  It’s an impossibly quaint fishing village on the eastern shore.  Charming fishing boats at every turn. Where there is “quaint”, there are artists capturing the view.  Peggy’s Cove is no different. With big tides, all you have to do to haul a boat is to pull it up at high tide and let the receding tide do the rest. Just about all of the boats we saw were still built of wood and the cottages surrounding the harbor, oh so quaint.  I expect that many of these have been sold, over the years, to summer residents, known in Maine as “from away”.  We visited, of course, the local lighthouse.   Looks like Brenda’s waiting for the wind to blow up her skirt.  Me too…And, speaking of breezy, the coastline here is quite rugged and windswept.  I can only imagine what it is like in the dead of winter. With the constant wind not a lot grows higher than knee high.
We went out on a day fishing boat, jigging for squid and even caught some cod.
Ready to head out to sea. We even caught a flounder, sole, fluke, something like that.  It’s flat anyway.   Not sure she’d “soil” her hands on an icky fish these days.  It was on this very trip that we talked about buying a boat for the first time.  There was a small boat show in Yarmouth, If I recall.  I expect that this photo was taken when I said “Hey, let’s buy a boat”.   “Very funny Bob, perhaps not.” The coastline is so spectacular.   Maine is very similar so we’ll see this sort of view next summer which will mark our 15th time to visit Maine aboard our own boat.  I went to Maine briefly a few years ago but Brenda hasn’t been there since I retired over six years ago.  Lovely views.   I wonder if it looks the same nearly 40 years later. Ok, how about a photo of me for balance?  Funny, seems that I had more hair then. Well, it’s getting late and I need to pack for our trip to MD tomorrow to celebrate our grandaughter Tori’s birthday.    She’s a real cutie.

Perhaps I’ll close for now with a photo of my own cutie.  Well, it’s been a long time since this photo was taken way back when.
A lot of water has gone under our keel since this photo was taken but it’s nice to know that we will soon be making memories again in Canada this coming summer.

Did I mention that we’re heading back?  This time on our own boat.  Who’d have guessed?

It’ll be fun.    Totally, for sure.

It was the late 70s, and we still practically newly weds, when I said something like “hey honey, let’s buy a boat”.    Brenda and I had been sailing together since our junior year of high school when we sailed aboard a Carl Alberg Typhoon out or Norwalk with our friend Chris.  It was from Chris that I caught the sailing bug.

Well, Brenda must have said yes, or is perhaps guilty of not putting up a better fight, but one way or the other, we settled on our first boat.   Somehow we found a tiny, although it didn’t seem particularly tiny to us at the time, Cape Cod catboat, a Mystic 20 built in Groton CT named Tao.    She was named, as are so many “cat” boats, after a cat.  In this case, the Siamese cat in the Disney story “The Incredible Journey”.

We looked at her in Mystic CT and it was love at first sight.  Our very first boat.   I believe this is a shot of her in the marina, the day we took delivery.
We headed out, aboard Tao, with our friends, Chris and Pat for the run back to Bridgeport where we planned to keep her.    I was a happy guy.   Happy to have a boat that was better looking than my hat.    Well, this shot wasn’t taken on that exact day, but it illustrates my point. Brenda, perhaps happy as well but only until she discovered, to her extreme distress, that she was prone to nausea when things got bumpy.  Which on a small boat, is nearly all of the time.  I wish I could say that she eventually got over it, but not completely, even to this day, 40 years later.

Look at her. Her expression is very nearly “come hither”.  Worked for me…

I guess it was a calm day on the water.  Nice sweater,  she knitted this one and many, many others, over the years.  Hundreds?  Quite possibly.
Well, we finally made it to Bridgeport where I had arranged for a mooring to be installed off of the beach, down the street from the duplex apartment that we were renting at the time.

That arrival day, when we tied up to the mooring off of the beach,  was not a calm day.  Not at all.  Once we were secured to the mooring, Brenda leaped overboard, foul weather gear and all, and waded ashore.   I don’t recall what she said or perhaps thought exactly, about that first cruise but I am pretty sure it isn’t printable.    Not a great way to begin our sailing life together.

Shortly after that horrible beach landing, perhaps the very next day, I moved the boat to a more sheltered mooring in a nearby harbor.

From that day forward there has been an ongoing quest to find calm anchorages.  Sometimes we were actually successful. We hung out with our friends Chris and Pat along with others, nearly every weekend.   No outboard engines on our dinks in those days.  Chris and Garrett with me in the bow.  Good thing it was a calm anchorage.   Rub a dub, dub…

Chris and Pat’s Sea Sprite 23 had an outboard.  Way to small for an inboard.
We joined the Catboat Association and were members for many years.  Eventually, Brenda and I ended up on the board, or “steering committee”.  Get it “steering” the association, like a boat?  Clever?  We thought so.

We also participated in many catboat races in those days.   However, like today, back then, if you ask Brenda what her favorite part of sailing is, she will say, predictably, “being anchored”.
And anchor we did.  I particularly like this shot of Brenda.   What a dish.  I’d totally date that girl.   To starboard, a mop, or some bleach blond chick.  No, a mop, really. However, anchoring alone was rare for us as we nearly always rafted up with other small boats.  Somehow three tiny boats tied up together don’t seem, well, so tiny.   That became even more important when we all started popping out kiddos.    However, we weren’t in a rush, as while we were “yacht owners” we didn’t want to bring kids into the world until we were really settled.

To us, being “settled” meant a microwave and garage, which weren’t in place until we’d been married for nearly 8 years.  Actually, there was more to it than that as we were pretty much kids ourselves when we got married, our early 20s.  Kids having kids doesn’t always work out so well.

Here’s Tao rafted with her bigger sister Lady Bug, a Legnos 10-3 and Petrel, a sister ship to Tao owned by Toby and Martha Forbes.   We met them. along with their son and his family that owned Lady Bug in Port Jefferson.   We became long time friends and eventually moved into the guest cottage on their estate Oak Knoll, in Ridgefield not long after this shot was taken. This is where Toby and Martha lived, in the main house.  It was built by Frederick Remington, the artist, as a summer home.   We loved it there and lived on the estate for, I think, three years.   Oak Knoll was designated as a historic site in the 60s. I was a really charming little cottage, once the home of the estate gardener and also built by Remington.  It was a great spot and the deck, nearly as large as our cottage, provided a spectacular view. I loved working out in the yard, or should I say, the South 40, clearing brush and cutting dead wood for the wood stove.   Toby and Martha were very happy to have the help, I think.  I am not absolutely positive about that, but they were always very gracious.   They left us pretty much alone and it wasn’t until years later that we really became good friends.  We all wished we had spent more time together when we lived in the cottage.

Toby and Martha met during WWII in SanDiego.  Toby was a PBY Catalina amphibious airplane Navy pilot.  Martha love to tell the story of how she was smitten by him when she first saw Toby in his uniform and went right up to him and took his arm.  They were a wonderful couple.

Here I am with my college buddy Tom, driving the tractor.  “Bob, let me drive, let me drive!”  Tom now lives in Marblehead MA and is an active sailboat racer with his wife Lisa.  It was a lovely cottage.  I believe this is a shot of the living room.  Want to guess what time of the year it is?  That’s right Christmas.  Gold star for you.

Notice the stuffed decorations on the tree and the skirt.  Brenda sewed them all.  We also sewed those lovely covers for the chair cushions.  Not a bad pattern.  Since then we’ve upgraded.  No more vinyl sling chairs for us.
It was aboard Tao that we learned to enjoy gin and tonics, perhaps from Toby and Martha.  It must have been too early in the day for that when this shot was taken.   We are still in regular touch with Chris and Pat, to this day.  Our youngest is named for Chris, actually.
We fished but once caught, we had no idea what to do with our catch on on such a small boat.  Besides, who actually eats bluefish?
In those days, no protection from the weather so foul weather gear was in use nearly all of the time.  Brenda just loved being coated with salt, even on a sunny day.  Tao was a wet boat and to make matters worse, no shower.   There’s that hat again.  I guess it was on sale.  I can’t think of any other reason I’d buy it.  Heck, perhaps it was free.  Had to be…
Not sure about how this shot fits in.  I just like it. We sailed as late into the season as we could and I can still remember the one Memorial Day Weekend when I couldn’t get the boat ready in time.  I wasn’t happy at all about that.  Mechanical problems, I recall.  Isn’t that always the reason?
I guess Brenda hadn’t yet seen “Jaws”.   Thanks Stephen, I never really got over that, myself.   DUH DUH…DUH DUH…DUH DUH DHU…However, I have always been fairly sure that sharks don’t eat clammers.   Well, mostly sure.  Don’t you just love the speedo?
We sailed Tao, far and wide, farther and wider than was reasonable, in such a tiny boat.  Oh, did I mention that it had an even tinier 5hp one cylinder diesel?  When it was running, it sounded like someone rattling a stone in a coffee can.  Bang, bang, bang… I still have the prop on my desk as a paper weight.

We covered a lot of ground from Bridgeport to Nantucket and down to Barnegat Bay NJ.  Brenda was not amused when we went through NYC, Hell gate sideways and into a snotty SW wind under the Verazanno Bridge with a full ebb against the wind and a huge chop.

After that experience, it wasn’t until we headed south in our SAGA 43 Pandora, that she went through NYC again, more than 20 years, or was it 30 years later, declaring “Well, that wasn’t so bad”.  You go girl!  She is such a sport.

Once, we even sprung for spot on the dock at Bannister’s Wharf in Newport, behind the famous ocean racer Boomerang.  For a 20′ boat the cost of dockage, by the foot was about the same as a fixed rate mooring.   It was a really long way down from the dock to the deck at low tide.
Remember Buzzards bay Light near Martha’s Vineyard?    It’s now a tall flasher but no longer manned or with a chopper deck for switching crew.
We passed the light on our way to the Vineyard and Nantucket.  It was a really long way to go in a 20′ boat.   Perhaps easy to get there, with the SW prevailing winds but tough to get back in time to go to work after our two week holiday.   And, when it got foggy, no radar, GPS, just dead-reckoning in pea soup, not sure what was coming our way.

And, there was always a lot of commercial traffic coming our way.  This freighter pre-dates the current container ships that dominate world trade.  This sort, the type that sports it’s own cranes for loading and unloading, are still used in some really small ports but most have been scrapped. Our one trip to Nantucket aboard Tao was to visit the Opera House Cup, an annual gathering of classic yachts.   This is the original Malabar class schooner, by the same name, designed by John Alden .  I tried my best to get a spot on this boat for one of the races.  No luck. Back in the early 80s, there we still a lot of older fishing boats out on Block Island Sound.  That was before the modern draggers that decimated the fish population.
And, there was no fishing village more charming than Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard.  This is an old style sword fishing boat.  A spotter would stand on the cross tree on the mast, supported by the hoops.  When they saw a fish swimming along the surface, they’d go up on a long bowsprit and harpoon the fish.    A lot of swordfish were landed at these docks.However, adventures aside, and there were plenty of them aboard Tao, we had some of our best times just lazing along on a calm summer evening, G&T in hand.
And it was on this very evening, when this shot was taken by our artist friend Chris, while aboard his own boat, that he immortalized Tao and her crew in the painting that he did for me as a gift on my 25th birthday.  For me, that painting immortalizes those wonderful times along with those famous words, “hey honey, let’s buy a boat”.   I’m pretty sure that sometimes Brenda still wishes she had said, “let me think about that for a while”.

Setting that aside, and I do, it’s been a great ride.

Now that I am settled, sort of, into the reality that cold is going to be the word of the day for the next few months, I have been wondering exactly what I will write about.  In years passed before I retired and we headed south for the winter, I somehow found a way to keep posts flowing, but for this winter I fear that I will find myself  at odds as to what I can write about for the next few months.  It’s really easy to write about boats and such when we are aboard one but now, not so easy.

Sure, I can write about the upgrades to Pandora but just how much scintillating prose can one absorb about heat guns and scrapers as I tease out the mess that’s ,no longer, holding up the headliner?

My brother Bill had suggestion that is intriguing.  He had initially shared this idea with me a while back but I never took it to heart and that was to write about the “olden days”, a sort of “what I did on my summer vacation” story.  Ok, described that way perhaps it, does sound like a big yawn but I am going to try a version of that.  With that in mind, I’ll try to go easy on you and bring something to the discussion beyond the “we went from Block Island to Cuttyunk and it rained with wind on the nose and took xxx hours….”

No, instead I’ll, well I’m not sure what I’ll write but I’ll try to make it interesting.

So, yesterday I went up into the attic to pull out a few boxes, and let me tell you these boxes are big, full of years of photos, both prints and 35mm slides.   I’ll admit that I got a bit teary eyed as I sorted through nearly 50 years of photos trying to decide where to begin.

As it’s close to Christmas as I write this, I also found myself thinking about an Osborn Family Tradition of watching National Lampoon’s Family Vacation with Chevy Chase, on Christmas Day, after all the packages are unwrapped.  Griswold had the crying gene too, big time.

My trip to the attic reminded me of the scene in the movie when he becomes trapped up in the attic.  If you recall the scene, skip this 2 minute clip.  If not, view on and you’ll get the idea.  And, speaking of wonderful memories and old photos.   I ordered a photo converter that can handle negatives, slides and prints and scan them to digital.  It’s a pretty neat unit and I should have it in a few days.  No wait, it’s going to arrive on Tuesday.   Amazon promises…and I believe.  I BELIEVE!

We have been planning to get a quality scanner for some time now as Brenda still has hundreds of slides to scan for the book she’s working on about Archie Brennan, the tapestry weaver and her long time teacher so we needed it anyway.

“So, Bob, do tell.  What scanner did you order?”   Well, if you insist, it’s an Epson Perfection Document Scanner, and can handle slides, negatives and photos as well as digitize text from a book or magazine which will make plagiarism ever so much easier.  I chose this particular model as it was recommended by Brenda’s publisher as easy to use and fairly fast, even with high density scans.  It even has a few “magic” features that removes dust spots and scratches as well as re-color faded slides and photos.  How do it do dat?

In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to kick off this “series” and write a bit about Artemis, our third boat that met an unfortunate and untimely death when she tangled with a granite dock years ago.

Artemis was a Pearson, Invitca Yawl, built in 1962, one of about 10 built from Bill Tripp Sr’s design.   I am told that the design was similar in form to a Bermuda 40, which you can see from the lines.  She was a beautiful, if slow boat.  We sailed her quite a bit, although she wasn’t very fast, with her 25′ waterline and small sail plan.

As a particular point of interest, Artemis had a famous sibling, Burgoo that won first place, for the entire 142 boat fleet, on corrected time of course, the Bermuda race in 1964.   Event the NY Times wrote about her feat in this article.   Don’t you just love Google?

So, back to Artemis,  and our time aboard her.   We spent a lot of time cruising in those days although it was always in short stints over weekends and our obligatory summer vacation.

Our boys Rob and Chris were a lot smaller then.  Along the way, we often visited Selden Creek, on the CT River, not far from our home now.  It was, and still is, a beautiful spot.  However, we don’t visit aboard Pandora as she’s as long as the creek is wide and draws to much water to get over the bar where the creek meets the river.

Don’t tell anyone but I was trespassing when I took this photo, probably in 1995.    Like the bimini?  I was a striped bed sheet.  Only the finest. A lazy day ghosting along in light air with her mizzen staysail up and drawing nicely.  Brenda and Chris enjoying the easy sail.
I always thought that she was had beautiful lines, and felt the same way about Artemis.   Here we are at the dock at Norwalk Yacht Club, where we were members for many years. Yes, we had some great times aboard.  However, good times do come to an end, sometimes more dramatically than others and Artemis met her end in the harbor during the October nor’easter of 1996.  Many boats went up on the rocks in Long Island Sound that night, over 200, I heard.    There was considerable damage in Wilson Cove, where Artemis was moored with nearly every boat ripped from their moorings.

I had received a call from the club that Saturday morning reporting that “Artemis isn’t on her mooring”.   Off to Norwalk I headed, not knowing what I’d find.   The beach near the club was littered with boats washed up on shore.  During the few short years I owned her, I took great care of her and did what I could to make her a proper yacht.  The name on the transom was hand painted by a sign painter.  That was in the days before the computer created vinyl lettering of today. So, there I found her, poor Artemis, tucked up against a granite dock.   You can’t see it, but she was sitting on top of a J24 which she had crushed under her heavily built fiberglass bulk.  You know the phrase, “they don’t build them like they used to?”   That’s how Artemis was built, but she was still no match for the granite blocks she was pitted against. They duked it out, Artemis and the dock, for hours and the dock won.  Being the “d0-it-yourselfer” I was and still am, I set about to salvage her myself.    First I stuffed bedding, cushions and towels in the huge crack, over 30′ long that ran down much of the port side where the deck and hull separated.   Notice the oil slick that covered everything down below and around the boat. I was able to get a work boat from Tavern Island nearby to help pump her out with a huge fire pump.   All that “stuffing” of the holes helped and once the bulk of the crack was above water, up she rose like Lazarus, from the depths. When the pumps finally took hold she came up in only a few moments.   Then I towed her to a marina where she was hauled out of the water.  I don’t want to think about what would have happened if she had sunk in the middle of the channel on the 2+ mile run to be hauled.  Oh, the ignorance of youth.

Actually, she was scheduled to be hauled for the winter a few days from then as we had our “final” cruise for the season on Columbus Day, only a few days before the storm hit.
She had a lovely galley with a very nice Force 10 Stove and oven. Not quite as nice after…How about the fridge.  At least, I think that’s what this was. Those cushions, the ones I plugged that 30′ crack with, well, they were never all that nice. But, by comparison, beautiful… Oh yeah, we had recently had her re-powered, about a month earlier actually, with a brand new Westerbeke diesel replacing her worn out Atomic 4 gas engine that finally gave up the ghost on our trip up to Martha’s Vineyard only two months earlier.  I think that the engine only had ten hours on it.   Particularly easy access from the cabin sole and particularly easy access for the engine oil and diesel to rise up and soak everything.  Thank goodness that the EPA wasn’t paying attention as I worked to raise her. Note the mooring pennant in the cockpit.  Oops.  Didn’t hold.  She was a great boat and, boy, was I sad when I lost her.  However, she was the only boat I ever owned that actually paid me back.  Not only was she insured for an agreed value of twice what I paid for her, prior to all the improvements, but I was also paid to salvage her.  When all was said and done, I ended up nearly doubling my money.   Not likely to EVER happen again, that’s for sure.   We are talking about boats, after all.

However, like many smitten by being on the water, I quickly doubled down and brought a boat that was cost even more, Elektra, our Tartan 37.  But, that’s a story for another post. so stay tuned.

Of Artemis, I will always have fond memories of times aboard with Brenda and the boys.   Especially in “The Pit” in Port Jefferson, Long Island.  Those were great times.   Well, great except when the weather was crappy, the wind was unfavorable and everyone was feeling a bit under the weather.  Perfect except for that…These days that harbor is chock full of moorings and it’s party city on the weekends with boats rafted up from one shore to the other.

A lot of water has gone over the dam, we’re retired now and both Rob and Chris are on their own and doing well.

I guess that about covers this for now so I’ll close with a shot I took last week of Rob and his brood.  My, times have changed, haven’t they?  But, in a good way.  Aren’t they cute?  Love Tori’s hair.  She’s going to be two in a few weeks.  Time flies indeed. And, Christopher and his girlfriend Melody, as we dropped them at the airport last week after their visit for Thanksgiving, to head back to CA.   They will be back soon.  So great. Yes, things have changed, but in a really good way.

So, there you have it, a bit of reminiscence of times past.    We’re all grown up now and no Artemis didn’t fare so well, but for us, so far, so good.

Let’s hope that our good luck holds.

As far as this post goes, I hope that it doesn’t read too much like “what I did on my summer vacation”.  Actually, it’s seems more like the Poseidon Adventure with sinking boats along with vacations and such.

Griswold, you aren’t alone in getting a bit teary eyed about days past.   Me, I have the crying gene too.    Just don’t get me started.

Here I am, home again in CT, after a week in Antigua to welcome the Dawgs and The Salty Dawg Rally to the Caribbean.  They had a tough slog on the way down, some saying that it was the most difficult run in nearly a decade.

Faced with persistent SE winds, about 25 boats had to stop in Bermuda for fuel repairs or both.  Others kept heading south, working hard to make their way against relentless headwinds.

With the fleet about equally split between making landfall in the BVIs and Antigua, the expectation was that about 30-40 boats would end up in Antigua.  However, with some boats taking nearly 2 weeks to make the run from Hampton, VA, as they passed the BVIs, a number of Antigua bound boats, out of time, stopped there instead of continuing on to Antigua.

I was bummed about that but certainly understand that crew has only a limited time to be away and with Thanksgiving early this year, schedules were tighter than usual.   And, speaking of Thanksgiving, this year it was on November 22nd, but next year it will be nearly a week later, on the 28th, which will take a lot of pressure off of schedules for both skippers and crew.

Anyway, when I arrived in Antigua on November 12th, there wasn’t a Dawg in sight excepting a few that had happily made their way north from Trinidad to meet up with the fleet.   Unfortunately, with nobody in “town” I had to put off the first event.  However, by the time our next event, on the 14th we had a respectable showing so we carried on.

The plan was for the boats to congregate in Nelson’s Dockyard and a number of Dawgs did just that. It was nice to see our rally flag being proudly flown in such a historic spot. Our first event, held at Rhythm of Blue Art Gallery was a great way to kick off a week of celebration for skippers and crew.  Nancy Nicholson, who owns this lovely gallery in English Harbor, timed her season opening to include us and it was a great evening, complete with a terrific reggae band, rum drinks and great sushi appetizers. I expect that Angie of Club Sushi, at the Yacht Club, had a hand in providing the sushi.   I’m no expert but Angie does make great sushi.

Nancy was joined by her mother, Lisa Nicholson at the opening.  Lisa and her husband Desmond came to the island in the 50s and were instrumental in establishing the charter and tourism trades on the island.  The Nicholson family had a lasting impact on Antigua.  I have a book with photos that Nancy’s father Desmond took in the 50s and will be posting them soon.    They are wonderful and show the remarkable transformation that the area has undergone over the decades.

Nancy and her mom.  Note Nancy’s colorful pottery behind them.
True to form, Nancy brought in a great band. It was a lovely evening. A number of “early Dawgs” joined in the fun. But wait, more Dawgs. The ever generous Antigua Yacht Club hosted three events for us.  Count em, three.  That’s a really remarkable showing of how welcome the Dawgs are in Antigua.

I presented a rally flag to AYC Commodore Franklyn Braithwaite.   Franklyn has been tremendously supportive of our efforts to bring the rally to Antigua.  Franklyn is a fixture in Antigua and an accomplished Olympic sailor.   I guess you could say that Franklyn is truly a “Dawg’s best friend”.
And, speaking of the best friends, Janie and Geoffrey Easton, have worked tirelessly on our behalf with local businesses and government agencies to smooth the way in Antigua.   Without their help, things would not have gone so perfectly.  The clubhouse is a great spot to spend time with friends. AYC even opened up the clubhouse for a “down island briefing” hosted by Bill of Kalunamoo to help the Dawgs learn about the best spots to visit between Antigua and Trinidad.  Bill and Maureen have explored the islands extensively over the last few year and were happy to share their experiences. The Dawgs even took time out for a jam session in the Dockyard.  Once again, the Royal Navy Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda, regaled us with a “tot of our own”.   This is a wonderful tradition of raising a glass to the Queen, yes that Queen, every evening at 18:00 to carry on the now discontinued British Navy tradition of issuing a “tot” of rum to it’s enlisted men.   What wonderful historic surroundings of Copper and Lumber, in the Dockyard.   The rum was good too.
North Sails opened up their shop for a cocktail party, complete with crepes for all.  I missed this event but heard it was a lot of fun. And, of course, our arrival cocktail party at the Admiral’s Inn, a wonderful spot to enjoy history, and an “adult beverage” in the heart of the Dockyard.
We also had our arrival dinner, the capstone of our week of celebration in Antigua, at the Inn.  Happy Dawgs. Me, I was happy to stay at the Inn myself for a week and had some really tasty cups of coffee while enjoying the sights from the deck.Well, here I am, writing about all this and we are on the tail end of a cold snap with temperatures in the low teens.   All I can say is that “it will be better by May”.  Yes, and shortly after that Pandora will be back in the water.  Something to look forward to.

Antigua next November?   Yes, indeed.  I’ll be there.  And, if you are too, you’ll have a great time, I guarantee it.  In fact, plans are well underway and I’ll soon have details of what’s in store for our arrival by mid January.

Arrival dinner?  Sure, we got that.  How about Celebratory Week, Antigua style?

And what a great style it is.

Oh yeah, come January you can click here to sign up and get more information about the 2019 Fall Rally to the Caribbean, you’ll be glad you did.

Well, it’s finally happening, after a long run south, with a stop in Bermuda for many, the Fall Salty Dawg Rally participants are beginning to arrive here in Antigua.

That’s a good thing as am here with lots of parties planned and I just hate putting on parties when nobody shows up.  When I arrived on Tuesday, there was, in fact, nobody here from the rally which was a bit of a bummer.

I should note that I came to Antigua the easy way, by plane, flying in for a week to enjoy all the festivities with fellow Dawgs.   As they say, “nothing goes to weather like a Boeing 737”.  Sadly, I’ll have to leave before some even arrive as there are a number of Antigua bound boats still up in Bermuda, waiting for a window to head out.  It’s been challenging weather, that’s for sure.

The weather here has been unusual here as well with more rain than normal.  As a result, Antigua is remarkably green.  This island is normally fairly dry this time of year, but now it has a beautiful tropical look I’d usually associate with the lush islands further south.

I am staying at the Admiral’s Inn and it’s a lovely spot with beautiful grounds, authentic, although updated, from Lord Nelson’s time on the island.   This is the view from the end of the hall.  What a spot. The gardens are really amazing.  And you can’t beat this as a spot to have morning coffee.  That’s my friend Craig, in the blue shirt reading a good book.  He arrived yesterday to join in the festivities.  And, there are plenty planned. In my second year as Port Captain for Antigua, I continue to be struck by how generous everyone here has been in helping set up a really wonderful series of arrival events.  Forget the notion of an “arrival dinner”, here in Antigua think “arrival week”.  Of course, we will still have our official “safe arrival dinner” at the end of the week at Boom, overlooking Nelson’s Dockyard but we will also have plenty of other events that will keep our early arrivals busy and make the Dawgs feel at home in Antigua.   Click here to see the full list of activities.

As I write this, on Saturday morning, perhaps 15 boats have have arrived but more will be coming into port over the next few days.   Many will tie up in historic Nelson’s Dockyard, the only operating Georgian Dockyard in the world.  And, to make things even better, they can enjoy this fabulous harbor for about the same cost as they’d have to pay for a mooring in some US harbors.

Our events began two days ago and the first of the many planned events was a special evening at the Rhythm of Blue Gallery in English Harbor.  Owner Nancy supplied the Dawgs and many local friends with free rum drinks, wonderful passed appetizers, sushi actually, and she even hired a terrific reggae band that really kept things hopping.Nancy was joined by her mother, Ann, at the event.   Her parents were early in coming to the island to set up a fledgling charter business, I believe.   The two were great hosts for the event. A few boats arrived that day so we had some Dawgs in attendance.  My friends Bill and Maureen, on the left, had come up from their summer “home” in Trinidad, aboard their Kalunamoo.  Later in the evening we were invited to a special talk, complete with free wine and cheese, at the Antigua Yacht Club by Andrew Dove from North sails who spoke about his 40 years as a sailmaker.

Last evening we were treated to a wonderful event at Copper and Lumber, in the dockyard by one of my favorite groups, The Royal Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda.  I  won’t repeat what I have written about this group except to say that they meet every day to toast the Queen.  I am not sure of the exact count but I believe that we had more than two dozen Dawgs with us.  It was a beautiful, historic setting.  If some how, you missed what I have written in the past about the Tot Club, click here for a post from last season. It’s a great group.

During “arrival week” we will welcome more and more of our members to Antigua for a great line-up of events, most at little or no cost to the Dawgs.  And to cap things off we will have our arrival dinner here at the Admiral’s Inn, perhaps the most scenic spot in Antigua.   Last year, this event was really well attended and I am hopeful that most will be on-island with us this year as well.

It’s been very rewarding to me, as I worked with many here on the island to set up this year’s arrival events, to see how enthusiastic everyone is about the rally coming to their island.  In particular, the Antigua Yacht Club, local businesses and government officials have made it very clear that having us visit is very important to them.  Given their enthusiasm, I am confident that next year’s events will be even better.   Charles, “Max” Fernandez, the Minister of Tourism, will be with us again, for the second year, which is more evidence that Antigua really appreciates our making their island a destination for the rally.

If you didn’t get to Antigua in time for our event week, be sure to put Antigua on your itinerary for later in the season and for next year’s Salty Dawg Fall Rally to the Caribbean, or should I say the “Salty Dawg rally to Antigua”.   I personally guarantee that you will be glad you did.

If Antigua is still on your travel plans before the end of December, make a point of being in Nelson’s Dockyard so you can ring in the new year.  There is nothing quite like fireworks over the fort guarding the harbor.   Brenda and I did this, along with other Dawgs last year and it was fabulous.I expect to have a full list of 2019 arrival activities posted on our site this coming January.  If you missed this year’s arrival events, you’d be well advised to put Antigua on your schedule for next Fall’s rally.  I know I will.

Now you see why it’s so easy to say, and that’s not Fake News, that we are deep into the Dawg Days of Antigua.

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am here in Antigua, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the “fleet” of Dawgs heading our way.   I  flew in yesterday afternoon, and I am here to say that flying is a lot simpler, and faster, than getting here by boat.  However, I’ll have to leave here to fly home after only a week.  That’s such a bummer, let me tell you.

The harbor is nearly empty with only a smattering of small boats here.  Our good friends, and live aboard couple, Bill and Maureen on Kalunamoo, arrived a few days ago from Trinidad, where they spent the summer, out of hurricane harm’s way.  It’s good to see them but I am sad that our paths won’t cross again until next year, perhaps in the summer.However, spars or not, there is plenty of tonnage here, made possible by Anna a 365′ behemoth, recently launched in the Netherlands, the largest yacht ever built there.  There’s only a handful of yachts in the world that are larger.  And she’s owned by, you guessed it, a Russian,  Dimitri Rybololev and she cost an astounding $250m to build.

That sounds like a lot but it’s really not all that much when you consider that he has an estimated worth of $7 billion.  That’s 7,000 millions!   What’s even more amazing is that he still has that much money after settling with his ex for a whopping $4.5 billion divorce settlement awarded to her buy a Swiss court.  But don’t worry about Dimitri because the award was later reduced to a piddling $600 million after the couple settled amicably.  Isn’t that sweet?  Me, I’d be pretty amicable if I got $600 million.   At 1/4 billion, she’s just bristling with cool stuff.  Including her own chopper.  You can be pretty confident that you have plenty of funds available if you have one of these on board.Of course, having two “garages” to keep your tenders makes a pretty clear statement as well. You can really tell how big she is compared to one of the crew up forward.  And, this guy is only one of 30 that work aboard full time.  Quite the payroll.   Need to know more in case you are thinking about having one built for yourself?  Check this link to get the skinny. Dimitri is a smart guy naming his new boat after one of his daughters as she won’t be divorcing him any time soon.    I expect is pretty good friends with Putin. 

And, speaking of Putin who also seems to be pretty fond of our president, I was struck by this sign at the Skullduggery bar in Falmouth, promoting a special rum drink.  At $5EC, it’s quite a deal as that’s only $2 US.  Thanks Mr President.  
If you disagree, don’t blame me, I’m only reporting. 

As far as the Salty Dawg Rally is concerned,and that’s why I am here in Antigua, the 40 or so boats that are headed my way, in spite of delays caused by a really bad run of adverse winds, should begin arriving over the next few days.

I expect that more than a few of them will be happy to have a Trump Punch.  At $2US it’s about the best deal in town.

Of course, that will only be the beginning as we have plenty of fun events planned to help welcome the fleet to Antigua now through Thanksgiving.  

One way or the other, Antigua is about to really go to the Dawgs and I am looking forward to that too.

It’s Monday morning and I am heading to Antigua tomorrow to welcome the Salty Dawg Fleet to that beautiful island.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that NOBODY has arrived yet and it’s still going to be a few days until the first members of the fleet will show up.

The problem is that weather in the Atlantic in November is generally not all that great.  As the summer SW prevailing winds begin to give way to the NW and NE winds of winter in the fall and early winter, things can be pretty unsettled.  As November is toward the end of the hurricane season and when insurance companies say that it’s OK to head south, that’s when most sailors move their boats to warmer climes to enjoy the winter season of sailing in the tropics.

Well, this year’s Salty Dawg Rally to the Caribbean has been pretty challenging with persistent SE winds making it tough for the fleet to make their way south to Antigua or the BVIs.   Additionally, it was a pretty rough crossing of the Gulf Stream due to strong NE winds the day before much of the fleet crossed, kicking up a pretty confused sea, and a number of boats had to stop in Bermuda to fix broken gear.  The winds after the GS were also fairly light and not from a favorable direction so many other boats had to make a stop in Bermuda as well for fuel before heading out again.

Add to all of this, a low forming north of Puerto Rico that will cross the likely track of the fleet, and it gets pretty interesting.   As a result of all this, the fleet is running behind and I am going to push back some of the events I have planned in Antigua to celebrate their arrival.

When I scheduled the first few events a few months ago I knew that there was some risk that we’d have to move it back and as of yesterday the full impact of delays to getting the fleet there in time, became clear.

So, off to Antigua I go tomorrow to wait.  However, my friends Bill and Maureen of Kalunamoo are already there, having sailed up from Trinidad last week so it will be fun to spend time with them.  My friend Craig will also be flying down on Thursday to enjoy the fun so I’ll be plenty busy.

Of course, staying at the Admiral’s Inn won’t be particularly tough duty.  It’s a really beautiful place.    What a spot to sit and work on a nice cool G&T.   No, make that a rum punch.  It’s the islands Mon!And, don’t forget about the infinity pool looking over historic Nelson’s Dockyard.  Yeah, I could do that too.  Now that I think of it, perhaps another totally excellent spot for a rum punch.  And speaking of rum.  How about hanging out a bit with my friends from the Tot club, better known as the Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua and Barbuda .  As a relatively new member, there’s still lots of Royal British Navy history to explore, along with an appropriate, make that a responsible, measure of rum.

I remember, well I sort of remember, becoming a member last spring and have a photo to prove it.   I say “sort of remember” as some of the details are a bit fuzzy.  Of course, after all of those “tots” it’s hard to be clear about anything.  But, it was fun and I, sort of, learned a lot about British Naval history. That reminds me, I don’t want to forget my “official” Tot Club shirt.

Anyway, I’ll make the best of this trip, one way or the other.

So, back to the Rally fleet and their run south.   It’s always tough to make the run from the US coast to the Caribbean and this year is a proving to be somewhat more challenging than most.  So far, only a bit of discomfort and some adverse winds. “That’s easy for you to say Bob!  You aren’t out there.” 

That’s true.  So, let’s hope that things continue to go fairly well for the fleet and that everyone arrives safely and without incident.   If you’d like to follow the fleet’s progress, click here to see a map of the fleet as they make their way south.  Put SDR in the “group” section along with the date range.  The fleet began to head out on November 1st but you may find it easier to see what’s going on with a narrower date range.

This is the location of the fleet as of Monday morning.   The fleet is roughly split between Antigua and the BVIs.  I have notated “the” destination, Antigua so you can see how much farther they have to go.  Yes, it’s a long way off but only 90 miles farther than the BVIs.Conditions may get bit rough for the fleet with the low that is going to cross their path as they get closer to the islands.  It’s fast moving and while it may bring winds in excess of gale force if they get stuck in the middle of it, it’s not looking quite as organized as it was forecast to be just a day or so ago.    The low is the dark blue section to the right.   This screen shot is of about 06:00 EST today and is currently east of the fleet’s track. However, by Wednesday, when many boats will be at about the same latitude as the stronger winds, it is expected to cross their track.   Chris Parker, the weather router for the rally, suggests slowing down to let the low pass.   Good idea. As they say, when you are on the ocean in a small boat “it’s always something”.

And, speaking of waves, which I sort of was, I came upon this video of the largest wave ever surfed, a 95′ monster a few years ago in Nazare Portugal.    It’s huge, and yet, in this short video, predictably looks smaller than it really is, a frustrating reality for anyone that has been in heavy weather on the ocean and has tried to document the conditions to share with their friends.

Ever wonder what those big rollers you see on the ocean look like when they reach shore?  Perhaps they look like this.  Ok, I said 95′ but who beyond the guys at Guinness care about such a fine detail.   It’s just a frigging big wave. And wonder what it’s like to get knocked down by such a wave as it crashes down on you?  No, me neither.  Anyway, this short piece shows what happens when a wave, again in Nazare crashes over a surfer and jet ski.  And so, you are saying that you do this for fun?Nazare, were these videos were taken, is of particular interest to me as Brenda and we were there, not by boat, a few years ago and were impressed by the size of the waves, even in the summer.   Interestingly, while there is a small well protected harbor nearby, many of the traditional boats that fish the coastal area are launched and retrieved from a ramp on the beach, pulled up by a tractor, in sync with the waves.   The boats have rub rails on their bilges to allow them to be dragged up by the tractor. And, as the videos showed, it gets pretty “sporty” in the winter so, to keep everything from washing away the breakwater is made up of huge concrete “jacks” that are more likely to stay put when those enormous waves come pounding down on them.I wrote about this beautiful village, waves and all, in a post when Brenda and I were there.

Still want more?  This post is mostly about the local fishing boats and what they catch.  I just love boats.  All sorts.  Perhaps this boat photo will tempt you to reconsider skipping my post and click on the link to read more.  So, there you have it, the Salty Dawg Rally fleet making their way south,  some wacko dudes surfing some of the world’s biggest waves and lovely Nazare Portugal during the “off season” when the waves aren’t all that big.

Well, that’s it for now.  Tomorrow I’m off to Antigua to welcome the fleet, when they finally get there.

It’s Monday morning and it looks like the bulk of the 80+ boats that are participating in this year’s Salty Dawg Fall Rally to the Caribbean will soon be underway and heading out to see.

And, as each participating boat carries a unit to transmit their position, you, like me and others that are “armchair sailors” this winter or those who have access to the Internet, can follow the fleet, in real time, as they make their way south.

There are three destinations for the rally, and in alphabetical order, Antigua, Bahamas and the BVIs.   Of course, as fleet captain for Antigua, I am all about making that destination the best of the bunch.

One way or the other, through the support of Ocens Satelite Systems, you can log into the Salty Dawg Rally page (SDR) to see the location of every boat in the fleet.  As of now, there are only a hand full of boats underway but the current weather looks like the bulk of the fleet will be underway in the next day or so.

I encourage you to open the SDR tracking page in your browser and follow along. Below is a screen shot of the page you will pull up, taken this Monday morning.  As a point of reference, the “green” boat, Willow, left earlier than the most of the fleet and is now in a good position to carry pretty good winds all the way to Antigua.     Several other boats, Quetzal and Ariana also left earlier and have stopped in Bermuda.  I expect that they will head out again soon.

In order to see the fleet, put SDR in the “group” area, on the left side of the screen and put the date range that you wish to see below that.  You can also choose how speed is displayed by choosing “KN” for Knots, as an example.   You can also choose to see only one particular boat by selecting that under “name”.  Anyway, it’s fun, so check it out.   BTW, the page works best on a Tablet as it’s easier to “pinch” the screen to see the area that you are interested in.
In the next few days you will see many more boats, and the screen will get really crowded with tracks, as others head out.

Most of the fleet opted to wait a few days before heading out as the winds were not particularly favorable, especially for crossing the Gulf Stream.   As a result, some headed down the Intra Coastal Waterway to Beaufort to depart from there once the wind was from a more favorable direction.   Another benefit of being in Beaufort is that it is south of Cape Hatteras and also a lot closer to the Gulf Stream so they won’t have to go as far to cross it and be in calmer waters.

The GS is a particularly nasty place to be when the wind is out of the North East, which is what’s been going on.  This GRIB file shot shows the winds as of a few days ago.  Note that the wind “flags” show wind in the teens from the NE.   You do not want to be in the “stream” when the wind is from that direction.  It kicks up waves that can be at least unpleasant or dangerous.  Below is what the wind forecast looks like for today, a lot better than from the NE even though the wind is from the south and much stronger. Not ideal as they really want to be heading south themselves and east is out of the way.  However, going east before heading south is a good idea as the winds will likely be from the east as their trip progresses.

The plan for most, I’d assume, will be to head east until the wind shifts more to the east and then turn south.  Actually, that’s exactly what Willow has done, now that the winds where he is are from the east, as is shown on the Ocens chart that I put above.

So, back to Antigua and the destination for about half of the fleet.  As port captain for Antigua, I have worked hard to arrange a number of events to make the fleet’s arrival in Antigua fun for everyone and with the help of local businesses and particularly the Antigua Yacht Club, there’s a great lineup planned.

While these events have been organized with rally participants in mind, I am happy to have other cruisers, that’s you, join us in the fun.  There’s no extra charge for “non-members” to come to our events this year so if you are planning to be in Antigua, please join us.   We’d love to get to know you.  I put an overview of what’s in store in an earlier post back in August.

Click here to see a full list of activities that we have planned.

There’s dinner events, happy hour mixers and even an opportunity to join in the fun with one of my favorite groups, The Antigua and Barbuda, Royal Navy Tot Club.  Just try saying that three times fast after a healthy “tot”, or two of fine rum.  Join us and you’ll see for yourself.

One way or the other, please stay in touch and follow the fleet.  Who knows, perhaps you’ll catch the bug and be one of us next year.  For sure, Pandora will be making the run south to Antigua with the Salty Dawg Rally to the Caribbean next fall.   I’d imagine that the registration for the 2019 rally will be opening in January.

Want to go to Antigua?  It’s not to early to begin planning for next year or to follow this year’s fleet.    And, if you go, you’ll see fabulous sunsets like this, nearly every night.  Perhaps you’ll even see the fabled “green flash”.  We have, more than once, actually.

Want to learn more?  Let me know, I’m all about Antigua.

Oh yeah, if you want to see what’s in store if you decide to cruise to Antigua and the islands south to Grenada, you can register here to see a free webcast that I did recently for the Seven Seas Cruising Association.

You’ll be glad you did, I hope.