It’s Wednesday morning and 25 degrees here in CT.  Burrr….

With just a month to go until Brenda and I rejoin Pandora in FL, I am thinking about what we’ll do and where we’ll go when we head to warmer climes.    All of this has me recalling our past visits to the Bahamas.  Yesterday I saw a very nice video of the Bahamas Sloop Tari Anne.  It was three years ago, the year that Brenda and I made our first run south, that I was fortunate enough to crew on a “Class B” sloop at the Little Farmer’s Cay Regatta.  It was a trip, let me tell you.  I wrote about this wild, and totally fun, experience here.   What a hoot…

Seeing this video last night brought back so many memories and has made me long for clear blue waters and warm breezes.  The video was filmed in Georgetown Exuma, a beautiful harbor in the southern Bahamas where as many as 500 boats congregate every winter when cruisers converge from all over the world to enjoy the protected waters of the largest harbor in the Bahamas.  I assume that it was summer when Tari Anne was filmed as the harbor is all but empty.   Note that you can watch the video in HD by clicking on the icon in the lower right and choosing, you guessed it, HD.
In my last post I wrote, with barely contained excitement, about the possibility of visiting Cuba this winter.   I learned after speaking with someone from the State Department, that Brenda and I could visit under the “journalism” category of travel.  As a next step I called my friend Frank, author of numerous Cruising Guides to the Caribbean. Frank is a prolific writer and maintains a site of FREE cruising guides, brilliantly named www.freecruisingguides.com.  He has written, quite a few guides on all aspects of getting to and cruising the islands of the Caribbean.  Anyway, I asked him about the best way to combine a trip to the Bahamas and Cuba in the same season.  His answer was, predictably, “well it depends”.

My first thought was that we would make a run over to the Bahamas, work our way south to Georgetown, on to the Ragged Islands and then jump over to the north coast of Cuba.  Sounds simple enough.  NOT!  Frank told me that the north coast is very rugged with almost no marinas to stop at.  Actually, between the eastern tip of Cuba and Havana, on the western end, there is only one marina and it’s in the middle of nowhere.   Setting aside the rugged coastline problem, the Cuban Government doesn’t allow anchoring out or landing on the north shore which really limits your options. Besides, the waters are pretty rough and, to make matters worse, it’s a lee shore.  Brenda doesn’t like lee shores and Frank reminded me of this too.

As an alternative, Frank suggested that I get crew, assuming that Brenda wouldn’t do the run from the Bahamas (a long shot at best), to join me in Georgetown and run south through the Windward Passage, the body of water between the eastern tip of Cuba and Haiti, a run of 250 miles.   It’s not as far as I thought, which would probably only mean one night at sea.  We’d have a fair current of 1-2 knots and it’s a beam to broad reach the whole way. After transiting the passage we’d hang an right and make the 250 mile run to Jamaica where I could loose crew, rejoin Brenda and make the 80 mile over to the south coast of Cuba with Brenda.

Another option would be to just make Cuba our first stop.  Brenda flies and meets us there and have crew leave by flying from Cuba to the Dominican Republic (DR), and then back to the US.  However, this option does mean that Brenda would have to fly from Georgetown to Nassau, from there to Florida, on to the DR and then to Cuba to rejoin us, a trip that I expect would take about the same amount of time as her sailing there with us.

Editors note:   As you can imagine, Brenda hasn’t immediately jumped at the “let’s cruise 250 miles to Cuba from the Bahamas” option.  Her reaction was more akin to “I am going to have to think hard about that so don’t push it Bob…”, delivered with a stern steely eye glare.   I was encouraged by that.  Very encouraged.  You know me, “ever hopeful”.

Once in Cuba, we would cruise the south coast, continue our way west, round the western tip of Cuba and go on to Havana where we could jump the 90 miles to the Keys, on to Miami and home.  Isn’t that simple?  Yes, excepting the thorny part of getting Brenda to agree.  Hmm…

Another option is to run down the FL coast, make the 90 mile jump directly to Havana and not cruise the south coast this season.    However, Frank said that the south coast is not to be missed.    So many choices.

So, what’s a cruiser to do?  Frank can provide answers!  Along with the free guides that Frank publishes, he has also written a book “A thinking Man’s Guide to Voyaging South:  The Many Facets of Caribbean Cruising“, which is available as for Kindle @ $9.99 from Amazon. This book describes, in great detail, the two options that Frank laid out for me, along with lots more information.  I downloaded it today and will let you know what I learn.

Yes, there’s lots to think about but there’s one thing for sure.  We are heading south and the water is going to clear, blue, warm and I can’t wait.  Did I mention that it’s 25 degrees outside?  Yuck.  No make that double YUCK.

It’s Monday and I am thinking hard about where Pandora will be this winter.

Now that we won’t be in the BVI, (that still bugs the heck out of me), the question for frustrated BVI wannabees, is what now?

Here’s an idea.  How about going to Cuba?  I had kicked this idea around months ago but the process seemed overwhelming with formal State Department approval required and all.  I had heard that I might be able to plan a visit without direct approval and while the same 12 reasons that are acceptable for visiting Cuba still apply, there might be a way to visit without going through a formal written approval process.

As a point of reference, a detailed document describing the rules for visiting Cuba are described in this document from the State Department.  However, if you don’t want to wade through the whole thing,  the 12 reasons are…

1. Family visits
2. Official Government Business
3. Journalistic Activities
4. Professional Research and Professional Meetings
5. Educational Activities, including People-to-People Contact.
6. Religious Activities
7. Public Performances, Clinics, Workshops, Athletic and Other Competitions and Exhibitions.
8. Support of the Cuban People
9. Humanitarian Projects
10. Activities of Public Foundations or Research or Educational Institutions.
11. Exportation, Importation, or Transmission of Information or Informational Materials.
12. Export Transactions

I have highlighted in red, the section that I believe applies to me, #3 Journalistic Activities under the section of the code, #515-563 Journalistic activities in Cuba. (a) General license. The travel-related transactions set forth in §515.560(c) and such additional transactions as are directly incident to journalistic activities in Cuba by persons regularly employed as journalists by a news reporting organization or by persons regularly employed as supporting broadcast or technical personnel are authorized.

Confusing?  Yes indeed.  So, what’s a blogger to do, especially one who doesn’t get paid for his/her efforts?  Am I employed?  I think so and to paraphrase the VISA commercial, “for me, writing for www.sailpandora.com is well, PRICELESS”.  So, I called the State Department of course and talked to Rubin in the Compliance Division of the Office of Foreign Asset Control.

My question to my new buddy Rubin was to find out if I needed to make a formal application to go or if I could operate under what he described as a “general license”.  That class of travel assumes that you are going for an approved reason and that you will keep records of what you did while you were visiting in case the State Department ever wants to check up on me.  He was careful to point out that general tourism isn’t approved which I guess means that I can’t “have fun” while doing it.

Not to tell a lie, I did mention to Rubin that writing and researching while we were in Cuba was likely to be fun although perhaps a bit less so as neither of us speak Spanish.  “OK, as long as you aren’t having fun…”, said Rubin.   That’s going to be a tall order as I am not sure that I am capable of keeping a dour look on my face the WHOLE time I am visiting.

Going around Cuba with a permanent scowl on my face just to prove that I  am not having fun will be tough given my nearly perpetual cheery nature.  This aspect of my personality is particularly annoying to Brenda, especially before she has had a cup of coffee in the morning.  Speaking of coffee, I wonder if you can get decaf coffee in Havana…  I’d guess I’d say…“Puedo tomar una taza de café descafeinado por favor?”  They’d reply… “De ninguna manera. ¿Que eres? Un yankee weasily ?”  Brenda, what did he say? Beats me.  I don’t speak spanish.

However, I’d say it with a smile.  I submit this shot of me looking my usual self.  Sunny?  Annoying?  You be the judge…Never mind about that.   So, here’s where we are now.  It seems that Brenda and I CAN go to Cuba and we plan to write about our visit.  However, and this is VERY IMPORTANT, we promise NOT TO HAVE FUN while we are there.  Ok, ok, got it.

So, there you have it.  Pandora’s definitely, or very likely… I think, visiting CUBA this winter.

Now I have to find out how much it’s going to cost for insurance to do this trip. I’ll bet my broker is going nuts with my change in plans, yet again.

Yes Rubin, trust me, I am pretty sure we won’t have even a little fun while we are there and I am sticking to that.  However, as miserable as we will be, we will just have to tough it out.  Besides, we do like old cars.Who knows, this might be me after our visit.  Besides, I am in touch with my feminine side after all.  Perhaps a visit to my dermatologist will be in order.

One way or the other, no rest for the “retired” weary.  Cuba here we come, I think.

 

As you might imagine, after so many months of my writing about our visiting the Caribbean this winter, I have received many questions and notes of sympathy from friends about how our plans have changed.

Frankly, it’s been a bit tough for me to swallow the need to abandon my run to the BVI but, as they say, “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.  Of all the queries about my reasoning, none were quite so “loaded” as our insurance company asking “just why are you not going to the BVI after all?”

Let me explain…

My insurance coverage for Pandora limited our sailing from Eastport Maine to the Bahamas and in order to include the Caribbean, less Haiti and Cuba, required me to go to a different carrier and the nearly doubling of my premium.  Of course, I didn’t want to pay the extra premium for any more months than I was going to be there so I had the new policy go into effect when I left Hampton.

Well, in less than a week after heading toward the BVI, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to there this season.  So, what’s a penurious boater to do?   Amend the policy, of course.    And let me tell you, this set off alarms with my carrier.  “So, what happened and why are you not taking your yacht to the Caribbean?”, implying “Now you have us wondering.  Should we be worried?”

So glad you asked…  I wrote a letter explaining, in the most balanced and lovely way, why not.  It will be interesting to see if any questions remain.

But wait, there’s more…

I now am exploring a visit to Cuba as I had read that the State Department has issued new guidelines for visiting Cuba by private yacht.  From what I gather, the same 12? rules apply but now you don’t have to have written approval from the State Department.  However, you have to keep records as to why you visited for a full five years, just in case they want to review what you were up to.

I suppose that it is a way for congress to deny Obama what he is looking for and let us visit in the mean time.  A sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to getting  permission to visit an “enemy state”.

So that’s all I know and I have a call into our congressional office.  It will be interesting to see what they say.   As a point of interest, the administrator that I spoke to did not know and would have to do some research.

Of course, if we decide to go, it will surely thrill my insurance company and I don’t even want to think about what the additional premium will be.  However, it probably won’t be any worse than what I paid when I had two teenage boys driving our cars many years ago, something that insurance companies view with as much concern as visiting a hostile country.  Hmm…

One way or the other, folks who are “in the know” feel that time is of the essence as Cuba will look a lot like DisneyLand once it’s open and easy to visit.

For now, if we go, I would expect that our first stop would be Marina Hemingway.So, where is Pandora going?   Hmm… I guess all of us will be wondering together. For now, it’s Florida and the Bahamas and who know where and that’s a good start.

It’s Monday morning and I am back at our “land home” in CT.  While I have only been home for a it more than 24 hours, plenty has happened in planning our “escape” to the warm weather of the Bahamas after enjoying Christmas with our family and Pandora is on the hard for a few repairs/modifications in preparation for her winter with me and Brenda.  Fortunately, there isn’t too much to do, I hope and she should be ready to go when we rejoin her in late December.

I have certainly gone on and on about what transpired on our run and why I decided to divert from our run to the BVI and take Pandora to Ft Pierce FL instead.  I’d say that a winter in the Bahamas isn’t something to be sad about and there’s always next year for a second attempt to sail to the Caribbean.

Not a bad place to visit.  This was Pandora before she was Pandora when we cruised with her prior owners in the Bahamas a few years ago.  It will be fun to be there again with her soon.  I thought that it would be fun to include a shot of our route as we made our run across the Gulf Stream and back for a stop in Beaufort NC.  From there my crew Jim and I ran Pandora down to Florida.   All and all, a satisfactory “shakedown cruise” aboard Pandora.

You can see our “loop” as we headed out and, oops, turned back.   As a point of interest, the “spots” were automatic at a predetermined interval, so you can see how our speed varied from time to time. I guess that’s all for now. Time to clean up the yard from all the leaves that fell while I was horsing around afloat.

It’s Saturday night and I am sitting in the boarding area for my flight to CT.   Jim and I left Pandora in Ft Pierce today and flew home out of West Palm Beach.   I had expected that flights would be too expensive and would require us to drive the 24 hours back to CT to avoid expensive flights.  Alas, we checked with the airlines as we came within cell range off of Cape Canaveral and were thrilled to learn that we could get $141 flights home from West Palm Beach.  That as less expensive than renting car and a LOT less time consuming.

We arrived in Ft Pierce at midnight last night and anchored just inside the inlet.  After a celebratory “adult beverage” we crashed into a DEEP sleep after not getting more than a few hours of sleep per night since leaving Beaufort NC on Tuesday afternoon.  In spite of a 24 hour period of slow progress on Thursday, into the wind, we had a pretty good run and covered the nearly 500 mile run in reasonable style.

I didn’t keep track but believe that we sailed nearly half of the time and enjoyed a 100 mile 12 hour run in the first day of our trip, meaning that we sustained more than 7.5kts, a very respectable speed.   Actually, we left Beaufort with a number of other boats and passed them all, sometimes sailing at better than 9kts on a close reach.  Pretty great, actually.

However, when the wind shifted against us, we struggled to make 4.5kts against the wind for an entire day.    The problem is that Pandora is “over propped”, something that I was aware of when I purchased her in May.  This means that the propeller is too large for the engine and it can’t attain rated RPM and while this is fine in flat conditions, we aren’t able to punch into waves when the going gets rough.  I believe that by adjusting the propeller we can likely improve things but it’s unclear if this is the only problem.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that there isn’t something more sinister at work, like some sort of compression or other engine problem contributing.  More to come on that point.

Also, the refrigeration problem continues to be quite vexing and if you have been following this you know that I abandoned my BVI run due to overheating from the refrigeration.  It turns out that the compressor doesn’t work well when we are moving fast as it can’t get adequate water flow, overheats and shuts down.  You will have to review a recent post to get more info on this problem.   Again, details to come.

So, based on these issues, I decided to haul Pandora and have the prop issue sorted out and have proper thru-hulls installed on the fridge and watermaker.  You know, the type with a “scoop” on the outside to be sure that adequate pressure is available to force water into the pump and counteract the vacuum that happens when water passes over a hull opening when we are going at speed.

If you’ve been paying very careful attention to past posts, you must be wondering “what have you done with all that frozen food Bob?”   Good question, good question indeed…

As is often said, “it takes a village” and I am very fortunate to have my friend and past fellow SAGA 43 owner Carl who agreed to store my 30lbs of frozen food in his freezer until Brenda and I return to Ft Pierce after Christmas.  Of course, with Pandora out of the water, the fridge doesn’t function.  Carl says that I can pick up the food when I return in late December.  That’s of course, unless he decides that it looks “good enough to eat”.  Hmm…

As it turns out, my 1,000 run from CT to FL was much more of a “shakedown cruise” and I can say that I have been indeed “shaken down” plenty by this experience but hopefully, most of the kinks have been worked out and we can again enjoy Pandora as the beauty that she is.  It’s pretty certain that there aren’t many boats that can take the pounding that we did in the Gulf Stream with 25kts opposing the current and continue to romp along in such great style.  It was a wet but terrific ride indeed.

I haven’t mentioned yet, but on our first night out we were peripherally involved in an Air-Sea-Rescue by the US Coast Guard, in the Gulf Stream.  Fellow crew Ken wrote about this in an e-mail today that I thought I would excerpt here.

And Ken wrote…

“Some of you asked about the SAR case we observed on our way south from the Chesapeake to Virgin Gorda on Bob Osborn’s boat Pandora.

So… the story was that a sailboat in our area at about 74.5 West off Hatteras transmitted a distress signal at about 2 AM on 4 Nov and then went dark.  This is a potentially nasty piece of water with 25 to 30 Kts against the Gulfstream, which meant it was a lumpy night with rain.  The boat was at the edge of the USCG’s VHF coverage so the Coast Guard asked those of us in the area to see if we could raise a boat named “Trouble” on our radios.  “Trouble” had sent a distress call that they were taking on water.  Three of the boats in our Rally and a cargo ship turned around to search the area.  The radio traffic turned into a Abbott and Costello routine of ; “are you trouble?.. your in trouble? No your trouble,  I’m not in trouble … third base”   A USCG helicopter soon joined them.  We were over the horizon to the east but we could see the “night sun” spotlight shining down from the helicopter.  There were a lot of false sightings of flares and debris all night but finally the helo headed back via the closest logical port that a distressed boat would head for.  It was on that track line that the boat was found, with its radio off.  Apparently they turned on a hand held radio when the helicopter was hovering over the boat.  We heard the Coast Guard side of the conversation, which was very cordial.  “Is this the S/V Trouble? How many people on board? Do you need assistance? Are you no longer asking for assistance?  (This last question was repeated a few times). 

We can only speculate on what happened.  The USCG will never discourage or scold a boater from asking for assistance, although I am sure they were frustrated.  The ship that turned around undoubtedly cost its owner one hell of a lot of money, but the SOLAS convention gives them no choice.  One of the three sailboats that responded ripped his mainsail in half while maneuvering in that sloppy sea and had to abandon his transit to Virgin Gorda. 

We aborted our trip the next day when smoke filled the aft locker due to an electrical short.  The 47-foot Aerodyne was a pleasure in high winds and sloppy seas.  We only had one boarding wave swamp the cockpit.  The starboard aft locker (on the leeward side) held the propane tanks and was therefore open to the sea and filled with water, as designed.  The problem occurred when we jibed and the water filled locker slopped over and through a hole for a wire that was not sufficiently watertight.  Just that little bit of water ruined our day.  We were never in danger but Bob made the right call on the side of caution.  There was no reason to risk a fire that far from land so he turned off the refrigeration.  This meant some food would have gone bad and no one wanted to eat peanut butter and jelly for a few days at the end of the trip.

We were all disappointed that we could not continue but it turned out that a Low that was north of Haiti turned into a full blown tropical storm so we may have avoided a few more sloppy days before making landfall.

As an aside, it was warm enough in the Gulfstream for me to take a shower on deck by just standing in the rain while avoiding the salt spray over the bow. “

It was an interesting night at sea and while I hated to divert and scrub my run to the BVI for this season, I am confident that I did the right thing.  Of course, with hindsight, it seems that the main reason we had to abort, a refrigeration problem, could have been avoided if I had better understood the limitations of the refrigeration installation and had a minor modification done prior to leaving CT.  Of course, with Pandora on the hard AGAIN, this problem should soon be history, I hope.

So, back to our arrival in Ft Pierce in today’s wee hours, Jim and I were happy to drop the hook and get a good night sleep.   When I dragged myself out of a deep sleep at 07:30 today I was greeted by a lovely breeze, palm trees and balmy temperatures. What a lovely warm dawn it was and it’s good to know that Pandora had a successful if  somewhat more “interesting” run south to her winter home.

So there you have it.  My plans for the winter?  Well, at least for now.

Hopefully Pandora won’t “shake me down” any more for a while.  But wait, she’s a boat and that’s what boats do.

I’d better run to catch my flight though…