S/V L'ORIENT

Kirstin and I are sitting in a lunch place in Roseau. We've moved the boat south to Dominica's biggest town. As we're waiting for lunch, the local paper is sitting on the table next to us. Three inch headlines announce "Buggery !!!". Two forlorn looking perps are on the page. First of all..........neither of us know what "buggery" means. What could these guys have done ? Sounds like they asked the same question 3 times and are being prosecuted for it. Anyway, as Kirstin reads the article it becomes apparent what buggery is. Apparently a Celebrity cruise ship stopped in Roseau, and these two guys were doing something on their balcony (facing the whole town) - twice - that is best done in front of a smaller audience. Cops run onto the boat...............and somehow find these guys still at it. Busted..........actually for indecent exposure vs. buggery (which probably carries some medieval penalty in Dominica.....like 2 weeks in the rack) Having the l...

As Kirstin and I are walking toward our lunch, a barefoot guy with a machete appears. He walks right past us (cold sweat) and jumps on a bus. A hold-up? No.......actually most manual laborers carry machetes. It's a basic tool for living/working in a jungle environment. It's just a little disconcerting..........where I come from, a machete is the weapon of choice for the "too deranged to get a gun" crowd. Transport this scene 2000 miles..........guy gets on a DC bus with a machete and 4 off-duty cops will fill this guy full of holes before you can say "drop it". Even with the proliferation of machetes, Dominica's population is slowly losing it's battle with nature. Everywhere you look, the jungle is encroaching on roads, buildings, houses. The sea takes it's toll as well. No fewer than 4 large freighters and fishing boats lie aground and rusting on the beach in Portsmouth Bay. "Think we need a second anchor Captain ?"...............

Even in paradise, some plans lay an egg. Kirstin got the idea to rent a car so we could go on a long hike in the mountains and end up at this waterfall/pool kind of thing in the jungle. OK........she's been a good sport on "Tom activities", so a small deposit into the marital bank seemed appropriate. The view from our hike I reserved the cheapest car with the most insurance possible. Why ? The cars have right hand steering wheels and they drive on the left (ala the United Kingdom). Having not driven anything since November,  I was a bit nervous. As it turned out, appropriately so. First, the "hustle". Of course, the rental car dude said the cheap car wasn't available so I had to rent a more expensive one. With Kirstin standing behind me with sad, sad eyes, I reluctantly agreed. Would I have agreed back in DC and a 4-day business trip coming ? No. Do I have to agree since we live together in a small fiberglass tube for year ? Yes. Anyway, the driving w...

Still reporting from mob-controlled (i.e. boat boys) Portsmouth, Dominica.........I'll say that these guys are first and foremost master marketers. Problem: Largely European sailors won't come in at night and patronize the restaurants out of some combination of fear and cheapness. Solution: Boat boys set up an event.......call it a "fundraiser".......and actually charge everyone triple for the food. A little music, a little dancing. Result: Every cruiser attends the "fundraiser" because these same Euro-cheapskates who leave no tips and steal breadsticks love to feel like they're kind of a mini UN. I can just imagine Cobra doling out the proceeds to the other boat boys.........."ten for me..........one for you..........twenty for me..........one for you". The ensuing party was kind of weird but fun. I always laugh at these multi-national shin-digs because it reminds me of an inter-gallactic bar from "Star Wars". Remember ? Some...

Being a sailor, I'm a big fan of "Deadliest Catch". Seeing those guys battle huge storms in the Bering Sea sends chills up my spine, and I've always thought that these fishermen were the toughest seamen afloat.......until yesterday. As Kirstin and I were listening to XM and enjoying a rare bottle of un-spoiled Chardonnay, a small open power boat roared past with two fishermen roared past. Typical Rasta fishing boat.......small, wooden, painted with the colors of the Jamaican flag, and held together with bungee and who knows what else.  But wait........sticking half out of their over-loaded boat was a very large blue marlin...........this thing had to weigh 300 lbs. We just stared at each other for a minute.........are you kidding me ? How did two skinny Rastas in what is essentially a large dinghy catch that monster ? They drove to the dock and we got out binoculars to watch them unload this thing. It took them (and about 4 friends) 15 minutes to figure out how to...

I really feel at home here. It's like Newark, NJ in the jungle. Dominica enjoys a poor reputation among some cruisers because of the "boat boy" phenomenon. Being from NJ and being racially sensitive, I'm not quick to call anyone "boy" for fear of the .38 slug that would soon be coming my way, but the boat boys have named themselves. These are entrepreneurs on small open motor boats that "encourage" cruisers to buy things from them.............banana bread, ice, beer.........and protection. They have colorful names painted on their boat to make them easy to identify............"Lawrence of Arabia"........."Mr. Magic"......and "Cobra". While you don't have to buy anything from them, you walk down that path at your own risk. It's kind of like organized crime (more familiar territory for me). Word gets around the bay quickly who you are "with", and everyone else leaves you alone. We are with "Cobra...

Here on Dominica, we share the island with other cruisers, locals, and the medical students of Ross University. Ross University ? Not ivy league.........think Coconut League.  Doesn't that sound like a fake school that the kids of 90210 went to after high school ? Ross University is apparently a medical school for the not quite ready for prime time kids of America. Can't you imagine a father-son conversation........."Your grandfather was a doctor, I'm a doctor, and you will damn well be a doctor"............albeit a voodoo doctor or whatever degree they bestow upon these folks. We see them a lot during our walks to the IGA supermarket. After 4 months in obscure anchorages in the Caribbean, we still mist up when we see Coke Zero and frozen food, so it's like Christmas day when we find one. The Ross University students are usually there as well.........bro-hair, lots of tattoos, lots of beer in the shopping cart. I desperately want to ask one of them about j...

Ah. I've been waiting for this for 3 months. Dominica.............the beginning of the real Caribbean. Burning garbage, stray dogs, great street food, and people sometimes living as primitively as hundreds of years before. Being a notable humanitarian, I immediately contributed to the local economy by purchasing..........two additional padlocks for our dinghy. Ba-ha-ha-ha. I do love this place. As we got off our dinghy, a stray puppy appeared across the street. This is one of my hopeless addictions........I'm an animal snuggler. I picked up the puppy and he just curled up into a ball. I put him down and immediately began selling Kirstin on the idea of us adopting "Rasta" (the puppy's new name). Funny thing.......as I was playing with the dog, a local walks past and offers to sell me the dog. Now that's marketing. I told him I didn't have money, but I'd trade him the dog for the orange dinghy (mine's gray). Anyway, if I see that dog in the next ...

We made it to Montserrat! We had bypassed it back in February because of extremely windy conditions - due to the volcano Montserrat only has a single anchorage and we had been warned about dangerous swells. The anchorage has plenty of swell even in zero wind - but the rolly two nights were so worth it. I am fascinated by volcanos and Tom has endured hikes up volcanos on other Caribbean islands and in Italy so he knew what he was getting into! The story here is that this island was really hip in the 80s and 90s. George Martin (Beatles guy) had a recording studio, Sting recorded here, etc. Suddenly, in 1995 and then in 1996, 97, 98, 2003, 08, 10......and seemingly all the time, the volcano erupts and wipes out the major city (Plymouth) and half the island. Imagine two 500 ft. mountains about a half mile apart. One day, going peak to peak involves traversing a huge valley 600 feet deep. The next day, you can walk in a straight line between the two as it has been filled in with ash. Th...

L'ORIENT at anchor in The Cove, Jolly Harbour Antigua Antigua has been a beautiful surprise. The only thing I had heard about the island was Tom recounting a trip in the 80s when his shoes were stolen from the beach. Those original Chuck Taylors are probably worth a fortune today. When we navigated the reef to come into the Jolly Harbour anchorage, I knew that the shoe incident would be a distant negative memory. The water color just left us both speechless. Nowhere else in the Caribbean have we seen this kind of mint blue/green water that glows during the day and almost shimmers at night. We anchored around noon and the water was so bright that it was almost blinding. Our private beach at The Cove, Antigua Antigua is truly the tale of two islands.....at least two sides of the same island. Falmouth Harbour has the mega sailboats and power yachts but the rest of the island is too shallow for that lot so the rest of Antigua's anchorages are for people like us..............

A sailing friend of mine told me that cruising is just learning to work on your boat in foreign countries. Come to think of it, he also told me to take the Patriots and give the points, so what does he know ?Anyway, this past weekend one long delayed project was put to rest.........pimping out Crabby. Crabby is our dinghy. It might sound contrived to name a small rubber inflatable, but Crabby is our only connection to the outside world. That aside, we've dinghied in high wind, big waves, and some conditions which we probably shouldn't have ventured out in..........and Crabby has never let us down. In our mind, he deserves a name. Now in the Caribbean, dinghy theft is an industry on a par with making bad Raggae demo CDs, so cruisers go to great lengths to protect their dinghy. Our strategy is a common one.............make Crabby so recognizable that he'd be difficult for a would-be thief to sell. Thus, this past weekend we busted out the red paint and adorned our beloved...

One really amusing thing about the Caribbean is arriving at a new island. You are required to check in; the same way you would if arriving by plane. While these processes are streamlined in airports, owing to the thousands of tourists that arrive each week, when arriving by boat the process is, shall we say, more interesting. Generally there is an isolated shack in a port.......unmarked, paint peeling. You've got to ask at least 5 people where it is before you find it.  In Antigua, there were three small offices next to each other; Customs, Immigration, and Port Authority. The process they had come up with involved filling out the same form 3 times and shuttling between these offices. As the offices are literally within an arm's reach of each other, one person and one form would have reduced costs by 66%.........but who's counting, right? We made a total of 7 stops between these three offices to hand a duplicate form to the next clerk. All the while, a ghetto blaster is b...

Here aboard L'ORIENT, date night is every night.........especially since we hate to cook on board. For Kirstin, that means shower, Athleta dress, heels in the purse, make-up.........basically no difference between the Caribbean and Annapolis (our last home port in the US). Now, our boat has great big bathrooms, hot water, etc......so it's not much different than a condo in that respect, but I do find it funny that women, being apparently very poorly unionized, can't let go of the arms race even when on vacation. Gotta look good. Complicating this is the dinghy ride from our boat to shore in howling winds and spray. Kirstin always manages to look poised and attractive as she arrives at the dock, in all weather conditions which is like magic to me. For me, things have gotten markedly easier (even though they were pretty easy in Annapolis). As far as date preparation, I'd feel negligent without a shower. I usually smell like some mixture of gasoline, diesel fuel, Lysol, ...

We've left Falmouth Harbour, Antigua. As we've mentioned in a previous post, this place was a British navy base in the 1700s, and many of the port buildings and fortifications are being used as restaurants, retail space, etc. You can almost imagine drunk British sailors from the days of wooden ships chasing "ladies of the night"; the smell of raw sewage in the streets............maybe a family with smallpox begging (OK, not sure about that one) but you get the picture. In fact, sailors hooking up isn't a thing of the past. You can watch it any night of the week in Falmouth Harbour. There are about 100 large sailing and motor mega-yachts moored there for the Spring. Beyond a captain and engineering officer, each yacht has "stews"..........short for stewards. These are young men and women (usually in their 20s) who do grunt work on boats. They get free room and board (as they live on the boat) and get paid about $25,000 - $30,000. Guess what else they do...

A nice surprise for us. A very "Tom and Kirstin" place in that fun restaurants, a chandlery, and a grocery store with decent wine and Coke Zero is within easy walking distance. Only problem is the neighborhood...........not for us, but for the mega-yachties. It's kind of fun being the riff-raff. As our boat is just a fraction of the size of some of these behemoths, when I walk up behind someone at an ATM, they get nervous and grab their wallet. The Britishness of it is fun too..........nice to hear everyone enunciating and honestly.......dentistry seems to be on the mend in the UK as well. Our cousins across the pond are not just good manners and bad teeth anymore. Enjoy the video of Nelson's Dockyard (a testament to how fast our internet connection is here in Antigua)!

We've done over 60 posts to date........none about this topic because a) I thought I was seeing an amazing string of outlying data points and b) I don't understand this phenomenon Sailors are more than bullshitters...............they are, as a group, compulsive liars. I'm in sales. I understand how to tell a story............how exaggeration can make it funnier. As Kirstin says, "that's why it's called a story". But what we're seeing in the folks we meet here is the scary, pathological, "I enjoy misleading people" kind of stuff. Case in point. A guy anchors next to us who we had drinks with a few months ago. We thought he was crazy back then, but had been drinking and forgot he was trouble. He rows over saying he has "a few minutes and wanted to say hello". OK, I guess. I'm still a little POed that I'm 95% sure I caught him checking out Kirstin with binoculars as she was hanging laundry a few hours before.........we...

OK- We're not exactly Magellan out here on our boat. Kirstin and I learn something almost every day about the weather, wind, and especially the nuances of our boat. But there's one aspect of sailing that you absolutely, positively have to nail out of the gate or risk deadly consequences. By way of example, an anecdote from last Thursday...........Kirstin is downstairs on the internet and I'm in the cockpit enjoying sunset and reading the Keith Richard's book (highly recommended). There are only about 6 boats in the bay, all unoccupied at this moment except ours. I happen to look toward the open ocean and I see a dinghy..........two guys on it. They're drifting, on one guy is pulling the starting cord of the outboard........pulling, pulling, more pulling. The wind is about 20 knots, so they're rapidly being blown out to sea. All of a sudden, the guy not engaged with the outboard leans his body over the front of the dinghy and starts paddling with his hands. Tha...

As Kirstin hasn't given up her dream of getting to Monserrat, we've doubled back from Marie Galante and headed north to Antigua. The sail was breath-taking, with L'ORIENT averaging almost 6 knots and frequently blasting through the northerly swell at 8.2 knots. What a difference 100 miles makes..........we arrived in Falmouth and are now surrounded by Brits (oddly, very few Yanks here as well). It's funny how different two islands this close together can be. The French on Marie Galante were so engaging (as soon as we busted out our restaurant-French.........Je voudrais autre vin blanc) Some context here is appropriate......unlike remote Marie Galante, Antigua is a high-end yachting mecca. There is a classic boat regatta in April, and Falmouth is quickly filling up with yachts 5-times larger that L'ORIENT. We arrived a bit tired and hungry and hit a wine bar (closest thing to customs and immigration) run by a British woman about my age. Other than my bro-hair (now ...

It's no secret that Kirstin and I like to eat out. Like, twice a day..........we consider ourselves a one-boat economic stimulus package for whatever island we happen to be in front of. Here in Guadeloupe, it's more fun than in DC. Why ? The people watching is always great (French people are very much into image management), but the best part may be our running commentary. We can speak in a normal voice to each other (even highly critical remarks regarding those around us) and no one is the wiser. I speak German, although the closest I ever came to fluency was 25 years ago when I spent some extended time there. One thing I learned is that the German you learn in school is rarely the German they use in conversation. English is the same way.........imagine a French person with even college level English trying to figure out what the word "tramp-tastic" means. You get the picture. As long as we speak in idioms or slang, we don't have to be that careful. After a few...

We just left Marie Galante, certainly the most remote island in Guadeloupe. It was rugged, scenic, and had some of the best beaches we've seen so far. Only thing missing............the people. It looks like 3,900 people left an island of 4,000. Nobody home. Case in point.......using our 5 year old guide book, we walked down the beach to a hotel for lunch. Sort of. We found the complex......100 bungalows with a pool, restaurant, and bar. We were 2 of the 4 people there. I'd make a joke about crickets now, but iguanas eat them so there are none here. We were alone in a restaurant that had a capacity of over 150. At this point in time, our very different personalities assert themselves. From Tom......."This is awesome.......nobody's here". Probably reflective of a job that involves pretending to like everyone in the room day after day. From Kirstin (of the Midwest)......."This is terrible.......where are the people ?" Probably reflective of her gregarious...

"Should I bring my raincoat ?" "Yes.........then it won't rain." Sailors are a superstitious lot. People have been going down with their ships for hundreds of years. The weather, seas, and winds often seem capricious and maddeningly random. As we were coming to the Caribbean in November..........700 miles north a sailboat much like ours was overwhelmed by a storm......a woman was lost overboard. I've noticed that Kirstin and I are beginning to fall into this trap. Sometimes you even outsmart yourself. If I bring my coat, it won't rain. But if I ask for a table outside (at the restaurant), it will rain. What will happen if I ask for a table outside while wearing my coat ? A well known sailing proverb tells you to never begin a voyage on Friday. Never. If you tell a cruiser (even someone relatively modern) that you're leaving on Friday they will definitely raise their eyebrows. Friday ? Really ? Our quirkiness deals less with superstition and ...

It seems amazing to some people - and indeed sometimes to us - that we can fill an entire day and never, ever be bored. Some time each day is spent in boat maintenance/ upkeep but other than that the day is ours and we can fill it as we choose. Visibly affected by the passing of Davy Jones, Tom downloaded and read a frivolous book about the history of the Monkees (there are certain times the eight year age difference shows!). After he DJed an hour long Monkees tribute I thought some exercise would end the insanity (or at least the music). From our very first trip together, Tom has said that there wasn't a climb I didn't like but our hike here on Ile des Saintes, Guadeloupe was a memorable one. It started by walking through a muddy goat pasture which should have been our first clue that this path was more appropriate to four legged friends than two middle aged folks who haven't been to a gym in months. But when we got to the top what a view... It's hard to fit 2 h...

Boats are like people...........as an aspiration, we try not to judge a book by it's cover but come on..........we do. Walk up to a guy who says his name is Spock.........."my parents were big Trekkies" and you quite naturally make some assumptions about the gene pool. I always wondered as a kid how these strange-named people would fill out standardized tests like the SATs..............Last name: N/A, First name: Madonna ? Anyway, it's both fun and efficient to pre-judge people because it's just too big a hassle to get to know everyone and give them a chance. In our world in the Caribbean, boat names are how we decide who we want to meet. I'm moored next to Hydrophile V. He's French, and actually has a nice boat. But I don't want to meet him. I can just imagine the conversation: Insert French accent....."Yes- Hydro means water, phile means love...........I am, how you say, lover of water". My response might be.........."I have an ide...

Guadeloupe is like the French Myrtle Beach. Not many Americans come here, and you get to see the French in their own environment, interacting as they do at home. We're kind of like Jane Goodall here, living among them. Now we've been to France. Paris is cosmopolitan........everywhere else, despite appearances, must be an elaborate tourist charade (even outlying areas) because the French haven't lost their "small village mentality". Case in point- we're eating dinner and these very young people sitting next to us have postcards spread out all over the table. Postcards ? When was the last time you saw that ? And they're writing on them.........in cursive !!!!! When my daughter sees interesting roadkill, I have a picture of it in milliseconds via her whiz bang cell phone. At 17, she's never written in cursive. And that's not all. Everyone goes to the bakery in the morning for a baguette. Just a baguette. What will you do when you're thirsty ? ...

Our vision of sailing for a year was one of perfect sunsets, dinners on the water, and making new sailing friends. I guess I assumed they'd be ruling class Brits driving Oyster 70s (a preposterously expensive boat) and we'd sup gin and tonics while their hired crew waited on us hand and foot. "Tom, you really must try the Bordeaux........1895 was a particularly good year". Well, it hasn't actually turned out this way.The sunsets and dinners have been great. The problem has been with the people we've met. Perhaps it's just bad luck out of the starting gate. It's funny, but when you give the mentally ill a boat they become "cruisers". Case in point- I"m working on a boat project at 8:30 AM when I hear "knock-knock-knock" on my hull. At first I think it's Kirstin (she has one peculiar guy-like tendency......when something doesn't work she hits it). The noise persists and I discover a woman in a rowboat (no outboard) hang...