S/V L'ORIENT

Another beautiful beach scene We've left Carriacou. The night before after happy hour a German boat arrives in the dark..........a completely half assed one at that (dented hull, manual windlass, etc) and tries to anchor in the shallow bay near us (15 ft. deep). He's not able to stick the landing because the guy at the front of the boat is lowering chain like it's insulin and he's diabetic.......7 times they fail to anchor successfully, then get really close to us for their 8th try............which causes me to lose it. "Are you kidding me ? Why the hell can't you anchor ? It's 15 ft !!!!!!" The German replies "If you are such a hero, please help us." If the dinghy had been down, I would have gone over there (machete in hand). They ended up on the other side of the bay, but those were two dudes who don't belong on a sailboat. The next morning, all 4 of us were up early..........the Germans to try again to anchor close to us..........

Bequia - The Whaleboner Restaurant (for obvious reasons) During our brief forays into the real world (i.e. away from our yacht), Kirstin and I encounter a lot of people in the US who are incredulous that we spend our whole lives in the Caribbean. We often hear "isn't every island the same?"or "I've been to the Caribbean; I went to Sandals in St. Thomas one time." We try to not look down on these luminaries of cartography...these modern day Magellans. We hear folks describe their wonderful trip to the mega-resort in Nassau, Bahamas as a trip to the Caribbean - until we point out that the Bahamas are actually in the north Atlantic, not the Caribbean. We will usually try something subtle like "Normally one needs to be in a bowling alley to hear travel tips as informed as yours". Our learning over the past 5+ years of cruising is that there is a scientific theory at work here.......we call it the "Second Island Postulate". It goes like...

View from the stern today - Le Marin, Martinique Kirstin and I skew towards the younger end of cruisers, probably 10 years younger on average. If you throw in the fact that we are "all-in" in cruiser parlance (meaning we do this virtually full time) and we have a very nice boat.........actually a yacht by length.........and it raises some questions with the neighbors. "So tell me how you swing this?" "Are you guys trust fund people?" "Did you invent Bitcoin or something?" These questions usually intrude while we're at a cruiser bar on shore - we're pretty careful about who we invite aboard L'ORIENT. Anyway, our boat card (pictured below) just adds mystery to the situation, as we're the only cruisers we've seen who don't include a last name or any identifying information at all. Being HUGE fans of comedy, this situation is ready made for some Tom and Kirstin fun. When we get one of these prying, nosy ques...

Delivery Van Cargo Selfie A boat is an organism existing in a harsh environment. The sun, sea, and salt air combine to create an unforgiving, corrosive stew that eventually destroys all. Kirstin and I view ourselves as antibodies that attempt to keep our home livable (OK, and luxurious) against these forces. Thus, we are constantly fixing fiberglass, aluminum, electronics, sails, upholstery, machinery, plumbing, etc. Waiting until something breaks doesn't always work, as we frequently sail in places that barely have clean water, let alone the shops and stores that seem to be on every street corner in the USA's exurbs. So, our clothes washer (yes, we have one on L'ORIENT !!!) is 14 years old......original to the boat. As we're considering expanding our sailing area to places like Colombia and Panama in coming years, having it break in a remote place would be annoying and not consistent with L'ORIENT's dignity. Time for replacement, and what better place tha...

Goodbye Origo! Next stop Panama So we're anchored here in one of our favorite places, St. Pierre in Guadeloupe. The town has natural beauty, an interesting history, and most importantly patisseries (french bakeries). Since we suffered from so many near misses from boats anchored too closely in both Iles Des Saintes and Dominica (our last two stops), we needed some peace from amateur boaters who inexplicably do not seem to be able to anchor a boat safely. Solution- we've chosen to anchor about a mile away from the town in fairly deep water. Normally, people who rent boats or are inexperienced try to get in close to the town. Because St. Pierre is dwarfed by the [hopefully] still dormant volcano and other hills, the wind swirls causing boats to spin in all directions at night. Result- if you anchored near another boat you might hit him. We wanted nothing to do with this after our recent experiences so we believed that being this far out was safe. Scene of the crime - so...

Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses - oh, they are already here. Welcome to Dominica  So we enjoyed a rollicking sail from IDS (Iles Des Saintes) to Dominica.......that most Caribbean of Caribbean islands. Dominica is a stunningly beautiful island and there is a 99% chance that neither you or anyone you know (besides us) has been here. The island has been hammered by a series of natural disasters over the years including a couple of hurricanes in 2017; the word "natural" somehow making it seem more polite. The island is positively trashed. Very few houses seem to have roofs (five months after the fact). A couple of restaurants are open but needless to say we are eating largely on our own. Rastas are filling dirty jugs with water from spigots on the street......the water trickling out slowly and of dubious quality anyway. Across the bay is a hotel which was financed for Dominica by the kingdom of Morocco (of all places). It had walls and a roof before the...

Cabrit's Anchorage We are anchored in Iles Des Saintes, Guadeloupe (IDS)..........islands of the saints, right ? Must be peaceful, even idyllic. Wrong. We are experiencing rain, wind, roll, and gusts of well over 40 knots (tropical storm level). Boats all around us are actually dragging their anchor, creating hazardous tangles all over. Being the experienced wastrels that we are as far as IDS goes, we know the ONE and ONLY place you can anchor here where is isn't so rolly.........although it's windy, which we don't mind because we have a big anchor and lots of chain. It's called Cabrit, a small island outside of the main anchorage. The problem is that other boats in IDS look around, see that we aren't rolling that much, and immediately head over to join us. Sounds great, right? Meet new people, have a few drinks........could be fun? At least he didn't anchor in front of us No, No, No. You see, here in Cabrit, the boats swing unpredictably in bi...