S/V L'ORIENT

Who's rustier....man or machine ? Through blog statistics and sleuthing, we've established beyond a reasonable doubt that the SV L'ORIENT blog now has more diverse readership than any publication in the history of man with two notable exceptions- The Bible and 50 Shades of Gray; "Wow", you say......Quite a Bold Statement. We now have substantial readership in Northwest Canada......meaning native Canadians (more appropriately "First Peoples"). Adding this to our American great plains cohort of Doomsday Preppers (who we call "Last Peoples")...need I say more? Case closed. Today concludes 21 straight days at the gym......or Klingon Death Camp. This is a 90 degrees, no AC and less maintenance affair on the second floor of a blighted village block in downtown Kralendijk, Bonaire which we affectionately call "the Dijk". With strange techno-music blasting and the guttural mutterings of the 6'7 tall membership and their gangly ar...

The lifejacket was decorative.....wouldn't have helped much if there was a problem How's that for band-width (a 1937 Spencer Tracy movie reference)! Shazam. Anyway, the moment had finally arrived. But let me rewind.......Amel Super Maramus (like our yacht) have a unique and dramatic "nuclear option" for going straight down wind. To quote De Gaulle (which oddly and redundantly translates to "of France")........France is not France without grandeur. And our French super boat is no different. On our boat there is an option to put genoas (a huge foresail) on both sides of the bow, creating an enormous wall of sail that propels you at very high speed. We had never used this before........and quite honestly were a bit fearful of this "nuclear option". The second foresail (called a ballooner) is a dramatic kaleidoscope of red, white and blue........a huge, preposterous middle finger aimed at the rest of the sailing world that seems to say "How do...

Forgot our meds... oops No question between partners demonstrates the difference between cruising and real life quite like this innocuous inquiry. On L'ORIENT, this question elicits laughs (every time). The reason ? Life on a yacht (even a large one) is all about proximity. Kirstin and I spend probably 23 out of 24 hours each day within 5 ft of each other. Really. Between dinghy rides, boat projects, snorkeling, swimming, hiking, dining, happy hour and sleeping..........that figure is about right. So "How was your day ?" becomes ridiculous since both of us know how our day was...........we had the same day. Merely operating a blue water cruising yacht requires two people........adjusting the sail plan, anchoring, launching and retrieving the dinghy........there's a ballet of motion and timing that develops between partners where almost everything is unsaid yet can be relied on to happen. We've noticed that conflict resolution among our cruising friends is ...

Sunset in the salon Kirstin and I are often times visually offended by the boats (and even yachts) of others. In short, many of them are a hot mess; holes drilled haphazardly in mahogany, wires running loose everywhere.....switches, breakers, and lights scattered randomly around the boat.......kind of like a bomb went off in a Radio Shack. Not so on L'ORIENT. We have no art, pictures, exposed electronics.............in short, our boat is everything we need and nothing we don't. OK, we need our clothes washer, dishwasher, 3 A/C units, etc. but the point here is we haven't cluttered things up with flourishes of our own twisted design. But there is one exception...........a small half hidden grab bar in the galley has taped to it various fortunes from cookies we've gotten in Chinese restaurants across our travels. This area is known as the W.O.K (the wall of knowledge). Like pilgrims climbing to the top of a buddhist temple in search of knowledge, occasionally we s...

Remind me... why did we leave Grenada and this beach? So Kirstin and I are in Grenada missing our $5 Bordeaux and other French goodies.........missing them so much that we decided on a quick 150 mile trip north to Martinique to buy 100 bottles of wine. As I write this I can see that it looks stupid, but trust me.......it made perfect sense at the time. Why not? Probably get to use my birthday present (a legit deep sea fishing rod) and finally land "the big one". I'm actually feeling a bit of fishing hubris. Watch out 300 lb tuna ! Armed with my new rod, I feel dangerous. To quote Julius Oppenheimer (not much at fishing but I recall he did something)...."I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" (I double checked that seemingly ungrammatical flourish). OK that's a bit aspirational...I'll walk that back....I'd settle for one freaking fish. We take a casual look at the weather........northeast wind at 15-18 knots, 3-5 foot seas. OK, a little ba...

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...