Dreams of that "Last Affair"

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glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Wed, 2 Sep 2015 07:00:00 -0500

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Tropical Cyclone Bill - Expected to hit Texas Coast tonight

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:02:00 -0500

We have been watching the tropical disturbance forming in the Gulf of Mexico now for a few days and yesterday it started to organize late in the day. The barometer was dropping to about 1007 millibars and NOAA was flying a hurricane hunter into it for observations.
Seems that it is has organized and went from a tropical disturbance and now formed into a tropical cyclone. That threw me for a bit not knowing what the difference is between a tropical depression and a tropical cyclone (especially in the Northern Hemisphere).

I did a bit of research and in the end, cyclone, typhoon and hurricane are all the same darn thing.
That said in all my time on the gulf coast, I don't think I have heard them referenced as Cyclones, but for some reason Tropical Depression Bill is being reported that way.

Deb and I are really carefully watching this storm, mainly because it is going to hit the Texas coast tonight or first thing in the morning. The challenge is that we can't really leave DreamChaser alone because I expect the water to continue to rise even here in Louisiana and we are not a floating docks, but rather fixed piers so we are needing to adjust lines as the water rises from the wind pushing all that water up from the gulf into the bays, lake Pontchartrain and ultimately up the Tchefuncte river.

That leaves the question of Last Affair. She is berthed in Galveston Bay right now. She is secured well and tied on floating docks in a very secure marina. The issue is that with sustained winds at 40+ for 24 hours straight, it can start to cause havoc on things. Luckily we still know a lot of folks in the area who have checked on the boat for us. She is tied secure and still riding out well. We have added some additional security to the sails being secured by taking a few extra wraps of the jib sheets around the roller furling up half way. An additional tie around the lower portion and cleating all of those lines well in hopes that the sustained winds don't start to grab that sail and work to unroll or tear it from it's furling.

The main is covered and secured tightly with sail ties, and cover secured well. Someone also went
over and ensured that the bimini was closed up very tight as well. I didn't want to ask someone else to take it all off of the boat, but the thought is that as secure and solid at is it (Rigid frame and not webbing to hold certain parts in place) she is a very secure frame. With the side flaps all zipped tightly it won't allow wind to get in and lift it like a parachute.

I have been watching the newscasts for how the weather is starting to effect the Galveston/Kemah area. Right now the water is up higher than the highest we have seen it since moving there. It is already starting to rise above Toddville road. The Kemah Board walk is already starting to see some breaking waves hitting the dock itself.

Typically when we would walk that back part of the boardwalk, the water is 6-8 feet below the dock even at the highest of tides, so this is certainly up quite a bit and I suspect it will continue to rise at least until the this thing is 50+ miles inland. Given the counter clockwise rotation of the weather systems, it is going to keep pushing water north and then as it hits landfall South West of Houston, that water will continue to drive that way even after landfall as the wind starts forming as westerlies.

Deb and I may need to split responsibility and have one of us go to check on Last Affair while the other stays here to manage and monitor the lines on Dream Chaser. Even here in Louisiana, we are up about 3 feet already and we have had to let some line out to accommodate the drift. Another foot to foot and a half or so and the water will be going over the dock surface. Our living blocking board is rigged up between posts so even if the water were to go high above the docks, we will still have a good surface to keep us from moving toward or over the dock. (Thanks Rat for the nice rig and setup you left in your slip when selling your boat. Rat had the slip we are in before us and let me know what he rigged up and how he set it up. It works well and he even took a step to automatically adjust the blocking board to rise up and down on blocks in relation to his boat so it would go up even if he was not at the boat.

Below is the weather forecast from Houston showing the details about the disorganized system and what the hurricane hunter plan was reporting on the North and East side of the storm. Just over 50 mph. I was looking at Bouy data and ship reporting and there are some reports of 19 foot seas and 54 knot wind gusts out in the Gulf tonight.

Peter Island, Roadtown (return Boat) then Trellis Bay - Sailing the BVI's (10 of 10)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 07:00:00 -0500

Well this was it, it was the last day we would be on the boat. Our plan today was pretty simple. We were only about 45 minutes from Roadtown so our plan was to prepare breakfast, clean up and stow all the dishes (With the exception of glasses as we knew we would have some drinks) and then clean the boat and pack our stuff.

We awoke as usual to fresh coffee and juice. We prepared a great breakfast cooking up any of the breakfast meats we had left (Bacon and Sausage). We had a good meal, and started the clean up process. We used the deck brush and buckets of water to clean the boat off. Mainly the cockpit was the area that needed the most cleaning. We went inside the boat and straighter up all of the food that we had stored putting it in boxes to be given to local's at the Marina or to other cruisers that may be heading out for the start of their trip.

We gathered everyone's stuff from around the boat and put in down on each persons bunk. Before we actually packed our clothes and bags, we decided to sit and just chat and have a few drinks and relax. We had brought a lot of music with us, including songs from about every genera and era. We decided that this boat full of Texans needed some old school country. The best part of old school country is that most of us knew the words to the songs and Oday can't stand country. Knowing Oday doesn't like country made us all want to have a sing-a-long.

We belted out sounds from Tammy Wynette, Roger Miller, Dolly Parton and even Claude Kings 'Wolverton Mountain'. The funny thing is we were doing this while anchored in this harbor with about 20 other boats. I don't know if they heard us or not, but it sure was funny to all of us except for Oday.

When we finished our sing-a-long, a peace offering was made to Oday who got to choose the CD he wanted to listen to next for our sail back to Tortola and Roadtown harbor. We lifted the dinghy on the davits and secured everything for this last leg of the trip. We dropped our mooring ball and headed almost due north toward Roadtown.

There was only 1 thing left to do on this leg of the trip and that was to drop off our message in a bottle at the place we thought it would likely travel the furthest. We wrote our note essentially saying that we were a group of people sailing in the British Virgin Islands and that if this were found, to please send an email and photo of the bottle where found to us (and we listed our email addresses). We put the note in a waterproof zip-lock bag and rolled it so it would fit in the wine bottle.

OBarr tossing out our message in a bottle

The bottle already had all of the labels removed and the cork was pushed back in to keep any water out of the bottle. We planned our drop at the place where we assumed that the wind and current would carry it West, Southwest down the Sir Francis Drake passage and south of St. John toward the open Carribean Sea. It could wash up on Puerto Rico, The Dominican or if it starts to head south, any where in Columbia or Venezuela. It would be really cool to hear back from someone if they find it. I just hope if it is found we don't get a note from St. John indicating that it would not have traveled more than about 10 miles.

We arrived back at Roadtown and called Conch charters who had us pull over by the fuel dock. They sent one of their guys out to the boat in a dinghy and he hopped up on board, took the helm and parked it behind another boat at the fuel dock. Because it was Sunday the fuel dock was closed so they were going to just fill it up on Monday and let us know how much it took.

We found another guy that was heading out for his charter, so we gave him some of our food stores that we hadn't needed. He was glad to get it and loaded it up into a cart and took it to their boat. We then set everything else out on the table for the woman who cleans up the boats to take home.

We loaded all of our bags into a cart and went through all of the check out procedures. It took about 15 minutes or so and they let us know they would dive the boat the next morning and verify that there was no damage to props or rudders and we could be on our way. We hopped in a van and headed back over to Beef Island, Trellis Bay where we would stay in a 'hotel' for the night to catch our early morning flight back to Puerto Rico.

This was the view from the front steps of where we stayed our last night

The place only had 4 bedrooms and a shared living room and no air conditioning. But, they did have a nice little beach front bar that we had a few drinks in and lunch. The hotel was called "The Loose Mongoose" It was rustic for sure. They didn't have air, but did have a fan in each room. They also were to have Wifi and since most of us had been without it most of the time, we all wanted to check in and check out what was going on. We couldn't get it to connect. I finally saw the owner and asked if he was ok with me taking a look at it to see if I could get it going. He was, but he couldn't recall his admin password for his service. Luckily, routers in the BVI's just like the US tend to have some fairly generic user name from the factory so I was able to hack in within about 10 minutes. The good news is that I fixed his connection and we were able to get on-line.

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This area is known as Trellis bay and there were quite a few boats anchored or moored just off the beach. This is also where they throw the other full moon party on the island. This one is on the East side of Tortola as opposed to BombaShack on the far west side of the island. Aragorn Art Studio makes the large decorative fire balls used for the full moon party and their studio is right on the beach. They have some really cool stuff such as smaller fire balls for home, tons of carvings and art made of the wood that drifts up onto the beach. The owner of the studio came out to our boat on our first night to see if we were interesting in coming by the studio the next day or picking up some t-shirts. You can check out their site here - Aragorn Art Studio.

We walked down the beach and found this really large starfish on our hike. It was the largest start fish I have every seen up this close. It was only in about 8 inches of water just a few feet from the shore. Deb picked it up so we could show just how large the thing was. We put him gently back where he was after the photo. We also found a section of the beach that was just littered with old dinghies. There must have been at least 8 of them that were flat and tossed up on the beach just beyond the sand line. It was an odd site, we joked that it was the island where Dinghies went to die.

We went back to the Loose Mongoose and relaxed on the benches that were water side. It was a great location right on the beach. What we didn't think about was the fact that the house we were staying in was 20 feet from that great little beach side bar we had lunch in. The live band setup and people started hanging out in the front yard with us. It was not too bad, but not something i had planned for. We went to bed at a decent hour since we had a very early morning flight.

Up in the morning, loaded our bags into a van and headed over to the airport less than a mile from where we were. We boarded our small plan and flew back to Puerto Rico to catch out flights back to the US. All in all this was one of the best trips I have had. We spent it doing what we love to do, sailing and cruising, we got to spend it with great friends that are all sailors and easy to get along with. There were no incidents of someone getting on someone else's nerves, just a great time with friends that I can't wait to do again. We are already starting to talk about the next trip. Monohull maybe, and we are thinking a one way sail starting or ending in the Grenadines.

See below for the last video installment from this Blog series. Remember, if you are looking at this from any site or method that doesn't have an embedded video below, please click the link here to see the video - Sailing BVI's - Last day, Peter Island, Roadtown, Trellis Bay

Cane Garden Bay - Great Harbor Peter Island - Sailing the BVI's (9 of 10)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 07:00:00 -0500

We woke up late this morning, assisted by the drinks at the BombaShack the night before. I was looking forward to getting to see the beautiful CT/Formosa that we dropped off some folks to last night. Sadly they boat had left the anchorage before we got up. We relaxed and had our morning coffee and fresh fruit and yogurt for breakfast.

This anchorage is really nice and I could see spending a few days for sure in Cane Garden Bay but for us, we knew we were going to head over to Peter Island for tonights stop. It was not a far sail and we planned it this way so the day we had to return the boat (the next day) we would just be a short 45 minutes from Roadtown on Tortola.

Knowing that we had a short trip the next day, it allows us to hang out for a while where we were and take a little dip. We decided that it would be good to see if we could hang Oday's hammock from under the boat between the hulls. There were towing points there and it sure seemed like the hammock might hang just below the surface of the water.

Sure enough it did and it was a great place to relax. We put some warm beers from storage into a mesh dive bag, tied it to the rail and dropped it in the water to cool them down to the water temperature before we transferred them into the cooler. I love this picture of Deb chilling in the hammock with a sack of beers floating right next to her.

We had a great swim, and then took our short sail over to Great Harbor on Peter Island.

When we arrived, we really just relaxed, swam and hung out. We grilled another gourmet meal on the boat and dinghied around the Marina and gave some of our left over beer to people we could tell were cruisers.

Sailing SouthEast just passing the western end of Tortola (toward Peter Island)

Anchored in Great Harbor on the North Side of Peter Island

We enjoyed the evening with friends and were wishing it was not all coming to an end tomorrow when we had to return the boat.

Another great meal prepared on the grill as the sun was setting

Sopers Hole to Cane Garden Bay & BombaShack Full Moon Party - Sailing the BVI's (8 of 10)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 07:00:00 -0500

Today after awakening in a great anchorage with a nice breeze, we fixed breakfast and coffee. We all decided we would head to shore today and check out the stores and shops on Soper's hole. There were still a few souvenirs that folks wanted to get and there were several shops along the water front that had t-shirts cheaper than a lot of other places we had seen them before.

We loaded up to the dinghy and returned to the Pussers Landing dinghy dock where we had drinks with the O'Day's the night before. We walked along the water front and stopped in a few stores. Mary bought a really cool shirt that was of a woman in a bikini so when she wore it, it looked like she was wearing a little red bikini. There were shirt and gift shops, there was a dive shop and some clothing stores.

They also had an island spice company which was pretty cool. It was a place to get whole nutmeg and a grater but we knew space was limited in our bags returning. (The whole nutmeg ground on top of the PainKillers made them so much better.)

We had a short sail today from Sopers hole, west and then North up the western side of Tortola. We decided to get over to Cane Garden Bay a bit early to see if Sandman was over at Myett's. Obarr really wanted to try to catch up with him. Deb had ordered that glass turtle that we didn't have time to wait for last time we were here so we told them we would pick it up today.

Today was Friday, it was a full moon and it was the night of the Bomba Shack Full Moon party which we planned part of our vacation around. We planned our itinerary such that we would be here in Cane Garden Bay on Friday and planned the week of our trip to coincide with a full moon.

We dropped our mooring in Soper's hole and sailed Southwest and then West around the tip of Tortola. There is a great property right on the southern tip there that has some rooms for rent, a great dock at the water level and it seems to be built hanging over the rocks on multiple levels. As we passed Mary took a great picture of this place.

From the point in this picture we headed North and kept the island of Tortola to starboard as we went the short distance to Cane Garden Bay.

True to form and based on Obarr's tradition we tuned the music to the Jimmy Buffett Album, Son of a Son of a Sailor and cued up Track 9 "Mañana" as we sailed into Cane Garden bay. (See one of the earlier blog entries on Cane Garden bay for the lyrics and why we play it when entering this harbor.)

As we sailed in we found place fairly close to where we stopped earlier in the week when we stayed in this bay. We picked up a mooring ball and just relaxed. At this point in the trip, we were completely into the island lifestyle and did nothing in a hurry. We milled around and cleaned up the boat a little bit. Played some cards, had a few drinks, sat around and shot the bull with each other and as Oday and T decided to take a swim, Me, Deb and Mary decided to head to shore.

Earlier in the week when we were here, Deb found a glass art studio where they used recycled bottles from the beach and all of the funds went to support the local waterfront community. Deb liked one of the turtles but wanted a different color, so they started to make a custom one for her, but we had to get going and let them know we would pick it up today. That was one of the errands we would run on shore. Mary also wanted to head back to Myetts to pick up a couple of souvenirs and we were going to get ice on the way back to the boat.

Dinghy ride to shore (this is a CT/Formosa-Deb and I love this style boat)

As we were loading in the Dinghy, T and Oday dove into the water off the side of the boat, and we motored through the crystal clear water to the Dinghy dock. This time Deb took the helm and she drove the dinghy. We walked over to Myett's first and Mary picked up a few things she wanted and then we stopped at the Glass studio on the way back to the boat. The turtle looked great, right along with the blue swirl deb wanted inside the clear glass shell. We picked up a 20 pound bag of ice, and loaded back up in the Dink. After getting back on board the boat, Obarr wanted to see if SandMan was at Myett's so we decided that we all wanted a few pain killers and cracked conch anyway. (The cracked conch at Myett's was unbelievably good). Sandman was there and Obarr got to speak to him for a little bit which was really cool. Sandman said he didn't remember Mike's name, but he did remember quite a few good dinners and parries on their boat. (this goes back 10-15 years).

View from the Myett's Patio.
The Good news is that the View from Tony's is the same

We found out Sandman would be driving tonight to BombaShack so if we needed a ride, he said to just give him a call. Sadly, Myett's was out of Cracked conch, so we decided to walk down the beach to a place called "Tony's". They had 2 Painkillers for $6 so we figured if we were just going to have a drink, we would go to the cheaper place. The view of the water was the same.

I swore to myself I would only have one painkiller because these things, combined with the heat, and not doing a whole lot, put me to sleep and I wanted to save some energy for the full moon party.

We went back to the boat, had a great dinner of marinated MahiMahi on the grill along with fresh veggies and some rice. Another great meal aboard Kastor Pollox. We all took showers as the sun started to set and then got ready to go to BombaShack.

Sun Setting from Cane Garden Bay

When I say, "get ready" it doesn't mean get all dolled up, nope, this is a dive. A dive may actually be considerably nicer than this place. So by get ready, I mean we ensured we had cash, cigars, and some bug spray. Robert and Mary decided to stay at the boat, mainly because of how winding the road over the mountain would be and Mary had a touch of motion sickness on the first day when we did this on the other side of Tortola. We loaded into the dinghy again and headed back to shore. Right at the top of the dinghy dock there was a cab waiting there so we just hopped in. The cabs here are really just a mini van with a lot of seats in them and all of the windows open. To have some extra room, you tend to hang some part of your body out the window (it may be your arm or even your head). There were five of us and only 3 other people hopped in, so it was not too overloaded. I climbed all the way into the back and off we went through some very winding roads. In the BVI's the cars drive on the left side of the road. When we were coming down the back side of one of the hills, the switchbacks were so steep, when I looked out my window to my left as we went left around a hairpin turn, it looked like it dropped straight down. (If you want the video at the end of this blog, I traced the road on a map to show how sharp these hairpin turns were.)

We arrived at the Bomba Shack and it needs some explanation. On one side of the road is the shack, 2 bars and the beach (and bathrooms), on the other side of the road is the place where you can buy drink tickets, there is a kitchen, large outdoor bar and huge stage and dance area. When you walk up to this it kind of looks like someone built it out of old pallets or wood that washed up on the beach. There are t-shirts, bras, panties, hats, flags, roadsigns and you name it that are covering the walls. (Walls that don't really keep much out, most walls have gaps and holes in them.

As you walk into the entrance on the beach side of the shack, there is a bar to the left and a few make shift benches out of stumps to sit on. There is no floor, so you kick your shoes off and enjoy the soft sand on your bare feet as you walk through the bar. It is not really small. Maybe 200 feet long or so when you get inside. There are areas to sit, there is a ledge you can put a drink on and look out over the beautiful bay. Oh, this is also where there are a few local entrepreneurs offering up mushrooms for sale that will surely "take you on a ride" There is hand written notes all over the wall. Some are funny, some are more like "ABC was here".
On Full Moon Party night, they don't take cash, you have to go across the street and buy tickets. (Essentially drinks were $5 each if you bought the tickets). I bought $20 worth of tickets and walked back across the street to get a painkiller.

We decided to walk up the street a little bit as we could see there were some things going on there too. They had a stand making snow cones. Someone was selling jewelry, and several folks selling shrooms again. Then we found the most entrepreneurial of all of them. A guy had a card table with a whole bunch of bottles on it. He was selling drinks for $3 about 100 feet from the entrance to the BombaShack and there were about 20 people hanging around there. He was working hard trying to get Deb and T to do Mushrooms with him but they passed.

Game where you had to swing the ring on a string and get it on the hook

As we walked back, deb decided she wanted to do the "All you can drink pass" that they were selling. It was $50 and included all you could drink all night, a BBQ dinner and gave you access to the Mushroom tea that BombaShack makes and a t-shirt. We decided to check out the other side of the street since we were at the ticket shack. We walked around into the dirt path that led behind all the bushes/shrubs and trees and there was a huge bar and raised stage and picnic tables. We met Bomba who was hanging out near the back door of the Shack.

We also ran into Sandman and hung out with him on and off most of the night. The band was good and as it got later more and more people started to show up. I guess by about 11pm or midnight, there were a couple hundred people there all together. It was a great place for people watching. We saw one person so drunk that he couldn't really walk on his own. We saw one poor girl stumbling and throwing up near the bushes and went to check on her because we thought her friends had left her, but her boyfriend had just gone to get her some water. I also saw a guy selling shrooms way in the back of this outdoor field/dancefloor/bar/stage/dining room or whatever you want to call this giant outdoor area cut out of all of the trees and kind of hidden from the road.

I heard the band yell "So how many people do we have here from Texas" and there were a bunch of cheers. I walked over to talk to some in front of us that had cheered and when I asked where she was from, her response was "I am from Oklahoma, he is from Kansas, close enough, right?" I just shook my head as I walked back to our group.

Before the party was really getting going, Deb and T decided that they wanted to dance, so went right up in front of the band and just started dancing with each other. We were all back near the road talking to Sandman and got a kick out of the whole scene. There is something funny that happens when girls dance together, all of the guys stop what they are doing and watch, so at one point, there are maybe 75 people milling around this large area, Deb and T are the only ones in the middle of this field dancing with each other, and of the 75 people milling, 50 were just kind of watching them. It was pretty funny, but to their credit, they got others to start doing some dancing too.

I wish we had more pictures of this place, but it is not like being in a well lit area, so most of our pictures didn't come out very good at all while we were there.

Sandman with OBarr, T and Deb (at the BombaShack)

We finally decided it was about time to head out and asked Sandman for a ride. He said yes, but that he was also taking 3 other guys back so we all decided to go back together. The other guys are nice enough, one was from the Coast Guard stationed in St. Croix. They were on a holiday for a few weeks and sailing with one of the guys aunt and uncle. On the way back, I remember hearing one of the guys talking to his buddy about the plan when they got back to shore. They were going to try to shine a flashlight at the boat they were on in hopes that their Aunt or Uncle would see it, get in the dinghy and come get them. If that didn't work, they were going to swim out to the boat.

Of course we said we would take them to their boat. So now we had 8 of us in the 10 foot dinghy. We certainly had this thing loaded down so we just kept it slow. The water was flat as could be anyway in the bay so it was a nice quiet smooth ride out to the boat. So as we left the dock, we asked which boat they were on and sure enough if it wasn't that gorgeous CT (Formosa) that we had seen in Cane Garden Bay, Jost Van Dyke and The Bight. Deb and I love this boat, it is the style and size we really like/want eventually. When we pulled up next to the boat, there was no boarding ladder, but these guys were young and nimble, they just climbed up the port holes and rigging up onto deck. His Aunt came up into the cockpit with the commotion and we complimented her on the boat. She invited us to come over tomorrow in the daylight and she would show us down below. (Sadly we slept in a bit and when we woke up they were gone the next morning).

All in all, the BombaShack was a good time. OBarr did say that it was not nearly as big as it had been many years ago and when we talked to some locals about it, they said that it used to be the only one on the island so everyone came to that full moon party. Now they do one in Trellis Bay, Cane Garden bay and Cappoons Bay where BombaShack is.

Below is a short Video for the morning in Soper's Hole on Tortola and sailing up to Cane Garden Bay for the Full Moon Party at the BombaShack. If you are don't see a video below, please click this link to go the the video on YouTube.

Leverick Bay, Key Bay Peter Island, Sopers Hole - Sailing the BVI's (7 of 10)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 23:30:00 -0500

We really enjoyed the air conditioning from being on the dock so much so that we all slept in, we prepared coffee and breakfast in the air conditioning and then each went and showered on shore where we could take as long a shower as we wanted.

Sailing to Peter Island (you can see boats anchored ahead at the Indians)

Sailing to Peter Island

We had talked about wanting to spend one night in a very deserted area where we would be the only boat. There is something just picturesque about that thought, so O’Barr again came through with a recommendation on the southwest side of Peter Island. There was a small point that pointed to the south and would protect us from the swells that would come from the east. This spot would also allow us to be behind the windward shore that was only about 2 ft above sea level so it allowed all the wind to still come across the bay. We pulled in and attempted to anchor. We could see the bottom in 15-20 feet of water and dropped the hook a perfect anchoring sand, but it just wouldn’t grab. The first time, we assumed it was because there was rock below it. We pulled it up and made another attempt this time a bit closer to shore and in water that was more shallow. Again the anchor wouldn’t grab. We dove the anchor and it just didn’t look like the point of the anchor was aiming correctly. We pulled up and attempted it again and the same thing. When diving to inspect our hold we saw the same problem. We pulled up the anchor and realized that the darn thing was broken. The spade and the shaft were not aligned like they should be. We started to think about re-rigging the spare anchor but none of us really wanted to chance having an issue in the night. We started to consider how lucky we were earlier in the trip. We only anchored 2 other times. Once was just for lunch and the other was an overnight in Cane Garden Bay. We really lucked out that we didn’t drag since it seems now that the anchor likely was not set real good earlier when we used it also.

Deb Relaxing for the short time we were at Key Bay (Peter Island)

What do you do when you have a problem but it is not an emergency? You open up a beer, and think about it for a few minutes. We did just that and came to the conclusion that we would head over to the West side of Tortola to Soper’s Hole. We could pick up a mooring there as there seemed to be a good number of them in that bay. A plan was hatched and away we went.
We sailed northwest toward the western side of Tortola, passing St. John on the Port side again. We went North between Little Thatch and Frenchmen’s Cay and then Eastward to Soper’s hole. By now, we have circumnavigated all of the BV Islands with the exception of Anageda which the charter companies don’t like you to take their boats too because of the shallow water and reef surrounding the island to the north of Virgin Gorda.

View into Sopers Hole from just between Thatch Island and Frenchman's Cay

We picked up a mooring and watched all the activity on a tall ship that was docked near us. The ship was called Ocean Star and was an 88 foot Schooner that weighed 75 tons. She has a staff of 4 professionals and 16 student crew that sail this boat while taking classes, and getting life lessons and certifications in diving, etc. They offer 20-90 day voyages and this particular ship works mainly in the Caribbean. While we were there, we saw the kids working on the boat and cleaning the decks, etc. We saw them getting lessons in Dinghy handling within the anchorage and as evening drew near, they were all swimming and having a great time jumping off the sides and off the bow sprit for some relaxation time. What an awesome experience for kids. I looked it up when we returned, it was pricey but still an awesome experience or opportunity for a kid. It was about $4,500 for a 20 day sail with lessons, about $10K for 40 days. I asked our Granddaughter if she would be interested in something like that and she said “I would not go to school on a ship, you would waste your money on that”. Funny how brutally honest kids can be.

Sea|Mester Boat - Ocean Star

Deb and I saw a couple of really nice looking boats moored in this well protected bay and wanted to take a dinghy ride to explore them. First Obarr and Oday took a little cruise around the anchorage to see if there was any chance that he knew of, or had met, the folks that were on board the Morgan Out Island. After they came back, Me, Deb, Oday and T loaded a couple of beers in the dinghy and slowly tooled around the anchorage. We saw 2 beautiful Hinkley’s, and several boats that you could tell were cruisers that had hunkered down in this place as a hurricane hole. We even saw one boat closest to shore that had about 5 anchors deployed, 3 forward and 2 stern anchors. It was an odd setup but it looks like they certainly didn’t want this thing moving.

We decided to run up to Pussers on the waterfront for a drink. They had a great dinghy dock and it was amazing at how clear the water was here as well. Just a few feet off the shore the depth dropped from 4 feet to about 20 feet because just 20 yards from the shore was a large fishing boat that likely drafted 6 plus feet of water.

We had a couple of drinks on the water front and then returned to the boat for a relaxing evening. It was an early evening so I was able to copy some photos and videos down to the computer and sift through what we didn’t want to keep.

Another relaxing night hanging out with friends. Robert took this picture off the back of the boat as the sun was setting. After another great day, we were off to bed.

Sunset out of Soper's Hole (aka West End of Tortola)

See below for a very short video clip from this day of the trip. If you are reading this in an email or PDF, you may not see the embedded video below. If not, please go to the following link to see it - Click here for Sailing the BVI’s Chapter 7 of 10 - Leverick Bay to Key Bay to Soper’s Hole

Saba Rock to Leverick Bay - Sailing the BVI's (6 of 10)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 07:00:00 -0500

We decided today that we really needed to get water. We were down to about 30 gallons or so and it just made sense that if we were going to come to a dock, we may as well top off fuel too. Since we were not able to get a mooring at Saba Rock the night before we would have to pay for water and fuel. Methods was not a huge problem but we were a bit concerned about maneuvering up to the fuel dock with the direction of the wind. This was going to be the first time we take the catamaran to a dock and just didn't want to increase our odds of hitting the dock or not being able to get close enough to tie off. We did a little checking and found out that we would get some free water (100 gallons) with a mooring at Leverick Bay and based on the guidebook and so e Ariel photos, it appeared that it was going to be a better spot to fill up.

This would be our shortest travel day of the entire trip, so we decided to take advantage of it and do some sight seeing.

We went back over to Saba Rock in the dinghy and walked the island. It is a beautiful resort. We walked the docks, around to the grassy lawns overlooking the Caribean. As we walked along this area we saw a small headstone that read "Ganja the cat" and it looked like Ganja was good to him because based on the dates he lived 18 years.

We continued our walk toward the sandy area and back again into the docks where the underwater lighting attracts the Tarpon at night.

We all loaded up in the dinghy and crossed the channel to walk around the Bitter End Yacht Club. This place is really interesting and very well appointed. The dinghy docks were in great shape and were right in front of the hotel. We were amazed at the wood carvings in the lobby.

View from the Hotel entrance toward the Dinghy dock

This is a typical island resort layout with all open walls but this one had really nice wooden floors and walls. The all appeared to be hand sawn. We walked through the lobby and certainly had to take some pictures of the wood carvings and a group photo of us all standing right behind the Bitter End Yacht Club and logo.

We walked down the water front and looked at some of the boats that the Hokin Family had bought over the years. The story behind the Bitter End Yacht Club is a bit interesting.

In the mid 60's they family brought their boat to this area for recreational fishing off this remote island. In the late 60's and early 70's the land where the Bitter End Yacht Club (BEYC) is now was just a fishing camp with no running water and no electricity.

there was a Bakery with fresh baguettes for sale

They loved it there and thought it would be a great place to live. The attempted to lease an acre of land to build themselves a house there, but the owner "Basil" at the time didn't want to lease them an acre, but instead offered to see the whole place to them.

In 1973, the Hokins bought the property. The family didn't know anything about running a hotel or "camp" as it were then, but they were enthusiastic about their new property. Each year the family would all come to this area and they discovered the great sailing, diving, fishing and snorkeling from Anageda to Tortola. They had a desire to share their love of this area with others, and had the building designed and built. Today the Resort creates it's own electricity, collects and distills it's own water and uses treated gray water for irrigation.

View from the upstairs lobby of hotel toward Prickly Pear Island

Today is a premium stop for anyone going to the area. Beatifully appointed, and well maintained, it is the kind of perfect trees and flowers that you expect to see on a Hawaiian resort or Disney land, but the people are all laid back islanders.

We took a walk all along the water front and shops at the Bitter End. I did end up buying a great portable cooler. It is a neoprene cooler that you wear on your shoulder (Soft sided) that will hold a 12 pack of beer or a 6 pack and 4 bottles of wine. It is a great bag and I look forward to using it at sundowners and events at other people's boats when we are back home.

We filmed some of the water front buildings, including a Bakery, Movie Theater (outdoor of course) marina office, fuel dock, hotel, gift shops, restaurants, pubs and what not. See the video at the end of this blog for some more views of this including a great little bench that was built under a stone arch for shade.

View from slip back toward the shore

We loaded up into the Dinghy and headed back to the boat to pack up for the very short trip to Leverick bay. We dropped the mooring and headed across the North Virgin Sound and circled the fuel dock finding our best place to pull up to it. We waited for another boat to pull out and worked our way right onto the dock between 2 other boats side tied. O'day did a great job and the guys on the fuel dock were really helpful with guiding us to the right spot and making fast the lines as we came in.

While we fueled up, Deb inquired about the Mooring versus a slip in the Marina. We were shocked to find out that if we took a slip, we would get al the water we needed for free. So a slip, with electricity, was only $25 more for the night than the mooring ball. It had been 5 nights and we all thought that we would take advantage of the power and air conditioning while we were here. After fueling up and filling with Water, we moved into our assigned slip. Again Oday made it look like he had been Captain of a Catamaran for many years. Once tied up, we connected power and flipped on the Air Conditioning units in the boat. No water flow coming out, so we started to investigate what happened. Turns out that with all of the sailing and beating, we just lost the prime to the pumps. After reprising the pumps for each air conditioner, we were pumping cold air into all of the staterooms and salon.

Lunch time visitor

We emptied the trash, cleaned up the boat (Taking advantage of the water) and walked up to the restaurant for lunch and some Pain Killers and Caribe beer. I love Island restaurant, it is not uncommon to see a dog wandering through looking for a handout. In this particular one, we had a chicken come through looking for some food.

After a really good lunch including drinks, Conch fritters and cheeseburgers in paradise, we decided to go for a swim in the pool on shore that was included with a slip rental. The water was warm, but it was very relaxing to just chill in the pool for an hour or so. Right next to the pool was one of those great outdoor tiki style bars, so we had to swing on over and have a drink or 3.

Yep, Texas Flag is us

One of the other cool things about hanging out in these water front bars and restaurants is the characters you meet. We met a guy that was there and he was full of rich stories. Really nice guy, and he was sailing "down island" on his "french cat" that was anchored out in the bay. In the hour or so we sat there he shared all kinds of interesting stories. If I were to sum it up quickly, he was a cowboy from Wyoming or something like that. He told stories of doing work for Nasa and rockets. He also talked about doing some kind of work for the Russian space program. He discussed national security type work he had done, He supposedly did delivery of private Boeing aircraft including delivering the 777 to Sir Richard Branson. He suggested that he was going to stop by Richards Island, but the wind was just too good, he didn't want to stop sailing. He is a test pilot and, oh yeah, he is a kite surfer that flies to all locations when there is a hurricane so he can kite surf in those. I personally think 85% of it was BS, but it was all interesting.

View of the restaurant, stores, bar and pool from up on the hillside

While we sat at the bar, Obarr took a little walk up the hill and around this part of the island. He used his amazing zoom on his camera to get pictures of the boat, the marina and even zoomed in on us sitting at the bar from a 1/4 mile away.

We slowly worked our way back to the boat and enjoyed the nice cool air that was in the boat. We were able to connect to the Leverick Bay restaurant's wifi connection so we all posted a few pictures on Facebook and I must confess I did download my work email so that I could sift through it to find the important stuff. We slept really good at the dock and planned to sleep as late as everyone wanted to.

We have a small video from our walk around Saba Rock and also Bitter End, It you are reading this anywhere other than the blog online, you will need to click on this link for the Saba Rock, BEYC Video.

Cane Garden Bay, Callwood Distillery and Saba Rock - Sailing the BVI's (5 of 10)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Mon, 7 Jul 2014 07:00:00 -0500

(Editorial Note - You will notice that the chapter count is now x of 10, I had to increase the # of chapters with the content we had from the trip)

It is amazing how great we all slept every night on this trip. This was another night where we slept at anchor, breeze blowing in nicely and while a bit warm, always comfortable with that breeze. We were really worried about not having air conditioning on the boat thinking it would be a too hot at night. O’barr was adamant that it wouldn’t be needed and he was right. Each bunk on the boat had a small fan that had both a high and low speed. They drew very little amperage and just having it on low speed was enough to just keep the air moving.

We did find that it was cooler if we slept with the stateroom doors open. The wind would come from the bow (where our stateroom was) and blow through the hallway to the aft stateroom where Obarr was sleeping. He had his windows and hatches open as well so they ended up being a wind tunnel. It was the same setup on the other hull sleeping configuration with Wild Mary and Robert up front and Oday and T in the back stateroom. You just had to be a little cautious when you got up early or in the middle of then night to use the restroom. I would do a bit of a peek around the corner to see if Obarr was sleeping before moving around in the stateroom. And I guess in the end, you had to just be ok that if someone saw something, oh well. The risk was worth the reward of a good breeze every night through the boat.

By this time it was becoming very routine that whomever was up first would put on the coffee and everyone would just enjoy it as they came up from their bunks. Another morning of a well cooked breakfast. Today we had fresh fruit and some yogurt with our breakfast. We had oranges, apples, grapefruit and some mango that we had fresh from one of the markets so it was quite a treat. We started to rinse out the coffee grinds on the aft deck rather than in the sink as it was much faster to get the grounds out of the percolator. The process was pretty simple.

Look at the Teeth on this guy up close

We had a bucket tied to a short line and we would drop it off the back of the boat and then use that to rinse the parts and dump it overboard. Today we happened to notice a fairly large fish swimming off the back of the boat. We figured he was used to hanging out in an anchorage and looking for food scraps to be tossed overboard. So we didn’t disappoint. We took a bit of some left over steak we had on board and cut a few pieces and dropped them in while holding the camera down below. He was a 3-4 foot barracuda and had a pretty amazing set of teeth. It was really cool seeing him up so close.

We planned a trip over to Myett’s gift shop and the Callwood Distillery so we needed to get going as we had a pretty good long sail today to get to Saba Rock in the North Sound. We all piled into the dinghy and headed for shore.
We walked back to Myett’s and the girls all went a little crazy with souvenirs. We saw these cool black and white shirts there that filled in with color when they were in the sun. Deb picked one up for our GrandKiddo and T wanted one as well. The good news is that she was able to fit into one of the kids shirts they had there so she got a pretty cool one for herself as well.

We walked down the street toward the distillery, passing the grocery store, an art studio and the postoffice, churches and the school with all of the children in their uniforms there. Pretty amazing view these kids have from their school which was a great view through a few trees of the beautiful Cane Garden Bay. We made the left hand turn onto the Distillery road and as we walked the block toward it we could already see smoke rising from the still.

This place is really amazing, it is the Callwood Distillery and has been in operation here in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola for over 400 years. They are one of the oldest operating pot distilleries in the world. We met the one employee working that day who was outside stoking the fire to heat the mash. From that outside still the pipe comes in through a wall and into a small bucket (about 4 gallons) on the floor inside. As it fills up, it is poured from there the bucket into the storing vessels. These vary depending on the type of rum they are making. For white rum, it is poured into glass vessels of about 4-10 gallons (they just had a variety there). If they are going to be making spiced or aged rum, they would put it in the wood barrels and store them. They get their barrels from Kentucky (old Whisky barrels) but I forgot to ask what they did prior to that.

The gentleman working there was really generous and provided samples of any of the variety they had there. Mary had some fun with him when we were selecting what we would buy and after him counting out the bottles, Mary asked "So what do you own me" and he was stumped for a minute. It was pretty funny and I think he had a clever retort like, if we had this discussion at 4pm, that may have gone more in your favor. We ended up buying quite a few bottles based on what we would drink on the rest of the trip as well as what we could take home. Deb and I picked up a bottle that was really good, lightly wood barrel aged, but had a large stick of sugar cane in the bottle to sweeten the drink.

The entrance and sign for the Distillery The stock to be purchased (note TX flag)

After the distillery, we were walking back to the dinghy dock and saw that glass blowing studio. This is the Green VI Glass Blowing Studio and it was founded as a way to have a more sustainable way of living on the BVI's. The studio uses all glass that the find on the beaches and in town. When we were there, they were telling us that they are about to convert their furnaces to use old cooking oil as a way to further enable their sustainability. See their beautiful work on their Facebook photo album. It was really cool and they were making starfish and turtles out of molten glass they found on the beach. We watched them doing this for a while and got some pretty cool video of them doing it.

Basically they take a molten hot glob of this class, and spinning it get it to the shape they want. They then take other molten glob of glass and touch it to the body and shape it with pliers to make the fins and head. They were willing to custom make one any colors that we wanted so Deb picked out what she wanted. We were running out of time and had to start heading to the North Sound so we asked them if we could pick it up on Friday when we come back to this spot for the Full Moon Party. Arrangements were made and off we went back to the boat stopping to refill the ice in the coolers since this was a cheap place to get 20lb bags of ice.

We sailed North of Tortola and had planned a few course changes to keep the wind moving us at a good pace. We happened to notice the depth on the charts showed that just a little ways beyond where we intended to change course the depth would go from 150 feet deep to 1400 and we thought it would be cool to sail out into that really deep water. We extended one of our lay lines and were excitedly watching the depth sounder. It went to 200, 220 and then up to about 75 feet which we expected, and we were anxiously waiting for the drop with cameras ready to capture the view on the depth sounder. It started to drop, 90, 110, 160, 190, 200, 240, 270, 320 and then the depth sounder just went to three dashes when the depth sounder could not longer read depths more than that. It was really disappointing because I was really looking forward to that.

We sailed into the north sound by heading directly toward Sir Richard Branson’s island (small light colored island on the top right of the map enclosed) and then turning to the south around the shallow reefs. We went into this great area of North Virgin Gorda Sound with Virgin Gorda in front of us to the south. We nagivated in with Prickly Pear Island to our port, and as we rounded Prickly pear, we could see the Bitter End Yacht Club and Saba Rock. Our intent was to grab a mooring at Saba rock because if you paid for a mooring there, you could get 200 gallons of water and a bag of ice for free. We got there a little late and there were no moorings left at Saba Rock.

We actually thought there were a few but as we got close we noticed they were labeled as "private". We decided that we would grab a mooring at the World famous Bitter End Yacht Club. I had the helm and found that it really is pretty nice to have the dual engines for maneuverability. We picked up the mooring and decided to just take a swim for a little while after our long sail. We were moored just outside of a channel that was used for boats taking workers to resorts on some of the outer islands, so we had to swim fairly close to the boat at all times. Each time we swam, we typically just jumped off the very low stern entrance and into the water, but today we decided to jump from the sides of the boat. I was amazed at how wimpy I was about it. I thought it would be no big deal, but I had to think about it for a 3-4 second period of time before doing it. Geez.

With the current coming in from between the islands in front of us, we decided to tie the life ring to a line and let it flow behind the boat. That way if we were swimming or relaxing on a float, we could just hold onto the line and relax. We did this for a couple of hours before grilling a nice dinner of marinated Mahi. It was such a nice and relaxing evening. We sat in the cockpit after dinner and just had a few drinks. After dinner we decided that we should head over to the bar at Saba Rock and maybe grab a drink. Saba rock has a great dinghy dock with underwater lights as you get close to it. From the lights, you could see a bunch of 3-5 foot tarpon. They feed them at certain times during the day, and we heard someone at the bar talking about them doing that at 9am in the mornings. We made a mental note to head back in the morning to check that out.

Another case of "it's a small world", we sat at the bar and ordered some drinks. We started talking to some folks at the bar who were sailing for the first time without the kids. Sounds like their kids usually come with them but not this time.

Turns out they are from the same town that several from our party are from and Deb lived for many years. Contact info was swapped and we received a nice invite to come to their house for a party near the end of July. Really cool to meet people so nice and close to home. We did count the number of boats in the mooring field flying the Texas Flag and we counted 5 boats including ours. We met at least 2 other people from Texas that were not flying the flag, so Texas was again very well represented.

We headed back to the boat from Saba rock and just relaxed before calling it a night.

Below is a video that summarizes the days activities. If you are reading this blog from email or a print out, you will not see the video embedded below and will need to click on the following link to our Youtube Chanel. Please click here to see the video of Callwood Distillery, Cane Garden Bay and Sailing to Saba Rock.

Jost Van Dyke, Sandy Cay, Cane Garden Bay - Sailing the BVI's (4 of 8)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Thu, 3 Jul 2014 07:00:00 -0500

With our last land adventure last night being a good time at Corsairs for a few more drinks than good judgement would have allowed, we slept soundly and late into the next morning.

"I don't know, can you tell if it is on"

We awoke once again to the smell of coffee, which was a welcome start to this morning. WildMary had woke up early and had it perking in two pots.

(Editorial note. I mentioned having some absinthe shots and hanging out at a waterfront beach bar last night, but when looking for photos for this blog post, I ran across a video of Deb and T working very hard to try to take a selfie sometime late last night. I don't think they realized that the camera was recording video the whole time. Bonus ! )

Sandy Cay (Photo taken by Oday from bow of boat at anchor)

This trip has been a series of good meals and today was another day of a well cooked breakfast. The plan for today was to sail from Jost Van Dyke to a small island called Sandy Cay and then on to Cane Garden Bay. It was going to be a couple of short sails for the day, so we took our time leaving Jost. We packed up our trash and made one last run to the dock where you could drop trash for free.

We decided to just motor over to Sandy Cay, a short distance to the East from where we were. Sandy Cay is an uninhabited island between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola and was owned by the Rockefeller Family and donated in 2008 to the National Park Trust of the Virgin Islands. The island is very small (just about 13 acres) but has several great attributes. There is a great sand beach, wooded trails, rocky ledges as well as a large salt pond in the center of the island.

Oday and T decided to stay on the boat
and relax in a Hammock on the bow.

We moored on the Western side of the island in about 15 feet of water over a gorgeous sandy bottom. The white sand and crystal clear water form that amazing shade of blue you see in just certain places in the world. Here the blue was so brilliant that when the seagulls would fly a few feet over the water it reflected up onto their bellies and made them look like they were a light shade of blue instead of white. We looked through all of our pictures and just couldn't find a great way to show that, but it was truly amazing and not something we saw in any other places we went while on this trip.

We took the dinghy to shore, beached it and walked up the beach to a small sign with a map of the island and trail entrance. Most of us didn't bring shoes, so we stayed on the trail for the most part. We walked about a third of the way around the island and saw many birds and lizards or chameleons. There was something pretty interesting on many of the trees but we are not 100% sure what it was.

Walking the trails on Sandy Cay

Our best guess was termites. There would be these small mud like tubes that would go from the ground up the tree trunks and out most of the major branches. We were interested to know what it was, but not so interested to knock the mud tubes down to see what may come out. We continued to walk down the trails and stop and observe all of the amazing sites. The chameleons where pretty neat, you would typically hear them before seeing them. They would scurry along the ground and as the leaves would russell we would see them moving along.

A few of them would perch on a tree branch, but if we got close enough to get a picture they would scurry around to the other side and block the photo. We saw beautiful cactus in bloom as well which surprised me to see Coconut Palm trees and cactus all sharing the same bit of ground. We also kept hearing what sounded like doves, but never did see any. I am assuming they were just up in the trees and would fly off as we would get close but they made that very distinctive dove sound. Robert found a great tree that was growing an an angle and looked like a great place for a picture, or to just relax. We continued along the path until it came to the edge of the shore again but this time it was all rocky and with our bare feet we decided not to tip toe around them. As we turned around to head back, we kept looking through the woods to see where we could come out of the woods and onto the beach.

Deb and I on the beach after coming from trail

We found a spot, walked carefully from the path to the beach watching out we didn't step on any cactus. As we stepped out onto the beach, it was a really neat site. Behind us was where the sandy beach started to turn to rock and at the edge of the water you could see the different colors of the water from the contrast between sandy bottom and rock bottom. The shades of blue were all dependent on how large the rocks were and therefore how much water was on top of them. Ahead of us was something from a magazine.

Robert waked behind all of us to catch a quick photo of just how pristine the beach, sand, water and anchorage were. You can see a few of the boats anchored just off the beach ahead of us. To our left in this photo is Tortola about 15 miles away.

We decided to walk along the water all the way back to where we beached the dinghy. This was the first time we had taken the dinghy ashore and beached it. Getting off the beach was not too hard, after getting a great hint from Obarr. I was getting ready to drag it back down the beach (Stern first) and Obarr quickly said, turn it around, it will be a lot easier. And it was !!!. Thank you. We pushed the dinghy into a foot of water and got Mary to load first since she typically sits on the bow seat.

The rest of us loaded in as Obarr held the dinghy. As more of us loaded up, we had to push further from shore. Obarr jumped in last and we headed slowly back to the boat, where Oday was there to take a line as we pulled along side the boat. We relaxed at this beautiful spot for a while longer. Sandwiches were made and devoured in the cockpit for lunch while we contemplated our very short trip over to Cane Garden Bay. With the short trip, we decided to just tow the dinghy rather than hoist it up onto the davits for this short trip. Below in this picture you can see where we started on the left and worked our way to the right at Cane Garden Bay with our stop at Sandy Cay. So as we sailed into Cane Garden Bay, we played Jimmy Buffett's Mañana on the radio. The lyrics were very appropriate for the trip as he sang out:

I hear it gets better, that's what they say

As soon as we sail on to Cane Garden Bay.

Please don't say mañana if you don't mean it

I have heard your lines for so very long

Don't try to describe the scenery if you've never seen it

Don't ever forget that you just may wind up in my song...

Obarr had been here before, on Charters but also when he and Kerri cruised on their boat some 10 years ago, they spent some time here in Cane Garden Bay. When they did, they got to know the owners of "Myetts" which is a wonderful beach front restaurant, bar, hotel, gift shop, etc. We walked up to Myetts to see if they were there. Unfortunately they were not there today.

We still decided to sit at a beach side table, enjoy some wonderful pain killers and Conch Fritters and Cracked Conch. The view from this place was just amazing, you could see right out over the beach to the boats anchored right out front. It was always pretty cool to see our Texas Flag waiving out there on our boat as well.
After our Conch and Pain Killers, we took a walk through town. We walked down to the Callwood Distillery but it was closed for a local holiday so we found out what time they opened in the morning so we could come back for a tour. We found a place where we could drop trash here in town for free as well. We didn't need to do so on this trip, but we planned on coming back to Cane Garden Bay on Friday when there was a full moon for the "Full Moon Party" at the BombaShack so we planned a trash drop for that day.

We stopped at a market and picked up a couple of items we wanted. On the way back to the boat, we stopped at Rhymers Beach Hotel and Store to pick up some ice. They were one of the cheapest places we found ice on this trip and picked up a 20 lb bag for about $6.50. When we got back to the boat, we swam for a while in the anchorage and again continued to be completely intrigued with the clarity of the water. Here is a photo of our anchor chain in 25 feet of water and you can clearly see it go all the way to the bottom and head off in the distance. We also got a chance to take some photos through our Floor Hatch in the boat. We figure it is a safety issue if something were to go horribly bad and you happened to have the boat upside down, it allowed a place where you could still get out of the boat. With that said, it was still very odd to see a hatch in the floor. Someone captured a cool picture of Oday under the boat, with T taking a picture of him from inside the boat.

We put our plans together for the next day. We were going to get up in the morning, have breakfast and then head over to the Callwood Distillery for a tour of an old school distillery still doing things much the same way they did 400 years ago when they started brewing rum there.

More in the next chapter of the blog !! Here is a link for Callwood's Facebook Page, I would encourage you to Check it out.

Below is a bit of a video capture of the days activities. If you are reading this in any other way than online, you may not see the video below. If not, click on this link to play the video.

Jost Van Dyke, Sandy Cay to Cane Garden Bay

http://youtu.be/GGNpp01mFsg

Norman Island, The Caves/Indians and Jost Van Dyke - Sailing the BVI's (Chapter 3 of 8)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 07:00:00 -0500

After a few drinks last night at the WillyT and then back at the boat, we slept soundly until we had an awakening from a bit of drizzle. It was almost a mist, but enough that when coming into the hatches and on me while I slept, it was enough to wake me up. I removed the breeze booster and closed the hatch, then it stopped. That was the way it went on this trip, we never really got any "rain" but just a few little misting. Sadly we were all hoping for a bit of rain to rinse the salt off the boat and we all wanted to experience a fresh and natural shower on the back deck or trampoline up front. O'Barr affectionately referred to this amount of rain as "Fairy piss" and that was all we got several times on the trip. To be clear I am not complaining, when you book a charter in week two of hurricane season, this was a really good scenario that played out.

I mentioned a breeze booster above. I have not seen one of this style but I will be getting some for our boat for sure. The goal of these is to capture or scoop more air than you would get from just an open hatch. I have seen these that look like a big upside down V and connect to a halyard and attach inside the hatch like this one that Amazon sells.
This one however was free standing. It had a v that was stiffened by something like sail battens and two angled legs that go to the hinged side of the hatch. They sit on the deck and the a string and a stick goes down through the hatch and it makes the upside down V look like a big huge scoop. Here is a link to them at West Marine for anyone interested. They would more than triple the amount of air flow coming into a hatch. When at anchor your bow always points to the wind so these take advantage of a knot or two of breeze and still work wonders to cool you down. We were in the tropics and most nights I would turn off the fan and sleep comfortably in 85 degrees which shocked me given we keep our thermostat at the dock down at 72.

Another morning of coffee as I got up, relaxing on deck and all discussing what we wanted to do that day and the rough details of the route and plan for the trip. We decided on some snorkeling stops today pretty close to where we had started our day then a nice sail planned in the afternoon to head to Jost Van Dyke and dinner and drinks ashore at Foxy's. After a breakfast of pancakes and pineapple we cleaned up the dishes while Mike went to go visit a boat in the anchorage he thought he recognized from his cruising days. It was an "Oceans 60" (if I have that name right). He dinghied over and talked to the folks on board. It turned out not to be the people he met years earlier cruising but they did know of the boat and those people so they visited for a little while.

We dropped our mooring ball and motored out of the anchorage at The Bight and just went around the point to "The Caves" which is on the northwest side of Norman Island.

The bay on the left is "The Bight", boats are ached in front of the Caves

Norman islands is said to be the inspiration for the book "treasure Island" based on the following history of pirate booty being stored there. In 1750 a Spanish treasure galleon named Nuestra Seniora de Guadalupe was caught in a storm off the coast of North Carolina. During that storm while waiting out the storm the crew mutined and the treasure was split up and taken on two different bilanders (smaller European two masted ships). There was said to have been 55 chests of silver coins on the galleon that was taken by the crews. One of the ships perished but the other was manned by Owen Lloyd who escaped with the ship to St. Croix. After disposing of so e of the money, story has it that he went to Norman Island and buried the treasure. Lloyd and his crew were eventually arrested bit word of the treasure spread to Tortola where people came in search of it. Interestingly enough part of the treasure was recovered by Gilbert Flemming who was the Luitenant General for the Leeward islands and convinvpced the Luitenant Governor of the BVI to issue a law where the treasure would be returned and the people that dug it up would retain one third of it. There are additional interesting stories of a local fisherman taking refuge In The cave from a storm and having found gold doubloons. There is no official record of this treasure being found but his family all moved off of Tortola at that same time and opened businesses in St. thomas. Read more online with a search for Norman island and treasure.

You can see the caves along the shoreline

Back to our trip. We picked up a mooring in front of the caves and were really close to shore. The stern of the boat was only about 50 feet from the rock cliffs. The wind was light and funky and a few times the boats on moorings swung in different directions. We never made contact with any boats around us but a few times the crew that stayed on board manned fenders in the event they may.

We hopped off the stern of the boat with fins, snorkels and masks and swam along the shoreline toward the cave entrance. This was really a cool place because near shore it was 5-10 feet deep and then about 30 yards from shore there was a pretty good 10-20 foot drop off. We snorkeled along the wall and saw great collections of coral and fish. At the

You can get a sense of the drop off

bottom of this blog post will be a link to a video of the snorkeling. Some of the photos contained in this blog post came from those videos.

At first it was really interesting we swam through a hole bunch of little jelly fish. Theese were not stinging kinds but the little quarter to half dollar sized translucent circular shaped ones. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it was.

We saw schools of dark tangs with light tails. They swam in groups of fifty or so and were just a few feet below us. We saw amazing trigger fish, and what looked like either a clown

T and Oday Snorkeling

trigger or some type of spotted grouper. We saw a lot of these silver fish with yellow tails.

Then as everyone was diving down a bit along the wall to get a closer look at the urchins in all the rock crevices we saw hundreds of zebra damsels swimming all around us.

The Urchins had some of the longest splines I have ever seen. We saw quite a bit of coral as well but I did not see any anenomies.

Hundreds of Zebra Damsels in schools

We made our way to the cave entrance and only went in the first edge of it and came back out and worked our way back toward the boat. I wish I would have gone in further. It got very shallow by the mouth of the cave so we didn't cross it for fear of touching the coral and damaging it. I later found out that you only have to cross that one shallow spot and it gets deep again in the cave.

We were on a national park mooring which you are only supposed to be on for 90 minutes so got under way and headed a

I attempted to capture just how many there were above

short distance to the north to an area called the pelican and Indians. For the record I do t know where these islands and Rock Archipalegos get their names, I can only assume that someone thought they looked like a pelican or an Indian. The wind had picked up quite a bit and we actually struggled for the first time to pick up our mooring. Wind and waves fought us and made snagging the pendant ( which didn't have a float) difficult. Third time is a charm and we were moored.

At this location (The Indians), it was a bit

The Indians (just Rocks and a reef)

like The Baths in that you had to dinghy to a dinghy mooring. And jump off to snorkel. Here the snorkeling may have been a little better than the caves and the water a bit clearer. While snorkeling there was a lot of fish and coral spotted as well as a decent sized barracuda swimming g just off in the deeper water. There was a school of blue tangs and several parrot fish. There was fan coral and leather coral all around.

See the bottom of the Blog post for my photos from Snorkeling at the Indians.

Black and Blue Tang

Upon returning to the Dinghy, they found Oday just relaxing in the bow waiting on folks to finish snorkeling. Robert and Oday came back in the dinghy but Deb and T decided to swim back to the boat to see what they could see over the deeper water.

Once everyone was on board, salt water rinsed from great and people, we raised the main while still on our mooring and prepared for a sail to Jost. All of us on this trip have boats that range for 23 to 43 feet, all mono hulls and used to lifting sail. That said, the sail on the catamaran is so big and fully battened with heavy duty sail car tracks for each batten, this sail is not easy to raise. On my boat I get the sail about a foot from the top of the mast and use the winch to
raise it the last foot and tighten. On the Cat, any one of us would get it about 80% of the way up and then have to use the winch to raise it the rest of the way. The main halyard has a 2 to 1 purchase to make this easier but it means you are pulling twice the height of the mast in line. So after a bit of panting and catching my breath the sail was raised.

Below is a video put together from the snorkeling at The Caves and The Indians. Just click the video below, however if you are reading this blog post from an email subscription or other means, you will have to click on this link to see the video (Snorkeling Video Link)

We dropped the mooring and then headed northwest toward Tortola and unrolled the jib.

Saint John just behind us on the Port Side

The boat sailed nicely and we had the wind just aft of the beam. When we got close to Tortola we gybed to the east to plan our next lay line to make it thought the cut near the west end of Tortola. As we were on this tack we were headed directly toward St John in the US Virgin Islands. There are very heavy penalties for going ashore in the USVI without first checking out of BVI, including a $5,000 fine per person and automatic confiscation of the boat. ( I am not sure our deposit would cover this ). We had no intention of going to St John on this trip but most people on the boat did take advantage if the fact that we were close enough for US cell service without roaming charges. A few people checked on pets at home, family members and to provide a quick update that we were all doing fine and having a safe sail through the islands. We beared northwest again and set up a layline to pass right between the west end of Tortola and Little Thatch island. We passed beautiful homes that just appeared to be stuck on the sides of the cliffs in the west end rope Tortola. We passed a few small ferries in this area as they headed into Sopers Hole on the West End. As we passed Tortola, we had a nice open water sail up into Great Harbor on Jost Van Dyke.

Robert and I setting up our Mooring Bridal

We found a mooring out a ways from land to take advantage of the wind given the height of the island. Upon anchoring we jumped in for a nice swim, we cleaned up and headed to shore for some ice and some provisions we needed. We found out we were missing mustard and steaks from our provisioning list. We tied up to the government dock right in the center of Great Harbor.m when you get off the dock there is a great sign welcoming you to Jost. The police station and immigration Is the first building up the dock. Mary, Deb and I went to the store, O'Barr and Oday made a trip to the ferry dock to drop off our trash and went on a hunt for ice.

One of the things you have to really think about on a boat is how much trash you create. We did find that in some of the anchorages, a boat would come by and offer to take your trash for a fee. We typically took ours to shore ourselves and most places it is free. We did find one place on shore that charged $2.50 per bag. We all met back up after getting what we all needed and headed to the boat. The market had just about everything we wanted and needed. Plantains, bananas, steaks (they were not delivered with our provision list and they substituted something else, but we wanted steaks), Propane for the grill and chips. Obarr and Oday had picked up the ice and met us at the dock closer to the market to save us the walk around the cove.

The Dinghy Dock at Foxy's

Tonight we planned on going to Foxy's. I thought I would include a few photos of how you actually get somewhere from your anchored boat. Some places have a "Dinghy Dock" you can tie up to, other places you just beach the dinghy. Foxy's does have a nice dinghy dock but as you can imagine, all of those dinghy's look a lot alike in the dark after a few too many PainKillers or Dark&Stormy's.

You just can't go to the Jost Van Dyke and not go to Foxy's.

He is an icon in this part of the world and his beach front bar/restaurant is famous in all sailing and boating and vacation magazines. There is part of the place that has a wooden floor, but no walls. The largest section of the restaurant has a roof but no floor. Sit on benches like a picnic table, feet in the sand and just relax to the sounds of music (maybe a live band but not the night we were there). You can go into the gift shop and purchase items if you want.

The food is pretty good (not great but again, you have to go there and get Conch Fritters for sure). But, What Foxy is famous for is his PainKillers. It is a sweet drink made with Cream of Coconut, Rum Pineapple juice, Orange Juice and some fresh ground nutmeg. (No wonder my blood sugar was high). They will, as their name implies have you feel no pain.

We were lucky, Foxy himself was there and was doing what Foxy does, walking around talking to guest. I don't recall this from last time I was there a few years ago, but this time he was drinking straight rum from a glass and it hadn't been his first nip when we got there.

He was telling jokes and making small talk. He is a nice guy but one thing struck me kind of sad actually. Some of the jokes he was telling were a bit racial and it dawned on me that his perception is that white folks want to hear that. Maybe I read too much into it or had one too many PainKillers already, but I hope he realizes that most people that come to visit him see him as a fellow human and not a color.

I had the camera going on the table to try to record some of the stories he was telling but they were just too quiet to hear them. He was really nice though and posed for a picture with all of us. OBarr and I went in search of the things that we have left tacked or tucked into the ceiling as a memento. I can't remember where the heck I had put my business card when I was there on a company trip and Obarr couldn't find the flag he thought he had left there. (Then again, there is likely 1000's of items that people put on the ceiling every year.)

Here is a little tip, if you go there (or anywhere in the islands) and are having dinner at dusk, the NoSeeUm's will get you pretty good so bring some skin so soft or off. If you ask, quite a few places will have some they will let you use or some will put those small coils you burn in the sand beneath your table. For those that don't know, NoSeeUm's are just that, you don't see them and they bite like hell. They seem to stay close to the ground and only bite for about an hour or so as the sun goes down. From the lower shin down needs to be sprayed. If there is any wind at all, they are not usually a problem but along the ground under a table, they were active.

We did the touristy thing and went to Foxy's but you MUST, MUST, MUST go to Corsairs. Corsairs is just down the road from foxy's past the government building. The owners is an Expat named Vinny who sailed to the islands and never left. The food at Corsairs is rated the best on the island and next time I will absolutely be going there instead of a meal. Everyone was raving about it and after our trip, I even saw a write up in a magazine about how good the cooking was.

First round of Absinthe

Deb, T, Oday and I went to Corsairs because we had read somewhere that they served absinthe (The little green fairy) and thought it would be interesting to try. So we bellied up to the bar and told Vinny what we wanted. He asked "Shot or some other way". Hmm, I had heard that Absinthe, should be dripped slowly over a sugar cube on the back of a spoon into a cup with distilled water in it, So we asked him what the difference is. His answer was classic, "Either way is going to f&%k you up, so not sure why it matters". From that moment, I liked Vinny. He did ask if we liked the taste of licorice, two of our party did not so his response was "Do a shot, it won't be in your mouth long enough for the taste to linger"

T and Oday at Corsairs

We sat a chatted with Vinny for a couple of hours. Really good guy, he had just gotten a GoPro camera so we were talking about that and I helped him download the app he needs and I was letting him connect to my GoPro and show him how he can control it and what not. The place is laid back, if he was busy, someone else would get us a drink. They wrote down most of them but not all of them and at the end of the night, he asked how many we had so we could settle up. I love that there is still a level of trust like that and that people are not all jaded into thinking

Vinny and the Girls. That thing around his neck is actually a
monocle. I don't think I have ever seen that before. It was very piratey

someone is going to rip them off. Deb and T tried to get Vinny to do a shot of Absinthe with them and he said he will drink with them, "just to that shit" which again just cracked me up. Deb and T were having a good ole' time and trying to ring the bigger dinner bell above the bar. As I was going through photos for the blog, I found pictures of the girls with Vinny, behind the Bar. I don't even remember who took those pictures and don't remember them being behind the bar. Obarr came back to meet us after taking Robert and Mary back to the boat and hanging out for a while. We left corsairs and wandered on back to the Dinghy dock. As we were walking down the street, Deb seemed to find someone that you would think was her long lost best friend.

Deb on Swing, T as the Pusher

They said hi, Deb asked how she was, then they gave each other a hug like they had not seen each other in many years. It turns out Deb had talked to her in Corsairs earlier, but I found it humorous that they seemed so close now. Oh, and on the walk home, Debs British accent came out. She is not from there, never been there but for her it seems to be some kind of a Blood Alcohol Content measurement for her. And before we could get all the way to the Dinghy dock, someone spotted a tire swing. So a detour was required and all I kept thinking is that we are a long way from the emergency room :)

So a nice peaceful slow dinghy ride back to the boat and as you can imagine, we all slept pretty well this night.

Below is a short recap video of the days activities form our YouTube Channel. Click the video below, however if you are reading this blog post from an email subscription or other means, you will have to click on this link to see the video (Norman Island, Snorkeling, Jost Van Dyke, Foxy's and Corsairs)

More Photos from Snorkeling at the Indians.

Schools of fish were everywhere. These were Surgical Tangs
with Black bodies and a blue tail.

ODay contemplating swimming into an underwater cave

T doing some free diving to about 15 feet or so

OBarr found an rock bridge and was thinking about swimming
under to the other side. The opening was pretty tight so
cooler heads prevailed

Robert was constantly diving down to 15 or so feet deep.
He is quite the frog-man

I think this may be a parrot fish, but not 100% sure

Marina Cay, The Baths and The Bight - Sailing the BVI's (Chapter 2 of 8)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 07:00:00 -0500

The sun rises early this time of year in the BVI's so most of us were up by 7 am. It is nice to get out of bed, walk on deck still wiping the sleep from your eyes, seeing the gorgeous views and having to pinch yourself to prove you are really there. Whoever woke up first would start a pot of coffee and prepare the second pot but not start it yet.

So began the routine of coming out of my stateroom, passing through the galley for my cup of coffee, complete with sweetener and hazelnut creamer, then step out into the cockpit to relax and enjoy each other's company and the views.

We would relax for an hour or so, maybe jump off the back and swim, or just relax. This particular morning a nice breakfast of egg's, sausage and fresh cut fruit was prepared and consumed. We would talk about what we wanted to do that day and plot a quick course. The navigation is really easy in the BVI's, since you can see land all the time and the water is so deep, you can pretty much sail by sight until you get close to your destination. We decided we would sail east and visit "The Baths" on the southwest portion of Virgin Gorda. This is a park where you can't spend the night so our plan was to grab a national park mooring ball, dinghy to shore and tour the area. We grabbed the mooring about 300 yards from shore.

Everyone but Robert loaded in the dinghy to head to shore. As we approached we realized you can't get to shore by dinghy, you have to tie your dinghy to a mooring ball in twenty feet of water and swim to shore.
Mary was concerned she couldn't swim that far, so we looked for another place to land the dinghy, none existed so we took Mary back to the boat and we moored the dinghy and swam to shore. It was quite a swim as the tide kept wanting to take you back out.

Then we got the bright idea of using the lines to mark the no dinghy access area to pull ourselves to shore and make it easier. I got to shore and realized that my underwater camera had the side door open. Not good, I pulled the battery and dumped way too much water out and figured i would see if I could get it to work later.

This is where you enter. It was a 'turn sideways
and crouch' type of walk but not too tight

Once ashore, we walked a short distance to the giant granite boulders that formed this natural creation of paths, pools, caves, etc. We crouched through the first tight squeeze (squat and turn sideways).
Once through, it opened up to 20 foot height, beach sand on the ground and some areas with a few feet of water pooled there. We walked a few steps and saw a tour guide talking to some folks in front of us.

Deb and OBarr swimming over some coral to continue
(Look how clear this water is

We stood back and listened for a few minutes and figured he was pointing them in the right direction to get to Devils Bay. There was a wide area where you could swim in waste deep, crystal clear water which was pretty cool too.

From here there was a spot where you would swim/drag your body over a bed of very smooth rocks into a larger pool of water. From there you could see a long trail of water where the surf was working itself in and out of the rocks.

As we stood here talking and

checking it out we kept hearing these loud splashes.
It turns out it was the guide in front of us taking people through a unique route where you had to climb up one rock,sort of lay on the rock, squeeze between the rock you were on and the one above and to the right of you and just sort of fall off the rock in to a pool of water below. You almost couldn't do it without belly flopping. It was fine, it was only a three foot drop but it was fun and that was the way we decided to go. One at a time we splashed into the four foot water below. I attempted to get video of one of us making this move, but was not able to capture any that looked good. This picture was taken right after OBarr had come up from under the water. The opening to the right and above his head is where we dropped from.

It was at this point that we passed the tour guide and just wandered our way through this giant boulder maze. In areas where it would be very difficult to climb the face of the rocks, make shift wooden stairs had been built to make it easier. At some points you would climb up the granite and be on a trail in the woods, then right back into the rocks. In area's that were a bit open, there would be a sign indicating the way.

At this point we walked along the beach with rocks blocking the view of seeing out to sea. We did find a place where we could see our boat anchored off the shore. It is easy to spot with the very large Texas flag on the left spreader.

From here it was back over some rocks, climb some steps, crawl over one part and then drop onto a little beach cove that is unbelievably gorgeous.

This is likely one of the most photographed and magazine featured slices of beach there is. It was simply magical to be walking toward the water for a dip in this crystal clear water.

To show how clear the water is, this is a photo I took by just placing the camera under water. You can easily see 100 feet or more under water. It was truly amazing to see how clear it was. (When we got back to the boat, I jumped in and you could easily see both hulls crystal clear and the bottom and we were in 35 feet of water where we were anchored.

After a refreshing dip, we started to walk back and found an alternate route back, the good news is that we got to see some additional portions of the path and we actually had a way around that drop off portion which we would not have been able to climb back up the opposite direction. Once back at the entrance there was a little beach bar serving cold beer and selling shirts and such. We all had a cold beer and Oday picked up a nice bandanna for a do-rag. After a cooling beer, we prepped for the swim back to the dinghy. Here is where i started to worry a little. I didn't figure I was going to be able to jump back in the boat from water deeper than I am tall. We all swam back, Oday and OBarr and T got there first and boarded. Deb used a looped line over the side to help step up into the boat. I did the same but made the loop a little deeper. I was able to boost myself up, but not far enough to kick a leg over the side, so my friends just gave me a pull. I am a big guy, coming in at just over 300 pounds, I know this had to be a funny sight for anyone watching. As I was getting pulled up, I kicked my left leg over the tube and someone grabbed my left leg to help pull me in. I flopped into the bottom of the boat laughing hysterically. In an effort to provide a visual, have you ever seen the show "Swamp People" about people that hunt alligators. If you have ever seen the way they pull these things into the boat, that is exactly what I imagined this looked like to anyone that may have seen it. The good news is, I was in the boat, which is better than hanging on the side which I thought I might do while we went slowly back to the boat where I would use the boarding ladder.

Once aboard, we used the shower on the aft deck to rinse off the salt and sand and lather up in another layer of sun screen.

We planned our general course for The Bight on Norman island which would be our anchorage for the night. It was going to be a general southwesterly sail down the Sir Francis Drake Waterway
with the wind behind us. It was a series of gentle gybes to get there. We sailed at about 6-7 knots in 10-12 knots of breeze. During the trip, sandwiches were made and served in the cockpit while under way. While on our way we heard a series of calls on Channel 16 about a boat on fire that had been seen, but must have sunk as it was no longer visible after the fire was spotted. There were several boats in the area that were looking for people in the water. They did find some floating debris but we could only hear the VHF traffic of the closer boats and not all of what was happening. It was several miles ahead of us and there were already boats on the scene so we were not needed to assist.
We continued our sail to Norman Island. As we passed Peter island to our port side, we turned In to the cove and found a place toward the outer edge of the anchorage to take advantage of the nightly breeze to cool the boat without having ourselves get back winded along the shore. When the wind comes over the land masses it tends to sort of "jump" over the land and curl back toward land for a few hundred yards or so. Boats close to shore will often be pointing away from land and barely get much breeze. If your are further out we face bow to the wind and it all scoops right into the open ports and just blows right through the boat like a cooling wind tunnel.

Once anchored we had our sundowner in the cockpit along with another great dinner. I believe it was marinated grouper that had been marinating since that morning. Brocolli and salad as sides rounded out another great meal. Dinner time was cleaned up and we planned our evening. Deb and I and T and Oday wanted to go to the "WillyT". This is actually an old boat anchored in "The Bight" that has a resteraunts on one side and a wild bar on the other side. We dinghied over to the small floating dinghy dock attached to the WillyT. There were already 8 or so other dinghies there and 2 power boats one was a 45 footer.

I didn't get a good picture at night so pulled this one from the web

We went to the bar side and ordered a few drinks, people were dancing and drinking and generally partying. The WillyT is known for a practice they used to have where if you were willing to strip naked in the bar, climb the spiral stairs to the roof and jump off, swim to the dinghy dock and come back to the bar to get dressed, you would get a TShirt. Now they don't give you a shirt and generally state that you are not supposed to do this, but it is still a common practice. So it is a bit of an odd sight, but fun to watch. It usually starts with a small group talking, then a round of shots or drinks, then all of the sudden there is one or two people standing buck ass naked in the bar. They run up the spiral staircase and out of sight. Everyone goes to the back of the boat and watches as they prepare to jump. Then two bodies drop past the lower deck and you hear the splash. Then all the gawkers go to the side to watch them climb the ladder and come down the dinghy dock and back intto the bar naked to get dressed again there in the bar. We only stayed for two drinks each and saw two 20 something girls do it, them a couple do it. The good news is the Deb and T got to see a dude do this as well so there was something for everyone. The funniest thing for me was that one of the guys that was there with the two twenty something's put her bikini top on and was dancing to "Gangam Style" and he was fully committed to his dance. It was hilarious.

Deb and T considered the jump but when they found out that they would not get the T-shirt for doing it, they opted out. It did appear that the twenty something's did get tshirts (to be fair maybe they bought them, but that was not what it looked like). Deb was a little offended but in the end, they are trying to attract the twenty something's to come drink and party all night, and they want to see other naked twenty something's. We are no longer in that category. :)

We dinghied back to the boat and enjoyed a relaxing time in the cockpit then turned in to sleep a sound sleep in a beautiful anchorage.

Below is a video capturing a 3 minutes run through of our day. If you are not viewing this online, you may need to click on the following link in order to view the video.

Click here to see the video - http://youtu.be/PKdVjsAeSE4

Sailing in the Dream like Waters of the British Virgin Islands (Chapter 1 of 8)

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 06:00:00 -0500

Since we got our boat five years ago, we had talked about chartering a boat with our dock mates at Pier 121. Typically these discussions would happen late at night when anchored out/rafted up In some small cove on the lake. It would typically be after many drinks and we would forget the discussion the next morning.

These discussions ebbed and flowed like the gentle tide and it never seemed that anyone, including us, would commit to a date and just do it. Years went by, Deb and I moved but stayed in contact with our friends there and would all get together a few times a year and these discussions continued over drinks.

Then all of a sudden it happened, the charter discussion came up, someone threw out a date and we all went and made the appropriate plans for taking off of work, budgeting, etc. With that the plans were finalized. Seven of us in early June on a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands. Done. Flights made, provisions ordered, booze planned, lists of things to bring, deposits made and then it was just counting down the time until it came time to depart.

So Thursday we all met in PuertoRico at the airport and then all took the same flight to Beef Island, Tortola. We arrived about 8pm and the charter company had arranged for a van to pick us up at the airport. Even with a delayed flight the driver was patient and waited for us. Upon arrival at the charter base, the office was closed but there was a note on the door telling is which boat was ours. We loaded our stuff in the boat, popped open a few beers and relaxed on the back deck of the boat. We had made arrangements to spend the night before our charter on the boat rather than a hotel.

A little bit about the charter company and boat.

We chose Conch Charters. They are what some would call a tier two charter group meaning that the boats are not brand new. If you use someone like Moorings or SunSail you will typically get a boat less than 5 years old. When boats are a bit older than that they often go to the tier two charter companies. As a matter of fact we could see on this boat where it once said "Moorings 4300" on the side. The boat we had was in great working order, it was a 2005 if I recall and we were nothing but pleased with it.

Photo taken off Sandy Cay (Yes, we were flying our Texas flag proudly)

The boat was a Leapord 43' catamaran. She was 24' wide and had a large cockpit that easily and comfortably sat all 7 of us. The helm station was protected from the elements and the sun. The large cockpit led forward through a set of opening glass doors to the large salon. Galley to port, salon to starboard, and nav station to starboard facing aft. There were views in all directions from the galley and salon with 6 opening ports/hatches in that area not counting the two large entry doors aft. Down and to port forward was a stateroom with a large double berth and head with shower. Forward of that was a small crew bunk that we used for storage. The forward stateroom had 3 opening hatches and the head had two. Aft of the forward stateroom was another that also had a double berth, head with shower and the same number of hatches/ports. Under the aft bunk was access to the engines, bilges and water heaters. The starboard hull was the same as the port so there were accommodations for 8 easily without feeling cramped.

We were very pleased with the boat. The engines started right away and ran great. Running them for two hours each day was enough to heat water and recharge the house battery bank with enough juice to run water pumps shower sumps, fans, lights, freezer, refridge, instruments, radios, etc and only one time in 10 days did we actually trigger the low battery alarm which was easily remedied by running the engines a little longer the next day.

Now on to Conch. They were great to work with from the initial reservations, confirmations, answering questions, etc. they provided a simple way to get them the information and experience of all crew members including the Captain and coCaptain. When we arrived they had the boat lights on, air conditioning had been running to keep it cool and greeted us the next morning when they opened They left a sign near the door of their office letting us know which Boat we should go to and where it was.

They came aboard and briefed us on all systems, operations, etc. This took less than an hour and was very thorough. We then had the captains briefing where they went over the charts, provided all of our park permits,

suggested anchorages, restricted areas, showed us where some of the more challenging reef navigation and provided us a cell phone in the event we needed to reach them or use it. We scheduled our charter at the beginning of the "low season" which is essentially the first few weeks of hurricane season. We had weather on the VHF and weather fax if we needed to download them. Because it was low season, the rates were cheaper and the anchorages less crowded. There was only one place where we didn't get a mooring like we had hoped to but were able to get one close enough that our destination was still just a short dinghy ride.

Upon return, they were just as good. They asked us for anything we found that may be in need of repair and we pointed out a few routine maintenance items that would not be out of the ordinary for any of our own boats so certainly doesn't reflect poorly on the charter company or the boat. These were as minimal as a sticking bilge pump float switch, a slow to drain shower sump, two heads with a joker valve that is likely approaching their time to be replaced but still working. The only maintenance item we were not happy with was the anchor appeared to be bent and because of that just did not set very well. We had a spare on the boat to use if we chose, but made do with what we had and picked up a mooring if it was a particularly grassy or rocky bottom. They did a quick inspection of the boat, said that they would top off the fuel when the fuel dock opened and would charge it to the credit card on file. They were going to have a diver check the bottom of the boat to be sure there was not contact with any rocks or reef that would do any damage to keels, rudders or props. Check out took about 30 minutes and they arranged transportation for us to our hotel.

All in all, I would highly recommend Conch Charters. We were all very pleased. I had heard that in the past (late 90's) their reputation for good clean working boats was not that good, but that seems to have all a been completely remedied based on our experience.

Now back to our trip. On the day of our charter we had preordered food for provisioning and the market would deliver right to the boat. The first delivery was food and it came in boxes on a few hand trucks. With a line of us handing boxes from dock to boat to salon we quickly loaded it all on board and the girls stocked the freezer, fridge and all of the dry goods. Next came our booze/drink delivery. This was embarrassing. There seemed to be more of this than groceries. The first load came down the dock and contained 3 cases of coke, 2 cases of Ting, 1 case of seven up, 2 cases of diet coke, 2 cases of bud light, 10 bottles of wine, 6 or so bottles of rum and 6 gallons of water. Then the next load came down the dock and it was somewhere around 14 or 16 cases of Coors light. Conch provided us two coolers so we had cold water, soft drinks and beer. We stores al the bottles of liquor in the salon seats and the cases of beer and soda in the aft end of the amas with plenty of room to spare.

We had planned on heading to Norman Island and anchoring in "The Bight" for our first leg of the trip. The good news is that all of us on this trip have our own boats and most of us have or still live aboard, so we all "go with the flow" and on day one we needed to practice that. During our flight to Tortola, one of our crew members arrived but their bag didn't. We had confirmation in the morning. That it was on a flight and what time it would arrive. It could be delivered to Conch but it would be a couple of hours after the flight arrived, so we decided that we would sail toward the east side of Tortola and stay in Trellis Bay right by the airport. This meant day one was dead into the wind and as we got close to Trellis bay, we saw all the boats in the anchorage and chose to anchor inside the reef on Marina Cay instead. It would be about a two mile dingy ride to get to the airport to pick up the delayed luggage.

The reef was nicely marked and we slid right in parallel to the reef and picked up our first mooring ball. It was like we all knew what we were doing :)

View to our right (See Reef) View to forward, small waterside Cafe and Bar

Mike, ODay, and T took the dinghy to the airport. Going between Beef Island and Marina Cay waves and wind conspired to make it a wet dinghy ride. There were a few waves that broke over the dinghy and swamped it pretty good. Running fast and opening the drain plug removed most of the water. At the dinghy dock, there was a small store so trash bags could be bought to cover the duffle on its way back to the boat. Those of us that stayed on the boat were oblivious to how wet the ride was until three soaking wet passengers unloaded from the dinghy and told us what they faced. It was not dangerous, so just added to the stories that will be part of what has come out of this trip.

Oday and T took a swim over to the reef for a bit of snorkeling while the rest of us just relaxed in the sun and started to prepare for dinner.

We ate really well on this trip and just took turns making meals. The first night Oday and T cooked and we had burgers cooked on the grill (mounted on the stern rail of the boat). For some reason food prepared on a boat just plain tastes better. These had all the fixing including tomato, lettuce, cheese and onion. We had a great fresh salad to go with it and chips to snack on. The galley was fully stocked so we ate on china plates every day. Someone other than the person that prepared the meal would clean up and it just sort of fell into a very well working routine on day 1.

The first evening we spent commenting on just how clear the water is, the weather being beautiful, the boat and how nice it was and just enjoyed being with good friends having a sundowner in the British Virgin Islands. One of my favorite island type drinks is a rum and ting over ice. I prefer spiced rum and I must say that Arundel Rum made in Came Garden Bay is pretty darn good. Fill a glass with ice, add 1 part Rum to 4 parts Ting. It is cool and refreshing. After a few hours of story and drinks, people were starting to get tired. It is amazing how the fresh air, sun and water make you ready for an early bedtime. With that, we each started to retire to our staterooms for bed.

What a great ending to our first night out on the water as opposed to at the dock. There will be more blog entries related to this trip over the next few weeks.

We were playing a little bit with a little movie trailer for the trip. This was based on little clips from the first day. If you are reading this via email, you will have to click this link to see it.

The Fish Apocalypse

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Mon, 19 May 2014 18:13:00 -0500

Today when I got up and went into the galley, I thought I smelled fish a little bit. I cleaned the sink thinking that maybe yesterday when I scraped the bottom of the Dinghy, maybe carried a barnacle in to the sink when I washed my hands. Nope, Couldn't find anything.

I then grabbed my stuff and headed out to the office and when I came out of the boat, I was shocked. The entire surface of the water was covered solid with dead minnows. They were all about 1-2 inches long and seriously were almost solid. In every square yard, there were maybe a few inches of water showing.

I have noticed that there are a lot of these minnows swimming just below the surface all the time and yesterday we were at Waterford Harbor and I noticed they also had a lot fate little guys swimming below the surface.
So this morning when I saw these dead fish, I went and looked in the channel, PortoFino marina, StarFleet Marina and South Shore Harbor. None of them were covered in dead fish, so I figured may there was something wrong at the Marina like a stray current in the water but that didn't seem to be the case either.

I talked to a few folks today who have seen this in the past, when there is an overpopulation of these things and they all grow and start absorbing more oxegyn out of the water, they essentially all go lethargic and float to the top and then die.

Really odd stuff. So today when I got home from work the smell is getting bad now. They have been sitting in the sun all day, so starting to get fragrant.
I put the boat in gear and throttled up against the dock lines to create some current and moved a few hundred thousand of these little guys, however it was just not enough thrust to push them the 250 yards to the channel entrance. I was able to get them moving about 75-100 yards, but that is it.

The guys that work at the BoardWalk Beast and Boardwalk Shuttle (Boats that dock next to me) said that if they haven't workd their way out of the Marina in the morning, they are going to attempt to net them and haul them somewhere.

This does go on record as the strangest thing I have seen related to the water so far.

Final leg to Kemah

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 18:00:00 -0500

The Southwest International Boat show was going to be the weekend we needed to move the boat and we really wanted to go to the boat show, but also didn't want to chance waiting until Sunday to move the boat in the event that something came up with weather, the boat, etc. The Marina we were staying at was charging me $75 per day so I didn't want to stay another week if I could avoid it.

Interestingly enough, we had several friends all come down on Friday and were staying through Sunday to go to the boat show. It was Mike and Kerry O'bar, Robert and Mary Fields and Oday and T Roark. They got in on Friday so we went and had dinner with them Friday and then decided that we were going to hit the water early on Saturday to get the boat moved and be back in Kemah in time to get to the boat show for a little while and more importantly the Cruising Outpost Cruisers Party.

A few years ago when the magazine sold and the new owners screwed it all up, the previous owners decided to bring it back again. They needed some people to commit to a long term subscription and we really enjoy this magazine as well as the couple that have sailed around the world and are the inspiration for so many that are living their dream on a boat. We helped out at that time and became part of what they referred to as the Founders Circle. Each year, they throw a cruisers party after the boat show with free pizza and beer and a live band. It is always a good time. But not to get ahead of myself, we still had to sail the rest of the way to make it...

We tossed the dock lines early Saturday morning and motored into the rain and strong wind as we headed to the east. Barge traffic was still pretty heavy but things were starting to move again so the barges were not sitting along the banks. We worked our way along East Bay, passed Offats Bayou, and worked our way under the I-45 Bridge between Houston and Galveston.

Going under I-45 in the rain and spray

Things were fairly smooth and as we started to hear the ICW, Galveston Ship Channel, Texas City Channel and the Houston Ship Channel the water was rough, the wind was strong and it was raining on and off so visibility was good but not good enough to read boat names with the binoculars.

We had to cross the Texas City Channel and should have crossed the Houston Ship Channel as well but there was SO much traffic out there now that the channels were open, I had a hard time feeling comfortable that I could cross the ship channel in enough time. With the wind and waves we were making slow progress and the last thing I wanted to do was be half way across the channel when an tanker or 1000 foot ship was bearing down on me at 18-22 knots.

Perkins poking his head out to see what is going on

The cat does not seem to like the rougher water. The first day of this trip he had blood in his stool and the vet ended up thinking it was stress related. We did find that if we put his carrying case out, he would go in that to feel secure and when it is rough, we take him up top in the cockpit so he gets some fresh air. On this particular trip, he actually ventured his head out the front of the carrier for a few minutes.

It was a little hairy there for about an hour and a half until we go through all of that and settled into a rhythm running north along the Houston Ship Channel but a few hundred yards west of the actual channel. According to the charts that seemed to be a good path as there was enough depth for me to keep out of the channel and from getting run down by a big ole' ship. To give you a sense of the size of some of these, we took this video as we passed one of them after things calmed down a bit. He was making about 17 knots.

We ended up passing Red Fish Island where these is a pretty major dredging operation going on in the ship channel in that area. For those that don't know, there is a good country sound about this little island. Listen to "Red Fish Island" here.. The song is by Kelly McGuire We made it to Kemah, passed through the cut and the boardwalk and turned into the Marina. We backed into our slip and got tied up in time for our friends to come pick us up and take us over to the boat show !

Freeport to Hitchcock

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 17:00:00 -0500

We knew we would not have a long day today since the distance we could go was limited due to the closed waterways from the oil spill. We slept in until about 8am and pulled off the dock around 9 or so.
We pulled off the dock in a pretty good cross wind. I ended up rubbing the hull on the side of the rubber dock protector as we left. I turned into the ICW and Deb came up the companion way and in a very direct voice, said "Gil, I need you down stairs now" I had someone else take the helm and quickly went to see what the issue was. The engine room was full of smoke. I could tell right away it was the smell of rubber and likely a belt that was a bit loose. I had Deb turn on the exhaust fan and took the helm again keeping a very close eye on the temperature gauge in the event the belt gave way. I reduced throttle and radioed to the tugs approaching in both directions to let them know I was going to be pulling an about face and then heading to the South side of the channel to get back into the Marina due to a mechanical issue. Both Tug captains were great and the one coming from the West slowed to let me pass in front of him.

I pulled right back into the slip and in the end only made it about 1/4 of a mile or so in all. It was a loose belt, I tightened it real good, checked it all the way around for any worn spots and we were back on our way within 30 minutes.

This was a pretty uneventful part of the trip. It was fairly short. About the most exciting thing was to

Dodging Barges - They were stopped everywhere along the ICW

navigate the traffic of barges and tugs EVERYWHERE. With the ICW closed down to most traffic and vessel traffic service allowing some commercial traffic through, the barges had to radio and get a "slot" to pass through. Because of that, many were just nosed up on the bank since there was no room at the barge docks or dolphins to tie up. Sometimes they would be on the north or south side of the channel. It was hard to know which side of them you needed to pass on so I would first check the AIS to see if they were broadcasting their vessel name. If they were I could radio them directly. If they were not, I would get the binoculars and attempt to read the name on the back of the tug and then radio for them by name. It was like running a slalom course.

We made it to Hitchcock and got tied up on Wednesday (a day later than we anticipated being all the way to Kemah). Deb and I took a taxi from there to where my car was at our intended destination. Our friends/crew stayed at the boat while we picked up the car. When we got back to the boat, it was about time to get them to the airport. We dropped them off at the the airport, with enough time for them to have dinner before their flight.

Kenny wanted to see if he could sleep in rough water - Yep!

It was great to have our friends with us on this trip and I think Kenny really had a great time, he just kind of rolled with the flow and this was something he always wanted to do, so the oil spill delays, the rough weather, the delays, none of it bothered him at all.

We haven't spent much time with Jim and Karen in a few years since we left Lewisville so it was cool to catch up and spend a few days together again. When we lived in Lewisville and our boat was 2 slips away from theirs, we
spent every weekend together and then got together 2-3 times during the week for dinner or a sporting event or something. I miss that so it was great to get a little of that time back too.

Jim and Karen

When we got back to the boat, they had cleaned everything up, dishes, put away all the clothes/blankets/towels, etc. It was a really nice surprise and allowed Deb and I to just relax that night, which was great.

I ended up working on Thursday and Friday from that Marina and we planned on sailing the rest of the way ourselves over the weekend. On Thursday they opened up the ICW and Houston Ship Channel for recreational boaters, as long as you had a specific destination and were not just out joy riding around in the area they were cleaning up.

The last leg of that trip will be covered on the next blog post...

Matagorda to Freeport

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 23:50:00 -0500

When we arrived at Matagorda city Marina, The crew from Nightingale came over and assisted with the lines, which took quite a bit of patience because I was having a heck of a time backing into the slip I was attempting to get to.
I finally made it, but not before seeing all of the mud churning up from how shallow it was, no wonder why I couldn't rotate into the slip, I was likely plowing some mud with the keel.

After tying up, getting everything in ship shape and checking the water intake strainers for any mud, we were set to relax. Deb fixed dinner and we had a bite to eat and then went up to the bar/restaurant at the Marina for a couple of drinks. While we were there the crew from Nightingale came up and offered us a round of drinks, on them, for coming back and helping them get ungrounded the evening before. I thought it was a really nice gesture, and certainly not the reason we did it, but it was nice either way.

Karen making Coffee

We had a good night sleep, and I must have slept sound because when I got up at about 6:45, I noticed that the shrimp boat that was docked 10 feet off my bow was gone and I hadn't even heard it leave.
We showered, fueled up, restocked a few beverages and were off the dock good and early in hopes that we may be able to make good enough time to make it all the way to Hitchcock.

As we started out into the next open body of water, it became apparent that we were NOT going to be making it all the way to Hitchcock. This whole week had been filled with winds at 20-35 knots and today was no exception. It was slow going slogging into the wind and waves for several hours which put us behind schedule a bit. We decided that the best place to stay was going to be Freeport. If you would like to see some video of the slogging into the wind, go to this link on Youtube for the Video. Link to "Slogging up wind in the open Bay"

Mid afternoon, we happened to notice Nightingale coming up behind us. They were making a few
knots faster than us and we talked on a radio for a while as they were passing. We got some good pictures of their boat and sent them via email. I am hoping they have some good ones of us as well and can send them our way.

They were also staying in Freeport but not at the same Marina. I was concerned about a fixed bridge near the Marina they were staying at so we stayed at Seaside Marina (mainly a large fishing boat Marina for offshore fishing yachts).

At some point during the trip, I decided to troll a lure for a while. I certainly didn't expect we would catch anything on the ICW since I was still rigged up for offshore fishing in deeper water. I figured what the heck and we did troll for a little while but then pulled it back in when coming up on some more barge traffic. What I certainly did NOT want to catch was the prop shaft of a tug boat.

We ended up going through a set of flood control locks on this leg of the trip as well. We didn't have to wait too long, but the water coming down the

Brazo's River East Lock (on the ICW)

river was flowing at a pretty good pace into the ICW and had about a 3-4 knot current. It felt like forever before we made it through that lock at about 1.5-2 knots over the ground. When looking at the water, it looked like we were cruising full speed, looking at the locks we were crawling. We went through the first lock and then had to circle in the river a few times to let some other traffic go through, they were heading West on the ICW and going north up the Brazos so we had to stay on the down current side of the intersection until he passed. Once through, we were able to go through the second flood control lock and continue East on the ICW.

Tonight, I wanted to go out and grab a bite to eat rather than stay on the boat. Last time we were through this Marina about 6 months ago, we stopped and had one of the best burgers ever at a little place called "Castaways" and I was determined to go back to this place. We walked over for dinner and drinks and in a bout of crazy small world stuff, we met some folks there. One of our guests/crew posted on Facebook that we were in Freeport. Someone she went to high school with happened to reply to that post and said, I have 4 crazy aunts that are down there on vacation. Sitting at the table next to us were 4 older women having the time of their life. They were toasting drinks, dancing with each others and other people in the bar and Deb, in only the way Deb can, Goes over and asks if there is any chance they know "So and So". As it turns out, that was his "4 crazy aunts". The night went down hill from there. Deb and Karen joined their table and next thing I know there were trays of shots and drinks, etc going that way.

Jim, Kenny and I had our beers and just watched the girls have a great time. While we were there, there was a gentlemen at the bar that had drank more than he should have to safely drive home. The owner of the bar insisted he not drive. This man was on a motorcycle and very worried about the safety of his bike leaving it out front. The owner helped him wheel the motorcycle into the
bar/resteraunt and then got him a ride home. That, in my book, was one really cool move. I must admit it did allow for one photo of Karen on a Motorcycle :)

So now it was time to head back to the boat. I am not sure what it is about my lovely bride, but when she has a few drinks, you never quite know what she is going to do/say. On this particular day, apparently she thought she should talk in a British accent the rest of the evening. So the whole walk home, she rambled on in a perfect (or maybe it just sounded perfect to me after a few beers) British accent. She even used the English words for things rather than what she may normally say, referring to the bathroom as the Loo and the elevator as the lift. I do have some rather funny video of this, but I decided that I would not post it, but I must admit, I just had some pretty good laughs going through them all again while writing this blog.

So off to sleep for the night and tomorrow we are headed to Hitchcock. That is going to be as far as we can get because the Waterways around Galveston, Houston Ship Channel and the ICW are all closed on the other side of Hitchcock due to the Oil Spill. (At the time we were sailing through (on March 24th) not at the time this posts)

Oil Spill, locks closed, an unusual docking situation and a rescue

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 18:00:00 -0500

After spending the day holed up awaiting a weather window, we left Sanctuary Costa Grande at sun up.

As we headed out to the ICW from the Sanctuary cut, there were quite a few barges lined up in the ICW heading east into Matagorda bay. We waited for traffic to pass and merged into the line.

The wind was down today to about 10-15 mph out of the north east which we assumed would make the 17 miles across the bay pretty rough taking the waves on the quarter. As we approached the jetties we contacted Nightingale (the other boat that we shared our weather hole with to let him know what kind of weather we were seeing) and let him know the weather was like in the bay.

We were just coming through the jetties so we told him we would contact him in 15 minutes as we were out in it. The good news is that the waves were only about 2-3 feet but they were stacked up right against each other and we were heading into the wind so the spray was constant. We were thankful for the dodger and bimini as we stayed dry and fairly warm.

Here is a nice little video of us sailing in San Antonio Bay the prior day

Barge traffic wasn’t too bad in the bay, and all of the tugs are good about responding on the VHF when you contact them to see which side of them they want to see us pass them on. As we got to about the center of the bay, the waves were starting to jump up to 4 feet and were stacked 3 and 4 in a row. For us this meant that we would go up and down the first 2 and then have the 3rd break over the bow and the 4th just slowed us down a bit. We attempted to call back to Nightingale to let them know since they have a power catamaran that has a fairly low center between the hulls. For him this would have been a bit of a pounding. We were too far away from him so we contacted a tug “Reedemer” that was 8 miles behind us going the opposite way and asked him to hail Nightingale and pass on the report. He did so and we could hear him relay the message. (Mental note, we don’t have as strong of a VHF signal as I want)

We made it across the bay and into the protected waters again and as we were passing up a tug “Janice Roberts” the captain informed us that the Colorado River West Lock was closed until 1900 (7 pm). The problem for us is we were hoping to go another 18 miles past the colorado river for the night, now it looks like we need to take a Plan B that is about 5 miles past the lock. Just over 3 miles from the lock, all of the barge traffic was stopping. We were able to see them stacked up on the AIS. After contacting the lock master, they let us know that we could go through the west lock and down river on the Colorado and take the bypass cut around the east lock. The problem is that cut only has 5 feet of depth and we need 6. So it was time to just bite the bullet and get in line. Looking at the tugs, I counted 16 ahead of us.

We were circling in the ICW trying to determine what we were going to do for the next 4 and half hours and decided that there was no barge traffic coming at us with the locks closed so we would just anchor in the middle. I went to the bow to ready the anchor and heard one of the tug captains talking to another to let him know that we were behind him. Deb was manning the VHF and let them know that we were going to anchor here while we waited on the locks to open and then through in a “unless one of you tug captains would let us tie up to you” We heard one tell us that he wasn’t sure what the company would think of that but he didn’t mind and asked us to just tie up to the first barge in his strung out load. The cleats on these things are about 3 feet across and docking on it is like pulling up to a nice 10 foot deep bulkhead. We stopped right next to him and tied up. He asked us to just make sure we stayed on our vessel which we were glad to do and thankful for the generosity of letting us tie up him rather than anchoring in the middle of the ICW.

So here I am writing a blog while sitting at the nav station while tied up to a barge. I made sure that the company name was not visible in these because this was a really cool thing this guy let us do. As I write this the thunder and lightning is picking up and I am just hoping that the captain of the tug doesn’t call me and ask me to shove off due to my 50 foot lightning rod (mast) tied up to his tug. If he does, I completely understand, but hoping not.

I got a call on the radio from the Tug Captain, he said that he was going to start moving on up the ICW a bit further. We told him we would toss the lines off. I went down below and had she wouldn't start. I couldn't believe it. I called the Captain back and let him know that I was having an issue and working on switching over to an alternate battery. He asked what we drafted, we answered and he said that he would just carry us along for a while and he would be sure that he kept us in water deep enough (not a problem as he needed 4 feet more depth than we needed. But it was really cool of him, he just left us tied on and carried us with him a mile or so while we swapped batteries. We untied while doing about a knot and a half while tied to him.

So it will get a bit more interesting tonight because these tugs in front of me will take a little bit of time to get going through the lock, which means we may not hit it until dark. The place we will stay for the night is about 4 miles past the lock. This delay certainly impacts us however as we were planning on making 55-70 miles today and with this stop we are oily going to make 34, which puts reaching Kemah out of the question by Tuesday. The goal now is to get to Hitchcock on Tuesday if possible so that our friends can catch their flights back to Dallas. If they can’t we may need to take a cab from Freeport which may be oostly but potentially the only option.

We were trying to figure out why the West Lock of the Colorado river was closed and then learned it was to keep the traffic from stacking up in Galveston where everything is shut down due to the oil spill and collision between a ship and a barge carrying oil. It appears that there was about 168,000 gallons of oil spilled into Galveston bay right at the Texas City dyke. Due to this and the clean up efforts the Intercoastal water way east and west bound is closed at the Houston Ship Channel, the Houston Ship Channel is closed, the Galveston Ship Channel is closed and the Texas City Channel is closed. This basically means there is no way to get home right now so our plan is to try to get to Hitchcock on the West side of Galveston.

We received a call from Nightingale, they had attempted to go around a tug and had the prop wash push them into shallow water and had run aground. We waited for a while to see if they were able to free up and they were not so we turned and went back to give them a tug and see if we could free them. The good news is that we were able to and we made good time heading up the ICW. The Captain on Nighingale radioed the lock operator who was willing to let us run through ahead of the barges. That allowed us to get to our designation for the night. We both ended up staying at the Matagorda City Harbor for the night.

Waiting on Weather

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 23:59:00 -0500

Nice new floating docks with 50/30 amp power

After getting tied up and settled in at Sanctuary Costa Grande, we filled out the small honor system 1 day contract and dropped a check in the box at the leasing office that was not manned. There were a few other boats in the marina including the Power Catamaran Nightengale that we passed us in Corpus Christi bay in the dense fog.

Public patio with grill, sink, furniture and music

This marina was really nice. They had nice clean bathrooms with 2 showers in the mens and women’s room. They had 2 ice machines that were available to transient slip renters as well. There was a great walking trail that went all around the housing development and marina with a boat ramp, gazebo’s with grills, fish cleaning stations and a big 40 by 40 foot patio with nice furniture, lights and ceiling fans. They even had a control pad to play music all over the patio area. This was a really nice place.

Since we didn't get to sail this day, I figured I would post a nice video of our sailing the day before in San Antonio Bay.

Clean bathrooms for marina users

club house (not available to transient slip users)

Several gazebo's with grills and ceiling fans

Nightengale (saw them pass us in the fog in Corpus)

The Crew for this trip (Deb, Kenney, Karen and Jim)

We chatted with Gene from Nightengale about the weather expected on Sunday. It was supposed to be cloudy and the wind was going to be 15-20 knots. We decided that we didn’t want to fight the fog again like the previous morning so we figured we would leave after about 9am after the sun had some time to burn off the fog. When I got up at about 8am Nightengale had pulled out already. As the fog started to lift we started to untie, and prep for departure. Right when we did we heard Nightengale hail us on the radio. He had poked his nose out into Matagorda bay and saw 4 foot waves and winds gusting to 35 knots on the note. He let us know that he was turning around and coming back to our weather hole.

We relaxed a bit and when he pulled back into the Marina we helped tie him up as he was getting pushed off the dock pretty good by the high winds. In the end, there are worse places to be stuck. We had a nice place to stay.

As Gene and I chatted, we talked about potentially leaving the next morning. We agreed that whoever left would report back to the other on the weather.

Below are some of the pictures we took as we walked around the marina. Anyone planning on transiting the ICW, this is a really great place to stop.

There are 2 kinds of people... Those that have grounded and those that lie.

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:27:00 -0500

We have been in Corpus Christi Texas for a couple of months now since our granddaughter was born. With my work travel schedule, it requires me to fly almost every week. Doing this out of Corpus has been a bit of a challenge due to the size of the airport and the connections.

To that end, we decided it was time to head back to the Kemah area. This is within 30 minutes of a large airport in Houston (Hobby) and allows travel to be much more easily accommodated. We started to plan our cruise from Corpus to Kemah via the ICW (InterCoastal Waterway). and some of our friends wanted to join us for the trip and thought it would be fun. A Plan was created.

We would give ourselves 4 days (5 with a buffer) and sail out on a Saturday assuming we would arrive in Kemah on Tuesday. We spent most of Friday just finishing up last minute things on the boat.

We picked up our friends late friday night, and everyone hit the sack for our early morning departure. Sunrise was scheduled to be 7:30am, so we planned on leaving by 6:30 in hopes to get a head start on the day 1 trip given we were hoping to make 74 miles before sundown.

As we were getting ready we noticed that there was dense fog but decided that we could go out slowly and stay out of the main shipping channel and it should burn off before we got to the narrow portion going to Aransas Pass. I was surprised at how hard it was to hold a course when you can't see something to "aim" toward. We made slow progress and it put us a bit behind schedule but really enjoyed the benefit of having AIS at the helm for this trip. We were able to see ships and tugs and their heading.

Barges pushed against the shore waiting for better weather

The fog cleared mid morning and we finally started to make decent progress as we headed north east on the ICW. There was a portion of the trip in Aransas Bay and San Antonio Bay where we were able to sail on a beam reach for a good portion of the trip. We were able to sail at over 7 knots for a good portion of the trip which helped us make up some time for our slow foggy start. There was quite a bit of barge traffic on the ICW and they were sitting along the bank going in and out of the bays waiting for the wind to die down. When they go through with a strong cross wind they tend to come through at an angle. Typically barges are pushed but the odd shaped ones tend to get towed.

Here we are passing a pretty large dredge barge.

Things were starting to go too good so Murphy decided to pay us a visit. As we were coming out of San Antonio Bay where the Guadalupe Bay cut intersects to it, we hailed a oncoming tug and asked if he was good passing on the "2 whistle" (this means that we will pass him so our Starboard side is closest to him). This is kind of like driving on the wrong side of the road, but since we were sailing it is safer to stay on the downwind side of him to avoid potentially being blown into him. as he approached, I gave him a wide berth so he had room to pass between an anchored tug on his left and us approaching him on his right. That is when I heard the wake next to the boat start to break and we jerked a bit. Yep, we ran aground.

From the charts we had a tough time telling where the actual channel was given the intersection area we were in. We checked the depth all the way around the boat and determined which way we needed to go. We tried to back off with no luck, we tried to spin on the keel in forward without success. We were about to take the anchor in the dinghy to kedge off of it when a fishing boat passed by. We flagged him down and asked him to give us a little tug backwards which he did and helped to get us backed off of it.

So they say that there are only 2 types of sailboaters, those that have grounded their boat and those that lie about having never grounded their boat. We are not 2 time grounders.

In the end, we actually got free in about 30 minutes and were on our way. But the delay meant we needed to stop somewhere closer for the night. We were not going to make it to our planned destination before dark.

Deb to the rescue, she started searching "active captain" points of interest and found a very promising place for the night. We will save the details of that for the next blog.

For those that don't know about Active Captain, check it out here. One of the best free services around!!!
http://activecaptain.com

Laughing and Learning your way through servicing your Sailboat Winches

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 23:59:00 -0600

Servicing the boats winches should be an annual maintenance exercise, but we procrastinate, we let it go to long and now the job must be done and more damage may have occurred because of the delay.

Heck we all know as sailors that the winches need to be serviced, so why not just take the hour or two and get it done? I would suggest that for many people, it is because they are not sure exactly how to go about doing it, so it gets put on the "back burner". Routine maintenance and servicing will keep the winches running free and easy and allow for a much less stressful sailing experience.

In this post and associated how to video, I will show the challenges that I faced because I procrastinated, as well as, show step by step how to remove the winch from the boat, service it, reassemble and reinstall on the boat. Feel free to bookmark this page or the "Last Affair Boat Projects" page on our blog. You can refer to it any time you have a need for some guidance on a project you are taking on or when you intend to service your winches.

We bought our boat about 2 and a half years ago and at the time I noticed that the base of the primary winches seemed like it was "melted". In our case we have two Barient 28 Primaries and 3 Barient 21 winches.

Part of the metal was eaten away and I was mentally dreading doing this job and knew that as we finalized the refit on the inside it was time to work on the items outside, including the winches. In addition to the visual side of it, when we made a passage from Houston to Corpus for a couple of days, it became evident that the winch was so much tighter and harder to use this time. We had to fix it, and since I knew it would be a doozy, I figured I would film each part to show how we would overcome what lied ahead, in hopes that it helps you too.

Removing the winch from the Boat

We learned that it is a good idea to come up with a method to keep any parts that you remove and happen to drop, from going to the bottom of Davey Jones Locker. On our last boat, we would lay down towels around the work surface to remove the tendency for a dropped item to bounce too high. We would then build sort of a towel damn at the lower areas of where we were working so that

something rolling or falling would hit that and hopefully stop it from going over. This time we used a slightly different method that I had heard others and it also worked pretty well.

I had heard that if you take a bucket and cut a hole in the bottom of it the same size as the base of your winch, you can essentially work and remove any screws and nothing can fall out of the bucket. Doing this also made it harder to work down in the bucket. I ended up using an old flower pot base that only had about a 4 -6 inch lip on it and cut a hole in that. It allowed for easy access to the screws, and still provided some protection for anything that happened to fall. I would suggest that you use one of these methods when you do the work and just use whatever one fits your location best. You will notice in the picture that the bimini supports were in the way even for the solution that I used.

To remove the top keyed locking nut (the portion with the 2 holes in it) you are supposed to be able to
use a standard deck key, however none of mine were large enough and the specialty wrench I have for the Groco strainers was too large. However, if you put the winch handle into the top of the winch, and an old hex wrench or bolt about the size of the hole, you can turn the handle counter clockwise against the hex wrench or bolt and it will rotate and loosen that nut that holds the drum on. Once the nut is removed, you can lift up the drum. BE CAREFUL that the bearings don't stick in the drum and fall out when you lift it off the shaft. In the picture to the side, you can see that after lifting the drum off, the bearing were still on the shaft.

Disassembly

Once the drum is off and stored in a bucket or bag for cleaning later, it is time to remove the bronze winch assembly from the base. There are 4 hex bolts in the base of the bronze winch. In the picture In this picture you can see 2 of the 4 bolt holes on this unit. In order to remove these bolts I sprayed

penetrating oil on these for about 24 hours ahead of when I was working on it and reapplied every few hours (WD-40, Berrymans, etc) In our case, that "melted" metal on the base, was the aluminum and the bronze fusing together. Metals of different qualities react to one another when in contact in a conductive environment. Salt water is a conductive environment so we as boaters, have to deal with this corrosion in many areas and on many levels. Without going into a lot of detail on this, we are all familiar with the need for Zincs since they are a 'lesser' metal they corrode before vital parts of our engine do for example. This same phenomenon is what impacted this winch. The Bronze from the winch was in contact with the Aluminum base and without a protective coating on it, these 2 surfaces were touching for many years in a salt water environment. This resulted in the aluminum corroding away and almost welding or fusing itself to the bronze.

After removing the bolts that held this winch in place it still would not come out. I attempted prying up on the winch, however that felt like it was going to bend the base before anything came loose. I attempted to try a rubber mallet. I also used a heavier hammer, and tapped on the shaft (while it was protected and wrapped in line so as not to damage the smooth texture of the shaft). These didn't work. I also used a small putty knife and attempted to chisel a small groove in the fused together metals where the joint should have been. This seemed to make progress but was not enough to break it loose (I even enlisted my grand daughter since she loves to help). What ended up solving the problem was to tie a line to a cleat, wrap it around the shaft of the winch and over to another winch and apply pressure. I did that and heard a pop sound with just a bit of light pressure and it was enough to pop that winch from the base. I do think in the end it was the combination of the putty knife removing a good portion of the corrosion that was visible and then the winch pressure in the end to finish the job.

Cleaning and replacing worn parts

After removing the winch assembly it is time to remove all of the parts and prepare them for cleaning. A good trick is to take the drum that you removed and stand it on a flat surface. You can then put the base upside down in the drum opening to hold it steady. There are 3 screws on the

Screws are identified by red circles (Click to enlarge)

bottom of the winch assembly that need to be removed (again these are hex bolts) and I needed to spray them with penetrating oil to remove them. Once the 3 are removed, you can remove the bottom plate and start to remove the gears. Before you remove too many, you are also going to have to remove the screw and washer/spacer that is on the bottom of the shaft, without removing it, you won't be able to completely disassemble the parts. Everyone has their own process of removing something so they know how it goes back together. These winches are pretty forgiving and if you have the diagram you can use that as a guide. Some people prefer to take pictures as they remove each part so they have a visual reminder when assembling. Others like to place them in a line as they remove them so they know the order in which components were removed. What ever works best for you is fine. I personally like the method of being able to follow the parts diagram since there are going to be times when you have to refer to them for this project or others. This link contains documentation and a parts diagram for the Barient 28 winch. There are also links to many other winches and manuals at the the "Barient Winch Manual link"

I like to inspect each part as I remove them and put them in a small bucket (2 gallons) that has diesel

or kerosene in it. This is what I soak the parts in and use later to clean them. In my case, I used Kerosene, because I had it more readily available than anything else. You can also use Paint Thinner, but I found that the first 2 tend to work better. Now it is time to scrub all of the parts. If your winches had a lot of grease packed in them, you may find that there is hardened grease in the valleys of each gear. I used a small screwdriver to scrape that out. I don't think that would be a problem if these had been serviced

regularly. If you don't want the fuel on your hands, you can wear gloves, but be sure to get the blue nitril gloves and not latex as the latex will melt when in contact with some of the cleaning solutions. I used a tooth brush to then scrub each part thoroughly. If you have a stiff bristled straight brush that would be better. I found some at harbor freight that worked well and were cheap enough. The stiff straight bristles can reduce the splashing that will happen using a toothbrush due to the angle of the bristles.

Be sure to be careful with both of the "double gears" so that you don't pop out the springs or pawls. In the photo below, which I have left large to make it easier to see, you will notice that the inner gear has too "flaps" on it.
These are called Pawls. These pawls can lift out of the gear and there is a spring behind each one that forces it into its extended position.
It is important that you do remove these for cleaning and you will likely need to replace the springs. They are inexpensive so it is worth doing it while you have it apart. I think it was about $20 for a package of 10 at West Marine. In the photo below you can see what these pawls and springs do. They act as a ratchet allowing the gear to rotate in one direction but not in the other. When it turns into the opposite direction, the ends of these pawls make contact with the outer gear 'steps' and prevents rotation. The video below as well as on the "Boat Projects" page demonstrates how to remove the pawl without losing the springs as well as how to put the springs and pawls back in. This winch has 2 gears like this so a total of 4 pawls and 4 springs on the Barient 28 2 speed self tailing winch. I suspect that is the same for most 2 speed winches

Assembly

When all parts have been thoroughly cleaned, I like to lay them all out on a flat surface and inspect them all one more time before starting the re-assembly. I also would make sure you have the supplies you will need on hand. I used winch grease that I was able to pick up at West Marine. You will

notice I am using Harken grease, they also sold Lewmar grease but it was a bit more expensive and I couldn't tell any difference in the two so went for price. I also have a small bottle of Lewmar oil to put on the springs and pawls. We don't want to get grease on these since it is too sticky, just oil those parts without grease getting in them and you will have smooth operation. I also have the package of springs. NOTE: Be sure to get the correct springs, you will notice this is a Lewmar bag, but they are specifically for Barient winches. Not all winches have the same shape springs. Surprising this is the easier part of the job now and the work gets easier from here. I like to dry fit all of the parts first before I put grease and oil on them. Go ahead and assemble the unit a few times without putting the final backing plate on, to get familiar with the steps and order that things need to go back in. There is a specific order and it becomes pretty obvious as you start to assemble that you need to put the items that are lower in first (when holding the winch upside down).

When greasing the bearings, don't overdue it. Just a small amount will do. I tend to hold the bearing in one hand and while squeezing some out of the tube, I rotate the needle bearing so that I make a small bead all the way around the bearing. I use about half as much grease as you might put on your toothbrush when brushing your teeth. I do this for each bearing and also apply grease around the teeth of each gear being careful not to get grease on the surface where the pawls are. Everything should fit together smoothly and nothing will have to be forced with maybe the exception of the final bottom plate. That I tend to tap on with a rubber mallet and then use the screws to draw it in tight.
A few things to point out when assembling.

There is a point where you are putting the last 2 speed gear on, and the outer gear can go on right side up or right side down. It is important that when they are assembled, the outer gear and inner gear and pawls are all the exact same height. If they are not, you likely have the outer gear on upside down, remove it and turn it over. I have included a photo of this but the video will show it a bit more clear. If you finish your assembly and you can't rotate the gears by hand by twisting the top of the shaft, you may have this piece upside down and the plate is putting pressure on it making it hard to turn. Finish the assembly by putting the last 3 screws in and validating that you can still rotate by hand.

Installation

Now it is time to install the bronze winch back into the aluminum base. This is pretty simple and just a reversal of what was done to remove it with one VERY large exception. We don't want to repeat this "removal of corroded metal" again so we will take some preventative steps to prevent it from happening again. This time before putting the winch into the base, apply a thin coat of "Lanacote" that can be purchased at West Marine fairly inexpensively and really should be something you keep on board your boat anyway.
This is designed to create a protective coating between dissimilar metal to prevent this corrosion from happening. In addition to putting the Lanacote on the contact points between the base and winch, I also dipped each screw in it that was going to make contact with both the bronze and aluminum.

After the winch is mounted to the base, it is time to apply grease to the last 2 large drum bearings and put them onto the shaft. When complete, apply a small amount of grease to the underside edge of the drum where the teeth are, and slide it down onto the shaft and bearings. The last step is to add the self tailer line catch and then put that keyed nut in the top. Like removal, the easiest way to do this is to tighten as much as you can by hand, and then put an old screw/bolt or hex wrench into the holes and use the winch handle in a clockwise direction to turn that inner locking ring until tight.

Now you have the pleasure of turning the winch by hand and hopefully you will notice a big difference if it has been a few years since these were serviced on your boat. I know I was amazed at the difference and they were working like new for just about $50 in parts (springs, grease, oil and Lanacote) and some of my labor. I believe that moving forward, this job should take between 1-2 hours per winch and I will be doing this every year for all of them. This first time sure did take a lot longer than that, but that was due to years of neglect and I suspect it had been many years before I bought the boat that they had been serviced as well.

Below is a full length video (20 minutes or so) that shows all of the steps we have taken as well as the tools and products used to complete this work. I hope you find this useful and can pass it on to your friends or local sailing clubs, etc.

I would encourage you to subscribe to this blog for automatic updates when new posts are added. There are 3 ways you can subscribe to this blog and the information we share. The first is on the top right corner of this page and it is to subscribe to our Youtube Channel where we post the how to videos. This is a good first step, but I would encourage you to also subscribe to posts on this blog as well as an email subscription to let you know new posts have been added and you can then browse to the blog to see all of the details. The email subscriptions will email the actual blog post, however videos and some other embedded content does not always come through email so you may miss some of the good stuff only going that one route.

Visit our Youtube Channel at "S/V Last Affair Video Channel"
View other cruisers blogs at "Cruising Outpost Blog Page"
I would love to have you tweet or Facebook this post if you think some of your contacts could benefit from the information it contains.

Low Flying Coast Guard Jet

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Wed, 1 Jan 2014 23:59:00 -0600

Look just through the Masts

The other day while down below working, I heard what sounded like a plane. I kind of ignored it the first time but when it flew by it sounded more like a jet but very low. I ran up into the cockpit and could see it banking over the bay just past the marina VERY LOW. I really thought it was a small private jet going down. He continued to bank and essentially made complete circle again heading over the marina. The view from the boat really looked like he was going to be skimming the mast tops. I am sure he was in the air a bit higher, but I would not say more than 1500 feet.

Here he is a bit closer to us (just over the pier in front of us)

This time I readied the camera and took a couple of pictures.

Hmmm, it was a Coast Guard Jet. I have never seen one of them here, typically we see the CG Helicopters but this was the first time seeing the jet.

The next day there was a CG Patrol boat tied up just down from us so I asked the gentleman if there was a search of some kind being conducted. They didn't know what it was for, but it was certainly interesting.

Twas the Night before Christmas

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 16:52:00 -0600

Boat lit up for Christmas

We have been all setup for Christmas on the boat now for a few weeks. The harbor we are in has a nice Christmas Boat Parade however it was scheduled for the day we returned from Vacation so we didn't participate. It was in the 30's the day of the parade and there were only 5 boats that actually showed up. We did however hang lights the outside of the boat by running colored lights around the entire boat from stem to stern along the pulpits and lifelines. We also ran white lights inside the cockpit and in the evenings we would play Christmas music through the outside speakers. We get some foot traffic down where we are from those walking down the street to the local restaurants. We enjoyed the reactions and also it helped to keep us in the Christmas spirit.

Additionally, we have a very small 2 foot Christmas tree that we decorated and put on a small table in the front of the Salon.

Christmas Garland on Arch in Salon

We hung the stockings from the Port Catches in the Salon and it really made it feel'Christmassy' down below. Deb also made a garland string that she hung on the arch between the Salon and NavStation & Galley. It looks great.

To finish off our Holiday Post, I wanted to show a bit of the Holiday on-board in the video below.
I have heard several different versions of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" but I figured this would be a nice variation to it.
Enjoy the Boating version of the story aboard Last Affair at our Youtube Channel and if you are viewing this on our blog, the video is embedded below.
(Twas the boating night before Christmas on Last Affair)

Merry Christmas to All and to All a good night

Update - 12/25 (I tend to write these posts a few days prior to the post date, and in this case, I had to update the blog post with some cool news. My Daughter and her Husband were expecting their daughter to be born on Jan 2 with a planned delivery date due to the baby's position. Well, it seems that she wanted this year to be her first Christmas. Mckinlee came into our world on Christmas at 6:47pm at 9 lbs. 11 oz. So cute and such a great Christmas surprise.

Even when you live on a boat, a vacation is still a nice relaxing change of pace

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Sun, 8 Dec 2013 18:55:00 -0600

We have been talking about going back to Jamaica for many years now. Deb and I really enjoyed the area in Jamaica where our son went to school. It is on the South Coast of Jamaica in a small fishing and farming area called Treasure Beach.
It is not anywhere close to the "all inclusive" type place where you stay with 500 other American and Europeans and never leave the hotel property. No, this is vacation in a way that lets you completely relax and make new friends.

Several years ago, we went on a small vacation with one of our close friends and really had a great time vacationing together. We were 'vacation compatible' which was a funny term we all talked about after that trip. We have all been around another couple or friends where they fight or nit pick at each other, or they just don't enjoy the same things you do making it very awkward to spend a few days with each other. That is just NOT the case with Dan & Jodi and we always have a great time when we do stuff together. When vacationing, either couple is fine with the other doing their own thing, or doing something together. It is not uncommon that some days, we will just "veg out" and not really do anything either playing cards or reading a book or just sitting in the sun having a few sundowners (and sun-uppers and sunsmiddayers - lol).

It is always hard to find the "best day" or "best time" on a great trip, but one of my favorite days was when we took a day trip out to a place called the "Pelican Bar". Now you may be reading this and thinking, "so a day at a bar. no biggie" however this Bar is built on driftwood and old logs on a reef a couple of miles from shore. You hire a boat captain to pick you up where you happen to be staying and you ride in the same boats that the local fisherman use to go fishing in 60 miles off shore. These are open "rowboat" style boats that have 4 or 5 bench seats across them and a 40hp or so engine on the back. In our case, our boat captain "Captain Ted" picked us up right at the beach in back of the house we rented and off we went just outside of the reef along the shore for about 30 or 40 minutes. Captain Ted always travels with his dog Flora in the boat and she is a regular at the Pelican Bar. 8-11 years ago, when we were going to Jamaica more regularly, we saw Ted and Flora every time while there.

On the way, we say dolphins playing and when as you pull up to Pelican Bar, you are greeted by the sounds of Reggae coming from a small portable boom box inside. The boat pulls up to a wooden plank and the owner "Floyd" comes over and reached a hand down to help you up the small steps. In our case, Flora was the first out of the boat and up laying down in the shade in the bar. At this time, you are in one of the coolest oasis' I have every been to. Step up to the bar and have a "winter cold" Red Stripe or as we did, started with a few delicious rum punches.

While we were there this time, there must have been 5 or 6 other boats of passengers that came out so the place was kind of hopping. The next 4 people that arrived after us, ordered drinks and lobster and fresh fish. When you do so, one of the guys that works behind the bar will hop into the water and go spear fish something to cook up.

We ordered a few beers or drinks and then just stepped down the walkway to the boats and jumped into the waste deep water out on this small sand covered reef. Other people were doing the same and it was a great time.

The boat captains and Floyd are typically sitting on small wooden stumps inside and playing either dominos or checkers. It is always great fun to watch them because folks in Jamaica really get into playing Dominos with them all being "slapped" down onto the table and some very fast and loud talking in Patois to each other.

We took some video while we were there and I put together a little compilation of the fun time we had. Needless to say, we needed a captain of the boat when we left, because we all had imbibed quite a bit :)

This definitely was a "Great Day" on vacation.

For anyone that may be interested, the place we stayed was called Bucaneer Villa. This is the kind of place where you rent the house and purchase the food you want to be prepared. The staff at the house will prepare meals for you. It was great to become friends with those that prepared the meals. If you want help quite a bit (like cleaning up the rooms every day) or if you want to have privacy they will honor your request. Suzie, Nicki, Judine, and Delaroy were all great and I am actually glad to be connecting to them on Facebook as well.
More info can be found at www.treasurebeach.com.

Working from the Boat - Day Job

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 17:00:00 -0600

People often ask me if I am retired, or how I can live on a boat while working. The reality is that if you have the type of job that doesn't require you to be in 1 spot, this is a very workable solution. In my case, I travel often to customer sites and to see employees and prospects. If you do any kind of traveling for work, you have likely already adapted to being able to work remotely. For example, I have found I can be fairly productive while at an airport, a hotel, or even while realaxing and enjoying a meal out.

When I am home (on our boat) that also means that I can work and be productive there as well. The boat has a Navigation Station like most sailboats (Think Mini office without the doors). In my case, this consists of a monitor that is mounted in the center of the Nav Station that both doubles as an extra monitor for my laptop when I am working, or the heart of navigation and computing for the boat itself.

In the picture in the sidebar, you can see that my desk is as messy as most desks you see in someone’s office. Sadly in my case, it is also filled with a pair of sailing gloves, some line, a bunch of wires for the electronics like the router and my headset.

To make hearing and speaking to people, I have a pair of pretty good headphones to use on my cell phone or my laptop whether I am taking a call on my cell phone, or Voice over IP software such as Skype. They are noise canceling which comes in handy when the wind is howling through the rigging above. (See video clip a little later to see why this can come in so handy)

When Deb is not on board and I am working, I will use the large LED TV in the Salon as my monitor and sit on the salon settee. It is a bit more comfortable and I like the extra real estate for the screen. This was the case last week as I was sitting in the salon working. It was a great day because it was still warm but overcast so no bright sunlight for a change, I had the hatches all opened up and had a nice gentle breeze running through the boat. Half way through the call the wind started to pick up, then it started to pick up a lot, and I could hear the howling in the distance as the wind blew through the rigging of the row of sailboats just upwind of me. While on the call, I muted my microphone and closed the large forward hatch. As I finished that the sky opened up with a torrential rain pour. I was quickly closing the 4 hatches in the roof that I had open and another 7 opening ports on the side of the boat. All of this was going on while I was still on this conference call and un-muting the microphone to respond to a question or comment then muting as quickly as I could again.

By the time the call ended, the wind was blowing a steady 20 knots and gusting to about 30. The rain subsided for the most part and when I went back up top, the temperature felt like it dropped 15 degrees in that hour.

I continued to work the rest of the day on meetings and phone calls remotely, however the wind really had the boat hobby horsing and rocking pretty good. When the wind starts to blow that hard, there are a few interesting sounds that happen on the boat, that we are just used to, but others wonder what they are. I attached a small video below that shows me sitting on the salon settee working. You can get a sense for how much motion there was on the boat this day, and we were tied up to a dock. If you listen closely you can hear a few things in the background. The first is the wind that you can still hear howling if you listen carefully. This is with all of the hatches battened down and closed up tight. You will also hear a bit of a ringing sound or long dull clank. This sound is actually made from two different things that run up the inside of the mast. There are wires that run from the base of the mast to the top of the mast for lighting on top of the mast, antenna, etc. This is combined with the lines that run up the mast for raising the sails. When the boat rocks a certain way they hit on the inside of the mast making this sound. The other is a loud thump , this is actually something that you should not hear, but I still had an antenna for the TV run up on the flag halyard and when the wind would blow it hit the stays (the metal wires that run from the sides of the boat to the top of the mast to stabilize it). It is a lot like a giant piano or guitar string being plucked.

So there you have it, a little insight into working from the boat. 98% of the time, it isn't much different than working from your office, but on some days the office is bouncing around a bit.

Making Granola aboard the boat

glhotka@gmail.com (Gil & Debbie Lhotka) — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 22:00:00 -0600

As fairly "new to the lifestyle" live-a-boards, we constantly struggle with space and storage. One of the things we both enjoy is a little snack when hungry and have recently got on a kick with granola. I almost always had a bag of granola that I would keep in a "lock & lock" container to keep it fresh. When it get a bit hungry in the evening, I grab a small handful of granola and munch on it and it does the trick to satisfy the snacking bug.

I have found I like to eat Granola as cereal in the morning with some milk over it. I enjoy it on top of yogurt or even on top of some fresh cut fruit. It is also really good on ice cream but that is something we don't have on board very often at all.

So today we decided to make out own granola. I was shocked at how simple it was and allows you to make all kinds of variations for whatever it is you prefer. For example, because we snack on it by itself, we made some that had dried fruit and coconut in it. Yummy. We made some that was individual crunchy bits the size of the oats so it can be spread on top of fruit or yogurt and even made some that is in chunks for snacking (think of a broken granola bar).

There are a ton of recipe's online but what we found in our few tries is that it is not really a science and it is pretty hard to mess it up unless you burn it.

We made ours with the following ingredients

3 cups of rolled oats (not the instant, but the plain old quaker style work)

1 cup of chopped mixed nuts (we used peanuts and cashews and just chopped them to about the size of the oats)

3/4 cup of sweetened coconut flakes (found in the baking aisle of the store)

3/4 cup of Brown Sugar (Actually we used just a bit more than 3/4 of a cup)

about a teaspoon of salt

1/2 tsp of cinnamon (I don't think this is needed, I just saw it on the shelf and figured what the heck)

We mixed all of that together in a bowl. On a boat, everything needs multiple uses, so the bowl is also the lock & lock that we typically keep salad in when storing it in the fridge.

In a separate bowl (one of our cereal bowls) we mixed the following

Pan cooking in the oven on the boat

1/4 cup of oil (we used Olive, but anything will do)

1/4 of a cup of Honey (could also have used Maple Syrup)

We both like Peanut butter, so I also dropped a couple of tablespoons of Peanut butter into this mix.

Mix this all together really well and pour over the oat mix. Mix well until all are coated really well.

Then spread evenly on a cookie sheet or small pan for the over. Be sure to oil or PAM the pan first to keep it from sticking.

Here is a small video showing the product after about an hour in the oven

You bake it in the over on a temperature between 250 and 325 and just keep checking on it every 15 minutes and mixing it up a bit (it tends to toast more near the edges of the pan so we just moved the mixture around a bit). It should cook between 45 minutes and an hour and 15 minutes. I think it tastes a bit better when cooked at about 250 for and hour and 15 minutes.

If you like it in chunks for snacking, just press it down in the pan the last 15 minutes you will bake it and then when you take it out of the over, don't mix it up until after it cools. We just broke it up into little bit sized pieces.

At this point, you can add in anything you really want, dried fruit like Pinapple, apricot, raisins, cranberries, papaya, really anything. We even put small dates and broken banana chips in it.

Good stuff….

Just pop it in an airtight container and it will be good for at least a month (we tend to eat it in less than a month)

This is about a third of a batch of what the recipe above makes.
We bake it in 3 batches due to the size of the pan we can get in the oven.