The third running of the OCC’s ‘Southern New England Rally’ was a success – especially as we managed to pass management of the event to our good friends Peter and Patty on Serendipitous, and they did a super job. We ended up with 14 boats, about half of them foreign flagged. The cruise took us from Newport to Bristol then up Buzzards Bay to Woods Hole, across to Martha’s Vineyard and ending at Beverly Yacht Club in Marion over the course of 2 weeks. We had a great time with the varied group, enjoying dinghy drifts, beach barbecues, sunny and rainy-day games – and of course, plenty of sun-downers!

Dressed for July 4th

Boozy Raft-Up

Now it’s time to take a little break from cruising and get Toodle-oo! back into tip-top condition so we ‘sailed’ her back to Bristol as a staging area before we head into New England Boatworks to spend altogether far too much money! Our “Sail” from Marion was mostly motoring (10 hours! – eugh!) and for a good portion we were in thick fog so watching AIS and Radar carefully. It was fortunate that we were vigilant as we came very close to having a head on collision with another boat on a reciprocal course – I threw the helm over and we missed ‘Adagio’ by about 10 feet!!! (Interesting tidbit: Toodle-oo!’s previous name was Adagio!)

We made it back and are now sitting on a friend’s mooring in Bristol, getting ready for the next few weeks of TLC…

We stayed in Newport about a week and then daughter Abigail joined us and brought in tow her new Beau – Nick – who just happens to be a double Olympic swimming medalist… We had a great visit with them – and Abigail, recently licensed, decided to take me up in a plane as a birthday present… What a thrill to be flown, by your daughter, from New Bedford to Newport – and to circle Toodle-oo! who was sat at anchor in Newport Harbour. Great fun!

Toodle-oo! lying to anchor just off Ida Lewis Yacht Club

Captain and Copilot

Newport Harbour

Sakonnet Point

Boats are assembling for the the OCC’s Southern New England Cruise and we’ve had a lot of fun socializing with everyone, including a very nice evening at Ida Lewis Yacht Club with which the OCC has a reciprocal arrangement – I can’t for the life of me see how the OCC, a club with no home base, can possibly reciprocate – but there you go!

We sailed up to Bristol with Abs and NIck and used that as our home base for the next few days while I celebrated turning the horrendous 60!

Then… we went out for a day sail on the last night of their visit – planning to circumnavigate Prudence Island… we left in very light air but made good progress – right up until the wind filled in and we decided to tighten the halyard some – which we normally do when tacking through and the sail is unloaded and we manage the tack with the autopilot… All went well with raising it – but when I disengaged the autopilot I found the rudder to be locked solid! This resulted in our first Pan-Pan radio call – alerting other traffic that we were disabled and unable to maneuver. As it turned out, I was able to disconnect the autopilot and free up steering quite quickly and we could cancel the Pan-Pan – though the coast guard took some convincing!

We sailed on and the next thing that occurs is that one of our primary winches started screaming at us – the plastic feeder arm seems to have worn to a level that it makes a devilish noise when pulling a line in fast. This sail was not going to plan so we turned around and headed towards Potter’s Cove for lunch and to take a break… No sooner had we secured the anchor down, than Abs yelled out Fire! Fire! I ran back from the bow, into the salon to find the boat filling quickly with smoke. A quick peak into the engine compartment showed a small fire, so I grabbed an extinguisher and with Nick’s help, worked out how to use the damn thing and emptied it into the engine room. The small fire was out. It looked to be caused by the starter motor jamming on and building up excessive heat.

Remarkably calm and collected, we remained on the anchor to have lunch and a much needed beer and then sailed back to a mooring in Bristol – and promptly went out for sea food appetizers followed by an exceptionally good evening at Aiden’s – who had a new Irish band playing. Turns out Nick and Abigail are Irish music enthusiasts and Nick virtually took over the group’s musical agenda!

The boat is now fixed – new starter motor and repairs to wiring, autopilot sorted and even the fridge is working and we’re back down in Newport – “Dressed” – for the start of the Southern New England Cruise – whose first event starts in about an hour – so I’d better go shave!

Dressed and ready for action!

Arrived in Newport! Took 4 days 4 hours, but used all together far too many fossils as we negotiated a windless ridge for over 24 hours and then got hit with no wind heading into Newport (when there was supposed to be about 20 knots! Blah!

Uneventful trip otherwise – we got to use the entire inventory of sails, we dodged a really nasty looking line squall during the middle of the night – but it had thrilling lighting to watch! and we were visited by a nice pod of dolphins…

Visitors on passage!

We then got boarded by the coast guard as we arrived in Newport – first time ever – apparently this is the new norm when coming into Newport. All OK they left happy. Then we went to Fort Adams to clear in with customs – and got to use the hose there while we waited and washed the entire boat down – nice!

It’s cold here! Feels like we’re heading into winter!

Misty morning

The Newport we know and love!

Here we are in these numerous small islands that are Bermuda, waiting out the weather alongside the fleet of Tall Ships – anchored right next to the Pride of Baltimore! There must 10 or 12 massive old ships all anchored here in St. George’s. Very neat!

Toodle-oo! lies to anchor in St. George’s

Waiting for a blow to pass – in good company with the Pride of Baltimore

We’ve been here 3 weeks now – a little longer than planned as there hasn’t been a suitable weather window to head out – so we’ve been enjoying ourselves, celebrating Bermuda Day in Hamilton, watching the America’s Cup preliminary races from aboard our friends Mindy and Reinhard’s boat ‘Rockhopper’, strolling around the island and visiting the Oceanographic research center here. All while trying not to spend too much money – it’s a bit of a stark contrast between Dominica, the Caribbean’s second most poor country to Bermuda, the world’s most expensive spot!

Swiss leading the Kiwis – for a while…

The USA Defenders

The British Hope!

Still the weather here has been great – gone is the heat and humidity of the Caribbean – now if the weather between here and Newport would just cooperate!!!

We left Dominica on Sunday at 10:30am having finished up a few minor chores. David and Leanne on Perigee were planning to leave about the same time, but in the end had some hassles and didn’t get going until 3:00pm. We were actually sailing as a part of the Salty Dawg Spring Rally – though the bulk of the fleet was leaving from the British Virgin Islands and headed towards Virginia, however, 5 boats (including us) were planning to go to Bermuda.

Our plan was to head up the windward (east) side of Guadeloupe, but when we tried to sail across the top of Dominica, the wind was way too strong and in our face, so we took the easier route on the leeward side of the island. Now that we were out of the shadow of Dominica, the wind had come up to 25 knots – so we crossed to Guadeloupe with 2 reefs in the main and our small jib – still making over 8 knots of speed! The feared wind shadow of Guadeloupe didn’t materialize until half way up the island – and only lasted for a couple of hours, so motoring in calms was reduced to a minimum. With this success, we decided to make a B-Line for Bermuda – not divert to the windward side of any of the islands, so instead went between Monserrat and Antigua and cleared Barbuda within 24 hours of leaving Dominica. We were flying with an average speed in the first 24 hours of 7.0 knots!

The rest of the passage went really well – we had a predicted trof with no wind which lasted rather longer than we’d hoped for, but we managed to keep everything going for quite a while, using our code zero and our spinnaker (no, not at the same time!). The nights were very dark until the moon came up (not until past midnight) so for the most part, I took the night shift and Laurie took over once the moon had risen. (Got to be able to see those sea serpents coming!)

On the last day, the winds again dropped and it appeared that we would have little chance to get into Bermuda in the light, so we decided to sail – at about 3 knots! This slowed us to a morning arrival, but then the wind collapsed all together, leaving us either doing about 1 knot by sail, with sails slatting around all over the place, or taking down the sails and motoring with the engine hardly above idle – not good for the engine. So, in the end we decided to just go for it with the engine, and we ended up arriving in St. George’s at 10:40pm (11:40pm Bermuda time) on Saturday night and we actually cleared in at customs just after midnight.

The arrival into Bermuda was not simple – I had heard that it was easy, but it really wasn’t… Still, we managed to avoid all the unlit buoys and anchored boats and after clearing in, found ourselves a spot to anchor ourselves in the boondocks of the large bay. 6 and a half days – 1040 miles, average speed 6.67 knots. Not bad! Slept well! And now looking forward to discovering Bermuda properly. The last time we were here was 10 years ago – our first major passage aboard the Crealock… it’s good to be back – this time with much more time available. To make matters even more interesting, we’re here with a bunch of familiar boats – who arrived with the Salty Dawg rally. The 5 boats turned into 11 or 12 as several boats diverted away from the American coast due to bad weather in the gulf stream. It’s therefore shaping up to be an enjoyable stop!!

Unfortunately, we didn’t see a single green flash on the trip, though there were several beautiful sunsets. I have forgotten to mention in a previous post that when we sailed up from Grenada to Dominica, we watched a beautiful sunset which turned into a magnificent green flash – John Galpin should have been there to enjoy it!

We had a rollicking sail to Dominica from Grenada – averaging 7.5knots over 27hours! This included a couple of hours at less than 4 knots, trying to avoid a squall.

We arrived in Roseau, capital of Dominica and enjoyed exploring the town.

A Roseau fixer-upper

Interesting streets

We decided a hike was in order, so bought passes to do one of the segments of the Waitukubuli National Trail – a trail that goes from the most southern point to the most northern… 14 “Segments” make up the trail – each between 5 and 12 miles long and rated easy through impossible.

We took a bus to the start of section 4 – a Moderate trail through the mountains, but when we got there, we realized we were totally unprepared – since it was bucketing down and being high up, it was cold! We ended up taking the bus back to Roseau, and then took another to the southernmost point, Scott Head and proceeded to do section 1. And it was still bucketing down!

At the Start of Segment 1. The trial went over the hill in the background…

Disheartening sign…

Steep Climb!

Laurie pushed us on and we climbed and climbed through the vegetation and after about 90 minutes of agony, came across a sign indicating that basically the trail was closed (the foot bridge over the ravine was destroyed. Agony! A not said that we should only proceed if we were highly trained hikers (we’re not!) so we prepared to turn back. Then Laurie spotted the rope – an aide to getting vertical to above the ravine – so rather than turn back, we took the hard route. It was steep! Very steep! But we made it and the trail suddenly opened up to a grassy plateau, site of an old coffee plantation. We continued up the trail – to the second ascent – and found a handy Gazebo where we took shelter from a torrential downpour!

We managed to get to the end of the section – which fortunately ended at a bus stop – with a little bar! A couple of beers went down a treat!

The following day we sailed north to Portsmouth where we had moored back in February and Laurie planned our next hike. This time along section 13. We took a bus to the start and then arranged for a taxi to pick us up. Timing got a little strained, so we had to really hoof it to make the taxi – which showed up just as we did! Driver Martin (Providence) gave us a little tour on the way back to Toodle-oo! along with a really good botany lesson!

Interesting vegetation!

Super Views

Tomorrow we’ll have a go at part of section 11 – and then prepare Toodle-oo! for the trip to Bermuda. We’ve decided to leave from here – most likely on Sunday – rather than motor to St. Martin. Our Australian friends David and Leanne aboard Perigee (Leanne is the nurse that tended Kate’s shin while in Martinique) will leave at the same time as us – this will be Leanne’s first overnight trip – so why not make it 6 or 7 in one!

Final kick in the pants from Dominica – Section 11 was brutal! Up and down very steep hills – requiring help of rope in several spots. Got back absolutely exhausted! Great hike!

Neat Bridge

Prince Rupert Bay – Guadeloupe and Isles des Saints in the background

Saturns’ Rings Fungus??

Rope required!

Tough Descent

Majestic forest

Second kick in the pants arrived this morning at 3:00am with swells rocking us almost out of bed. Didn’t subside until late in the morning – so long walk with lack of sleep on top of it, just before we set off on a 7 – 8 day passage to Bermuda!!! Great!

We’ve done a couple of really nice walks in Grenada – one in the south of the island up to Mt. William and the other in the north east, around the St. Antoine Rum Distillery – we got lost in the trails, but had a good walk – and yes, we did  indeed end up at the distillery and took a bottle home with us!

Bananas!

Tricky path with significant drop off to Starboard!

Now you don’t!
The “Sensitive Plant” folds it’s leaves up when you touch them…

Now you see them…

All good walks end at the pub – this one didn’t serve food – but they did serve Fried Fish! Delicious!

This is the beginning of Rum – that grey/brown muck…

Crushing Sugar Cane – I wonder how many feet and hands have gone through that roller?

Anyone want some compost?

Yesterday we did another Hash – it was very good fun, though not as interesting as the first one because it was in a more urban environment, so we were in and out of peoples gardens. Never-the-less, it was challenging and it was interesting to see Laurie’s competitive side in full view! She was NOT going to be last and was going to do whatever she could to get home first! It was therefore rather depressing to arrive back at the start/finish to find Bas and Agnes on TiSento already back – especially since those two are notorious for coming last! Turns out they got somewhat lost and ended up on the kiddies route – so that doesn’t count – Laurie’s pride restored!!

So, stealing a line from Tess on Ingomar… we’re half way! That is, since leaving Newport in September, we’ve come all the way south to Grenada and now we’re about to head back – though it probably (hopefully) won’t take quite as long!

St. George, Grenada

We’ll probably leave Grenada (which we have really enjoyed) Wednesday or Thursday and head north – either to Antigua as a staging post or direct to Bermuda. It all depends on what the weatherman says we should do. Our DeLorme tracker will be active again so that anyone interested can check our progress here (once we’re underway).

https://share.delorme.com/Toodleoo

We’ll stay in in Bermuda for a couple of weeks – if there’s room for us (our visit coincides with the start of the Americas Cup events) – and then expect to be back in Newport around mid June… Fingers crossed…

A Hash is a beat through the wilderness on trails marked by ‘hares’ leaving shredded paper piles along the way. We did our first on Saturday in Grenada and it was a blast!!! So much so, we’ve decided to stay in Grenada another week so that we can do next week’s Hash! About 100 people showed up for this Hash – sometimes they have as many as 200 – and the majority are locals, but there’s always a few tourists – including a good contingent of Yoties amongst the crowd. Pics here of us receiving our instructions…

There’s a price to be paid for a Hash however – especially as ‘Virgins’ doing it for the first time – and that is that (for one reason or another…) you get absolutely filthy and smelly – so when we arrived back at the boat we had to strip off everything outside and Sunday morning turned into wash day.

What you get for finishing a Hash

Participants gather for the Hash start

Some may remember that Toodle-oo! is now equipped with a twin tub washing machine! Whoo-hooo! So, Laurie set to on Sunday morning washing our Hash gear. I took advantage of the effort to run our generator to make power for the wash, but also to make some water and to heat some water. All very boring, until the generator decided it’d had enough and coughed and spluttered to a halt.

Monday I looked at the generator and finally concluded that fuel was not getting to it – and my in-depth analysis showed that the lift pump which brings fuel from the tanks, through the primary filter and to the generator was not doing what it’s supposed to. So I pulled it off the wall and looked long and hard at it – and confirmed that indeed, it was not pumping. Fortunately, here in Prickly Bay, we have a ‘Budget Marine’ store, whose catalog (at least the 2016 version) shows they have the exactly correct lift pump… I dinghied over and sure enough, there it was! $250 later, the lift pump is installed, but the generator is still coughing and spluttering. Well, clearly, the fuel lines need to be bled… so for the first time in my life, I set about bleeding the system – turns out to be stupidly easy – one nut has to be cranked open a little bit and wait for air bubbles in the fuel to stop. Trouble is, air bubbles were definitely not stopping.

I decided that I must have installed the fittings to the pump incorrectly – and that air was getting in at the joints. So I went back to Budget Marine and purchased the right (yellow) kind of Teflon sealing tape (as opposed to the while plumbers sealing tape I’d used), disassembles and then reassembled everything. Nope… Still got air in the fuel (more like I have a little bit of fuel in my air…).

Laurie convinced me that a beer and a sit-down would help.

I sat. I drank. I drank some more. I had a thought. Dumb shit!

As soon as I turned to the supply of fuel from the empty port tank to the full starboard tank, the generator barked into action, ready for more charging, water heating and water making!

Anyone interested in a slightly used lift pump?

We had a super cruising day yesterday… We got going fairly early from Prickly Bay, catching a bus to St. Georges and then another up to the ‘Grand Etang” area and the trailhead for the hike up Mt. Qua Qua.

St. George’s Harbour from the fort

The trail, which was well maintained, followed a mountain ridge around the volcanic lake, slowly windy it’s way up and down to Qua Qua. Quite a challenging walk with steep ascents and descents along the way. I also realized that we were right on the ridge when the vegetation thinned out some and we were perched up there will steep drop offs on both sides – making our trek up Helvelyn seem somewhat easy! Normally I’d suffer major vertigo, but the thick vegetation provided a sense of security – and I guess a grab hold should one miss-step. It was a very enjoyable walk up and back.

Mt. Qua Qua

On our way…

Nearly there!

Sheesh! This is steep!

Steep drop on both sides all the way up!

Made it!

Best of all: there’s a bar at the trail head so we were able to enjoy a couple of beers on our return!

Later in the day, we took a taxi ride with a van full of other cruisers, clear across Grenada to the North East point, to one of the three sites in the world where Leatherback turtles come to lay their eggs… The description of the event was something like: ‘We’ll show you a turtle laying eggs, but we’re not sure when…” We arrived at the beach around 9:00pm and got lucky that by about 10:30 our group was allowed to walk along the beach to where a turtle had already started digging out her nest. As we walked in darkness, we could just make out another black blog coming out of the sea for her turn.

It was a fascinating scene. For one, I had no idea how large these creatures are – our missus was about 1300lbs, shell dimensions 169cm long, 130cm across the widest part of the ‘shell’ – with head and back flippers, she was probably 7ft long and later when we saw her front flippers, realize she had a ‘wing span’ of about 7ft! Her shell isn’t! It’s more like leather and moves with her movements and breathing.

It was a little disconcerting about how close we got to the animal while “researchers” took down her measurements and carefully managed the egg drop – one researcher was able to hold a back flipper out of the way for the other researcher to catch and place each egg in the nest – thus preventing breakage. Leatherbacks are very threatened and only one in 1000 little’uns manage to get to maturity. Anything they can do to change the odds is what they’re doing. We were able to watch the eggs being dropped into the nest.

After dropping her load, she then proceeds to smoosh the sand back in place and then pat it down with rear flippers. Then she starts moving sand with front flippers around to the back to completely fill in the hole, and then basically tramps all over the area before heading back down to the beach and out to the ocean. The whole process start to finish takes about 3 hours… She’ll be back in a couple of weeks to repeat the process. Apparently, she lays 50 – 150 eggs in each nest – some with yolks, some without (cushions) and then will repeat 5 or 6 times during the season…

Besides being massive, they’re pretty prehistoric looking! The head is somewhat grotesque and her mouth a jagged affair. As she’s smoothing all the sand back in place, you can hear her wheezing at the effort – can’t be easy for this mammoth who’s basically weightless in the ocean at all other times…

According to our guide, Leatherbacks can swim as deep as 4000ft, staying down for an hour or two before coming back to the surface for air. They must be able to dive faster than me!

Unfortunately, with light restricted to red only, I was unable to capture any photos. I also brought completely the wrong lens – since I thought we’d be miles away from the critters… As Laurie points out, rather weird that we’re able to get within a foot of this highly endangered species as she attempts to re-populate, but are held back 50 yards from the stones at Stonehenge!!!

To round out the day, we got a great view of the southern cross while watching our missus do her thing!

We were lucky in our timing – in that we were back in our boat by 1:30 am – some of the previous visitors were not back until dawn! Even so, with the good walk and late night, we’ve decided today is going to be an easy day!!!

After Bequia, we sailed down to the Tobago Cays, a group of 4 little uninhabited islands with a large reef, protecting them from the Atlantic swells. Many boats were anchored right behind the reef – but we decided to stay behind one of the islands, seeking shelter from the boisterous wind.

We snorkeled around one of the small islands, but the current was pretty significant and it was a little murky in most places. When we finally came into some clear water with interesting coral and fish, we were too tired to really enjoy it! So we drifted back to the dinghy and took a ride out to the reef where we had an absolute blast in crystal clear water, swimming around small (house plot sized) coral beds. The diversity of fish was great.

On our way back to Toodle-oo!, we saw turtles, so in we get again and went snorkeling with turtles. They are really nice animals, though I gather they are far more bad tempered than they were letting on to us. They graze on the sparse grass growing in the sandy bottom, then come up for a breather every so often. Very neat. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable so far to reduce the size of my video files to fit in the blog – probably need to make a link to a U-Tube page, but have not worked out how to do that yet!!! (Update: Maybe I have – check out previous post…)

We then sailed around to Chatham Bay on Union Island where we found Ti Sento and Nomad in the anchorage, so enjoyed happy hour in one of the beach bars with them. The following day we did a bit of a walk – that turned into a marathon day… We scrambled along a very overgrown path following our guide, Alex to the top of a hill that was too overgrown to get a decent view, and then walked down into Ashton where we had a tasty local lunch. We declined a bus ride back and walked back over the hill – with unfortunately Tom from Nomad suffering from heat stroke in the process. It was hot!

Goats Everywhere

Chatham Harbour from the overgrown path

At the top of the hill our guide Alex takes a ‘Breather’

On our way down to Ashton

Chatham Hbr. Toodle-oo! in the centre

Don’t Shoot!

After Chatham, we moved to Clifton, still on Union, which turned out to be a hustle bustle little town and met up with three other OCC boats, Sundowner of Beauleigh, Altair and Rhythm – so we all enjoyed sundowners at Happy Island Bar – a bar built on a man-made island on the reef – made basically of Conk Shells! Had an excellent evening!

Happy Island
Front to back:
Laurie & Bill
Sue and Howard (Sundowner)
Charles and Francis (Altair)
Zach and Mia (Rhythm)

Clifton. Happy Island is the last “House” on the reef.

After Union, we sailed down to Cariacou, just 20 miles south and spent a couple of days in Tyrrel Bay. It was nice not to be hustled by anyone, but we found the island to be a little tame. We’re wondering if we’re becoming island snobs!?

Hillsborough Bay, Cariacou

We then sailed down to Grenada, our southernmost destination for the year (just reached under 12 degrees north). We had a great sail, and then spent one night in St. David’s Harbour before moving on to the more popular Prickly Bay, where most of the cruisers hang out. Yesterday was Easter Sunday and Laurie out did herself with the best ever Massa and Biscourts(sp) – so we invited Ti Sento and Nomad over for Portuguese bread!

Initial Prep

Second Rising

Wow! Best Ever!

Happy Easter!

All was great until we got interrupted by a massive cockroach in the cockpit! We live in fear of getting an insect infestation and take serious precautions to try to prevent them – like no carboard comes aboard, feet and shoes washed in sea before entering, etc… Seeing this 3-inch roach was disquieting to say the least! We believe that he flew in – since we have seen no evidence of little roaches, but just in case, we decided to wash the cockpit out and remove and scrub all teak grates… Today we bought some powerful bug spray… can’t be too careful.

We’ll stay in Grenada a week or so and then begin our journey back north.

We’re thinking we might stop on the way up in Dominica where we can do some sorely missed walks due to Kate’s mishap and then Antigua where I hope to dive in English Harbour.

PS: Can someone tell me if the previous post’s videos are actually visible now???