Our tour up the Indian River shows us how resilient nature can be. As you can see, many of the trees that created the full canopy are gone but the new growth is filling in. The Blood Wood trees (named for their red sap) are turning green again. Many of these trees have been growing on the river bank for a hundred years. The coconuts are well on their way to making new coconut palms! The small coconut trees…
On our trip down the coast from Portsmouth, we stopped in at Roseau, the capital of Dominica in search of propane. Roseau was hit harder by H Maria than Portsmouth but there was much activity cleaning up and effecting repairs. The biggest challenge is figuring out what to do with the massive amounts of debris. There are still a large number of deadheads (logs and trees) floating off the coast and washing up on shore. The amount of metal debris…
As many of you may know, Dominica was hit hard by hurricane Maria. While many cruising boats bypassed Dominica this year, we stopped in to check it out. Some things were immediately apparent: The damage caused by hurricane Maria was very extensive. Every building showed the scars; broken windows, missing roofs and damaged walls and many were simply destroyed. The trees all showed damage and many were broken. The once full canopy of the rain forest was simply missing. The…
We will miss family and friends this year but wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas from Guadeloupe on a Big Hot Sandy Beach…… no snow…… Joyeux Noel! Merry Christmas everyone and we are thinking of you! Be safe this holiday season.
Nevis culture is warm, friendly and welcoming. I found it to be very refreshing. We moored on the leeward side of the island and had a fantastic view in our front yard. The library was easily accessible with free wifi so the kids got to spend a day doing research and school work. We took a peaceful day trip to the Botanical gardens on the north end of the island. We were lucky enough to meet a local who lives…
Today we made authentic Caribbean chicken Roti inspired by Sue Roti in Falmouth Bay Antigua. Several days ago we hade some wonderful roti from Sue and decided to try our hand at this wonderful dish. We dug through the stores and found everything we needed except potatoes. Off to the store in Parham to get them and we found an icecream parlour along the way….. sweet! Roti is actually very simple to make. It just takes a bit of time…
Antigua is one of those special places in the world that is enjoyed by all types of people. From superyachts topping $100m to the humblest of boats, everyone is here to enjoy what Antigua offers. We found that we were very much on the small side of the boats here in Antigua. In fact, of the 100s of boats we’ve seen come through Falmouth Bay, we could count the smaller boats on one hand. For the nature oriented, we have…
Our passage from Bermuda to Antigua was milder than our passage from Nova Scotia to Bermuda. The first day was great sailing followed by a couple of days of variable winds making it hard to make good progress. The weather front pushing out from continental US gave us a nice push day 4-5 – thank goodness we had made enough progress to stay out of the stormy weather in Bermuda. The trade winds filled in steadily from the east driving…
We have officially and successfully made it to the realm of blue water cruisers! Our first ocean passage was as expected. There was some days with little to no wind and others with some exciting sailing. Our onboard weather fax worked wonderfully giving us valuable insight to the happenings of mother nature. For a couple of days we made REALLY GREAT progress with 25 knot winds on the hind quarter driven by the high pressure zone pushing eastward. This is…
We are safely moored in Lunenburg waiting out the passing of a strong cold front interacting with the remenants from storm Phillipe. Storm Phillipe started in the Western Caribbean and has moved up the eastern seaboard. The cold front pushing southeast interacting with the warm most air from Phillipe has caused widespread stormy conditions. The nice thing about a storm like this is the north breeze on its tail as a high pressure zone fills in its wake, perfect…