Author Archives: sailmakai

I’m so sorry I haven’t posted sooner, internet is a real issue.  The fact that we even have it is amazing to me, but so far in the Virgin Islands there has only been one bay that we visited that had internet strong enough to upload photos for posts.

Let me get caught up here.  Eric went home to work for a week, so that gave us a week to get caught up on school work.  Marie managed to finish her Math book, she’s a pretty good reader but needs to cross the bridge to enjoying chapter books.  Roy and Genny haven’t worked on math in over a month. It’s dvd based on my computer, which has a damaged hard disk, Eric will bring back a replacement for me.  They spent the week working on writing  worksheets and journals.

We also read several chapters of our Sea Creatures book, did several CBS bible study lessons, and found science in the kitchen when replacing our old box of baking soda.  No balloons, so Genny blew up a glove by adding vinegar to the old baking soda.

We also had lots of fun snorkelling by the hot water exhaust from the desalinization plant. Roy found a lobster nest and spent most of the week looking for something big enough to eat.

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Now that her math is finished Marie and Genny set up a craft store.  After Topaz’s haircut, they made a craft by glueing dog hair around a piece of fabric and adding googly eyes.

It was a quiet week with only a few annoyances.   There was the weekend booming music on the beach and jet skiers that made Topaz bark constantly and even drove us into the cabin with the doors closed.  Gentle swells came into the bay that made the monohulls rock like crazy, but our cat made it barely noticeable. We also had to avert our gaze when sock man came out while we were snorkelling. This guy was camping on the hill and wearing only a g-string that looked like a sock.  Then of course where was the great barracuda that lived under our boat.  Roy named him Dog Meat. We refrained from swimming off the boat

BVI only allows us to hang around for 30 days without paying extension fees, so we decided to hop over to the US Virgin Islands.  At the closest point, Tortola, BVI is less than a mile away from St. John, USVI.  The airports are more like 30 miles away from each other.  We left the Pimentel family off at Trellis Bay and started our downwind adventure stopping at the grocery store, customs and immigration for BVI as well as USVI, and finally ended up in Lindbergh Bay.

I wasted Friday morning away snoozing and laying around.  I only knew I had been asleep because I woke up.  It was a great day, the house was a mess and no one cared.  Today Roy and Genny cleaned up their spotless, cozy  rooms, I wish I could say the same for the room I share with Eric and Marie, it’s in really bad shape.  Our guests have only been gone one day and Roy has already made a paper chain to count down the days until the Aanonson family arrives.

Other chores include making water, defrosting the freezer, gathering laundry, thinking about doing laundry, and thinking about cleaning the room I share with Marie and Eric.  I got so tired out with all that thinking, we went off to a surprise location Eric found yesterday.  It’s our very own hot springs.  On the other side of the hill we can see the desalinization plant that has returned this water after compressing it through filters and collecting the fresh water. Eric estimates this water to be about 100 degrees, we had to float in and out of the hot stream to cool off in the 77 degree bay water.

If I thought I was sleepy before, floating around in the hot water really made me drowsy, so we went back to the boat.  Almost immediately we saw two tourist ladies floating in the water next to their kayak, they looked like they needed rescuing, so we gave them a hand.  Right after that the jet skis started zipping around. Topaz is totally tormented, running around the boat barking at them as they race by. We watched Water World recently so the kids identified them as ‘smokers’. One of the jet skis was tending to this guy with some kind of cool water jet shoes.

He could plow through the water submerged to his waist, or hover in the air.  He also did this cool dolphin maneuver.
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But the real reason I had the camera out was to get a picture of the airplanes taking off behind Makai.

We are really here is because Eric is flying home to do some work next week.  Tomorrow around noon we’ll drop him off at the beach, it’s a very short walk to the terminal from here.

Lindbergh Bay is rather large and quite empty.  Between the jetskis, airplane noise, and rolling waves, most of the boats are across the channel in the lee of Water Island.  We’re such a noisy family we don’t notice the planes or jet skis, and Makai handles the rolling waves nicely, so this is our new home for the week.  We have great Sprint cell phone service, so go ahead and give us a call or send an email so we won’t be lonely.

In the four months since Brian left us in Grenada, Makai only had to deal with the five of us us plus Topaz.  Here in the British Virgin Islands we’ve scheduled all of our guests to join us.  Why BVI? There are more islands and anchorages than we could possibly explore, it’s easy to have great sailing days without leaving the country and modifying the crew list, access to the airport is a short dinghy ride and a short walk away.

Each guest offers us a new experience on Makai. We’ve been waiting for the Pimentel family to show us how to have fun on a Leopard 47, because they have experience.  In the fall of 2009, Rodney, Jane, RJ and Leo shipped a pallet of stuff to St. Lucia where Azure II was waiting for them.  From there they cruised the Caribbean Islands and the Mediterranean Sea, leaving the boat in the Canary Islands at the end of their adventure.  December of 2011 Rodney and Eric along with Jamie and George sailed Azure II across the Atlantic Ocean in 17 days to Grenada where she was renamed Makai and waited there for us to move aboard at the end of 2012.

We visited the Pimentels on Azure II April of 2010 here in the British Virgin Islands, and now here they are visiting us.  It’s sooo cooool!

After a late night of excitement and catching up, we headed out looking for something fun to do. First off, lets put up the spinnaker and see if Rodney has any tips for us.  Yes indeed, we learned this and that, tell us more Rodney.

The weather was beautiful and mooring balls were available, so our first stop is the Rhone, our favorite dive site.

Rhone Dive

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Deadman’s Bay

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Unfortunately, the weather was getting nasty and we decided to bail on the anchorage when it was still time to move before dark.  Back to our favorite Peter Island anchorage with the wind turbines.  Saturday we had a nice walk on land, another snorkel, and off to bed.  Well, going to bed and bad weather doesn’t mix, so at 2 am, we were up again and moving, this time in the dark to an anchorage we had never been too.  Everything worked out fine, we anchored off of Norman Island at the entrance to the Bight.

Sunday Morning was Easter, Jesus came and opened the gates of heaven to all those who believe and wish to join him for eternity.  We had an egg hunt on Makai.

It was fun hunting for eggs in places unique to the boat, like the sail.

Or the anchor roller.

But, weather or no weather, we’re on vacation and off to the next adventure.  Most of the day was spent on an upwind bash to the far end of Virgin Gorda, someplace new for us. RJ, looking for a thrill, sat up on the bow waiting for the next wave to crash over and flush from under the bow.

Rodney was in his element, Makai hat on top and Azure shirt in front.

The Bitter End is a resort with restaurants, rentals, and rooms.  We enjoyed all the amenities during our stay.

The girls rested on beach chairs looking for the waiter, luckily he never came.

We set off for a nice walk to look for iguanas.

It turned into a challenging bolder scramble up a steep path.

Once at the top, the path offered beautiful views of the bay.

Back to the beach, Topaz drank three hat fulls of water and soaked at the beach, while we learned what Jimmy Buffet meant by “Cheeseburger in Paradise”.

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Eric calls it supporting the local economy, so we have permission to buy trinkets  There have been very few shops in our path, so trinkets were a treat.  After comparing prices with a shop in Trellis Bay, I think we got a bargain from the traveling trinket lady.

The wreck of the Rhone is in the BVI National Marine Park.  You can’t take anything but trash but that might be an artifact now.  When we descended to the sea floor I wanted to capture the moments of our journey using the GoPro.  Mom took many pictures of me, but the light wasn’t adequate at that depth. A liquid version of Kamagra tablets, Kamagra Jelly UK successfully treats sexual health problems in men such as tadalafil 40mg india ED or impotence. Have an active lifestyle – Including exercises and healthy activities in cheapest tadalafil one’s lifestyle plays a very important component present in it with the name Tadalafil. ErectoMax users may think that they are solving their sexual problems but in truth, they are just wasting their prescription viagra without hard earned money for an ineffective product. Kamagra is a generic version of cheapest levitra http://seanamic.com/overview/our-companies/-traditional treatment introduced in 1998.  The wreck had many hiding spots for the fish and other sea creatures in one spot.  I saw the biggest lobster I ever saw, about as big as a grown-up dog, local divers know him as “Lobzilla”.  The National Park protects the Rhone and the life that inhabits the wreck so snorkelers and divers may enjoy it for generations to come.

RMS Rhone is a 310 foot long steel Royal Mail Steam Packet Ship. The link to saildivebvi.com has some great information on the ship.  In 1867 during a hurricane she hit Black Rock, the boilers exploded and she sunk.  Now the ship provides a habitat for reef fish and destination for BVI divers. The national parks system in BVI has installed short term day moorings in several locations to protect the treasures that lay beneath the surface from anchors and chain.  We’ve made this dive twice this week by picking up a mooring very near the wreck and descending the mooring line to about 40 feet to explore the stern.  From the diagram below you can see the propeller, this area is the shallowest at about 25 feet, and the other end gets down to 60 feet.

The Rhone is a great place for Roy and Genny to get some dive experience.  The moorings allow us to drop down over the wreck with out strenuous surface swims or beach entries. Over the last 150 years some beautiful coral and sponges have grown on the debris left behind.  Below Roy is checking out the oldest brass propeller still in existence.

I found that at this depth, the light is not good enough to bring out the colors in photos.  I tried a few underwater photo enhancements, with limited results.

There are plenty of hiding holes to explore, and the fish that live here seem to be much larger that the ones we’ve seen on the surface reefs.

Currently we only have two sets of dive gear, so we took turns.  Eric and Roy roamed around first while Genny kept warm on Makai, and Marie and I snorkeled with Topaz over the diver’s bubbles.

Next was the girl’s turn.  Genny and I had a great time taking pictures and exploring this artificial reef.

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There were corals and sponges of different color blues, purples, greens and reds.  Unfortunately, without a flash the camera didn’t do it justice.  Next time I’ll try to bring a flashlight to shed a little light on the subject.

Genny peaked on one hole and found the biggest sea monster lobster I’ve ever seen.  He was enjoying his long healthy life in this BVI National Park.

Around every corner was a different school of fish.

Roy and Genny just finished up IEW’s dvd writing class.  This week’s assignment was to write about their dive.  This is what they came up with:

The Awesome Dive   by Roy

Today I set out to dive the Rhone a mail carrier that sunk in a hurricane on black rocks in 1867.  My Dad and I donned our dive gear with a giant stride we were in the Caribbean Sea.  We quickly proceeded to the bow where we descended along the mooring line to the sea floor.  We saw many species of colorful reef fish as we swam through the bones of the Rhone.  Dad caught lots of images of the underwater graveyard in his Gopro camera. When we rode the current back to the boat my energy level was deteriorated to almost nothing.  As I dragged myself onto the boat I thought wreck diving was the best thing since instant messaging.

Genny hasn’t completed her assignment yet, but here is her journal entry from the last day with Becky and David:

We dove the Rhone wreck with our guests.  The wreck was really wrecked but teaming with life. Coral and reef fish had taken over the wreck.  In every nook and cranny fish or coral had taken over.  The fish were bigger and the coral was quite colorful.  On our way to the surface dad swam down and mom and him buddy breathed.  Then Roy went diving and saw the beautiful sight of the wreck.  I hope I can dive again at the Rhone wreck.

Becky and David are our first guests.  They arrived last Monday evening from D.C. The weather was a little less than perfect with high winds and rain on Monday, but luckily the weather improved and was perfect the rest of the week. We started their cruise with a comfortable down wind sail using the spinnaker, we call it the ”Whomper”.

Then to break them away from their hectic life back home we spent two days on deserted island beaches. On this windy day the kids flew kites, we splashed in the waves, walked across from Sandy Spit to Green Cay.

The next morning we moved the quarter mile over to Sandy Cay and made sand sculptures. Genny gave Marie a sand mermaid tail.

The beautiful water and white sand beach is always an opportunity for photos.

Roy has an eye for critters.  He managed to scoop this guy up in his hat.

 Sandy Cay is a 14 acre nature preserve donated by the Rockefeller Foundation. There is an interesting hike around and over the top of the island presenting a view of the east side of the islands.  The trail runs through the trees and past many species of birds, reptiles and hermit crabs.

The top of the island was occupied by these interesting cacti.

and the west side of the island is a view of the anchorage.

Throughout the island the trees were covered with these strange termite shelter tubes, which led to a big mud nest somewhere in the bushes.

Roy is a master lizard catcher and presented this crested anole for a photograph.

Back on the beach it’s hard not to take photos of the sand and coconut trees.

After a day at the beach it’s required that everyone take a dip to get rid of the sand. Genny and Marie are always putting together a new floating device.

When evening comes and the sun sets, we’re ready for another set of photos with new lighting.

Poor Topaz, back home she could sleep on the couch for hours and hours every day, here she swims for that long and by the end of the day she finds a cozy place to retire to.

Enough goofing off, with 60 islands in the British Virgin Islands, we better get moving. The down wind trip to Soper’s Hole only took a few hours.  The attraction at this little town is the grocery store.  A few weeks ago I loaded up good at St. Martin, but we still needed fresh produce and a few odds and ends.  It was reported that a Tarpon was spotted in the marina. They are usually very large and feed off of the fishing boat scraps.

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Soper’s Hole also has a busy ferry dock and a customs/immigration building frequented by boaters coming from the U.S. Virgin Islands for a day excursion. It is also surrounded by beautiful houses with amazing views.

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Now we’re getting into the swing of things and moving around like the charter boats on a one week vacation.  After  Soper’s Hole we made a quick snorkel stop at the Indians. I wasn’t super impressed, it looked like every other snorkel location with the addition of a deep drop off for SCUBA.

Our final destination for the day is Soldier Bay where we took a mooring for the night.  The snorkeling was nice and the water was calm after the crazy nights on the North Side of Tortola.

Eric had great results with adjusting the color on our photo editor. Our friends on Zero To Cruising explain underwater photos for dummies on their blog.  One of the reasons we haven’t included many underwater photos is because everything looks dark, green, and lacking the brilliant colors we actually see.  What do you think?  These pictures look pretty good to me.

This is a slipper lobster, it looks more like a big crab. I read that their meat is tasty, but they are endangered and the travel guides specifically state that we’re not to take them.

Eric is encouraging everyone to snorkel in wet suits.  You don’t get cold, have great protection from the sun, stingy things floating in the water, and scrapes on the rocks and coral.

Back to our island tours, we made an afternoon snorkel stop at the caves just south of the Bight on Norman Island.  These three caves are wide open and very safe for snorkelers. The parks department has several moorings in the area for tour boats as well as charter and private boats. Topaz always gets to join us on snorkel trips.  Eric over heard one of the ladies on the snorkel excursion boat point out the seeing eye dog with the blind snorkeler.  The crazy part is that the tour guide agreed with her.  I can assure you, with my new lasik surgery, I see great!

Back on Peter Island, away from the crowds and charter boats, we took a little hike. Once again, Roy spotted the coolest critter of the day. We think it’s an American Kestrel, thanks to a comment from our friend Eric Horstkotte. This little guy could hover over the bushes in an updraft looking for his next snack.

From the top we could see the wind blow across the water in waves, and boats sailing around as far away as the US Virgin Islands and Tortola.

Walking along the sunset loop we came to this Sundowner spot set up by the islands resort.  The colorful chairs begged us to rest our legs and look out over the point.

But of course, Eric didn’t bring us up here to see the flora, fauna and sit in the resort’s chairs.  We came to check out the wind turbines. Later in the day we we’re invited to meet Chris, the caretaker of the power and water plant,  and Jules and their two little boys.  We had a great time and plan to have a BBQ with a few other boaters they know sometime in the future.

To wrap up Becky and Dave’s adventure we stopped at the wreck of the Rhone to snorkel and take Roy and Genny down for a little extra ‘bottom time’.  But I have to save this adventure for another post.  The camera battery died and I never got pictures.  I think this is the best dive I’ve had in the Caribbean and we’re planning to dive again tomorrow.  Their last night was spent at Marina Cay, where we had a great dinner at the restaurant on the island and then at first light took them over to Trellis Bay for their early morning departure.  We all had a great time and the kids couldn’t believe they we’re leaving so soon.  Not to worry, we’ll be spending the summer in Becky’s neighborhood and I’m sure she and Dave will have another adventure on Makai.

We’ve been here for about a week now.  That’s given us time to relax from our whirl wind week of over night sails and massive shopping trips in St. Martin.  For us the British Virgin Islands feels like we’ve come full circle with the boat.  I’m sure we’ll embark on another circle soon, but the point is, in 2010 we visited our friends, the Pimentel family, here on this boat  when they just started their cruise.  Eric had been researching the Leopard Catamarans, then Rodney went and bought one and invited us to join them for a week.  So, here we are back in the BVIs and they will be our guests in about 2 weeks.

 Wiki Travel says the BVIs have over 60 islands and 43 of them are uninhabited.  The islands are situated with Tortola in the center and the smaller islands around it.  Virgin Gorda is relatively large and off to the east.  In most cases each island is no more than 3 miles from the next and in many cases even less than that.  From where we sit today, I can look out and see half a dozen beaches and coves we might like to anchor in.   One of the main industries here is charter boats.  With so many places to visit and so little time for people on a one week charter, every morning the waters are filled with boats moving to the next fun place.

We’ve been busy this week snorkeling in coral gardens, stringing hammocks, Roy is always fishing, sailing.  Don’t forget there is always homework, Eric works a bit to keep the cruising kitty up, and now that we’re having guests, we’ve been “company cleaning”. It’s amazing how these activities can fill our day and send us to bed early.

Rodney was kind enough to buy the boat this beautiful asymmetrical cruising spinnaker.  Eric and I have no experience with spinnaker sailing, but the amazing world of the internet gave us some guidance (http://lifepart2.info/tips-tricks-techniques/how-to-fly-a-spinnaker-on-a-cruising-catamaran).  The other day we had very light winds, 5 or 6 knots, and managed to sail 4+ knots with this huge billowing head sail.  We spent the whole afternoon moving from Peter Island to Jost Van Dyke, the seas were calm, the  catamaran doesn’t heel, and the kids didn’t even notice.  Everyone went about their usual activities of playing, cooking, dancing, while Eric happily sat at the helm.

 

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Sandy Spit is nothing more that a pile of sand with this little patch of green in the middle.

It is connected by a sand bar to Green Cay which is small enough for the waves to wrap around both sides of the island creating these fun waves which crash on both sides.

The kids spent hours getting wiped out from both sides.  Topaz is always busy dragging sticks, rocks, leaves and any other debris out of the water.  Yesterday she decided she could catch pelicans.  This activity wore her out nicely.

Scootching down in the lee of the island offers protection from the trade winds.  Marie loves to be covered in sand so it’s only natural that she would construct her lounging furniture out of sand.

When we were done with Sandy Spit, we moved to a beach a quarter mile away that Eric had been eyeing.  From the tiny beach, you can see Sandy Spit’s patch of trees to the starboard of Makai.

After a long day of moving Marie out and cleaning the forward port cabin, then doing laundry, I got a few minutes at the beach.  There is quite a collection of trash put together to build this little retreat.

Roy, Roy, Roy the fishing boy.  He gets up in the morning, scratches his head and then throws out his line. After a little math and cereal, he’s out there soaking a piece of hot dog on the end of a hook.  While he’s waiting for dinner, he casts some fancy lure, while we’re underway he’s dragging a line off of each hull.

In the 10 minutes before we anchored he caught a 20 inch little tunny. We have to get better about accurately positioning the measuring stick.

Then at our first anchorage he caught several squirrel fish and then his big remora. Remora is the fish that attaches itself to sharks, rays and turtles.  When he got it close to the boat, the remora attached itself to the hull.  Eric had to go and knock it off so Roy could get the hook out.  Catch and release is the name of the game here.  Roy keeps catching things we can’t eat but are fun to catch.  Due to the ciguatera disease in reef feeders, we only keep tuna and if we ever get one, we’ll keep the mahi mahi as well.

Yesterday at Jost Van Dyke, while I was hanging up laundry, I saw this huge barracuda on the end of Roy’s line come flying out of the water.  In our usual style, everyone started running around and screaming, scrambling for any tool Roy requested.

This barracuda was so big and his teeth so scary, we released him without bringing him aboard.

Roy was amazed how the barracuda tore up his metal lure.

Adios to Barbuda, we have two long sails ahead of us before meeting our guests in the BVI.  Tuesday March 5th, we checked the weather, light winds were forecasted, so we decided the 70 nm to St. Martin would take longer than expected and maybe leaving before dark would still get us there after sunrise.  It was a beautiful sunset at sea, we saw whales breaching and lob tailing, what a treat.  The seas were flat and the breeze was considerably stronger than forecasted.   After a few hours of traveling at 8 knots, a little math (speed X time = distance) we realized we would be arriving at 1am.  Yikes, we can’t arrive until daylight, it’s the safe thing to do.  So the jib was rolled up to the size of a handkerchief, the main was double reefed and we managed to slow down to 4 knots.  In the morning we anchored at Marigot Bay.

If you look at the google map, Simpson Lagoon is on the west side of St. Martin, Marigot Bay is north of the Lagoon and Simpson Bay is south of the lagoon. St. Martin/St. Maarten is the only island we’ve come across that is half French and half Dutch.  The good news is that plenty of English is spoken and the U.S. dollar comes out of the ATMs.

To enter the lagoon we had to wait for the scheduled bridge opening.  From Marigot Bay, the bridge opens three times a day.

The width of the bridge is less than Makai is long, but we’re so wide there was only a few feet of clearance on either side.

We stayed in the Lagoon for three days of shopping and saying good-by to friends.  Eric had a long list of boat parts from Budget Marine, and I had an extensive provisioning list from Cost-U-Less (should be called lets-spend-more).

We had a wonderful evening of wine tasting with our friends from Cape, Fawkes, and Heymead.  But after 3 days of shopping and not swimming in this enclosed lagoon, we were ready to leave.

At 8:30 Sunday morning we went out past the bridge only to be greeted by waves breaking in front of us.  Apparently, the NE Atlantic had a storm which send high northerly swells our way.  Eric floored it to get out into deeper water which was difficult since the bay is only about 10 feet deep and we had to go out a mile and a half to find water over 30 feet deep.  These rough conditions gave us the opportunity to sail around to Simpson Bay on the south side of the lagoon.  Here we had a great view of the airport.
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Not trusting the weather reports anymore, we planned our sail to the British Virgin Islands based on the fasted time.  It’s important to arrive during the daylight so things like islands, rocks, reefs and shoals are more visible.  If the trip will take more than 6 to 8 hours, we plan to leave in the dark for an early morning arrival.  On this evening, the kids went to bed in one of the aft cabins, Eric and I did two hour watches, everything went smooth and Virgin Gorda in BVI greeted us with the sunrise.

Roy only had about 15 minutes to toss out his line before we were to head in between the islands.  So out went the lures and in about 10 minutes he hauled in this Little Tunny.  We’re not very good about measuring Roy’s catch, but I’m guessing this one was about 20 inches.  Eric hove too which is a way to stop the boat and sit dead in the water under sail.  Basically you back wind the jib and turn the wheel to one side and everything stops.  While practicing this sailing move Roy set to work cleaning his catch.  At the last anchorage we had wifi at, we found a youtube video on how to clean a tuna, so now we have four nice loins in the freezer to bbq for our first guest.

The BVI anchorages were also suffering from the northern swell that greeted us in St. Martin, so after cruising around looking for a safe anchorage to clear in with customs and immigration, we finally settled in Brandywine Bay, a dinghy ride away from Road Town where we have to clear in.  The next morning over cornflakes, we watched the cruise ships come in.

BVI has a dozen or more islands with anchorages, each offering a different attraction.  Many of the boats here are charter boats, you can rent one for a week or two, with and without a crew.  The Moorings is one of the big charter companies in this area.  A big part of their fleet is Leopard Catamarans like ours.  They use the boat for a handful of years and then sell them off.  Makai was a charter boat in the early 2000′s and by 2009 it was sailing with the Pimentel family who we bought it from.

Yes, Antigua and Barbuda are two Islands that I would look forward to visiting again.  If you use google maps, you can see Barbuda‘s west coast is just a strip of beach on the outside of a lagoon.  In the photo below, the lagoon is on the right side of the beach.  We anchored in Low Bay, there are no services, and during the days we were there never encountered another person on the beach except Goldilocks.

Goldilocks is a local guy offering tours of the frigate bird colony, water taxi trips to Codrington, and lobster dives.  With no other way to contact his customers, walking the beach seems to be his best bet.  So we signed up for Tuesday morning.

We learned that the Frigate birds have up to a five foot wingspan, the males migrate between Barbuda, Mexico and maybe the Galapagos.  They love to be airborne so when not feeding or sitting on the nest, they circle in the updrafts above the island.

The males still looking for a mate puff up their red chests trying to impress the ladies.  If she likes his display, he starts bringing her sticks for the nest.  Eventually they raise an egg together in the mangroves.  The males are black with a red chest, the females are black with a white chest and the chicks still have white feathers on their head.

When the kids got tired of looking at the birds, Goldilocks scooped up these gooey jelly fish for them.  He walked through the lagoon pushing the boat along, answering questions, pointing out things and scooping up jellyfish.

By the end of the trip, the jellys were more interesting than the birds.

Since negotiation is the name of the game around here, we negotiated a trip to Codrington to check out with customs and immigration after the frigate bird sanctuary.  Goldilocks led us around the town to take care of the necessary paperwork with a stop at the bakery for cokes and sweet rolls.

At the end of his tour he made one more offer for a lobster dive.  Ok, Ok, Ok, you talked me into it.  It was a good thing, I think the lobsters were the highlight of the whole day, week, cruise!

Apparently, Goldilocks has a lobster farm in the lagoon.  He uses old tires as an artificial reef.  We visited a few tires and a few ledges in 5 or 6 feet of water.  He would stir them up, then Roy and Genny lassoed them around the tail.
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My job was to transport Genny’s catch to the boat.

I questioned the size of the lobster, but Goldilocks said there we’re so many of them and these are the size perfect for eating, a bucket full is an appropriate catch.  In the end we snared 19 bugs.

The lasso was simply a wire with a little slip knot on the end of a stick.  You just slide the loop around the tail and give it a little yank.

After a great day, it was time to start cooking.  Nineteen lobster requires quite a few pots of boiling water.

We were advised to boil them for 20 minutes.  After the first few pots of whole lobster, I decided to throw take the tails from the rest of them and feed the remainders to the fish living under our boat.  We knew there were plenty of hungry fish down there because Roy was catching them and releasing since the Jacks are not pelagic fish, they feed on reef fish, and could possibly carry ciguatera.  So while they are a fun fish to catch because they are rather big and good fighters, they aren’t something we want to eat.

After all that swimming, fishing, and cooking, it’s time for eating.

The one thought I had over and over while leaving Jolly Harbor is, we didn’t have enough time.  Up until now I was pretty much done with the previous islands.  There were inland jungle trips that we missed because of Topaz, the kids and the expense of the guided tour.  But Antigua had beaches and islands that I would have loved to swim around and kayak along.

Oh, well, maybe something up ahead will make me forget what I missed.  I mean, look at this water.  An artist’s color pallet couldn’t do it justice.  The colors change when a cloud passes over and it’s shallow sandy bottom produces little upwellings of sand on the surface.

The 30 mile sail north to Barbuda was perfect.  Fifteen knots of wind, zero seas, and Makai sailing along with 6-7 knots over the ground.

We anchored at the North West side of the island along a strip of sand and mangroves that separates the Caribbean Sea from Codrington Lagoon.  This lagoon is the home of a frigate bird sanctuary that rivals those in the Galapagos.

We’ve been spending our days wandering up and down this 12 miles of deserted beach.  When the water washed back off the shore, it exposes pink coral sand.

We wanted to say HI to Erica, a fellow Disney friend who lives in Utah!

One day at bible study, we were studying Gods love for us.  I asked, “How do we know He loves us?”  The answer given compared the love given to a child.  When we love a child, we do things that makes them happy.  Grandma, makes them cookies, Grandpa takes them fishing, Mommy buys them t-shirts in their favorite color, and Daddy reads books.  God shows us his love by giving us the humming bird that swoops around on sweet flowers, towering  red rocky HooDoos in the desert, and God is showing me his love with this great family, great boat, and the pink beach in Barbuda!
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I’ve taken numerous pictures here where the subject is simply COLOR!

Even boat work is pleasurable when I can look out at the water.

The beach here is pretty steep with quite a shore break.  The dinghy wouldn’t be happy about landing on this beach and we wouldn’t be happy about dragging it up away from the surf, so we’ve opted to use the kayak.  Topaz  has to swim to shore and it takes two trips for the rest of us to get in.  We could all swim, but it’s pretty uncomfortable to spend the day with crusty salt on your face and hair.

Topaz is having a blast running free and diving in the surf.  We walked over a mile in each direction and never came across another person.  There is a hotel on the beach in front of us, The Lighthouse Bay Resort.  The place doesn’t look like much to speak of, but after further research, it’s way out of our league. There is a helicopter pad in the back,  9 rooms at over $1000 per night, and a friend emailed Eric warning him about having a beer at the beach bar, their bill was $20 US each.  So far we’ve only seen one couple at the hotel, I’m sure they’re having a peaceful time.

We’re having a strange south wind right now, the next two days are supposed to be light winds barely reaching 10 kts, so we’ll wait for a bit more wind on Tuesday night and do an overnight sail to St. Martin.