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Diane's DiaryNovember 1, Saturday We had a very bad night last night with another violent thunderstorm. There was lots of lightning and wind gusting to about 20-25 knots. The wind lasted for about an hour but there was no rain. The wind switched from the East to SE so the boat was rolling a lot and we had a lot of fetch. It was not very comfortable! We decided to go to another small island nearby via dinghy - Long Island. It was to rough out to go snorkeling so this was a nice alternative. We left around 10:30 and it took about 20 minutes to dinghy over there. Due to the rough conditions, we could not go fast with the dinghy. Anyway, it was a bigger island than the one we are anchored in front of and we enjoyed walking around it. Still, walking the entire perimeter of the island only took less than 1 hour. We saw some fisherman and told them to come over to us if they caught anything. Anyway, the only really good anchoring spot is directly in front of where the fishermen have their shack on the beach. All the other spots have a lot of coral around so anchoring would be difficult. There was a lot of garbage on the windward side of the island, which was very sad to see. Anyway, later the fisherman came to Destiny and brought us some fish. We got 3 slipper lobsters, parrotfish and mutton snapper for 5 cans of coke. I also just gave them a beef and noodles can since Larry doesn't like it very much. They did put a small gouge in the boat with their boat though so we weren't too happy about that. Next time we need to get the fenders out before we let them come alongside. Anyway, we never had a slipper lobster before and it was excellent! Tasted like a Maine lobster but is really ugly looking. We are not sure we will eat the parrotfish as they are said to have ciguatera poisoning so we may just throw it out. Anyway, we thought the trade for 5 cans of coke was well worth it! November 2 Sunday We were woken up at 5:30am with some lightning, thunder and a few drops of rain. Within minutes we had a severe wind reversal storm with the wind coming due west. The wind got up to 45 knots with 6-foot seas coming into the anchorage. Our bow kept plunging under water so it was very scary. We should have gotten the anchor up and gotten out of the anchorage immediately but we didn't know how bad it was going to be. Visibility was zero and we couldn't even see Saki Saki island right near us. The boat was on a lee shore and we were afraid the anchor would drag and we would be on the reef within minutes. I suggested to Larry that maybe we should turn the engine on so we did. This way at least if we started to drag we could move out with the engine already up and running. The lightening and thunder were booming directly over head. I thought we would be hit by lightning for sure. It was the scariest storm I can remember other than our trip to Bermuda. I really thought our anchor was not going to hold but fortunately it did. The other boat HonaLee managed to get out of the anchorage before the bad seas started. We lost a whole tank of water when Larry's toolboxes came crashing out of the shelves in the forward head and opened up the faucet. Luckily, the water all went in the drain but it really hurt losing all that fresh water and I don't think we can recover this so quickly. We are not getting enough wind to run the water maker as much as we would like. The waves were so severe during the storm they were crashing over the stern into the cockpit! We both stayed in the cockpit watching the storm in case we needed to leave immediately. We were both soaked from all that rain and I started shivering. Another boat at Round Island almost went aground. Thankfully, we had been tying 2 lines on the dinghy every night just from protection in case 1 of the lines broke. The really bad winds lasted about 45 minutes but the seas stayed high until around 11am. The rain lasted about 4 hours. It's too bad we couldn't have collected any of that rainwater! The boat was rolling about 35 degrees from the short steep seas coming into the anchorage. I was not a happy camper! When HonaLee came back into the anchorage he dinghied over to us. He was a single handler and we had called him on the VHF and then SSB. I think he was glad we were concerned about him even though we didn't even know him. We were all keyed up and our nerves frazzled so I decided we all needed a drink, so we had several drinks (on an empty stomach) at 11am! After Allan left, I tried to lie down for a while but just couldn't sleep since I was all keyed up. Allan invited us to come over and fill our jerry jugs in the PM so we did. He has plenty of water as he has a generator and makes 20 gallons of water an hour. We wound up having a few beers and than some rum. We hadn't had much to eat all day so it wasn't good to be drinking on an empty stomach. We got back to the boat around 6pm and I made my famous chicken italiano that Larry loves so much. This was the first good meal we had all day! We went to bed at 8:30am but got a bad night's sleep - I had a headache and stomach ache. Think it was from all that booze. Anyway, hope we don't go through any more of these wind reversal storms- it was too scary! November 3 Monday I was sick the entire day- I think it was a hangover from yesterday. We didn't have that many drinks but we were drinking on an empty stomach, which definitely did not help things. Anyway, I had a headache and stomachache the entire day. It was cloudy and overcast with zero wind the entire day with some on again, off again rain. Certainly not a good day! I made some bread but generally we just took it easy and didn't do much. November 4 Tuesday We had very bad thunder, lightening and rainstorms the entire night. We were up and down all night with the storms watching to see if we were OK so we didn't get a good night's sleep. It was cloudy and overcast the entire day out. I did about an hours worth of logs this morning. We went snorkeling with HonaLee around 11:30am but the visibility was not that great as it was very cloudy. However, the coral was very good and it's too bad the water was not clearer. We are sure it is due to the light winds we have been having, as the water does not circulate well and algae blooms. Anyway, Allan has been very nice in giving us some water. We got about 35 gallons from him which filled the port tank about halfway. This was extremely nice of him as losing the whole tank of water really was drastic for us. Since we don't have much wind or sun we have to run the engine every day just to charge the batteries. So, we have to run the engine longer when we have the water maker on so we are grateful for the water. Allan invited us over to dinner tonight. I said I would bring some minestrone soup I made and bake my chocolate cake we both liked. I baked the cake in the PM and just relaxed the rest of the day. At 6pm we went over to Allan's for dinner. He had smoked some fish, which was just fantastic. Plus, we had toasted bagels and real Philadelphia cream cheese. It was great! We haven't had bagels or any toast in quite a while so it was fantastic. We stayed until 9pm and had a great time. Both Allan and I had hangovers from the previous day and neither of us felt like drinking. Larry didn't drink either. Anyway, I got another conch while we were out snorkeling and Larry will clean it tomorrow when we go to the beach. November 5 Wednesday It was cloudy and overcast out the entire day. However, there was enough sun to read the reefs so we will go out onto the reef today. I did some logs between 9-10:30am. We stopped by HonaLee this morning to return a net bag we borrowed from him. We had put the conch in it overnight and hung it off the side of the boat so the conch would not die overnight. We definitely have to get one of these, as I would like to have a bag to put things in like shells or conch while I am snorkeling. Then we went to the beach to open up the conch and take a quick swim and shower. At 11:30am, Blind Date and Amphitrite came in from out on the reef and anchored right near us. Amphitrite's anchor was almost on top of us and we were a little annoyed at this as there was so much open space and he has to anchor on top of us. Since we were going to leave anyway we didn't say anything but we were very close to them when we started to pull up our anchor. We had a quick lunch of peanut butter and pulled up anchor around noon. We motored out to the reef and it took us about 1.5 hours. It was a beautiful spot as there were no other boats around for a few miles. It was very cloudy out so we decided to just skip snorkeling. So, we stayed on the boat and just read and relaxed. It's very nice to just have these very lazy days. I even lay down on the settee for a nap but didn't sleep at all. The wind is coming from the east at 10 knots but we still don't have enough wind to run all our equipment - hope it picks up! I almost finished reading a book by James Patterson called " First to Die" which I really enjoyed. We had a nice dinner of hamburger and carrots and had a nice evening of just sitting and reading. November 6 Thursday We finally got a bright blue sunny day. I finished my book this morning- First to Die and really enjoyed it. We were filling some jerry jugs with water from the water maker, as this is the only way we can fill the starboard tank. Anyway, I wasn't paying close attention to the water maker and it overflowed all over the floor. Not to bad though and at least it was fresh water. This jerry jug is blue so it's difficult to see when the jug is full. I'll have to be more careful in the future. We went snorkeling just right around the boat at 10:30. The snorkeling was not that great as the visibility was poor. I made conch steak for lunch and it was very good- way better than fritters. We went snorkeling again from our boat around 2:30. I got two conch- one of them was really big. I had to come back to the boat with it, as it was so big and hard to keep carrying. By that time I was tired so I decided to just stop for the day. Larry continued snorkeling. We are still having trouble opening the conch and it makes such a mess on the boat that Larry said from now on I could only get conch when we are near an island to go and open them. Anyway, after the conch was opened, I skinned them and by this time it was 4:30pm and time to get dinner started. I made a nice pasta dinner with pesto sauce; sun dried tomatoes and canned mushrooms. The wind picked up enough that we actually had enough electric and enough to see a movie! We watched "Pelican Brief" as we had not seen it in a while. I got a really bad night sleep as the wind picked up to around 20 knots and the lazy jacks were making a clattering sound slapping against the mast all night long. November 7 Friday Well, its cloudy and overcast out again and looks like it's going to rain out. Not a good day to go snorkeling. The wind blew about 15 knots all night long. We had so much electric we even had to turn the wind generator off. Now that's a first in a long time! I made some biscuits for breakfast, jello, pounded out the conch, macaroni salad, crab cakes and more biscuit mix. So I was cooking for quite a while this morning! I took a nap from 2-4 since I didn't get a good night sleep. We had a nice dinner of crab cakes and macaroni salad for dinner. I started another Vince Flynn book- Third Option- it's very good. November 8 Saturday I was up until almost 12 reading, as I just couldn't sleep. The wind increased to about 20 knots at 4am and than to 25 knots with a small amount of rain. It finally stopped and I went back to bed. But at 5am it started up again and woke me up, as we had to close all the hatches. The rain only lasted a short while and we finally got back to bed. We slept until 8am, which is very late for us. I finished my Vince Flynn book and really enjoyed it. We went snorkeling around 10:30 but came back when it looked like it was going to rain as we had all the hatches open. The snorkeling so far does not seem to be as good here as Barlovento. Anyway, it did rain again. I am definitely bored out here as the weather has not been good and we haven't been able to do much snorkeling. The wind gusted to around 25 knots for a while but than calmed down to zero overnight. We had a full lunar eclipse around 9pm with the moon being totally obliterated. It was a little cloudy but visibility was still good enough to see the eclipse. November 9 Sunday We finally got some blue skies again but we have almost zero wind. I made some bacon and eggs for breakfast. The Guardiacosta came by - their engine had been broken so had not stopped by any of the boats. They did speak some English although I conducted the entire conversation in Spanish. They were extremely polite. They did not ask to board the boat. They wanted to know how long we had been there and how long we were going to stay. They were more upset that the VE flag was in tatters. I explained it was from the big storm and also told them what happened to our US flag. They only stayed about 5 minutes and than left. We went snorkeling at 10:20 via dinghy to the reef in back of our boat. This reef was pretty good and the best we had seen yet in Sotavento. Visibility was a little murky though but not too bad. We went snorkeling again from 2:30-4pm but the light was not as good. I got 4 big conch and we will save them until we go back out to the little islands. During the evening the wind decreased till almost zero and at 4am we both we woken up when we had mosquitoes in the boat. Mosquitoes out here on the reef - boy did they have to travel far! The wind also shifted to the south so the boat has shifted 90 degrees and the reef is now on our stern. We both had a hard time sleeping between the mosquitoes and heat due to the lack of wind. |