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Diane's DiarySeptember 11 Saturday- 3rd anniversary of the attack on the WTC and Pentagon Hard to believe 3 years has gone by from that eventful day. It seems so long ago and yet so fresh in all of our minds. I am actually surprised the US has not experienced another terrorist incident since then, after all the horrible things we keep hearing about the Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations throughout the world. I hope we never do but I don't like what I see happening in the world. I don't think we'll ever "get the guys who did this". All of our lives in the entire world will never be the same anymore. I really feel bad for all of those who lost someone on that fateful day. We will leave late this afternoon, as it's 80 miles to Tortuga so we need to do an overnight sail. Tortuga is a low lying island with lots of reefs around so it's better to approach in the daytime. We prepared this am and Mima came over for about an hour, we had lunch and finished preparing. I tried to lie down for an hour or so in the pm, but didn't sleep. I knew it would be a long night and I had already started to take the Sturgeron, which was making me sleepy. Mima came over at 3pm to say goodbye and we really felt bad, as we don't know when or if we will ever see them again. We hope so though! We had really been looking forward to spending some time with them in the out islands also. They stayed until 4pm when we left. I know I felt really badly about saying goodbye. Anyway, the anchor was in good - very good to know as we had ridden out a hurricane here! It took Larry a while using the salt-water washdown pump to get all the mud off of it. We left out of Laguna Grande anchorage with the mainsail up around 4:45pm. We had to motor to charge the battery and fill the water tanks. We were down to less than 1/4 tank of water in the port side and have 3/4 in the starboard with 11 gallons in 2 jerry jugs. Anyway, the winds were supposed to be SE 10-15 but what we got were SW winds almost nonexistent and 1-2 foot waves. Looks like we will have to run the engine all night at this rate as we'll never get there under sail alone during daylight. The wind instrument is no longer working - this really helps me tell the direction of the wind as I am bringing the boat into the wind to raise the mainsail. We have another one on top of the mast but I have to crane my neck to see it. If we had known it wasn't working, we would have cranked Larry to the top of the mast when we had Tom and Steph to help. We also had a problem with the shackle on the mainsail as it opened up during the passage so I had to call Larry up from his rest. I increased my watch to give him an extra half hour sleep though. Anyway, around 6am, when it wasn't fully light out yet, I got spooked by a freighter- it was just getting light and I couldn't determine his course because I was tired. I called Larry and he was very annoyed I woke him up and said I should have handled it myself. If I had not been so tired at this point, I would have, but just couldn't. We arrived at Playa Caldera before 8am but saw that the anchorage was rolly from the other boats there already. We had been their once before when it rolls and it isn't a great experience. So, we decided to go down to Cayo Herradura at the west end of the island. The wind had picked up at this time and we sailed under the main only. It was a beautiful sail. However, the wind now switched to the S-SW as we made our approach. This was not good as the anchorage was not comfortable as it's exposed from this direction. We were not happy but there really was no other place to go. We could have gone behind the reef at Palanquinos, however, we could not have left at 6pm for Los Roques as we would not have been able to see the reef at this time of the night. Anyway, we were safely anchored around 10:30am. We put the canvas up, flaked the main and put the cover on; Larry raised the dinghy (so we can open the forward hatch) opened the hatches, etc. We had a light lunch and I tried to sleep on the settee. I was exhausted. However, the wind was really blowing and the high voltage alarm went off which woke me up. We ran the watermaker again for 2 hours as the tank wasn't filled and we had to either run appliances or shut off the wind generator as we had too much electric. Since we needed water, it was a no brainer. We try to keep the tanks as full as possible as we don't know when we'll have enough electric to run the watermaker. Larry does not like to run the engine to charge the battery unless we really have too. We have to run the water maker at least an hour every few days to keep it working properly so it's good when we get a lot of wind and only need to run it an hour or two every few days. Remember, we are only getting around 4 gallons/hour - less than half what the manufacturer said it would, so this isn't much. Anyway, there are only 4 other cruising boats here plus 2 local powerboats. In the late pm, I made a pot of spaghetti sauce and we had ravioli. I had taken them out of their original bags as the bags took up to much room but 2 bags got moldy and had to be tossed out - oh well. It's too windy to go swimming since the boat is bucking around so much and we don't want to take the dinghy down. Anyway, we had run the watermaker on passage from 5-9, 11-12, and 2-4 and it still wasn't full- only about 3/4. We were both exhausted so had an early dinner. We went to sleep at 7:45! September 13 Monday At 11pm last night, we waked with a start with winds gusting up to 40knots. We quickly jumped out of bed to make sure the boat was secure and we weren't dragging. I looked at the other boats in the anchorage as well as the lighthouse to determine our position to see if we were dragging. Thankfully, we weren't but the wind howled for about a half hour. We had lightning off the north coast of venezuela and I'm sure this was just a squall. Lucky we weren't caught out in it! Anyway, the wind is back from the S-SE again so the boat is like a rocking horse. It woke me up after 6am and I couldn't get back to sleep. Larry said we should stay one more day to get rested so I guess we will. I would have gone tonight as we can't get off the boat and it's not that comfortable. But we are both still tired from the passage so I guess it's better to wait just another day. We listened to the BBC and things sound awful in Grenada - I'm so glad we weren't there. There were around 350 boats there and most have some damage. Poor Mo - we were upset to hear her boat was destroyed- she lived on it for 20 years so this must be absolutely devastating for her. Anyway, I spent the morning working on my logs. I recapped the Ivan weather reports I wrote down while we were experiencing them so you could all know some of what we felt during that time. We'll spend a quiet day just reading and relaxing. We'll leave tomorrow for Los Roques. September 14 Tuesday The wind is still blowing from the S-SE-SW so we are not very comfortable in this anchorage. It's not even safe to get off the boat or swim off the boat as we are bucking around too much. We spent a quiet day reading and writing. I made lomito, salad and leftover green beans for dinner. The wind calmed down some over night and did switch back to the east again late in the PM. September 15 Wednesday The wind switched back to the S - SE- SW again so we are not very happy campers. It increased to about 15 steady with gusts up to 25 knots - we had to feather the wind generator as it as just freewheeling from too much wind. We are still planning on leaving around 6:30pm but will listen to the 4:30pm weather on the SSB. There is a TS at 17 north that may be affecting some of our weather down here. But it's still probably from Ivan - think he upset all the weather patterns down here. I usually like Tortuga but I am not enjoying it at all this time as the wind is just making the anchorage very uncomfortable. I wish we could get off the boat and take a long walk on the beach! Anyway, we plan on leaving tonight for Los Roques. We'll probably just have the jib up as even though it's 85 miles, we have a strong current with us. I hope we have a nice easy sail! I finished reading the book "Time On Ice" about a sailboat wintering over in Antarctica - it was just OK. Too preachy about the environment and everything was OK all the time! The wind continued to blow all day long from the S-SE so I was glad to get out of there. The water was crystal blue so I was sorry to leave it but it was too rolly to get in the water or launch the dinghy. We left the anchorage with the sails up at 6:20pm. We wanted to sail with the jib only as we didn't want to sail "too fast". Instead the wind was from the SE right on our asses and it wouldn't have been good with the main up anyway as even with the preventer, we would have had to watch for a gybe. So instead, we started to sail at 3 knots. Normally, this would be OK with me but we had 85 miles to go and at that speed, we wouldn't have gotten there till after dark. No good with reefs all around- plus, we need to arrive before 2pm at the latest so we could clearly see the reefs. The ideal arrival time is between 9-1am as that's when the sun is the best to read the reefs. Anyway, with just the jib out, the boat was really rocking and rolling. So, we started the engine and motored till 12am when the wind came up. Then we were sailing about 4.7 knots but the boat was really rocking and rolling since we were going dead downwind. We sailed until 9:45am when the wind died so we were only doing about 3 knots again and the boat was rolling even more now. So, even though we only had a few hours left, we were both tired so decided to put the engine on. We arrived at the pass around 11:30am just as a big powerboat came in before us and one came in on our stern. We had the anchor down at 12:30 behind the first little island. We were both tired from the long trip and all that rocking. We put up the canvas, raised the dinghy so we could open the forward hatch and had lunch. After lunch, I lay down to sleep and fell asleep right away. Larry just read his book. I woke up around 4pm and it was extremely hot out with zero wind. I took a quick swim near sunset. We have lots of growth on the waterline and need to clean it off. We had lots of mosquitoes toward sunset since we had no wind. But then later that night, the wind picked up again. I couldn't get back to sleep. Larry set the GPS alarm so if the boat moved it would go off. Why did we need the alarm? Well, it was so dark outside, there was only 1 other sailboat and he wasn't nearby, the light on the lighthouse wasn't working and there was no moon so it was too dark to tell if we were dragging without any references. Well, the alarm definitely works as it went off about 11pm. I wasn't really sleeping so heard it immediately. I woke Larry up and we both jumped up. It turns out the wind had just shifted more to the East so we "moved" and the alarm went off - it scared the shit out of us but glad to know it works! I was too tired to cook much so we had hot dogs and salad for dinner. The salad doesn't last too long out here so I had to use it up. We were in bed by 9:30pm. September 16 Thursday I had coke with dinner last night and I need to remember not to have caffeine after 4pm as it keeps me awake at night. We were up at 7 am but I got a terrible night's sleep. We listened to the various nets - another hurricane now but it's up near the VI! Also, another TW near 11.5N but at 33W that has the potential to develop into a hurricane. So, we need to watch out for this one also! Anyway, we left the anchorage at 9:45am and with the jib up only, sailed at about 5.5 knots as we reached Francisquis Cay around 12:15pm. We had a beautiful sail up here except the water is more green color now - not as blue as it had been. BTW, we have seen no damage from the hurricane up here even though we found out it passed only about 40 miles north of here. We had lunch and then had lots of chores to do. Since it was blowing so hard, we decided to fill the starboard water tanks with the jerry jugs so this tank would be full. Since we never know how long we are going to have lots of wind, we try to keep the tanks as full as possible. We had so much wind that after filling the tanks, I did a load of wash. Better to keep up with the laundry when we have lots of water! Larry put all 4 diesel jerry jugs into the tank - it's almost full now so looks like we'll only need to get fill them up. We also launched the dinghy. By this time, we were both exhausted and didn't want to do much. Thankfully, I had lomito already marinating and with a salad, we had this for dinner. We were so tired I didn't even feel like swimming or going to shore so we just had a drink and relaxed. |