Grenada - and home

Wednesday 27th May 2009, 7,171 miles, day 312,. 12° 01’.42 N, 061° 40’.69 W. St David’s Bay, Grenada


Here we are in the pretty little harbour of St David’s, in Grenada. It is the place where we shall leave Tomia, and the blog, for the summer, so our appreciation of the place is tinged with sadness. Except that of course the whole reason for coming home is to see you, which we are so looking forward to, along with chatting on the phone in a hot, deep bath (Celia) and reading the sports pages every day (Anthony)

Tomia has been hauled out, and we are living precariously (or so it seems, compared to the stability of the friendly water) balanced on six struts, a long way above the ground. We have shore power, so for the first time in almost a year, can turn on lights and computers and fans with abandon. But we have swapped this convenience for having to lower the washing-up down to ground level in a bucket, and the loos and showers being 200 yards away … and at the bottom of a rather long ladder – certainly too long to negotiate in comfort at 3 in the morning.

Grenada for the minute exists for us only as a boatyard, a bar on the beach to have a cold beer in at lunch time, and a palm-fringed bay. A bit like Antigua, we are exploiting it for its boating facilities, rather than exploring it properly. At first glance, though, it seems very pleasant and laid back, although we have only ventured out of the yard for long enough to track down a few chicken thighs, and visit Rhoda’s Ice Cream Parlour and Refreshment Centre for some Hurricane flavour ice-cream.

The only inhospitable creatures on the island appear to be the sand flies – or “No See ‘Ums” as they are known locally. Tiny little critters with sharp teeth and a bite that itches for days. We walk around in a cloud of “Off” the local insect repellent, but it only seems to last for four hours or so, so we wake slapping and scratching in the middle of the night. The little devils are far too fast and small to even have the pleasure of swatting them.

We’ve had a week of laying up and readying Tomia against any strong winds that arrive. Grenada is at the south of the hurricane belt, but Hurricane Ivan came through five years ago, so we can’t assume the island will be spared – and anyway, in the Caribbean summer, you can get plenty strong winds without it actually getting up to hurricane force. She is prepared as best we can, and now we just hope for the best.

Back to England now, to see as many of you as possible.


This ends the Voyage of Tomia – Part One

Martinique

Monday 11th May 2009, day 296, 6,951 miles. 14° 35’.98 N, 061° 04’.15 W. Mouillage des Flamands, Fort de France, Martinique.

We finally disentangled ourselves from Antigua, with engine and generator running, the diesel tank thoroughly cleaned, (and containing nothing but diesel), sails mended, and set off south for Grenada, to lay Tomia up for the summer. A day and a half’s sailing took us half way, to Martinique, which we had left out on the journey north, due to the whole island being on strike.

Two months later, and the capital, Fort de France, is in full metropolitan swing. It is a proper town – with a few high-rise flats on the outskirts, and traffic jams, rush hour, no right turn, “Défense de stationner”, traffic lights, junctions, sign posts, parking meters, bollards to stop you parking on the pavements, zebra crossings … life on a boat is really much simpler.

It also has easy access to three of life’s great pleasures, which we have been denied for some time: baguette, butter and brie. (And a bit of Bordeaux too, to round things off.) There are several markets, the one by the dock labelled “Marché Touristique”, which is probably warning enough, so we should not be too surprised at finding ourselves surrounded by people wanting to sell us all sorts of souvenirs, from place mats to shell necklaces. I had a spirited conversation with one of the vendors, a lively and optimistic chap, who worked hard at convincing me that my two small nephews would be delighted to be kitted out in sets of matching shorts and shirts, made of a pink, orange and turquoise tartan.

Oh heavens, how it rains here! And how consistently. Every night, we go to sleep with the hatch open to let a bit of breeze in, every morning at around 3 am we are woken by rain falling on our faces – a mad scramble around ensues, to get everything closed down and waterproof – and stifling. Then after half an hour of uneasy dozing, the heat wakes us, and we open up again, knowing there will almost certainly be a repeat performance at around six.

We caught a bus up to St Pierre on the west coast, to see the site of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée, in 1902. It killed 30,000 people, and destroyed the town, in about five minutes. There is an excellent vulcanology museum, in a futuristic earthquake-proof building, with films and exhibitions and interactive displays, and a children’s discovery zone, where we played happily, building models, and watching them fall to the earth in simulated earthquakes. For the minute, what we don’t know about the difference between Plinian and Pyroclastic explosions isn’t worth knowing.

The only other notable event in Martinique was discovering that we had uninvited guests in both the chick peas and the oat meal. That’s a morning gone, cleaning out all the cupboards, boiling the boxes, checking everything else for possible infestation.

Antigua

Thursday 7th May 2009, day 292, 6,797 miles. 17° 00’.87 N, 061° 46’.48 W. Falmouth Harbour, Antigua

Today could be described as trying.

About five days ago, the generator started to give problems: the fuel lift pump was working too fast, and the engine began to hunt after a few minutes’ running. Hmm. Filters checked, fuel-lines checked, no obvious dirt, leaks or airlocks, oil both plentiful and clean. A bank holiday weekend intervened before we could get an engineer to come and look at it. So we used the time to go off to Green Island, in Nonsuch Bay on the east side of Antigua, and had a lovely two days relaxing, reading and snorkelling. Except that Tomia’s engine (which, is apart from anything else, our back up means of producing power) also started to act up. Different symptoms: it didn’t want to start, and ran very ragged. Hmm. Filters checked, fuel-lines checked, no obvious dirt, leaks or airlocks, oil both plentiful and clean.

So yesterday we got back to Antigua, got an engineer on board. Hmm. Filters checked, fuel-lines checked, no obvious dirt, leaks or airlocks, oil both plentiful and clean. He was an expensive echo. Our friend Pete came for a beer, helped us discount some more possibilities. Another friend, Alex, came, and started methodically to work back through the engine. We changed a filter, Anthony went to get some diesel from the cans to prime it – and it was petrol. The girl in the filling station had sold us 40 litres of petrol rather than the requested diesel. No wonder the engines were unhappy. If there is a silver lining, it is that the tank was only half full, so we “only” had to throw away 200 litres of contaminated diesel … Like I said, a trying day.

Apart from that, we’ve had a busy time here since the last post. I got a position on a fast racing boat, Lost Horizon, a J122, for the first three days of Antigua Week (Anthony’s back wasn’t up to it, having been hauling on an anchor chain, but that is a whole other story) and we got three firsts (and three thirds overall in the racing division). It was fascinating being on such a competitive, tight boat – everybody with their own task, absolutely no requirement for initiative, or that constant looking around to check that all is well on one’s own boat, and NO TALKING on the rail! There were 11 of us on board a 40ft boat, so it was a free fight when it came to changing sides on the tacks.

The round the island race, at 50 miles, was a long hard day, surviving like a camel on an enormous breakfast, and one chocolate biscuit. We had some wonderful reaching at almost 12 knots, all of us at the front continually soaked with the wash thrown up at the bow, drying off again, soaked again. I still can’t get over the pleasure of sailing in warm waters, where getting drenched just doesn’t matter.

Then on the fourth day I didn’t go out (it didn’t seem fair to leave Anthony behind again, and his back still wasn’t up to it) and a series of things went wrong, culminating in the boom breaking, a tragedy for all concerned. Apparently a known weakness with the newer Js – the owner had an email from the manufacturer saying “we knew it would happen sooner or later” ! Really a great shame after all the hard work put in by so many.

We got invited one evening of Race Week to join in with one of Antigua’s traditions – the Royal Naval Tot Club. A hardened bunch they are. The daily “meetings” start off with a reading of the key events of British naval history from that day (mainly victories, of course), then there is one of seven daily toasts (with “Our wives and girlfriends, may they never meet” being very popular) followed by “The Queen, God bless her” and down goes a substantial quantity of rum, in one. [We later found out that the chap’s tot is a whole quarter of a pint. I got away quite lightly at half that.] The tot doesn’t seem too bad at first, but after about 10 minutes, life gets most cheerful, at twenty minutes, we are swinging from the chandeliers, and after thirty, finding it hysterically funny just how carefully we shall have to concentrate when walking back to the boat. Very wobbly, these pontoons!

The club was founded by an ex Chief Petty Officer, small, stocky, twinkly, heavily bearded, an irrefutable authority on all things related to rum, the Navy and Antigua. Members fly a white ensign as a burgee, so the whole is an engaging mixture of the official and the anarchic.

After our Oyster Regatta, and then Barbuda, and then Race Week, we had a few days recovering, waited for some repairs to the spinnaker and cruising chute snuffers, and were just about to set off for Montserrat when the generator started playing up, which brings us back to the start of the blog.

The diesel has been drained and refilled, the engine has been put back together again and bled, and is now humming like a sewing machine. Then the same thing has to happen to the generator, and we’ll spend the rest of the day vittling and scrubbing, then set off. Antigua is as far north as we’re going to get this season; now we’re about to start the last leg of this trip, and head south to Martinique and then Grenada, to lay Tomia up for the summer.

Antigua and Barbuda

A guest blogger, Max Vines, condenses our first two weeks in Antigua and Barbuda


Jeremy and Max with the Masons and Tomia in Antigua

We flew into Antigua from Gatwick on Easter Saturday
to be met by Celia and Anthony at Falmouth Harbour for our fortnight of play

Through Customs we brought some marmite, and Easter eggs to supply
together with The Times, Spectator and Private Eye

Once on board Tomia we were shown the ropes
that we would make decent crew they clearly had high hopes

Our first week was to be filled with the Oyster Regatta
with strong winds forcast we wished we were fitter and fatter

Our first task was to scrub Tomia’s bottom
and with every barnacle we all shrieked Gottam!

From Harbours Falmouth to English we then had to move to meet
the rest of the illustrious Oyster fleet

For the Concord d’Elegance Tomia we all had to prepare
scrubbing, rubbing and polishing we took supreme care

We were placed on the pontoon right at the end of the line
being the smallest and oldest we were maybe thought not to be so fine

There were gleaming Oysters 56’s and 82’s
along the dockside with their equally matching crews

The event was opened with the Oyster Reception and Skippers briefing
rum punch and the Tot Club it was a fun filled greeting

Tuesday at ten saw us on the line for the start of race one
20 knots and long beating legs but where did we come?

And so the racing went on all week
ending each day on a stunning different beach

The bays were beautiful, the hotels were smart
as we enjoying our dining before the band was due to start

Racing ended on Saturday at St James’ Club
for dinner, prize giving and friendly hubbub


Farewells were made and see you next year
our 3rd place in class filled us with good cheer

On Sunday Antigua Classic Week had started
so we went out to watch the racing before we departed

J’s Valsheda and Ranger looked quite splendid as they gracefully tacked
having first left their genoa’s well abacked

Eleonora the most elegant schooner racing like a boss
when Oh Dear her mainsail ripped right across

We then set sail on our voyage to Barbuda
passed Jolly Harbour, fishing line out, we hooked a barracuda

On our island paradise we stayed for 3 days
and to pass the time we found many ways

Snorkling, pink sand and sunsets and we enjoyed
and various culinary techniques we employed

Celia and Anthony made wonderful hosts
exploring as we did Antigua’s coasts

So we’d like to say a hearty thank you one and all
for making our stay with you such a ball.

Guadeloupe

Tuesday 7th April 2009, day 262. 17° 00’.89 N, 061° 46’.47 W. Falmouth Harbour, Antigua

We had another cracking sail coming up here: 40 miles in just over six hours, with the wind on the beam the whole way, at a nice steady 15 – 20 knots. The sea was slight, and we romped along with all three sails up. Tomia was delighted not to have to carry around her layer of weed, poor thing, it was like being asked to run a marathon in a sodden winter overcoat. No fish were caught on the way, though – they couldn’t swim fast enough to keep up with the lure!

Now, on the subject of fish, has anybody read Moby Dick? We all know it’s the story of Captain Ahab and the great white whale, that his boat is called the Pequod, that the book begins “Call me Ishmael”. But has anybody read the book itself – or more to the point, finished it? Because it is causing me great trouble, and Melville’s orotund, fleshy sentences, inability to get to the point, acres of heavy-handed moralising, or exhaustive catalogue of each mention of sperm whales in histories dating as far back as Pliny, are making me almost scream with boredom and frustration – and, just over half way through, there are still a further 323 close-typed pages to come. Please tell me that it gets better.

We stopped at Deshaies, on the north western corner of Guadeloupe, to pick up the new sail, and explore the island a bit. Deshaies is another simple, pretty town, perhaps Woodbridge to Bourg des Saintes’ Southwold. It boasts an excellent boulangerie (I’m not sure that life holds many greater pleasures than rowing ashore first thing in the morning to bring back fresh baguettes and pains aux raisins), a charming if steep Giverney-styled bridge to cross the little inlet, and a post office (closed due to yet another strike). Vive la France!

As a treat, and because the buses, although large, properly regulated and clean, don’t run very often, we hired a scruffy old car, and did the circuit of the island, on the look-out for a spot of culture. The Maison du Bois was closed as was the Caféière Beauséjour, but hurray the Maison du Cacao was open. The deal is that you don’t get to the tasting session without doing the tour, so we bought our tickets and spent a respectable amount of time walking round a small tropical garden, learning various interesting, but quickly forgotten facts about the different types of cocoa trees, the amount of moisture they need, the quantity of cocoa that can be expected per hectare, the place of cocoa in the global economy, associated Mayan legends … before agreeing enough was enough, and making for the hard stuff.

We went through the whole range: raw cocoa beans, roasted beans, cocoa paste, cocoa butter (disgusting), drinking chocolate, 70% chocolate, 80% chocolate, chocolate made to an old Guadeloupian recipe, hot chocolate as it would have been drunk in the court of Louis XIV, rum infused with chocolate … the visitors stood around like little nestlings, mouths open, waiting for the lovely guide to spoon us another mouthful of nectar.

Finally tearing ourselves away, laden down with souvenirs (not all for us), we carried on, taking the cross-island road, up and through the forest, coming down onto the east coast for lunch, and then back round the bottom of the island.

ps sorry there hasn't been a blog for a while, we have been busy sailing! More soon

Les Saintes

Saturday 4th April, day 259. 15° 52’.17 N, 061° 35’.06 W. Bourg des Saintes, Terre de Haut, Les Saintes, Guadeloupe


Apart from a supermarket and a sail-maker, Basse-Terre hasn’t got much to recommend it, so we quickly moved on to Terre de Haut, the largest island (but still tiny) in Les Saintes, a little group of islands off Guadeloupe. The island lives on tourism: the main street is a collection of brightly coloured weather-boarded shops and restaurants, all with white-painted wooden fretwork round the eves. The whole place comes to life in the morning when the ferries come in, disgorging their visitors from the “mainland” who stroll around the shops, disappear into restaurants, hire scooters or are swept up by taxis, and scatter round the island. Mid afternoon, they all come back or are ejected from the restaurants, do another sweep through the shops for hand-painted T shirts and €70 bikinis, and vanish.

The whole is brightly coloured, neat, colourful, totally aimed at tourists – think Southwold with sunshine and added garlic. The inhabitants are nearly all of French stock – there were no slaves imported onto these islands, as the lack of rain meant no agriculture – so we have chic, elegance and a certain formality, to take the place of the noisy cheerful exuberance of the islands with a stronger African heritage.

We spent a day exploring on foot, and walked up to Fort Napoleon to admire the impartiality of the naval historian who had devoted so much time to making innumerable scale models of the progress of a battle which his side lost. Among the heroes of the battle was the Chevalier de Soissons, who had had a spectacular naval career, improving the accuracy of sextants, bettering the lot of the average seaman, rising quickly through the ranks … “He only received one set-back in his entire career, when his head was blown off during the Battle of Les Saintes” the exhibition tells us.

From there we went on to a little beach, and swam, with some pale blue geckos keeping a beady eye on our belongings.

I wish I were a gecko on a tree-trunk by the sea
With a frill around my neck, oh, what a splendid sight I’d be.
I’d catch butterflies for breakfast and mosquitoes for my tea
Just a happy turquoise gecko on my tree-trunk by the sea.

The rest of our three days in Les Saintes was spent starting to clean up Tomia, in preparation for the Oyster Regatta in Antigua. European anti-fouling doesn’t quite seem up to local wildlife, and the poor girl has developed quite a thick coating of weed and crystalline white growths.

So we had a happy few hours harassing barnacles (don’t tell the RSPCA), armed with our WMDs (Weapons of Mollusc Destruction i.e. a polyfilla knife for Anthony and the kitchen spatula for me). The thrill of the chase is such that after a while we forget about the tons of water and boat above us as we try to lever them off (or should that be winkle them off?) their footholds. Underneath the keel, where the anti-fouling never reaches, was a veritable octopus’s garden, with beautiful fronded ferns waving gently among the barnacles – rather peaceful, like an upside down Japanese Zen garden. All gone now!

The weed and growth comes off in a great cloud of dust and gunk, which makes the local fish very happy. We are swimming in a great cloud of little silver ones; they keep out of the way of the flippers when we thrash our way downwards, but otherwise seem very unbothered, happy to mop up the free fish food.

Marie Galante

Tuesday 31st March, day 255. 15° 58’.98 N, 061° 43’.11 W. Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe

Before Powerpoint, before even overhead projectors, there were slide shows. The white tray was painstakingly loaded with upside down slides, on the command “Next” a button was pushed to advance the cassette, the room held its breath to see if the contraption would jam, and with a brief pause and an audible, grating grr-thwock, the next picture arrived. It feels like that here in Marie Galante, with the discontinuity between one scene and the next, in these islands off Guadeloupe, so firmly part of the Caribbean, so immutably part of France.

Slide one: In the Caribbean, in front of the fish market, a small covered area by the dock, where, in a welter of blood and flies, mahi-mahi and kingfish are gutted and sliced. grr-thwock: Turn round, and you’re in France, faced by the Hôtel de Ville, a Rachel Whitehead-like construction, with the ghost of a concrete building surrounded by plate glass panels, and shaded by a twenty foot high metal lattice, woven to look like bamboo. grr-thwock: Back in the Caribbean, in the market, choosing christophenes, pineapples, sweet potatoes, plantains, then grr-thwock: The boulangerie across the square is sending out wonderful smells of croissants and pains aux chocolat. grr-thwock: Still in France, we have dinner at Footy’s restaurant, slices of fresh baguette come in a wicker basket to accompany the delicious local pork chops, cheese is offered before pudding, French television is muttering in the background, grr-thwock: We go behind the bar to the nightclub and feel utterly, uselessly, unredeemably Western, faced with the sinuous undulations and dapper footwork of the locals.

The houses all have blue and white enamelled numbers, the road signs come from the same factory as all the other ones in mainland France; the road that leads from Grand Bourg (pop 1,000) to St-Louis (pop 750) is marked the N9, which in another life we know as the road between Montpellier and Béziers.

We set off on Saturday for the second town, St-Louis: there are proper buses with timetables – but because this is France, and the buses are state run, unlike the cheerful free-for-all of the other islands, the fonctionnaires tend to take Saturday afternoons off, so we got a lift with a farmer on the way there, and hitch hiked back.

Marie Galante is lovely and peaceful, but, to be honest, it is at the very end of the road to nowhere. Stay there too long, and you would become rooted in the sand, swaying gently in the breeze like a palm tree on the beach. So we moved on to Basse-Terre, on the main island of Guadeloupe, to be measured for a new mainsail, the old one having reached the point of no return. This definitely felt like France – everything closed up, behind graffiti’d roll-down shutters.

We went to the local supermarket to stock up. This meant getting into the dinghy, bouncing up the coast for a mile and a half, scrambling up onto the remains of a partially collapsed dock, more scrambling over rocks to get out of the port, and picking our way through a rather manky underpass. The supermarket appeared, just across the road. “Oh that’s convenient” says Anthony, and can’t understand why I collapse laughing.

Because there is (yet another) strike here, the shelves were a bit bare, but we found frozen smoked salmon, some lovely blue brie, and the last two pots of crème fraîche, all of which we haven’t seen for many months, so the trip was worthwhile (probably).