Hello Everybody!

FYI The overwhelming choice of title for our day of drifting serenely backward was “ETA never”, with a vote coming from as far away as Germany!

To continue the saga of getting home with no engine, let me say we had good luck. We did indeed get the predicted SW breeze overnight into Tuesday, 15 knots increasing to 20 and beyond. There was fog, but only 3 hours. Leo got to make a security call and Ruleo learned to watch for high flyers (lobster pots with radar reflectors on their buoys–which scratch the heck out of the hull if you hit one) on the radar. By daylight we had 25 knots of breeze from the SW, off our quarter, which is a terrific ride. That was all good luck. As we hurtled toward Jamestown the off watch crew was madly packing bags, stripping beds and filling laundry bags. We had a quick lunch of whatever leftovers were available as we entered Narragansett Bay. Just in time to jibe 3 times on the way to our mooring.

Fortunately the marina crew had put a pick-up wand on the mooring line for us and could direct us to the appropriate buoy (it’s been half a year, after all). They also stood by near the mooring to help if we needed it. More good luck (or was it skill): we didn’t need help. The wind had picked up (as Herb had predicted) to probably 25 knots–I don’t think anyone looked–as we approached the mooring. It looked as if we’d come up short, but with a full crew aboard they simply rolled out the staysail for a little speed, rolled it up again, and we coasted right up to the mooring. Meanwhile Brian & I were doing the “pickup dance” on the bow: get the wand, no use the boathook, no the wand…..you get the picture. In the end Brian grabbed the wand with one mooring line and got it onto the cleat! Success on the first try. More good luck.

We got to the mooring about 12:30, then continued our clean up and pack up as we waited for Customs & Immigration. The officer arrived about 2:15 and we lucked out again: although it’s not normal procedure, she took the launch out to avalanche at the mooring instead of asking us to come in to the dock. More good luck.

We left the boat with the C&I officer and all our clothing and personal gear and lots of laundry. Jake, with Leo and Ruleo, took Dave over to Newport and Brian home to New Bedford, where they had a great time checking out Brian’s bachelor pad and his Harley!

More good luck came with the weather. About 5 pm a round of thunderstorms came through with lots of rain (free fresh water rinse, good luck), followed by calm. As in no wind, which continued through most of today until the fog rolled in about 3 pm. It is now so foggy we can’t see the dock across the street! Really good luck that we didn’t have to attempt to arrive becalmed in the fog.

At this point we are feeling fortunate. Although we consider losing the use of the engine bad luck (especially because we try so hard to stay on top of maintenance), we were really lucky to be able to sail into the bay in bright sun and right up to our own mooring!

Regarding the fishing: I’m going to have to mend the 3 fish flags that flew through all the squalls and high winds. The West Indian lads plus Jake will have to pay off the bet to the engineers. The final score stands at WI+Jake 1, engineers 4, fish 1. About 4 miles from the mooring buoy we got 2 hits, one on each side. Bluefish. The good news: Leo, Ruleo, Jake & I had fish soup with bluefish for dinner tonight.

So, all the best from the crew of avalanche, ashore.

P.S. Please keep checking. We have photos to put up, but our photo editor (Ruleo) has been busy scrubbing and cleaning the boat, so he might take a day or two to put the photos together for us!

We got into Jamestown about 12:30 today. Sailed right up to the mooring first try. Celebrated our arrival with our last ice cream bars on the mooring waiting for the Customs & Immigration gal to arrive. All’s well, everyone is home. We’re about to have dinner ashore.

P.S. Both sides caught bluefish on the way in–about 4 miles from home.

We’ll post today’s adventures tomorrow, along with photos and, if we’re lucky, that video we talked about.

All the best from the crew of avalanche, disbanded for now.

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David Young is the oldest “rookie” we’ve ever had aboard avalanche.  He will turn 70 the day he comes aboard to help us get the boat ready for sea.  David was born in Tasmania and grew up in Australia, where his passport was issued.  His home, however, is apparently wherever he drops anchor!  He has been sailing forever, having taken his 24’ boat to Europe on to the Caribbean and further to the Americas.  He estimates that he has crossed the Atlantic in his boat and others 20-30 times.  He has canoed a 16’ Coleman canoe from Bremerhaven Germany on the North Sea to Sete France on the Mediterranean.  He has also piloted a 20’ boat throughout the canals of Europe.  Along the way he has learned to speak French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese.  He also managed to learn to fly a plane.

When I asked David to provide information for this biography he replied that if he had done nothing in 70 years he could easily answer, but that he has done so much that it would take another 70 years to tell it all.  He did have a further comment, which I quote here:

“We have 10 days or more of sailing.  If anybody wants to listen to boring stories, I will elaborate.  BUT, I do have great jokes, am a good cook, don’t get miserable, can keep my temper (when all around, others are losing their’s) and I’m extremely humble…”

So you can see, we think we have a fine addition to our crew.  Not only can the man sail a boat and fix stuff, he can call for help in 6 languages and keep us laughing!

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If David Young is the oldest “rookie” we’ve ever had on avalanche, then Brian Barer is probably the most professionally qualified!   He graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and spent 5 years in the merchant marine as a licensed engineer, and as an officer in the U.S. Navy aboard a Minesweeper.  I suspect that if we have a mechanical problem of any sort, Brian will be able to solve it.

He has been sailing since he was a kid, racing Lasers and Sunfish.  He considers himself lucky to have been instrumental in resurrecting both brands from bankruptcy in the late 80’s and then to have served as general manager for the company responsible for building them.  He worked in the boatbuilding industry for 20 years or so in almost every capacity and at this point in his life says he feels that he knows enough about boats to respect their (and his own) limitations always!

He built his first boat out of plywood from plans that he got through the mail from a magazine when he was in high school–unfortunately it sank shortly after launch!  Someday he plans to build another boat from those same plans for his grandson, which we all hope will stay afloat!  Currently Brian owns an Irwin 31 that he keeps in Wareham and cruises between Maine and NY.

Brian has done several offshore trips, most recently just a year ago when he helped a prominent sailor deliver a Beneteau 41 from Tortola to Newport.  He reports that it was a hair raising experience.  I expect that Brian will be entertaining the rest of us with tales of that trip as we make our way home!  He says “I bet you will all find my stories very entertaining, I warn you though I have a lot of them and I think some of them are even true!!!!”

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Ruleo Camacho will turn 20 during our delivery to Jamestown, his second birthday on avalanche.  Last year Ruleo joined us for his first trip offshore and performed admirably.  His first solo sailing experience was across Falmouth Harbor in a Sunfish at age nine.  Since then he has become a fine helmsman and sailor.  In addition his fishing skills are excellent, an important consideration in selecting crew for avalanche.  It would be difficult to choose between Leo and Ruleo as the more skilled fisherman.  You might have to include a count of who broke more gear trying to land really big fish to decide that debate.  (And would that count for or against the fisherman?)  You will notice that in photos of Ruleo he is almost always holding up something that he caught!

Like Leo, Ruleo is West Indian.  He has grown up in Antigua and now attends the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and aims one day to be a Marine Biologist.  We met him 11 years ago when he was 8 and his father was our favorite taxi driver.  Since then our families have become great friends.  Through the years we have had the Camacho family on Avalanche for a weekend at Green Island; they have driven us through the countryside on Christmas Eve to show us all the beautifully lighted houses competing for a month’s free electricity and $2,000.  We’ve had lots of dinners and watched many boat races, both full sized and miniature models.  In addition to the delivery last May, Ruleo has visited our home in Jamestown 3 times, at 13, 15 and 16.  He has always told us that he wants to see snow–even strip to his swim suit and roll in it.

And that is what makes the story of Ruleo and the dishes so funny.  Naturally Ruleo doesn’t have winter clothes, so we loan him a few layers for those last 2-3 days when it is so cold approaching the east coast.  Last year we had come up on the continental shelf in pretty moderate weather for the season, but we were dressed in lots of layers to stay warm and had the heat on below.  Ruleo had all his layers on and was doing his job of washing the lunch dishes.  Ruleo found it so cold despite wearing warm layers that he managed to spend over an hour drying 2 pots in order to stay below where the heat was on!  This year we have added more warm clothes to his bag!

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As we described before our November trip south, Leo, who is from Dominica, is 3/4 Carib Indian.  We have been reading about the Caribs and have become very proud of Leo’s heritage.  It turns out that the Caribs were very strong and fierce warriors.  They defeated many English, French, Dutch and Spanish explorers and settlers as well as the Arawak Indians who tried to conquer them and their lands.  Reports say that the Caribs would rather fight to the death or commit suicide than become slaves to the European conquerers.

Leo comes from a family and village of fishermen on the northeast coast of Dominica.  At 15 he had quit school to help his grandfather fishing with hand lines from a small skiff with an outboard motor on the sea offshore.  As a result he is a very fine fisherman.  He knows where fish are likely to be and why, he is very good at actually catching fish and boating them.  Additionally, he has introduced us to the delicious local meal called “fish water” made from fish heads! (He’s broadening our horizons!)  When he was 19 he moved to Antigua where he began working for Ken Malone…and, as they say, the rest is history!

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That’s the plan of the hour. We’ll let you know tomorrow how it works out.

All the best from the crew of avalanche, ready to go!

November 25-29, 2009 At anchor, Falmouth Harbour, Antigua

Hello Everybody,

I’m sorry this final blog has taken so long to post, but just as I predicted, the Patriots game kept me from writing on Monday night November 30th, so I am writing the final chapter of our November 2009 delivery south from stormy cold Jamestown instead of sunny Antigua.

Once the boat was cleaned up and all the work done, Leo had headed to his home, and Peter had flown off to cold upstate New York;  Kim, Chris,  Jake and I had a fun filled vacation for 5 days, including Thanksgiving.  Our vacation featured wonderful weather: water temp about 83, air temp in the high 80′s and 90′s, little wind, even calm at night, and after the first couple days only small seas with no swell.  We spent our time diving almost daily, snorkeling, swimming, bathing, reading and eating.   Probably the most fun was diving.  We all dove together 3 times, seeing a turtle and a threatening green moray as well as the usual colorful tropical fish.  We were excited to note that the coral in Windward Bay, which was wiped out by a hurricane several years ago, is coming back!  Jake and I had a 4th dive at Split Rock just below Eric Clapton’s cliff top home.  We had great visibility down to almost 100′.  Heading for the dive site in the dinghy we saw what must have been a jellyfish hatch.  As we motored we saw more and more jellyfish, closer and closer together, until finally the water was pink with little jellyfish–an area about 5′ by 20′.  It was incredible to see, and I was awfully happy that we didn’t find the same thing at the dive site!  We also saw a large turtle on the surface:  3-4′ in diameter.

The day Jake and I dove alone Leo took Kim and Chris on an “Antiguan’s tour” of Antigua.  They drove through Antigua’s rain forest; into the Jolly Harbor yacht and resort area; stopped in St. Johns, where they walked the streets with the locals, shopped at the produce market and ate fresh rotis for lunch.  (A roti is a flat bread with veggies and chicken, beef, shrimp or conch in a curry sauce all rolled up.)

On Thanksgiving day Kim, Chris and I hiked around Falmouth and English Harbors.  We checked out the local handcrafted items:  Nancy Nicholson’s signature blue pottery, Carl Henry’s great carved fish, watercolor paintings by local artists, and the ubiquitous t-shirts.  We wandered through Nelson’s Dockyard, named for Admiral Nelson, who commanded the Antiguan outpost in the 1780s.  The area has been restored, with historic buildings now housing contemporary businesses.  We finished by hiking over the hill and back to Falmouth Harbour where Jake met us with the dinghy.  By then we were hot, dusty, thirsty and tired, so we enjoyed a swim before preparing our Thanksgiving dinner.   Jake and Kim, both huge football fans, had a fine time watching football, and Leo joined us for turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  We wished Peter Happy Thanksgiving on the phone, and were happy to hear that he had gotten home in time to celebrate with his family.

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Sunday evening Kim and Chris headed up to Shirley Heights, a scenic lookout above English Harbour, from which you can see both harbors and on a clear night  Guadeloupe and Monserrat as well as  a beautiful sunset.  They feature  a steel drum band, a bar and restaurant, and a man who weaves hats, bowls, birds and more from grasses.  That evening was the final event of a unique introduction to Antigua for Kim & Chris.

Monday we took Avalanche to the dock, where Leo will take care of her in our absence.  It takes about a day to get that accomplished.  We always leave her clean, so the hull got a good polishing and the deck a final clean up, and the awning was taken down.  We had to pickle the water maker, defrost the freezer and clean out the fridge. We 4 had had the difficult task all week of finishing all the food on board because when we leave the boat we turn off both the freezer and refrigerator.  We ate very well:  lasagna, ham, turkey, meatloaf, eggs & potatoes & bacon, french toast, and on the last day a “clean out the fridge omelet” and a “clean out the fridge salad”.  On Monday night Leo was the recipient of spaghetti sauce and garlic toast for 6, plus a pork tenderloin and a few leftovers from the fridge.  Now he will eat well!

In summary, the delivery was quick.  We had some queasy moments initially when we were affected by Ida’s waves without any wind to steady us.  We got through the Gulf Stream with a brisk breeze, even catching a Mahi Mahi.  After we left the Gulf Stream the wind picked up for 3 days, which gave us a 200 mile day, but left the deck watch soaked with constant spray.  Because of our great mileage and the wind around Bermuda, we could forego the fuel stop, but we knew it was a risk because the weather folks were predicting areas with little or no wind in our path.  Fortunately we found enough wind to get to Antigua in  9 days and 1 hour, which also gave Peter a whole day to get to customs before departing for home the next day.  We had one of the most experienced crews ever, capable of handling any mechanical or sailing problem.  All in all, it was a very satisfying and pleasant trip!  A quick note for the record:  This year’s bath on the back deck was indeed the furthest north ever at 38 28 degrees North, it’s about 108 miles further north than the previous record of 36 40 in 2006!

Thanks for making the trip with us, we look forward to having you on board for the next trip!

Hello Everybody,

Our morning arrival on Tuesday was a great relief to all because it meant Peter could celebrate Thanksgiving at home with his family. The morning timing was also a big help because it meant all 6 of us could pitch in to clean up the boat. This probably sounds picayune or nit-picking, but clean up is a huge time consuming deal! Remember we have just moved our 60′ home 1600 miles through the salty ocean full of splashes, breaking waves and salty air. Salt penetrates everywhere and attracts moisture and mildew, especially in warm, dark, closed spaces. For that reason we hose, wash with joy and rinse every inch of the exterior of the boat: deck, cockpit, hatches, hull, mast & boom, sails, lines, cushions, fishing gear and more. Inside we vacuum, then wipe down every surface with vinegar and water to cut the salt followed by Murphy’s Oil Soap to feed the finish. Foul weather gear, life jacket/harnesses and tethers, emergency flashlights, MOB watches, emergency gear pouches and other personal gear all get washed, rinsed and dried. Bedding gets aired or sent to the laundry. We were doubly fortunate in having a beautiful clear sunny day with none of the usual convection rain showers. Gear dried quickly. (In the photo gallery you will find a photo of Kim reading in the cockpit while everything was drying all around the deck.) The next step was putting up the awning and the “froo-froo” light in the cockpit, opening all the hatches and letting the balmy Caribbean breezes blow through.

While the crew was on clean up duty, Captain Jake had to play captain at Customs and Immigration. Unfortunately a clipper cruise ship had just arrived, so Jake had to wait about 2 hours for Customs to return to the office. Once he returned we took on 230.6 gallons of diesel. We had 31 gallons in the tanks when we got here. That was where we had planned to shut down the engine in any case, but the wind filled in before we had to make the measurement and the decision to stop motoring!

After everything was clean Leo took off for home and the rest of us broke out the rum and had a fine dinner of pork tenderloin. The boat was level, the hatches were open, the sky was clear and full of stars. We sat on deck and enjoyed our own company! Then we all fell into beds sans lee cloths for a full night’s sleep. (There is a photo of Jake in his bunk with lee cloth up, and my bunk empty.) We use the lee cloths to stay in the bunk when the boat heels. Jake was on the high side for the entire trip and had to have his lee cloth up, while Peter was on the low side and took great pleasure in goading Jake by not even putting his lee cloth up, except for one 6 hour period while we were rolling. That, he said, was strictly for insurance against having the entire crew laugh at him if he had rolled out of his bunk.

Chris and Kim have joined Jake and me for a mini vacation, Wednesday-Sunday, before we head home. Monday will find us moving the boat to the dock and closing the boat up to leave before watching Monday night football. Go Patriots! We all fly home together Tuesday, arriving in Providence about 7 pm.

Tomorrow I will try to get time at the computer to write again, but bear in mind that I will have to fight off the football fans because they watch the game on the computer.

All the best from the remaining crew of Avalanche, having as much fun in the sun as we can.

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