Daily Life

A situation that has arisen in the USVI recently is disheartening, Three sailing yachts have been stolen in the past week and half from St. Thomas and St.Croix! A large Catamaran and two monohulls. I brings to mind a few questions, Where do you hide a sailing yacht that is 35 – 60 ft? Wouldn’t someone notice a boat moving around when so many are in lock down? I can’t seem to get a feel for how often this happens, but it appears this current rash is a surprise.

Tuesday and Wednesday are gas deliver days her in St. Croix. This tanker came within 30 yards.

We have to remind ourselves that this is a working harbor and things like cargo ships and tankers come and go all of the time. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week the island had its’ weekly natural gas delivery. The huge tanker ship above came through the harbor, there is dredged path for large ships. This path is roughly 30 yards from our anchorage, so it can be pretty startling to come up on deck to huge tanker so close at hand. The daily seaplane trips to St. Thomas are another routine that reminds us that other people are working. Then we hear the occasional rooster crowing throughout the day and remember we are in the islands!

You can set your watch by the daily flights to and St. Thomas. The plane takes off and lands right next to the boat!

Today is Dennis’ turn to have kitchen duty. He took a good part of the morning familiarizing himself with the equipment and provisions which he felt were rather meager until it was discovered that he was literally standing on food! The floorboards of Yantina are used for food storage, who’d a thought? Anyway, now we realize there is a little more here then meets the eye!

On a sailboat, any open spot can can storage!

Assembling the Troops

Capt. Dennis modeling the “new normal”

We are finally all together with the arrival of Dennis! Dennis arrived yesterday on the same flight out of Miami that Patrick and I did days earlier. This means now that with us all in the same boat, we can look for symptoms over next days to confirm none of us have contracted the virus.

Upon Dennis’ arrival he promptly dropped is eyeglasses into the Caribbean Sea near the dock in Christiansted. We were unable to locate the glasses in the clear water, so we rushed the boat to take on snorkeling gear and have another look. Patrick showed off his underwater prowess and found the glasses… Crisis averted!

Yesterday was further filled with maintenance and housekeeping. Ian went up the mast twice to sort out a faulty wind indicator. We also made yesterday wash day with changing all sheets and laundering clothes (having a wash machine onboard is a godsend!). Bathrooms were cleaned and as Ian said, “A general tiddying up”. Apparently, that is the difference between crewing on a yacht on passage and episodes of “Below Deck”, we don’t have legions of deckhands at our service to clean up. We do that ourselves. Funny how tiddying up a sailboat just feels better than cleaning up your apartment.

Ian getting ready to scrape the side of the boat under the waterline. I think this is the boating equivalent of cleaning gutters.
Here is a printout of the watch duty roster and kitchen schedule, all very official.

Tomorrow begins the above schedule with Patrick up for kitchen duty! Now if you have ever sailed on boat for more than a daysail you would know that storage is a premium and food and provisions tends to be stored all over the boat (Patrick located coffee and spaghetti noodles in the space under his bunk), therefore, knowIng what food we have to use in meal preparation is challenging. Not only do you have think up a meal, but you have locate all necessary ingredients from various points around the boat. This should be interesting.

On a completely different note, I was made aware of how Hurricane Insurance works. I did not realize, but if you have insurance on your boat in the tropics and you sustain damage from a named tropical storm and submit a claim citing the named storm as your reason for the claim. You can be denied the claim if are between certain certain latitudes (ie. in the tropics) and tied up to a dock. You are usually covered if you are actively evading the named tropical storm in the open sea, but not covered if you seek shelter of a harbor within certain latitudes. So, don’t play it safe, go for it! Or leave the tropics to begin with.

Gratuitous Caribbean Sea picture.

Settling in to a Caribbean Quarantine

Yantina at anchor with all sunshades up.

Just to give you all an idea of our plan, we intend to have Dennis join us tomorrow and we will continue to quarantine on the good ship Yantina until next week before leaving. We are trying to be sure none of us has contracted the virus during our travels to the Virgin Islands. The general feeling is, having someone come down with sickness during the passage should be avoided at costs! Our plans are all weather dependent, of course.

Given the above issue we are considered in quarantine here in St. Croix. Which is obviously a blessing (but it may not be a blessing for everyone as witness by the outburst this morning from one of the other boat in harbor, “Woman, stay the **** away from me”. Needless to say we are keeping our social distance from that boat.)

Today we are settling into a routine of life on the boat. This morning after breakfast. We embarked on our outing for the day, grocery shopping in Christiansted. I was impressed with the offering at store, they were a full service grocery with prices obviously higher than Aldi but palatable. The town of Christianstad was basically following social distancing, but everyone was still pleasant and found everything we needed. The town itself had a very tropical laid back feel to it. I especially like the practice of driving American left hand drive cars on the left side of the road. When I asked I local about, I was told “because that is what we do”. Sometimes the simple explanations are best. I apologize for no photos of town I did not take my phone on the ‘rib’ the English name for dinghy.

Our grocery getting “rib”

After a lunch of egg salad on freshly baked bread it was time for the afternoon activity, snorkeling. There is a wreck just behind our anchorage that proved to very interesting! It is an old sunken metal hull from the 40’s which the sea life has basically reclaimed. All the fish were really very interesting to see. It was a totally a new experience for me. Snorkeling around the harbor will have to become may form of exercise.

I had to justify my purchase of an Apple Pencil, so here you go.

Now that we have gotten the groceries and explored the local wreck, it’s tea time. I am after all on a UK flagged boat!

Adding to the Experience

Ian & I were joined b… Gallagher… Patrick Gallagher. He takes it shaken/not stirred.

Today we got Yantina underway for the first time! In order for Patrick and I to be oriented to Yantina, the three of us had a discussion about safety protocol and where all safety equipment is. Next we discussed the watch schedule which consists of 2 hours on followed by 6 hours off. This we allow us to shift our watches one slot every 24 hours so all 4 of us all will have different watches everyday and not get with the same ones all of the time.

We have also set up the cooking schedule. Everyone is on there own for breakfast. Each person will be responsible for cooking and cleaning up lunch and dinner on a daily rotating schedule. Therefore once you have your day Of cooking, you not have “kitchen duty” again for 4 days. This should be interesting. I am not sure if my culinary talents are up to it, but stay tuned.

After getting underway, I have to admit words don’t express how beautifully blue the Caribbean Sea is!!

To continue our orientation we prepared Yantina to get underway! We left Christiansted Harbor heading north east toward Buck Island, myself on working the port side jib sheets and Patrick working the starboard side jib sheets under Ian’s command. I put it that way because this is the largest boat I have ever sailed and the powerful sails and winches deserve much respect! You don’t just flip the line off the winch with one hand and haphazardly wrap the other side by hand and let the sail flip across. The furler and winches are all power for good reason, you can’t hold them yourself! So after some practice tacking back and forth and decided to stop for lunch just off Buck Island. It was apparent to us that social distancing was being enforced when the park ranger (apparently all of St, Croix is a national park) showed up by boat and all beach goers scrambled to get on there boats.

The Beach at Buck Island

After lunch, we continued our sail back to the harbor. All in all, a wonderful day!

Beautiful Sunset at day end!

The New Normal

This is how I showed up for TSA Pre-check at 4am? I hope it’s not a harbinger of times to come?

I mentioned last time I would fill you in on my traveling to St. Croix. It went something like this:

I rolled out of bed at 3 am to get to O’Hare for a 5:15 flight to Miami, then on St. Croix. I donned my stylish mask and latex gloves for the Lyft ride, I wasn’t taking any chances. A had letters of confirmation showing I was working as crew on board the Yantina in case you could only fly on official business. It felt good to be heading somewhere with a purpose.

The airport at that time of the morning during the COVID-19 was deserted to say the least. I was only passenger in TSA Pre-check, just me. The staff at O’Hare didn’t have any masks or PPE. Only about a third of the passengers wore masks and I alone had gloves. While waiting to board several passengers including myself had our seat reassigned to maintain social distancing. All food and beverage service was suspended (I think the airplane crew was excited about not having personal contact with each one of us). The airplane crew did wear masks and passengers were seated 1 passenger to a row, that means one passenger to every 6 seats. We still only had about 25-30 passengers.

Miami was taking things much more seriously. 90% percent of food kiosks were closed and most of the shops had no merchandise on shelves as if they had not been open for some time. I did notice that Starbucks was open and very busy, is coffee addictive? 9 of every 10 people had masks on and a few fellow travelers had what appeared to be HAZMAT suits! All airline and airport personnel had masks and appeared to be taking things seriously. We were boarded in several groups, presumably to keep the number in each group smaller. We were also given numbered circles on the floor stand on to keep us 6’ apart.

St. Croix was typical tropical outdoor small airport except for National Guard there to meet our plane in full fatigues. Each passenger’s temperature was taken and then given one of 2 pamphlets (I didn’t see anyone get the red one.). The healthcare situation on the islands could easily overwhelmed if they don’t identify carriers early. To date they have tested 637 with 56 positive and 3 deaths here on the island.

They did have roosters roaming the sidewalks at the airport to remind you your not in Chicago!

In looking back on the travel experience, I feel I had more contact and more potential for contamination going to the grocery store than my trip to the USVI!

Here We Go Again!

On location in the US Virgin Islands!

I find myself onboard a 56 foot cruising yacht in Christiansted Harbor, Saint Croix, USVI! In quarantine for COVID 19 preparing for an open water passage to the the east coast of the US, specifically Hampton, VA.

First I should back up and fill in the blanks on how I got here. While I experiencing the effects of the world being caught the grips of this pandemic, I realized that my spring and potentially my summer had taken a turn for worse. I went from planning on working in Chicago for the spring and summer as a charter boat captain on sailboats, to joining the ranks of job seekers displaced by the pandemic. We were right on the cusp of the sailboat season about to prepare boats for the water when the shelter in place order became a reality. Just before Easter I answered a phone call from a London exchange asking me If I was available to crew aboard a sailboat needing to leave the Caribbean bound for the East Coast. Apparently, the owner‘s usual crew were unable to join him due to the international travel ban. Since I was in the US, he could fly the USVI and I would be able join him while not having to leave the country!

THE CREW

Ian, the owner of Yantina and our captain, has logged over 80,000 miles on Yantina including a circumnavigation! He has personally setup the systems of the boat and is very knowledgeable on boats as well sailing. Case in point, last night we discussed the merits of lithium batteries vs. gel batteries and solar for cruising. Given his experience he is a wealth of knowledge and an excellent conversationalist.

Dennis, as you may remember if you are familiar with this blog and the fall trip I took, has agreed to reprise his role as Cookie. Dennis has long and varied sailing experience having been a captain, boat owner and Salty dawg Rally participant on many occasions.

Patrick is a Chicago sailor out of Belmont Harbor who is very knowledgeable about Lake Michigan, but less so on the Ocean. He just recently sat for his Masters Credential and is in the process of becoming a captain.

THE BOAT

The Good Ship Yantina!!

Yantina is an Oyster 56 Center Cockpit with 2 state rooms and bunk room for crew. She fully outfitted for Bluewater passages and is the most capable I have ever been on.

I share the forward state room with the spinnaker.

Ian and I will be in Saint Croix for awhile waiting for Dennis and Patrick to arrive. Then we need quarantine for awhile before the passage. We don’t want to have anyone become sick while we are underway!

More on the plane ride from Chicago later!