Big News for Team Sanitas!

February 12, 2023February 12, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 6 Comments

As some of you may have noticed from our social media posts, there are big changes coming up for Capt. Mike and me this year. We have listed our beautiful Sanitas for sale ⛵️❤️ ⛵️ So what’s next?

Are we giving up on the nomad life and going back to work? 📇🗄️📅 No way!

Are we buying an RV and switching to land cruising? 🚐🌆🇺🇸 Not yet!

Are we fully committing to this crazy life and upsizing to a bigger boat? ⛵️🦈🏝️ Absolutely!

We’ve been making a lot of upgrades to Sanitas to keep her systems in great condition and to make living aboard more comfortable. But I think we’ve reached the limit of how well we can use the space on our beautiful but teeny boat. So for the past year or three, we’ve been casually on the lookout for an upgrade. We haven’t been looking very hard, just kind of hoping the universe would eventually deliver us the perfect boat – maybe finding a fellow cruiser moving back to land who just happens to have the perfect size, model, and age of boat for us! Clearly, that hasn’t really worked out. So on Christmas Eve I told Capt. Mike it was time to inject our boat search with “a bit more vigor.” Vigorously, we did so! On 18 January, we put in an offer on our next sailboat and we are working toward closing the week of 20 February.

We are purchasing a 2001 Island Packet 420 currently located in Stuart, FL. I won’t tell you her name yet, because we are still deciding whether or not to change her name, and I am rather superstitious- I don’t want Neptune and Aeolus to know before we hold a formal renaming ceremony 😜 I can tell you she’s an absolutely beautiful vessel. She has only had one owner, AND he is a talented mechanic who worked with the Island Packet factory in Rock Hall, MD. She has been meticulously maintained and cared for. Equally important (at least to me) she has two cabins, two heads, a spacious galley, and enough room to support a larger dinghy with a bigger outboard than we currently use on Sanitas. Capt. Mike says this new boat will blow my mind. Did you catch that? She WILL blow my mind. Yes, we are buying a boat that I have not seen, leaving a small fluttering feeling in my tummy. However, Capt. Mike flew from Grenada to Florida and was present for the survey and sea trial. He even had the opportunity to spend time with the current owner and to investigate every hold and locker and every system. He assures me that I am going to fall in love as soon as I get the chance to meet her. Which I hope will be soon! 🤞🏼

So what’s next for us? We are trying to sell Sanitas here in Grenada, hoping to find someone who will love her and care for her as well as we have. So, for the moment, my full time job is boat broker. Oh, and cleaning lady, stainless polisher, chef, insurance broker…all those jobs! Hopefully we will be able to transition Sanitas to her new home within the next couple of months, and then I’ll get the chance to meet my new floating home. We hope to spend June and July back home in Colorado, riding the 50th anniversary RAGBRAI at the end of July. Then we’ll leave the mountains and return to the water, moving our new boat from Florida to Brunswick, Georgia for storm season. At least this is Plan A. And you know what they say about cruising plans…”Cruising plans are written in the sand at low tide.” (That means everything is likely to change!)

Do yole wanna race?

January 30, 2023January 30, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

On our final Sunday in Martinique, we tagged along with Popeye and Lisa on SV Tumoltuous Uproar to watch the traditional Martinique Yole boats race in a regatta. We didn’t really know what to expect but Ooh la la! It turned out to be an exciting day.

One of the best teams – look at that coordination!

What is a yole? Well basically, they are traditional wooden sail boats, originally used by fisherman and to transport goods around the island. Each 10.5 meter yole boat is hand carved out of solid wood, without a keel or any ballast. So they are light and fast, but extremely “tippy.” The masts are made of bamboo, and instead of a rudder, a long wooden oar is used to steer the boat and to help paddle it through each turn or tack. The sails are rectangular and un-battened and extremely hard to manage. To balance the boat, a team of strong, burly, coordinated men hike way out from the boat onto sets of wooden poles, using their body weight and hopefully perfect timing to keep the boat from tipping over. Did I say “hopefully”? Several times during the race, we saw a boat heel over a tad too far, scoop up a whole bunch of seawater, and slowly sink. A race boat then had to tow them back to shore in the “tow of shame” with the boat sinking lower and lower, arriving back to the beach before it completely sank. There are actually members of the racing team whose sole job is to bail out water with plastic bottles and buckets during the race. If you can’t quite picture that strangle jumble of boat parts in action, have no fear ‘cause I took tons of pictures!

Capt. Mike getting ready to help launch team McDonald’s

One man’s trash is another man’s bailing bucket

The best part of the race is the start. Each boat gets dragged down the beach to the water’s edge and turned onto its side. On land, the two masts are maneuvered into place and the team rigs the two sails by tying a whole bunch on knots while the boat is still on its side. Once all the hiking out poles are slotted into place, three or four of the heaviest guys stand up on the high side, lean their weight onto the poles, and slowly (then all of a sudden, very quickly!) they tip the boat upright, with other team mates running in at the last minute to push it into the water. It’s a blast to watch! When it goes smoothly, it’s a work of art. When it doesn’t, watch your head ‘cause it’s all going to fall back to the ground again.

To start the race, crews wait for the final horn blast and then shove and push these heavy boats full of heavy guys into deep enough water for them to float and start sailing. With at least a dozen boats all starting from that same stretch of beach there’s always a lot of bumping, knocking, crashing, and shouting until they get far enough apart to settle down a bit. Mike and Popeye helped launch the McDonalds boat. Luckily, this maneuver went fairly smoothly and we did not have to experience the local health clinic.

The next best part of the race is watching the boats round a big floating race marker. We took the dingy out to watch the lead boats make the turn from up close. They come in HOT with the team captain shouting out commands. As the turn starts, everyone hikes way, way out on the poles trying to keep their legs out of the water. Not to stay dry (this is definitely not a dry sport) but to avoid slowing the boat down due to drag. The sail guy on the bow basically bear hugs the mast and the spar to force the sail to tack from one side to the other. The boat slows way down and three guys on the stern start rowing with all their might to complete the turn. If all goes well, the sails quickly grab the wind and the boat surges forward on the next leg of the race – with very little bailing required. If it doesn’t go well, the boat loses all speed, scoops up a bunch of water and starts that slow sinking process. It’s very exciting!

We all picked a team to root for and joined the rest of the crowd in cheering on our favorites. I understand just enough French to understand the announcer calling out the team in first position, followed by the second team, followed by the third. At one point, he announced that a team was “trés malade,” I asked, “Did he just say that boat is very sick?” I got my answer a few minutes later when the race boat towed in a bright red yole nearly submerged with its team members sitting in sea water up to their waists. Very sick, indeed!

On the road (water) again!

April 7, 2022April 7, 2022 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

Once we got Sanitas’ engine fixed, we didn’t waste any time! Laundry, groceries, filling the water and fuel tanks, moving from the marina to the anchorage…in about 24 hours we had Sanitas ready to move. A good weather window was coming up at the beginning of April and we wanted to be ready to take advantage of it.

Take advantage of it we did! Around noon on Tuesday we raised anchor and started north. The engine purred like a kitten (or maybe more like a tiger) when we used it to navigate out of the anchorage and get ourselves on our point of sail. But as the Captain says, “We’re a sailboat!” and we didn’t use the engine for long. We had a glorious sail up the west coast of Martinique, past Diamond Rock, and anchored in St Pierre just before sunset.

We set the alarm for 4am and were underway well before sunrise. Setting off in the dark is always a bit disconcerting, but the harbor in St Pierre is wide open with few hazards, so it wasn’t dangerous. We mainly had to watch out for fishing boats and floats for lobster pots. Sunrise at sea is always glorious, and this morning we even had a beautiful bright double rainbow to welcome us back to the sea.

Conditions were perfect for a fast, salty sail. We had easterly winds pretty consistently from 90 degrees between 12 knots and 20 knots. However, we encountered a lot of variation in conditions as we traveled part of the day between the islands of Martinique and Dominica (where seas can be quite big, and winds are strong and sometimes swirl as they are funneled between the islands) and partly in the leeward protection of mountainous Dominica (where wind and waves were lighter, and we actually had to motor sail for about an hour when we had no wind at all). Capt. Mike was kept on his toes putting in reefs and shaking them out. Bringing out the headsails and furling them in. We both ended up with callouses as our soft little hands had to become accustomed to line handling again.

Seas hit us on the beam which makes for a very rocky and rolly ride. There was a period of about an hour when we experienced the worst of the wind funneling effect with consistent 29 knots and I mostly just held on for a very wild ride. Capt. Mike took a picture of me in what he calls my gecko pose. You probably can’t tell from this photo but we are heeled over about 30 degrees so I’m bracing myself with my legs and holding onto the companionway and the winch. I’m kind of huddled in the protection of our bimini because waves on the beam create a great deal of splash.

Speaking of splash! We had a huge wave hit us without warning, and Mike and I were both soaked. The cockpit was swamped – good thing we have good scupper drains – and both bilge pumps turned on, and an alarm started beeping loudly. The worst part of the chaos was that we had forgotten to close the companionway with the sliding boards. So at least a couple of liters of that huge wave ended up with in the cabin. We spilled a bit of wind off the main and once I was sure that the Captain had things under control, I went below to survey the damage. Bilge pumps seemed to be doing their job. The alarm came from the lpg propane gas sensor, so I turned the propane solinoid off at the breaker panel. Mike disconnected it back at the tank just to be sure. I mopped up the saltwater lake on the cabin sole, rolled up the rugs, and did my best to dry off the port settee. I wiped down the breaker panel and port bulkhead. It’s the first time ever that I had to wash saltwater off the INSIDE of the portlights as well as the outside. Looking back on it, we weren’t in danger, but things were pretty darn exciting for a while.

Speaking of water in the cabin, I found a new leak, or what sailors call euphemistically “saltwater incursion.” I noticed that small drops of water were landing on the cushions of the port settee. I first thought that we hadn’t closed the cowl vent well enough. Nope. Watching for a while, I observed a drop forming on the zipper of the headliner, growing, growing, and then falling onto our lovely comfy couch. Darn it! That’s a problem to investigate for another day.

All in all, we averaged over 6 knots today which is crazy fast for little Sanitas. We made it to the mooring field near Terre-de-Haut in The Saintes, Guadeloupe with plenty of time to pick up a ball before sunset. After a day and a half of very active sailing, we were much too tired to go ashore. But after taming the chaos of the boat a bit, we could enjoy a magical view of the island during dinner and then a well-deserved early bedtime.

Our diesel engine has “un mal de tete” (a headache)

March 22, 2022March 22, 2022 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

On the last day we sailed with our guests Micki and Nathan, we had a bit more adventure than they signed up for.

We sailed down the western coast of Martinique and then east from beautiful Anse d’Arlet to Sainte Anne. For most of the day, we were heading straight into the wind, using the diesel engine as well as the sails to give us a little boost in speed while cutting through big waves. All hands were safely wearing PFDs, and our guests got a lot of practice tacking. It was a bumpy and salty day for sure.

A couple of miles out from Ste Anne, with the masts of that massive anchorage in sight, we could no longer keep the staysail full of wind, so we attempted to furl it. Nope! The furling line was snagged on something so every attempt to put the sail safely away for the day resulted in loud and violent flogging instead. Capt. Mike went forward to investigate and discovered that we had an overwrap on the furling drum. It was going to be much too difficult to resolve it in the rough seas and high winds, so he decided we were better off simply dropping the staysail to the deck and fixing the furler later when we’d arrived in the protected anchorage. I took the helm to keep us pointed into the wind. And Mike, Micki, and Nathan went forward to wrestle the sail to the deck by dropping its halyard. Good thing it was the small sail!

While I was at the helm, I discovered a new and even more disturbing problem. Even with the throttle fully open, I couldn’t get enough power from the engine to keep us moving forward. And a sailboat needs to be moving at about 2 knots in order to be able to steer. We’d dropped down to less than a knot of speed-over-ground, so I really couldn’t steer at all. I got the Captain’s attention and explained as calmly as possible what I’d observed. That convinced him to stop messing around with the staysail and come back to the cockpit pronto!

Capt. Mike did a quick bit of troubleshooting and confirmed I was telling the truth. Almost no power coming from the engine. So, after an already long and difficult day, we were looking at another hour or more of sailing upwind and tacking in slow motion through the anchorage. We probably could have dropped anchor in deeper water far back in the harbor. But with guests aboard, we prioritized calmer water closer to shore, and a shorter dinghy ride to the dock when we had to offload people and luggage in our little dinghy Bug. Capt Mike took over at the helm and did an excellent job maneuvering Sanitas through the crowded anchorage, finding a spot just barely big enough for us to drop anchor between all the other boats.

We were all pretty much exhausted. Micki and Nathan helped clean up the boat from our rough passage, and then went ashore for an hour or so, giving Capt. Mike and I time to get the rest of the place organized with fewer adult bodies in the small space. Dinner was simply cartons of french vegetable soup – surprisingly good! – and we went to bed early. We’re safe and sound, and we’ll worry about that engine tomorrow.

A quick spin through the southern Grenadines

January 5, 2022January 5, 2022 / FloatsOurBoat / 2 Comments

Phew! We finally finished all of our boat maintenance and received all of our parts and packages and untied the lines from our mooring in Grenada. Hooray!!!

We picked a tight little weather window in the heavy Christmas winds and headed north with the goal of making it to Bequia in time for Christmas. First stop, Carriacou – the little sister island to Grenada with a much more laid back, island time feel. With only a couple nights in Tyrell Bay, we made sure to hit our favorite spots. Paradise Beach Club is absolutely amazing. It’s owner, Allison, remembered our names and Sanitas’s name, even though we last visited almost a year ago 😲 We spent a wonderful afternoon on the beach during Paint and Sip, admiring the wall of boat signs and enjoying delicious seared tuna Greek salad and fresh lime margaritas.

We were among the first to paint a sign. Now the entire wall is full!

Well fortified with that delicious meal, I prepared for our first international border crossing of the cruising season. I don’t know about you, but I sure never thought we would still be dealing with border closures and COVID restrictions at the dawn of 2022. This year, things are honestly a bit easier for fully vaccinated travelers – there are fewer requirements for long quarantines, for example. To travel by sea from Grenada to St Vincent and the Grenadines Team Sanitas took the following steps:

Submit an on-line pre-arrival form for each passenger
Submit a “Request for entry and quarantine aboard” form
Create a SailClear departure declaration for Grenada
Create a SailClear arrival form for SVG
Submit digital vaccination certificates
Document recent travel history
Get a PCR test at the clinic where swabs are sent the Grenada’s main island for processing. Wait impatiently for results
Wait for permission to enter SVG on our desired day
Upon arrival at Union Island, grab a quarantine mooring and dinghy ashore for health checks and processing

Processing at Clifton, Unions Island went quite smoothly, although it was slow and expensive. We joke that they slow-rolled the paperwork so that the Bougainvillea restaurant would get more of our tourist dollars as we sat at the bar waiting for nearly two hours. Hmmm, maybe it’s not a joke 😜 By contrast, friends who cleared into SVG at Bequia found a somewhat chaotic process and were required to stay in quarantine for over 24 hours. Pandemic travel is still not easy!

We’re not afraid of these tests anymore but they still aren’t fun!

If you ever visit The Grenadines, you must, must, must visit the Tobago Cays Marine Park. It’s a little slice of paradise on earth, with a cluster of small uninhabited islands nestled within a protective coral reef. Even with our high wind conditions, we were able to squeeze Sanitas right in between the two largest islands and picked up a park mooring ball. We were snug as a bug up close to the beach, where we could swim with turtles, linger on the white sand beach, and climb to the top of the island for stunning views. Last year, we and our sailing buddies had the park almost completely to ourselves. This year, tourism has picked up slightly. The number of French charter boats has increased quite a bit, and there are definitely more huge mega yachts in the grenadine waters. On the beach where we used to cook casual beach barbecues, there are now catered lunches for wealthy clients, complete with a steel pan band! We sunned ourselves on the small beach next to passengers from a French cruise ship where champagne corks were popped and everyone received a chilled glass before tenders fought them back to the ship. Too bad my French isn’t good enough yet for me to fit right in and sneak a glass! Of course, we met back up with our favorite hustler Romeo for a delightful lobster dinner on the beach. This is one of my favorite experiences in the islands – toes in the sand, sunset over the water, fairy lights, and an absolutely delicious feast of grilled Carribean spiny lobster, seasoned rice, veggies, garlic potatoes, and fruit. If you go, tell Romeo that Mike and Jenn of Sanitas say hello!

All too soon, we had to leave this paradise to continue our sail north to Bequia just to make sure we’d get there in time for the holidays. Winds were still quite fresh and between 30-50 degrees from the north, and seas about two meters high, but consistent. We kept the main double-reefed, and Capt. Mike chose a sail plan that kept us in deep water and sailing as close to the wind as Sanitas can manage. It was an exhilarating salty sail, and we arrived in Bequia just before sunset, ready to settle in for a month in our favorite grenadine island.