We’ve had a pretty quick run down the islands. Seven different countries in ten days (St Barths, St Kitts, Montserrat, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Lucia).
Customs officers have the most elaborate signatures.
I’m working on a customs theory but it’s not perfected yet.
Greg is monitoring the Heineken Index (St Martin = US$17 for 24 @ 33 centiliters = 100).
He has had several entrepreneurial ideas since we’ve been here. The best is the CaribPass. It’s a small electronic tolling device. You sail past a buoy and – beep, beep – you’re cleared customs and all fees are charged to your credit card.
It’s a great idea, but you have to deal with about twenty satellite governments to get it rolling. Here is a sample as I see it:
Antigua: “but the forms must be filled in in six-licate (can somebody please tell me what that is actually called). Then get the form from customs, and they will elaborately sign and stamp it (a staccato drumbeat on each page, with a short pause for more ink). Bring it back to us. We’ll give you the other form which you should take to ports after you’ve paid us the customs fee. They will give you the form you need to clear in, once you’ve paid the ports fee. No credit cards. Ports will direct you to excise. Get the blue form from immigration, have it stamped, get the sticker from over there and bring it back to ports. Your crew cannot land until they are cleared, but they must sign this form – you must go back for their signature. What do you have on board?.....okay, okay, you can stop, that’s called ‘ships stores’ for next time. Before you leave tomorrow, you’ll need to do this again. Oh, and ports won’t be back till Monday”.
Anywhere in the French West Indies: ‘eet is empossible!’ (confusion, shrugged shoulders).
Dominica: (once you’ve handed over passports and all your original ship’s documents) ‘my daughter’s school is raising money for…would you like to contribute a small sum. All credit cards are accepted and we have a wireless terminal to make the transaction easier for you. In the alternative, it’s my lunch break and the same daughter has a dentist appointment this afternoon.’
We’ve just taken a mooring in Soufriere, St. Lucia. We’re not in the habit of taking moorings, but it’s a marine park and you cannot anchor. I noticed it’s also 30 meters deep despite that we are only a boat length or two offshore, so the mooring’s good and the fee is included in our park fees. As an indicator of things to come, as we sailed in a flotilla of boat boys came roaring out in their pirogues (each with a 75HP Yamaha on the back) in a big race to get the next customer. You want a mooring, ice, we take your garbage, I’ll take your dock lines. In actual fact they’re polite and it’s good fun to chat with them. You buy the services you need. I’m not sure they’d had this request before: Greg ordered up six deboned and fried flying fish! (delish by the way). It was 20EC (a little under US$7) although I noticed a few beers were expertly lobbed between moving boats to help lubricate the transaction.
[In case you’re wondering, that move requires similar skill to the Airforce air-to-air refueling a helicopter, but Greg pulls it off with a nonchalant panache.]
On the way over, leaving Martinique, we were laughing about something and telling stories; not paying attention. Suddenly we got hit by a big squall – I think it gusted to 40 knts out of nowhere - and we broached, taking a bit of water over the cockpit side. Greg hit the traveler and I steered out of it, so we were clean fairly quickly but it was a good reminder to keep a weather eye. She’s a lithe machine and doesn’t like to be overpowered. The best advice the Shafer’s (former owners) gave me was to reef early. Phil Shafer told me he started out flying a lot of sail – like we all do – to get the boat ripping, but it really doesn’t work that way. His advice is dead-on: it’s initially counter-intuitive, but the boat is frequently much faster with less sail up. We’ve found keeping the boat flat makes a huge difference to speed. It was a great 50nm reach over to St Lucia. We put in - and shook out - reefs (reduced and expanded the sail area) several times, and changed from the genoa to the jib and back again more than once, but maintained nearly 8 knots for much of the way for our efforts. And that’s fun! Surfing and carving between the ocean swells, flying fish bursting out of the bow wave!
We’ve also made a small breakthrough with our Solent jib. Although it’s our smallest sail, it’s not a small sail (it’s tacked to the bow, runs to the masthead, and is near 100% of the fore-triangle). It’s also on a self-tacking track that curves across the foredeck. This means that a single handed sailor can short tack to windward with speed and grace, and we love it for that. However, when we are reaching – the breeze is approx right-angles to the boat – the track isn’t wide enough to ease out the sail as much as you would like; the clew lifts, the leach sags, and it tends to flog and spill air in the top third. It’s meant at reaching and downwind angles we’ve had to over-sheet the sail with the dual effect of inhibiting the sail’s performance while simultaneously frustrating the skipper. So today we rigged up some tweakers through snatch blocks on the toe rail. These open the sail and allow us to maintain leach tension. It’s increased the wind angles through which we’ll happily fly the sail, and it’s done wonders for our reaching speed, especially when it’s too windy for the big-bad genoa to do it’s magic work!
28 December 2007
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