Joana's Yarns

From the Bottom to the Top of Saba

Cath's birthday sail to Saba

Having sundowners hanging over the ocean at Shearwater

We had a great sail from St Martin to Saba - and even better it was Cath's birthday (notice, we did not specify which birthday it was!) This was our second trip to Saba, and it is one of our favorite islands. We tied up to the free mooring balls in the late afternoon, had a quick cocktail and them went into town to clear in and in search of our friends, Kathy and Picky that live on the island. Our friends on s/v Ultra and s/v Solmate made the trip from St Martin to Saba with us, so we dragged them into town too. After clearing in, we found Kathy and Picky, picked up some goodies from the store and had an impromptu birthday party at their house. The next day, we hired a local guy with a van and did a full day's island tour, with the highlight being the stop at Shearwater Resort where Kathy works for some sundowners. The balcony at Shearwater hangs off a cliff and all you can see is blue blue ocean with a few islands speckled in for good measure. It is truly one of the best places in the Caribbean for a cocktail!

Beautiful diving

Worse than a Stairmaster

We set up a dive trip with a local dive shop. In Saba, you can only dive with a local guide, so we picked our guide up in our 11 foot Boston Whaler and brought her out to our boat. Solmate and Ultra then dingied over and we had the dingy train going out to the dive site. Now, those of you who know Saba know that this in not an easy feat, as there is no such thing as a "calm day" on Saba! But, our guide was a good sport about it as water was coming in over the gunwales on our low free board skiff! Our first dive was at the famous Pinnacles and they lived up to their reputation. The top of the Pinnacles lie in about 80 feet of water and we followed them down to about 110 feet. The visibility was awesome and there was tons of fish and bright coral. It was a beautiful dive. We went back to Joana for lunch and then headed to another dive site. It had just as much life on it, the visibility was also great and we got a good workout as there was a current ripping through the site! We made it back to our boats around 1pm and decided that we need more exercise, so we went for a hike up to the top of Saba! We are nuts! We hiked through the rain forest and up pseudo stairs for 3 hours! Finally, Brandon, Maria and I made it to the top (Bill, Joanne and Carryn declined to go up the last 10 minutes in favor of a bench we found!) The view was unbelievable and we even saw an airplane flying below us!! It was getting late so we hiked down as fast as our wobbly legs would let us, but even then we had to hike the last bit in the dark. No worries though - as soon as we got down, we ordered some pizza and beer!

We relaxed for the next day or so, visited with Kathy and Picky some more, and then we had to say goodbye to this magical island and head off to the BVIs.

100 ft down on the Pinnacles dive site

And then we thought it was a good idea to go hiking

The top of Saba

No really, that's the whole runway

A view from the top

We are higher than the airplane!

Even Niko made the hike

Another view of Paradise

Niko at the helm

Picturesque Saba

St Martin

Christmas morning

We were weathered in for about 3 weeks in St Martin, but we found lots to do! We spent a great Christmas with our cruising friends. We kept up with the Schuneman tradition of having mimosas in the morning with some fun gift exchanges. Later in the afternoon, we had a potluck with friends on 6 other boats and had a great dinner, complete with ham, turkey and too many side dishes to mention!

Christmas morning with friends and mimosas

For a Christmas present to ourselves, we bought a new washing machine! It is an LG model, completely plastic so we are able to stow it outside under a tarp and has a big bin that washes your clothes and a smaller bin that spins the water out of them so they will dry faster once you hang them up. The water doesn't automatically drain out of the washing bin, so you can get about 2 loads done with the same water before it gets really gross! Then you spin them to get the soapy water off, refill the bin with clean water to do a rinse. All in all, about 4- 5 loads of laundry takes about 15 gallons of water - not too bad considering we have a water maker or use rain water. It saves a ton of money and time doing it ourselves rather than bringing into to town to get it done.

Christmas morning on Joana

Christmas dinner

Beach by the airport

The next few days we spent exploring St Martin. We went out to the beach by the airport where the planes come right overhead and you can stand right next to the runway when planes take off and literally get blown away by the thrust of the engines! Maria was brave and managed to stand firm against the pelting sand but I wimped out and ran down the beach after a few seconds!

We spent New Years Eve in St Martin dancing the night away and a late night run to McDonalds!

Transporting our new washing machine

Maria hugging the new washing machine

Our first load

Dancing in the street St Martin style

Late night Mickey D run

Saint Martin

Jo-Jo under sail

Ten days to Christmas and the winter trades are here! We looked at the forecast, and we have one day to get to St Martin from Guadeloupe before the 20-30 kt winds and 10-12 foot seas kick in and are forecasted to last through at least Christmas. We were debating going to Antigua and then over to St Martin, but we thought we would get weathered in in Antigua, so everyone decided to make the 125 mile over night trek to St Martin to make sure we are there for Christmas. Leaving Guadeloupe, we had decent swells – 6 to 8 footers, but they were of the slow roller variety so actually relaxing! The winds were fairly light but forecasted to pick up early in the morning, so we motor-sailed for the majority of the night. It was a pretty easy night sail and right about 5 am the winds picked up to about 20 kts and the seas heaped and instead of the long 9 second interval, we were pounding in to 6 - 8foot seas about 4 seconds apart. Luckily we had less than 20 miles to go so only had to beat into it for about 4-5 hours. As always, Jo-Jo performed like a champ! Our downhaul on the flying jib did unravel and was trailing in the water so I had to go forward to retrieve it. Josh was at the helm and I swear he steered into the biggest wave he could find and I went airborne and then got smacked in the face with a wall of water! What a rush!!

Everyone made it to St Martin with no problems and we anchored in the bay before coming into the lagoon the following morning. What a nightmare that is going through the bridge! It is only about 50 feet wide and there are only a few bridge opening times. The bridge operator is very impatient and wants all the sailboats in the front of the line, right up close to the bridge before it opens and then all the mega yachts (and I do mean mega, mega yachts) behind. The channel to the bridge is lined with rocks and on the morning we went through, the winds were a healthy 15-20 kts. We were in line fairly close to the front, about 5 feet behind Sol mate, so we had to be careful not to ram him, and we had a 250 foot mega yacht right behind us – maybe 10 feet away, trying to nudge us up. There was a very handsome deckhand on the bow, about 50 feet above us, peering down trying to tell Maria to go forward, and she glared, communicated through certain hand signals, and held our ground! We made it through the bridge with no problems, but lots of stress, and found our anchoring spot on the French side, where we will be through Christmas.

Guadeloupe

As we continued our journey north, we stopped at Pigeon Island in Guadeloupe. The main attraction is the Cousteau Underwater Park. We did three dives here over the course of two days and all of them were fantastic. Rocks, cliffs, great coral and lots of fish made for beautiful dives!

From Pigeon Island we traveled up the coast to Deshaies. The following day, we gathered everyone together, including four friends from s/v Song and s/v Blue Moment and decided to do a hike up a river bed to a waterfall. It wasn’t really a hike – it was really river rock hoping! It was so much fun! We even brought Niko and Sol mate brought their dog, Bella. Niko thought she was a mountain goat as she bounded from rock to rock! We hiked for about an hour and a half and then stopped for lunch and a swim. A little further up was a road that you could walk back to town on, and about half the group opted to do that while the rest continued on to the waterfall. Another half hour of rock hoping, a few Spiderman moves over some rocks and we were standing in a semi-cave with thousands of gallons of water pouring down from above. Another great day in paradise!

Josh bosun chair swinging

Wild women

Rock hopping

Monkey see Monkey do

Baguette anyone?

Making our way over the rocks

Entrance to the falls

The falls

Les Saintes

We weren’t quite tired of the French islands, so our next stop was Les Saintes. On the way down, we were able to get a mooring ball for free, but they have started charging for them, and charging a lot! It would have been about 15 Euros a night for a boat our size, so we decided to anchor around the corner from the main town. Our friends followed suit, so we had the “cool kids corner” in Petite Anse. It was a beautiful spot, in front of a little resort with a mini piton just abeam of us. The water was crystal clear and a nice turquoise blue. We spent the next few days walking around the picturesque town, relaxing in the great water and even got another dive in. The nights were spent frequenting the local watering holes. Our favorite was a place called Coconuts which played great music and we danced well into the morning there. Two of our friends who shall remain nameless tried to re-enact a Dancing with the Stars move – the one where one person is swung under the legs of the other and then back again…well, they did it great once – I mean toes pointed perfectly and everything…but then they got greedy and tried it again and all I will say is one ended up with a big bump on the head and the other with a black eye! I didn’t know dancing was a contact sport!

Josh and Connor before they jumped from the top of the crow's nest!

The three pretty ladies

Girls' day in the water

After the dive

Martinique

The next stop on party caravan north was Martinique. Our first port was Marin, which we had not been to on the way south early this year. The anchorage was a little tight and the water unswimable, but the town was cute and is a big yacht center so it has all the supplies one could want. From Marin we sailed about 15 miles to Grande Anse d’Arlet. We had stopped here on the way down and fell in love with it. It is like a little Riviera with bars and restaurants lining the beach flying their colorful umbrellas. Unlike last time, we did a ton of diving…got to love it when the only cost to doing an unbelievable dive is an air refill ($7 Euros) since we have our own equipment. Brandon from Sol mate even talked us into doing a night dive. It was awesome! The visibility on all the dives was 80-100 feet and the reefs were beautiful with bright, neon colored coral and tons of fish. We must have seen 30 eels, a few octopus, brain coral with all of its feelers out and luckily no sharks!

We next hit the big city Fort de France and stayed there for two nights before continuing up to St. Pierre. We explored St. Pierre for a day and then decided to boogie as we had been there before and wanted to keep moving. But of course, we didn’t leave before buying two cases of 3 Euro wine, brie and baguettes!