Another report from
Consulting Time II:
It is 1820 CCT (UTC-4 or 6:20 PM in Houston), Sunday, 28 January 2007. Our position is N13-18’/W059-45′ or about 7 nm NW of Port St. Charles, Barbados and some 73 nm from the south tip of St. Lucia. We have about 16 kn of wind from the east and we are broad reaching at 6-6.5 kn under Main and genoa. We took the second headsail down when we got to Barbados.
We left Barbados about an hour and 20 minutes ago after daysailing down to Bridgetown and Carlisle Bay with four guests. This morning it was raining and instead of going snorkeling as we had planned we went to St. Nicholas Abbey, a restored sugar plantation great house. They had period antiques including a lot of English china.
Yesterday, Bill and I went to the Barbados Museum, toured a working windmill and had lunch in a hotel on the East side of the island that has been in business since 1882. My flying fish stuffed with spinach and covered with a sweet and sour sauce was excellent.
On Friday, after cleaning up the boat, we attempted to tour the Mt. Gay Rum visitors center but it was closed by the time we got there. And we learned that traffic on Barbados is terrible. Then Friday night we went to Oistin’s Fish Fry and met up with the crew from S/Y Amsala. We swapped lies over several beers and ate some fried marlin and tuna.
We were one of four yachts in Port St. Charles marina. The other three ranged in size from 182 to 138 feet. The 138 ft boat was the beautiful sloop Destination (Fox Harbor). It is owned by the Canadian who founded the Tim Horton coffee house chain in Canada and sold it to Wendy’s. She regularly sails against Rebecca and Scheherazade. Anyhow, Port St Charles is a pretty upscale place. Oh, and we were not able to used the dock outside Becky and Beau’s condo. It was too short and we would have blocked the channel had we tried.
And the radar is working. It turns out that someone (me?) accidentally turned the Tune control way down. I discovered that on approach to Barbados Friday morning!
I promised you some statistics re. our trip from Tenerife to Barbados and here they are:
Distance: 2725 nautical miles Elapsed Time: 17 days, 16 hours (or 424 hours) Average Speed: 6.43 kn Main Engine Hours: 73 (included 3-4 hours in neutral to charge reefers); we motored about 16.5% of the time. Genset Hours: 28 hours Fuel Consumed: ~89 US Gallons LP Gas used: 1.5 tanks (11 lb tanks) Water Consumption: about 5.5 gallons/day Fish caught: Five Mahi
What would we do differently?
1) Buy more fruit and veggies in Santa Cruz. They were so fresh and kept so well that we threw very little out.
2) Not stop in Santa Cruz, Tenerife but rather a different Canary Island.
3) Stop at the Waypoint Bar.
So we will be at St. Lucia at first light and plan to do some sightseeing there. Bill and I return home Thursday. Beau and Becky are staying in St. Lucia a few more days. I will send you one more of these Sailmails before the trip is over.
Best regards, Doug and crew and Becky
