PART II

Wednesday, May 20

We raised the anchor at 2050. We were sorry (again?) to leave Dominica – so beautiful and nearly undiscovered by us… so well, we promised to ourselves that we would come back here one day for sure!

During the voyage to the North we had mostly beautiful beam reach sailing on nicely calm sea.

The weather forecast we previously downloaded from the Internet was correct. There was nearly cloudless sky at night, with millions of stars. Single white clouds were lit by the moon and hurriedly were continuing their journey toward the west. Our YouYou was swallowing the miles with lovely grace. This was also the first trip in which the waves were not coming into our cockpit :)))

On this cruise we did not see any marine life besides birds – petrels. Although in the very first morning a small private plane flew just above the water, really close to us... – a very interesting experience :)

Thursday, 21 May

At night we passed Monserrat - the island-volcano, where we stopped at another time, sailing the 56’ catamaran in August 2007 - with my older brother Cuba - in the opposite direction: from St. Martin to Bequia :) [Be welcome to watch the pics from that story - “Cruise to Baquia” - text still in Polish only...].

After passing the island we sailed off the wind - 30 degrees to the West. Although slower than beam reach, it gives other kinds of joy :)

Meanwhile, the sea has changed and for the first time we experienced when YouYou was nicely pushed forward from the back by waves quicker then us. She was swinging from side to side, as in a dance to the rhythm of shanties played by the wind on her steel shrouds.

It reminded us sailing in the trade winds across the Ocean...

In the morning we saw well-known island of St. Barthelemy. YouYou literally flew the last ten miles with her sails set up in “wing-wing”. The sun was shining beautifully and the wind was blowing with the force of 3-4 in Bofourt scale.
From St. Barths we had only 17 miles to the Simpson Bay in St. Martin. Anyway, we decided to check whether at anchor in Gustavia there was "Snow Goose", that large yacht on which we worked for several months in 2008.

How exciting it was! To arrive on our own yacht to the place where we have been working and collecting money for one and a half year to be able to buy our little boat and fix her, and where we spent many hours talking and dreaming about this moment :)))

The distance of 169 miles to St. Barths we sailed through in 35 hours. We had best so far average speed - 4.83 knots. It seems that each leg we make another new record :)

The explanation maybe that in the North of the Caribbean currents no longer play such importance as in the South - the strongest are in the area of Trinidad, Grenada and the Grenadines. Also restless "trade winds" which blow all year round to the westward, finally lost their power in comparison with the beginning of the year. The sea was calmer and finally we were lucky with more favourable winds :)

The anchorage in Gustavia Bay was nearly completely empty...
Well, probably the "Goose" flew out to the U.S. for hurricane season...

The harbour in town was deserted as well,

mega yachts have already completed the season and were waiting for the next one in Florida or crossed the Atlantic to the Mediterranean to let others “see them” now in Saint Tropez, Portofino and Cannes :)

We had dozens of memories with the well-known bay while sailing through the anchorage... We even recognized some of the boats rocking on buoys.

We decided to anchor just for a few hours, eat a late breakfast, jump into the wonderful turquoise water to swim

and search for the turtles living in the area (island is surrounded by several natural reserves). Then we had a little rest, and went off on a way to St. Martin!

We started late in the afternoon, as we know this area very well. The distance St. Barths-St. Martin we made a few dozen times before...

We left astern Ile Furche, yellow buoys of Reserve Naturelle de Saint Barthelemy, Table Rock and the rock formations called Gruppers – all in the flames of the sun setting down in the sea... Sailing along the shore of St. Martin, literally every few seconds we were remaining to ourselves more and more stories that we had had here while working in charters...

We anchored in Simpson Bay at 2210. The bay lies at the gates of the largest lagoon in the Caribbean - Simpson Lagoon - which has been divided between the Dutch and French parts of the island. “So we are in St. Martin!”

SINT MARTEEN

We knew that our stay on the island had to be the last stage of the "shake down cruise" - that is, learning our boat, fixing the faults which we encountered during the first five hundreds miles travelling, as well as general modernization and improvements on our YouYou.

Trinidad and St. Martin are two best places in the Caribbean to work on a yacht due to their excellent infrastructure, good supply of parts and fair prices. As in Trinidad (watch the pics in stories: “YouYou refurbishement Part. I” and “YouYou refurbishement Part.II"), this time we had also a list of tasks to be done in St. Martin.

The most important project was the refurbishment of our dinghy, which was full of holes…
This was really complex because it is our only means of communication with the land so the repair could not take place on board. Therefore we had to find a berth or marina, so I could be able to fix our little boat. Most of cheaper marinas were full with yachts having shelter from the hurricanes, the more expensive marinas were not for us…

Fortunately, our friends from St. Martin came with the solution. First we passed through the bridge inside the Simpson Lagoon and anchored in the Dutch side.

A few days later we moved YouYou in a tiny private dock. We got a seat at the pier of a very well known restaurant on the island - "Uncle Harry’s Floating Bar & Restaurant”.

Uncle Harry is a special figure in St. Martin. In addition to the restaurant he runs a machine shop in shipyard. The shipyard itself is owned by really nice, cheerful man – Carl – who was very helpful as well. Harry is smoking cigars non-stop, also while ride his Harley around and sometimes he also operates 105-tone crane

- mostly lifting boats from the water to the shore, but not boats only :)

Minor repairs in “Caribbean Way" :)

Thanks to the kindness of our friends from Trade Winds Cruise Club, we were able to use their facilities, got many advices and a lot of help from workers there specialising in yacht repairs (Ian, you are GREAT! Thank you so much!). The invaluable assistance we received from the guys from Bequia! Without Archie, Cletus and Knolly (the last one from Trinidad), our dinghy would probably be just repaired and this time it was completely renovated under the supervision of professionals :)

To commemorate their collaboration and to make "Bequia Boys” happy, we called our dinghy "Bequia Pride"!.

The time to cut off the steering (!!!) finally came.

After the mast and sails, the rudder and tiller are the next in the hierarchy of helpful sailing "gadgets";)

I must admit that although I knew that the repair was necessary (and this was the only way), I felt very strange cutting off the fitting for the tiller from the rudder post with a grinder...

All the necessary elements we made in Uncle Harry’s machine shop. It took a while before we finished the project. In the meantime we became friends with working there – Tico,

Danny from Aruba

and Marshall from Jamaica.

So YouYou was safe being tied to the key side
and at the end of each day we were deleting more and more items from “To Do” list :)

While staying on St. Martin we also met with old friends and have established new friendships.

Owen is a British sailor, a single handler, who helped us SO MUCH (Owen, thank you once more!) to solve several of our electronic problems (remember our “black list of failures”?). He fixed our stationary VHF as well! We got to know Owen when we had been working in charters, two years ago. Since then, a lot has changed in his life and Owen is not the only one sailor on his boat… ;) He is joined by best crew: Dona and Sparky :) – (all the best to you guys!!!)

Besides that, we met a artist painter from St. Kits – “Bee” – for years living and working in St. Martin.

Among other things, “Bee” told us how it was to seat hidden in the house while outside there was a hurricane raging (Lenny in 1999)...

I also had the opportunity to meet several times with Michael,

Photo: Courtasy of Mike

who until recently owned a famous for the whole St. Martin pub - "Shrimy's Bar". In addition to the best shrimps on the island and nice cold beers,

Photo: Courtasy of Mike

at Shrimpi’s you always were able to meet the mass of interesting people - sailors from around the world -

Photo: Courtasy of Mike

and exchange information or just use the wireless Internet.

Every week Mike used to organize a 'flea market' for the sailors

 Photo: Courtasy of Mike

and he also led the second hand boats equipment shop, gathered technical divers for special tasks or emergency assistance :) not to mention the laundry - how strategic point in the lives of most of the sailors :) Shortly saying everyone knows Mike and he was always very helpful to all sailors.

He lives on a yacht "BayWood" with his wife Sally. At the beginning of our work in Trade Winds Cruise Club, he was the first to ask for information about a cheap yacht for sale, we still remember that meeting, Mike :)

St. Martin is famous for the "good deals", as many yachts there were devastated by the hurricanes and are still waiting for their new owners. Many of them have been recovered from the bottom of the lagoon, wrongly recognized by some sailors as a "hurricane hole"... While watching different boats, no one was better then YouYou, in which we have felt in love in Trinidad. YouYou was also the reason we decided to discontinue our yacht hitch-hiking!

Two and a half years later we met Mike again! We found out that although the previous bar was closed due to the expansion of a nearby marina, soon there will be a new Shrimpy's Bar! As before, so this time we got many valuable tips and helpful "tricks" from an experienced sailor. Both of them – Mike & Sally (and their dog Shrimpy) are very well :) See you Mike, thanks for all your good words!

James is another interesting guy.

Free spirit, seeking his place in the world. James recently bought a beautiful old wooden boat, and now is renovating her on the French side of the island. You can follow his struggles on his YouTube channel HERE. (By the way you can also follow OUR CHANNEL on YouTube HERE ;)

James also repaired Patricia’s flip-flop with split pin :)

Very skilful & creative. He spent several years in Africa, also visiting the local tribes. Now it looks like he is preparing for a serious sailing...

Meanwhile the hurricanes season officially began. And although we enjoyed the daily progress of our works, at some point it became clear that this season it is already too late to sail to Jamaica... Well, there are always priorities in life... The only right decision to take was therefore to complete the remaining projects as soon as possible and then set the course to the South-West, to Panama and finally leave the hurricane area.

With hurricane season it is like with winter (i.e. in Poland) ;) It must start somewhere in a calendar but that does not mean the next day is always snowing :) Even at the beginning of July you can easily find a good weather window and safely, comfortably sail across the Caribbean Sea.

Ultimately, on the way we decided to visit the ABC Islands (or Netherlands Antilles) off the coast of Venezuela. We hoped to easier find work there than in Panama... We have been already on Bonaire (during the trip to Panama – you can see the pics from the story HERE).

On the other hand Aruba is later on our way to Panama. Thus we chose the third one - Curacao! As they say in Papimiento :) BON BINI!

Mikołaj Westrych