Nanny Cay by Ruby

Nanny Cay is a great place to visit because people are friendly, you can get boat fixed, fun for kids.  When you come into Nanny Cay there are two marinas — the old and the new.  The new marina has better wifi at the dock.  The old marina is closer to the pool.  There is also a special chair by the bathrooms you can get internet.  Directions to the pool from the old marina are when you get in your dock slip turn right, keep walking, go over the bridge. After the bridge you will see a low tree and a path and you will eventually see the pool.  When you get to the pool there is a bar and restaurant.  If you want a burger the burger on the kids’ menu is very small.  I recommend ordering from the adult menu if you want a big dinner.  There are also swings over by a really cool tree.  I recommend go on errands with your parents because most of the stores have air conditioning like Arawak, the grocery store and Budget Marine.  Nanny Cay also has lots of animals like cats and chickens. They like to roam around the neighborhood. There is also a hotel if you want a break from your boat. 

Leif’s block and tackle video

Leif’s video of how a block and tackle works

People we meet

The people we meet continue to enrich the experience of this trip.  For a while we hung out with the crew of Zipporrah who’d been members of our yacht club in Minnesota but who I only met when Doug and I entered a single-handed race to Bermuda. In Antigua they became our Exploding Kittens playmates and twice took our kids for overnights. Ruby considers them a “kid boat,” something few people would recognize. Then in Pointe-a-Pitre we struck up a conversation at the dinghy dock with a Swiss family on a 33’ steel boat, Laya, and kept bumping into them, leading to a friendship.  Their daughter is only three but Ruby still looked forward to playing with her. Both of us were meandering at the same leisurely pace so we were able to spend time with Laya at several subsequent anchorages.  Most recently we parted from Ramble Too who’s crew is a family of four cruising with grandpa for a year.  Their 8-year-old daughter and Ruby soon became BFF’s (best friends forever) and made chicken sounds to each other. We parted with them because they are having a family of 5 come to stay on the boat with them, and their boat is not much bigger than ours. 

Now that we have entered the BVI suddenly the people I meet are not fellow cruisers but staff on boats.  Charter boats dominate the scene here and it seems that the experience, especially the pace, of people on charter boats yields a much different experience.  Despite a couple attempts I have not forged any connections with charterers. Instead we met Sebastian, the captain of a 56’ charter catamaran when he dinghied over with leftover chicken paiaya.  We met Billy, a deckhand on the 105’ charter sailboat Crossbow, when he helped me rescue Leif after he capsized our sailing dinghy.  I met Ben, the captain of the chartered catamaran Soterion, when he came over to ask me about Gryphon.  I briefly met a young woman crewing on a 256’ megayacht after they invited Ruby and Leif to play with their child on an inflatable slide at the beach. I casually asked if it was a charter but she let me know it was private. That’s big money. 

These people working on boats often started out as cruisers.  They share the longitudinal experience of living on a boat.  They are living the life rather than having a flash-in-the-pan, rum soaked vacation.  They share with us good spots to anchor and understand that we are short of good food and probably short on beer.  It is not a novelty to them when they hear the sound of my drill.  They simply understand our situation more than the charterers. Nothing against the energy of vacationers. I was once a charterer as unprepared as anyone. But now I live here. We have a day-to-day routine with homeschooling and boat jobs. I am not on vacation. I still have to floss every night. 

At Nanny Cay (a marina in the BVI) I ran into all the people I met while fixing up Gryphon after Hurricane Irma. From the point when Richard was there to catch my dock lines it felt like a homecoming. I could hardly walk anywhere without stopping to catch up with someone I knew. 

Challenges

I am pleased I did as much preparation as I did. It is amazing how many challenges, personal, natural and mechanical   So many things break down and require me to fix them myself. We are in the marina now, but we are almost always at anchor by some beautiful beach. Getting some repairs addressed that I could not completely manage myself, so I am running around these 3 days trying to coordinate everything. Weather, often the severity or lack of wind, has a part in all our decisions. All our plans require flexibility. There is no way I could commit to being in a specific place at a specific time. The Dream is never quite like it was imagined. Learning to live slow, but still try to sail fast. 

Passage notes

[written on passage and not uploaded]
Good morning from the good ship Gryphon.  I seem to have had a fast first night given that a catamaran who was 2 miles ahead of me is now 6 miles behind.  The view as I ascended the companionway this morning was fantastic with the grey-blue of the ocean, a light blue sky and the orange of the sun not yet over the horizon.  The vastness is humbling. 

The one eventful thing during the night was that my wind vane came untied from the steering wheel.  When this occurred the boat headed up slightly and the sails began to flog.  Part of the art of steering with the wind vane is to have the sails balanced so that the forces on the sails keep the boat in a straight line without much rudder correction.  It was because I had tried to achieve such balance that the boat only headed up 30 degrees and luffed.  She did not tack.  It was a bit cold when I went up to address that issue so I took the short cut and just switched to electronic wind vane (the autopilot steers to a wind direction rather than a compass heading).  I did not go on deck to clean up the lines and this morning from the bathroom window I noticed that the jib sheet was wrapped around a mooring cleat.  

I also have noticed that I tied my second and third reefing lines too far forward on the boom.  I will need to retie those when the boom is closer inboard. The problem is that when I go to put in one of those reefs I will not be able to get the sail flat because I will not be pulling effectively on the clew (the aft corner). Having the sail flat depowers the sail which is the point of reefing. It is not a big fix but I need the boom trimmed closer inboard  I have been on a deep reach all night but the wind is veering (moving clockwise) so I have brought the boom in closer already.

I have made radio contact with Zipporrah this morning.  I have not heard from Yeah Baby since a text at 0115. Currently 48.5nm to my Gulf Stream entry point which is 35° 30’N, 74° 20’W. Making 7-8 kts. Arriving at that waypoint by 1500 Atlantic time would be ideal per our weather router.

Pinned down in Iles des Saintes

We are using two services for weather, both of which we can access daily via our satellite connection.  I had initially set us up with PredictWind. It is a straightforward service that provides weather maps based on the GFS and the European models, providing big picture weather. It allows me to import my boat’s polars (performance details) so it can compute the weather I will see over a passage. I also have subscribed to daily emails from Chris Parker, a meteorologist who specializes in Bahamas and Caribbean weather. He incorporates into his forecasts weather patterns particular for this region. I am reading his book and his emails reinforce that effort. I then teach his concepts to Leif and Ruby as part of our homeschooling science curriculum. 

Both services were in agreement that we were going to see big winds beginning yesterday. We positioned Gryphon so as to be reasonably protected and to be in a place where we would not mind spending a week (or possibly two if you believe Chris Parker). I think we’ve done well for ourselves. 

We’re tucked in behind Ilet Cabrit, an island within Iles des Saintes south of Guadeloupe  I suspect we chose the most protected of the 3 mooring fields. Ruby and I, during a lull yesterday evening, went to town where the boats seemed to be bouncing around more. Moorings that open up around us are quickly snatched up. There is a small cat and 2 mega sailboats anchored just outside mooring field. 

Yesterday we only saw white caps coming around the south side. Today they’re around both sides.  Where I can see out into the open there is a lot of white water. Every once in a while the wind sneaks around the corner to where we are and we’ve seen 27kts in the last hour. I’m sure it’s blowing 40 in the slot between us and Guadeloupe. 

Not a bad place to be pinned down. We’ve got a little beach 100 yds away that’s part of a nature preserve. Good swimming off the boat. Gryphon’s bottom scrubbed clean fairly easily and as I was doing it Ruby swam for the first time under the widest part of the boat. Not a day to go up the mast and pull the diverter off so that project will have to wait (It is helping me to conceptualize the challenge here as needing to pull the halyard both aft and to starboard. Clearly it will require a ring attached in some way.) Leif and I built a bungee for Rudolf’s painter to prevent it from shock loading. We’re surrounded by French people And the language barrier prevents the socialization we had with other boats in Antigua. 

Ruby and I walked along the waterfront street (pedestrian), up one side street to a deli, then back to the waterfront and to a little square. Little shops and restaurants. There may be some marine services. It will be a wet dinghy ride to get there.

Routine Breakages

People commonly have two misconceptions about life on a boat.  First there is the idea that we are living in luxury.  Second people ask what we do with our time, as if life on a boat is filled with downtime.  The reason each of these ideas are wrong are related.  The things that keep us busy are not luxurious.  

What I have come to accept as routine breakages occupy more time than I thought they would.  Prior to the trip, in the three years we have owned the boat,  I addressed all the issues that came up and I would always have the yard fix things that they pointed out to me.  Yet problems come up daily.  The toilet outflow tube clogged due to years of crusty build up along the hoses.  The new navigation and autopilot systems shut down because salt water had penetrated one of that system’s numerous electrical connections.  A bolt on a recently installed larger flywheel had worked its way out causing the other bolts to wear, leading to a loose flywheel which could not drive the alternator.   The list goes on. It would be prohibitively expensive to have professionals address these problems so I have books, fellow cruisers and professionals who I can email.  I also have tools frequently laid out on a no-longer-white sheet I use to contain my mess.  

I am curious to understand how these systems work and I’m keen to be more self sufficient.  Without that interest these problems would be much more of chore than they are. I always make a good attempt at addressing problems myself, no matter the size.  What gets discouraging are the self-inflicted injuries I incur as part of my learning process.  When I tried to put back on the flywheel I was told to use a regular washer and a lock washer where neither had been before.  I therefore needed longer bolts and found some I could cut cut to the correct length.  I cut one of the bolts too long so that when I crewed it tight it bottomed out and stripped the threaded socket on the engine.  We had to stay at the dock two days longer.  

A useful strategy is to start with a good look at whatever component of that system I was last messing with to see if my own efforts to solve something else created a new problem.  For example, we discovered our freshwater tanks were leaking.  Our water supply should last 10 days and we had gone through our larger, 75 gallon, water tank in 2 days.  I initially suspected a leak in the water pressure system since I had disconnected that pump and indeed to was wert under that pump. However, by creating dams with wads of paper towels and drying the hull  downhill of the dams I was able to follow the flow of water.  I was able to determine it was fresh by tasting just a drips off my finger.  I found the highest point of this seeping flow by laying a paper towel flat  and finding it soaked 10 minutes later.  Of course the source above that point was concealed by a hole, cut in the woodwork, into which the freshwater hose passed on its way to the tank.  Access to points beyond the hole would require major carpentry. I then recalled that we had opened the inspection port on top of the tank to clean out some black floaties we were finding in glasses of water.  I would not have thought that the  top would have been the source of the leak but drips of water were sloshing out.  By re-opening it, cleaning the seal and screwing it firmly in place I stopped the drips sloshing out.  It took a while for the drips that were already flowing from the top of the tank to reach that hole in the woodwork, but eventually my paper towel laid on the hull remained dry. 

Projects have a way of coming up unpredictably and with some urgency.  The other evening our guests, during dinner in the cockpit, noticed that something was making a bubbling sound.  It was the bilge pump frequently being triggered by the float switch meaning we were taking on water.  First thing in the morning I began by inspecting the stuffing box which is a large nut stuffed with packing material that encases the propeller shaft and which screws down around the hole in the boat where it exits on its way to the propeller.  Water seeps through the packing material so that it does not get too hot when the propeller turns.  The tightness of the nut must be adjusted so that it admits no water when the shaft is still but allows a couple drops per minute while the shaft is turning.  I had recently adjusted that nut.  My stomach began to turn when I peaked down there and saw the two 14” wrenches I had used resting next to the propeller shaft.  I immediately thought about an occasional knock I’d been hearing and had not yet investigated. I was convinced the spinning shaft had driven those wrenches into something that was leaking.  

That turned out, fortunately, not to be the case and the stuffing box job had been done correctly save for being careless about putting tools away.  It wasn’t hard to find the leak which was a full on trickle coming from the bathroom.  It turns out it was coming from the foot pump in the bathroom.  A quick taste and I knew it was freshwater.  We have foot pumps so that we do not have to turn on the water pressure.  Obtaining water pressure uses the batteries and leaving the pressure on risks loosing all our water if a faucet is left open or, which actually happened before, gets knocked open. We had opened the 75 gallon tank, which I thought I had fixed, while preparing dinner the night before and now only 40% was left.  I could stop the leak by plugging the hose with a shaved down wine cork.  Fortunately I had squirreled away a rebuild kit the old owner had left behind.  By mid afternoon it was repaired, though I admit it was not until evening that I had everything put away because we needed to go back to a newly discovered snorkeling spot at the entrance to the harbor at Deshaies while the light was still good. 

It is clearly not just our boat that has issues. “Boat talk” is often the topic when visiting with other boaters. And we regularly run into people at the marine supply store. I’m told it happens more in the first year which doesn’t help us single year cruisers. I suspect that if you’re not somewhat prepared and inclined to accept this aspect of boat life, you may be ready to get off the boat before that year is over.