Journal

My final week in St. Thomas was spent preparing the boat for the trip to St. Martin and spending time with the friends that I was fortunate enough to meet in Red Hook during that past two months. One addition to the boat that I acquired this week is a 15-foot two-person kayak. On Wednesday, […]

Following the departure of my visitors, I moved the boat over to Christmas Cove, St. Thomas and resumed my normal routine of boat maintenance, reading, and swimming. Twice each day, a tour boat full of snorkelers would arrive to swim around the bay and observe the marine life. These loud, pasty American tourists would float […]

Upon his arrival in St. Thomas, my Uncle Larry was eager to start fishing. On Friday morning, we moved over to Christmas Cove, St. Thomas and found spear fishing paradise. Even a horrible shot like myself could catch a few fish. While Uncle Larry caught a few fish worthy of eating, my fish tended to […]

After snorkeling in Francis Bay, St. John’s on Monday morning, we enjoyed a brisk sail over to Jost Van Dyke. With winds gusting to 27 knots, we sped along at nearly 8 knots while flying only the mainsail and staysail on a beam reach. This, along with the fast sail from Jost back to St. […]

On Tuesday, I returned to St. Thomas, my recent home away from home. After clearing in, I met up with several friends from my last visit. One of these, Zach, had three of his friends visiting. Colin, Jay, and Eugene were on Spring Break from Northwestern, where they are getting their masters degree in biotechnology. […]

On Monday, I endured the first rainy day since I arriving in the Virgin Islands three weeks ago. Beating my way to Virgin Gorda, named by Columbus because he thought the island resembled a fat woman, the island is famous for The Baths, a collection of giant boulders strewn along a section of the shoreline. […]

After an enjoyable week in St. Thomas, I decided that it was time to visit some of the other Virgin Islands and test my solo sailing skills. My departure from Red Hook Harbor in St. Thomas was anything but pretty. Overly eager to raise the sails, I flailed for a while until I was able […]

The trip from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands went as smoothly as could be hoped for from an offshore sailing passage. We departed Thursday morning expecting the trip to take four days and were pleasantly surprised by consistent winds that allowed us to reach our destination in 3.5 days. Our new bottom paint and the […]

Our last week in Power Boats, Trinidad’s hottest boatyard, saw enough accomplished to allow Audentes a taste of water after a month on the hard. We made a great stride toward this goal on February 17th, when we managed to reinstall the mast. All the other yachties we’ve talked to have nothing but praise for […]

A week is enough time to gain sufficient perspective on Carnival. It kicked off with the NFL Superbowl on Sunday night, which we watched on a Mexican channel in a local bar. We missed out on the commercials, but we did manage to catch some off-air chatter between the commentators, who discussed whether or not […]