All Alone
I've been on my own for the past 10 days or so, as Maryann's been back in California visiting with her mom and daughter Theresa. She's due back tonight, so today marks an end to my bachelor days. I think this is the first time we've been apart for more than a couple of days since we got married. Actually nice to have a break, but reunions are also nice.
Being alone means I've had to singlehand the boat. When she left we were in a slip in Crown Bay Marina, for ease of transport and luggage. After putting her on the plane I moved from the marina to a quiet anchorage near the airport. It's always slightly tense backing out of a slip in 20 knots of wind, but with a couple of dockhands to toss lines and fend off any near crashes (there were none), it was pretty simple.
I'd never anchored by myself before, so that was a new experience. The bay I chose is nearly always nearly empty and I think there was just one other boat there when I arrived (and not to make it sound like an epic journey, it's only about a 15-minute motor around one headland and it's the next bay over). I picked my spot and dropped the hook. We have a windlass control in the cockpit, so that would normally make it simple. However, the latch that holds the chain when the anchor is out oftentimes will flip over when the chain is rattling out, engaging it. Then I have to go feed the chain back into the chain locker and start over. That happened as I was letting out the chain from the cockpit, but it was easy to run up to the bow and take care of it.
Lindbergh Bay, where I was anchored, is a bit rolly, being open to the south. But it also has a couple of Best Western motels and one of them has free wireless Internet! So I was in a dilemma, put up with the rolling (and sometimes I mean it rolls a lot!), but have free wireless, or move and have to pay for it. Well, I'd already paid in advance for a month's worth while at the marina, and in anticipation of being in a pay-zone, so moving won out.
Next day I raised the anchor, finding it a bit more difficult to do singlehanded than getting it down. You have to motor slowly forward in the direction of the chain, creating just enough slack to make the windlass's job easy pulling up the chain. You can't really see where the chain runs off from the cockpit, so I'd run back and forth between the bow and cockpit, leaving the boat in gear, but at idle, and letting the autopilot steer in the direction of the chain. It really wasn't too terribly diffiult, just a lot of running back and forth.
I moved out to the main harbor where there's a brand new marina and where some of the cruise ships dock (there's room for 2 cruise ships at Crown Bay and room for 3 here in Long Bay; the other day we had 5 in port and another anchored in the middle of the harbor!). We have friends on another boat who were also anchored near the new marina and I anchored just a couple of hundred yards behind them.
Spent most of last week moving up closer to the marina each day, since the closer to the marina the less rocking and rolling of the boat and the better wireless signal (detect a thread here?). Wednesday our friends' company arrived and they went off to the BVI with them; I grabbed their spot and had it pretty good. Except for wireless. I just couldn't stay connected. The boat would "sail at anchor", basically the wind blows it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and I could not keep the wireless signal. Luckily there is a coffee joint in the marina with free wireless, so I ended up spending a fair bit of time there. Besides, a latte and bagel in the morning is my idea of breakfast heaven.
I also spent a fair bit of the week fighting with my old Mac PowerBook G4 laptop. It's 7 years old and was starting to show its age. The display would get a bad case of jitters and I'd have to carefully warp the case to get to settle down. Then it took to spontaneously powering down, even when connected to the power brick. That did it - got my son Erik to buy me a new Mac laptop (funny enough, Apple announced new models the very day I asked him to purchase it) through the UCSD bookstore at a bit of a discount. He sent it via FedEx and it got here overnight from San Diego. Spent quite a bit of the week getting all my programs and data back in order; I had a recent backup of everything buy my email, of which I'm missing a couple months worth. All in all, not too bad.
Yeseterday I was so frustrated with the wireless situation I went back to Lindbergh Bay. Getting pretty good at getting the anchor up and down and motoring by myself. With this push-button boat I'd probably be able to do a fairly decent job of sailing as well. Anyway, Lindbergh was almost as rolly as it was last week, so it was hardly worth getting the free wireless.
Today I moved back to Long Bay and Yacht Haven Grande Marina. This was a first, docking without anybody else on the boat. And it was a tricky maneuver, backing into a spot just behind a docked catamaran. In a crosswind. But the gods were smiling (or ignoring me), and it all went quite well. We're docked in the newest luxury mega-yacht marina in the eastern Caribbean. Very, very posh surroundings. It's one of the few marinas that can accomodate Larry Ellison's (Oracle) little 432' power boat, Rising Sun. Funny thing is, the marina is actually less expensive than where we were staying at Crown Bay. The marina is between the cruise ship dock and downtown Charlotte Amalie, but most of the cruise ship passengers hate to walk (not all, but a goodly number). But the marina was clever, it stretches over about 1/4 of a mile, and is chock full of very high end shops (Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, you get the idea). So there's a constant stream of cruise ship passengers walking by.
I was going to write about the other scourge of the Virgin Islands, the bareboat charterer, but this has already gotten long enough. Perhaps next time around.
Being alone means I've had to singlehand the boat. When she left we were in a slip in Crown Bay Marina, for ease of transport and luggage. After putting her on the plane I moved from the marina to a quiet anchorage near the airport. It's always slightly tense backing out of a slip in 20 knots of wind, but with a couple of dockhands to toss lines and fend off any near crashes (there were none), it was pretty simple.
I'd never anchored by myself before, so that was a new experience. The bay I chose is nearly always nearly empty and I think there was just one other boat there when I arrived (and not to make it sound like an epic journey, it's only about a 15-minute motor around one headland and it's the next bay over). I picked my spot and dropped the hook. We have a windlass control in the cockpit, so that would normally make it simple. However, the latch that holds the chain when the anchor is out oftentimes will flip over when the chain is rattling out, engaging it. Then I have to go feed the chain back into the chain locker and start over. That happened as I was letting out the chain from the cockpit, but it was easy to run up to the bow and take care of it.
Lindbergh Bay, where I was anchored, is a bit rolly, being open to the south. But it also has a couple of Best Western motels and one of them has free wireless Internet! So I was in a dilemma, put up with the rolling (and sometimes I mean it rolls a lot!), but have free wireless, or move and have to pay for it. Well, I'd already paid in advance for a month's worth while at the marina, and in anticipation of being in a pay-zone, so moving won out.
Next day I raised the anchor, finding it a bit more difficult to do singlehanded than getting it down. You have to motor slowly forward in the direction of the chain, creating just enough slack to make the windlass's job easy pulling up the chain. You can't really see where the chain runs off from the cockpit, so I'd run back and forth between the bow and cockpit, leaving the boat in gear, but at idle, and letting the autopilot steer in the direction of the chain. It really wasn't too terribly diffiult, just a lot of running back and forth.
I moved out to the main harbor where there's a brand new marina and where some of the cruise ships dock (there's room for 2 cruise ships at Crown Bay and room for 3 here in Long Bay; the other day we had 5 in port and another anchored in the middle of the harbor!). We have friends on another boat who were also anchored near the new marina and I anchored just a couple of hundred yards behind them.
Spent most of last week moving up closer to the marina each day, since the closer to the marina the less rocking and rolling of the boat and the better wireless signal (detect a thread here?). Wednesday our friends' company arrived and they went off to the BVI with them; I grabbed their spot and had it pretty good. Except for wireless. I just couldn't stay connected. The boat would "sail at anchor", basically the wind blows it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and I could not keep the wireless signal. Luckily there is a coffee joint in the marina with free wireless, so I ended up spending a fair bit of time there. Besides, a latte and bagel in the morning is my idea of breakfast heaven.
I also spent a fair bit of the week fighting with my old Mac PowerBook G4 laptop. It's 7 years old and was starting to show its age. The display would get a bad case of jitters and I'd have to carefully warp the case to get to settle down. Then it took to spontaneously powering down, even when connected to the power brick. That did it - got my son Erik to buy me a new Mac laptop (funny enough, Apple announced new models the very day I asked him to purchase it) through the UCSD bookstore at a bit of a discount. He sent it via FedEx and it got here overnight from San Diego. Spent quite a bit of the week getting all my programs and data back in order; I had a recent backup of everything buy my email, of which I'm missing a couple months worth. All in all, not too bad.
Yeseterday I was so frustrated with the wireless situation I went back to Lindbergh Bay. Getting pretty good at getting the anchor up and down and motoring by myself. With this push-button boat I'd probably be able to do a fairly decent job of sailing as well. Anyway, Lindbergh was almost as rolly as it was last week, so it was hardly worth getting the free wireless.
Today I moved back to Long Bay and Yacht Haven Grande Marina. This was a first, docking without anybody else on the boat. And it was a tricky maneuver, backing into a spot just behind a docked catamaran. In a crosswind. But the gods were smiling (or ignoring me), and it all went quite well. We're docked in the newest luxury mega-yacht marina in the eastern Caribbean. Very, very posh surroundings. It's one of the few marinas that can accomodate Larry Ellison's (Oracle) little 432' power boat, Rising Sun. Funny thing is, the marina is actually less expensive than where we were staying at Crown Bay. The marina is between the cruise ship dock and downtown Charlotte Amalie, but most of the cruise ship passengers hate to walk (not all, but a goodly number). But the marina was clever, it stretches over about 1/4 of a mile, and is chock full of very high end shops (Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, you get the idea). So there's a constant stream of cruise ship passengers walking by.
I was going to write about the other scourge of the Virgin Islands, the bareboat charterer, but this has already gotten long enough. Perhaps next time around.
posted by Ken at
2:27 PM |
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