At 1730 local time (2130 UTC) on Jan 31, 2017 our position was 13.15.66N, 59.38.74W.
The anchor is down and we have stopped moving for the first time in 21 days and 9.5 hours. We are anchored outside Port Charles on Barbados. We are not sure what to do with all the silence and stillness.
And wouldn't you know it the first sailboat we saw as we arrived in Port Charles was Canadian flagged no less who was just leaving. When we spoke with them on the VHF, Darryl realized he has actually been in email contact with the captain relating to rigging related questions. Yet another example of what a small world it is!!
Darryl has us all checked in to the country so tomorrow we will all venture off the boat for the first time, how incredible it will feel to have our feet on solid ground again. What an amazing journey it has been! Maple handled the crossing beautifully, big thanks to our auto helm who was a workhorse for the entire time. But most importantly thank you to the crew on Maple who worked tirelessly to bring us all safely across the Atlantic Ocean. I am still in awe that we just crossed an ocean!!!!
The girls wasted no time jumping into the water for a swim and play. Ella who is quite picky about water temperature gave the nod of approval to the temperature here. Jeff and Sandra soon followed them after.
We are all exhausted and looking forward to an uninterrupted night sleep before we sail further down the island to Carlisle Bay!
Love to all from,
Janet for
The Maple Crew
PS: Sorry for the delay in sending this out, but we had a hard time getting the modem to connect.
Did you check in by pulling up to the customs dock, or did they let you dinghy in from anchor?
ReplyDeleteWe checked in at Port St. Charles. They didn't answer the VHF (16 or 77) and so we anchored and I dinghied in. They had no issues with that. I did need to go back out to get signatures on immigration forms so if you go that way, take everyone in with you to check in. No issues, no problems, no hassles. Hope you make it here when you get away from the Canaries. My heart still breaks for you and Marvin...
DeleteCongratulations Maple crew, I am in awe of you all. I'd love to see a summary of the passage statistics. You didn't explain how you connect your modem.
ReplyDeleteAfter you rest up what's the rough plan now?
Sorry Phil I didn't include much in the way of actual sailing stats, clearly you can see I (Janet) was writing the posts as I am sure D would have included far more interesting sailing bits. For staying connected during the crossing, we have an high frequency SSB radio and Pactor modem. Before we moved aboard we did loads of hemming and hawing on the debate between SSB vs. Satellite and in the end SSB won us over. We could not be more happy with the functionality it offers us. Sure it is not the latest and greatest in terms of technology, but it worked and after the initial cost of purchasing equipment (D installed himself), it has cost us nothing in term of any kind of ongoing data plan as needed for sat phones. We use the SSB and modem to connect to download our weather and send and receive emails. As for updating the blog, we just used a specific email address to email our blog and it would post the emails here. Then further to that, D set it up so that any blog posts automatically get updated to my Facebook page. Super easy way to stay connected. Of course, we can't review any comments on the blog or FB during the crossing but for those people we set up in advance, people could email us.
DeleteAs for plans now. We are waiting for friends to arrive, we will sail with them to St. Vincent and St. Lucia. We then have family visiting us in Martinique at the end of March. From there we will likely start heading south. More friends are visiting in May in Grenada. For the hurricane season, that is a bit of a question mark. We don't really want to stand still too long. We thought perhaps hang out on the hook in Grenada for a bit as we have heard there are loads of kid boats there. Then we thought we would venture over to the ABCs and possibly Colombia. We are being flexible! For now we are loving the warm weather, warm water and white beaches. I look forward to following In Tunes journey west!!!