4/22/2011 – 5/11/2011 -- 2011 Fajardo and Thornless Path Wrap-Up
At this writing Judy and I have both returned to Minnesota. It has now been roughly a month since Jubilee arrived in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. These past weeks went by like a whirlwind, as we frantically prepped Jubilee for hurricane season, worked our way back home, and then started to “dig out” after being away for several months. The following paragraphs briefly highlight our wind-down activities in Fajardo, followed by reflections on a this very special cruising year following Bruce Van Sant's “Thornless Path” to the Eastern Caribbean.
Eastern Puerto Rico and El Yunque National Rain Forest
From our brief and somewhat hectic time in Puerto Rico after the conclusion of this year's cruise, we left the island with one overriding observation – we love Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican people. The island itself if simply stunning with its densely wooded mountains coming down almost to the ocean shorelines. And we found almost everyone there industrious, helpful and very friendly. We hope to do more inland travel next January when we return, but Bill did get in a short excursion to Puerto Rico's El Yunque Rain Forest before Wayne left for Minnesota.
El Yunque is the only tropical rain forest in the U.S. National Forest system. In 1876, when the island of Puerto Rico was still a Spanish colony, King Alfonso XII named the forest a Crown Reserve. Regulated by the Spanish Forest Service - it was perhaps the first such preserve in the western hemisphere.
When the United States assumed control of Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War, Teddy Roosevelt retained El Yunque as a federally managed forest. Four years later it was placed under control of the newly-formed US Forest Service, where it remains today. More recently the forest was named a United Nations International Network of Biosphere Reserves site.
Although our visit to El Yunque was short, we worked in a lot during our short time there. Vistas from various overlooks within the forest are truly awesome (as the accompanying photographs reveal), and the bio-diversity within the forest itself incredible. When we return to Puerto Rico next January, we definitely plan to spend at least a full day there.
Hurricane Storage Preparations
Bill, and later Bill and Judy both, quickly became almost totally consumed with prepping the boat for storage over the June to November hurricane season. In addition our normal layup tasks plus prepping for hurricane season storage, we also tackled a long list of tasks that hadn't been addressed since last May – things like refreshing the Cetol and varnish on all external bright work to protect it from the summer tropical sun. We had a lot to do in a relatively short time.
Readying a boat for safe hurricane-season storage is a bit complicated, especially for neophytes to the process like us. Our savior in this effort was Betsy Risto, a local resident with a couple of transatlantic crossings under her cruising belt. Betsy is a miracle worker. She brought hurricane straps and had us securely strapped down within hours of being hauled out. She'll periodically put a humidifier on board to keep things dry inside during the hot, humid, Puerto Rico summer. In addition, Betsy will be checking for any signs of developing mold, and attacking it before it becomes a problem, regularly checking our bilge for any accumulated water, and periodically charging our batteries as needed. She even volunteered to distribute our remaining food stores to local people in need. We can't imagine going through this process without Betsy to assist.
Both of us worked on the boat up to 12-hours each day until our return flights on May 11th. As we left we felt confident Jubilee was as ready as possible should a storm find her, but we're still hopeful she won't be meeting with any hurricanes during our absence. You can bet we'll be keeping close tabs on the National Hurricane Center web site (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/).
Cruising Friend Connections
Although we did work many long, hard, hot days, our time in Fajardo wasn't all work and no play. On Easter Sunday Bill invited our Puerto Del Rey dock neighbors, Art and Beth Bauer, aboard Jubilee for a pork tenderloin dinner. It turns out that Art and Beth, from Massachusetts, had previously also kept their Catalina 42, Adagio, in Brunswick, GA, during the off season, but we'd never been there at the same times so hadn't previously met. We subsequently had dinner together a couple more nights before they returned home. We're hoping to spend some time cruising the Virgins together with them next year.
We also had a one-day overlap with long time friends Hans and Ruth Deller as they arrived to haul their catamaran just a day prior to our flight home. We've known Hans and Ruth since the mid-70's, bought three boats from them when they were in the boat business, sailed with them several times in the Caribbean, and skied with them in Colorado. Although our time together was brief, we did get to enjoy a relaxing dinner together before flying home. We're looking forward to sharing a number of Virgin Islands anchorages with them next season, and will definitely be tapping their wealth of local Virgin Islands knowledge gained from over 10 years of experience cruising these waters.
And speaking of long time friends, on his drive home from St. Augustine, Bill stopped in at Brunswick Landings Marina to visit Bill and Sylvia Mueller. Bill and Sylvia had wintered in Brunswick aboard Eos, their beautiful, personally built, 52-foot modified FD12 sailboat. It was good seeing them again. They plan to head further south and east next season, so perhaps we'll get a chance to do some cruising together in the Eastern Caribbean.
Reflections on Our Thornless Path Passage
Although cruising the Eastern Caribbean has always been in our vision, how to get there has been a continuing question. The direct route from the east coast to the Virgins or Antigua had always seemed the preferred route, however it involves a 10-12 non-stop-day passage with the associated uncertainty of weather windows during a long period like that. Plus there's nowhere to hide when 500 miles from land should the weather turn nasty. Nevertheless Bill had done that run twice from Norfolk, VA to the BVI's, crewing on friends boats in Caribbean 1500 rallies, and thoroughly enjoyed both passages (although they weren't always easy). As an option the non-stop route was definitely in the running.
The alternative route is often referred to as the Thorny Path. This route entails an island to island, harbor to harbor, upwind trek east and south directly against the prevailing easterly trades (thus the term “Thorny”). Most runs along this route involve daytime passages, with about three overnight jumps and often other pre-dawn or evening passages to take advantage of nighttime lee's which have a tendency to ease the trades near an island or bank. Taking the Thorny Path also typically involves waits in protected harbors for the weather to settle down. These waits can often delay passages for several days at a time and sometimes for weeks, before reasonable, safe, and relatively comfortable windward progress to the southeast can resume.
To get ready for our trip, Bill attended Dave Lavigne's excellent Seven Seas Cruising Association webinar series “Island Hopping to the Caribbean”. A little later, after reading Bruce Van Sant's “Gentleman's Guide to Passages South … the Thornless Path to Windward”, the die was cast. We'd try it the hard, mostly upwind, route this time around.
Judy, not terribly interested in 800 miles of upwind work, decided she'd opt out at Georgetown, Great Exuma. Wayne Leblanc filled in the crew roster in her absence. Wayne came with plenty of cruising experience, having also done one Caribbean 1500, plus recently delivering his own boat from Florida to Lake Superior. With Wayne signed up we were ready to go.
Resources
For planning and navigation purposes we purchased Van Sant's Passages South, and Stephen Pavlidis' Cruising Guide to the Far Bahamas. We rounded out our Explorer chart books with the new 5th edition of the Far Bahamas book, which now includes the Turks and Caicos Islands. Also purchased were Wavy Line charts of the Turks & Caicos and Hispaniola, and US NOAA charts covering the Mona Passage and Puerto Rico. Finally, we purchased the latest Navionics 3XG chart chip for Central and South America, including all the Caribbean Islands (we already had Navionics chart chips covering the Bahamas to the Turks and Caicos).
As described in prior blog entries, additionally we subscribed to weather router Chris Parker's invaluable Marine Weather Center single sideband routing services (http://mwxc.com/), sometimes supplementing those broadcasts with downloaded hard copies of his daily Marine Weather Center forecasts via our Ocens Weathernet satellite service. Having access to Chris Parker's expertise through his weather routing services was like having a 3rd, very experienced, crew member on board for advice. We highly recommend subscribing to his service if undertaking any serious passages in these waters.
Lastly, we also regularly pulled down wind gribs (wind direction and speed prediction charts) through SailDocs when we had internet access, or Ocens Weathernet when we did not.
To those who haven't cruised, the above may sound like overkill. It isn't. We used everything. For example, we found having three cartography sources for some stretches of water to be far from redundant, as in the Caicos banks where we used both the Wavy Line and Explorer charts for planning, and our Navionics chips for route plotting on the computer, comparing differences between the various charts and their often differing route recommendations when making our ultimate routing decisions. We found the Van Sant and Pavlidis guides particularly valuable.
Timing and Weather
After all the charts had been purchased, after all the information in the cruising guides had been digested, after all the boat prep was done, and after all the supplies had been bought and stowed, there remained two significant and interrelated variables: timing and weather.
Our prior two seasons of cruising taught us that weather in the Bahamas tends to improve as winter turns to spring. By late March the cold fronts progressively rolling off the North American coast gradually start becoming less intense, and their associated clocking west and northwest winds in the northern Bahamas become less of a problem (most anchorages only offer protection from easterly winds). Staging in St. Augustine the prior October had helped us get a bit further south for the start of our 2011 cruise, plus our later, mid-February, St. Augustine departure helped assure better cruising weather. And when we did leave St. Augustine we hurried south with one overnight to Port Canaveral followed by another to Lake Worth and a third to Nassau. We took only eight days to reach New Providence Island and Nassau, putting a total of 458 miles under the keel in the process.
Once in the Exumas we truly got lucky. In prior years we were still encountering cold fronts and strong clocking winds as late as mid-March. This year the fronts seemed to track to the north, affecting the Abacos but not touching the Exumas. Our almost six weeks in the Exumas were a pure delight.
Similarly, luck was with us from Georgetown to Fajardo. While some contrary weather pinned us down a few days in Georgetown, provisioning and Judy's flight schedule kept us there during that time anyway. And when we did leave Georgetown on April 6th,it seemed we were blessed with favorable winds for every leg of our remaining passage.
It isn't supposed to be like that. If our experience were normal, Van Sant wouldn't have sold a single “Thornless Path” cruising guide. His extensive information and tactics for making progress against strong easterly trades would simply not be needed.
For example, who could have guessed that during our Thorny Path passage a deep trough to the east of Antigua would stall the easterly trades for days on end, and that pressure systems far to our north would bring northeasterly gradient winds in their place? Who could have guessed we'd be sailing even reaches solely on port tack instead of tacking (zigzagging) our way upwind? And who would have guessed we'd be experiencing 10-12 knot breezes instead of 15-20, with 2-4-foot seas instead of six feet or more?
As we said in an earlier post, it helps to be good, and it also helps to be lucky, but it really helps to be good and lucky! We were most definitely good and lucky.
Deserved or not, we made good use of that luck as we trucked on down to Puerto Rico as fast as Jubilee would take us. In the process, our trip after Georgetown turned into a delivery rather than a cruise. We totally bypassed places like Long Island, San Salvador, Rum Cay, Aklins Island, Mayaguana, and others. We spent only one day in the commercial heart of the Turks and Caicos, Providenciales, and only one day in all of the Dominican Republic. We also made only one stop on Puerto Rico's southern coast. All of these spots have been placed on our "must stop" list for our eventual downwind return to the States.
However, delivery or not, throughout the trip we experienced one excellent passage after another, with comfortable crossings and good sailing the rule of the day. All tolled we put 1,582 nautical miles under the keel this year (1,820 statute miles), bringing our overall cruise total to 8,420 nautical miles, or 9,690 statute miles since we cast off our dock lines at Bayfield, Wisconsin, in 2007.
Beyond luck, one possible factor contributing to our favorable weather window might have been the late timing of our Georgetown to Fajardo leg. Most people make this run much earlier in the year – often in January – looking to travel all the way to Trinidad to get south of the hurricane belt before the June 1 start of hurricane season. Our decision to instead opt for a hurricane-hardened land storage facility in Puerto Rico allowed us the option of a later and possibly more favorable passage window.
The storage risk in Puerto Rico is of course higher, as is the cost of the tropical storm rider on our insurance policy and the additional financial risk associated with the required 10% named storm deductible in our policy, but those are costs and risks we decided to take. Thousands of other boats weather hurricane season in these areas each year without fleeing back to Georgia or points further north, or to Trinidad or points further south. Time will tell if we've made the right decision.
Next Year's Plans
Next year will be a very different cruising year for us. Instead of putting 1500-miles or more under our keel, we'll be intensively exploring the Spanish, US and British Virgins, an area scarcely covering 30 by 80 miles. Remote Bahamas anchorages will give way to the most popular and populated tropical island cruising location in the world. Little access to groceries and boating services will be replaced with ready access to both. And limited flight connections via small planes will give way to easy jet access from anywhere in the world. Consequently we're hoping to have more guests join us next year, something that had been harder to arrange in the Bahamas. Access to easier flights should also make it possible for one or the other or both of us to easily make a quick trip back to the states should the need arise.
We're also looking forward to sharing anchorages with our friends Hans and Ruth Deller, with Bruce and Susan Harris, Andiamo, whom we cruised with in 2009 and 2010, with Art and Beth Bauer, Adagio, new friends we met in Fajardo, and with others cruising the Virgins.
Should the spirit move us we could even opt for heading another 70 miles ESE to St. Martin, St. Barts, Anguilla, or perhaps even Antigua yet another 70 miles to the SE. Although they're not in our thinking for next year right now, each of these runs would be baby steps compared to the distances we've been traveling and the jumps we've been routinely making. There are so many options, but so little time.
With those thoughts we close yet another chapter of our cruising chronicles. Our immediate attention is now shifting to an upcoming land and cruise tour of Alaska in June, followed by time spent enjoying family and the Minnesota summer while attending to projects at home. In the mean time we wish our readers the very best of summers and falls, but do remember to come back and join us as we pick up our travels again next January. Until then, fair winds to all!
