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The Adventures of Phano in the Caribbean Sea
15 years ago
Who missed me?
I'm sitting in Newark at the moment waiting for my flight home. Back to a world of snow, solid ground and nobody knows the difference between a halyard and a jib sheet.
When I first started out, saturday I guess it was, that mother of a snow storm was still raging on and my flights were cancelled. It took almost an hour to work out a way to get to St. Thomas, and we eventually got a schedule worked out. Unfortunately the only time I could get there was ten at night. Atlantic time. I got up at 2:30 that morning. :P but I called the school and told them about my situation and he said it was fine and Captain Francis will call and work out provisions and stuff. The funny thing is, I had that captain last time, and if I knew him, he wouldn't call until last minute. That's what he did. X3
I'm glad I got that captain again, he's very committed to his job. I didn't get the same boat, but it's OK we kept making jokes about how slow it was. There was a lot of other students this time. There were 7 people on board all together. They were all much older than me. I asked the captain later how many young people took these classes and he said only about ten percent.
I have lots of stories to tell, but I can't tell them all here. I will tell you where we traveled though. We sailed out of Redhook St. Thomas to Francis Bay St. John. My first national park by the way. We did a little snorkeling. Some people said they saw some sea turtles and a stingray, but I looked in all the wrong places. :P after that we sailed back to water island by St. Thomas. I didn't like it very much really. After that we took a long passage to Culebra in the spanish virgin islands. We stayed there two days to take our navigation tests. Only two of us passed. I got the highest score of 86 or so. It was a hard test. I want to return to Culebra someday. Took some pictures, but my phone got wet and had to be rebooted. Only two survived. I'll post the nicer one later. After two days sitting on an anchor in Ensenata honda, Culebra, we sailed to a fantastic little island called culabrita. It was trecherous going in, unmarked reefs, breakers and lee shores, but it was totally worth it. The only man made object was a lighthouse at the top of the hill we took turning bearings off of to get us past the dangerous rocks. It was fun. We didn't stay long on culebrita. Some of us snorkled, but I got tired of that and swam ashore. Another ship mate and I found some turtle tracks and then just bummed around on the sand. There was only a handfull of other boats anchored in the cove. Each from another country. Eventually we had to sail all night home that evening, so I decided I had to return to my boat and swam off the beach toward it. In the middle of plotting a course out we were attacked by killer bees so we had to save the rest of the plotting underway. It was all changed around anyway of course. :P as soon as we left, all the other boats did too, probably for the same reason. We made excelent time back to redhook on a nice beam reach going at a lovely 7 knots. We actually got there too early for the night sailing lessons, so we got ourselves lost doing night time man overboard drills. (More nerve wracking than you'd think.) So we took danger bearings off light houses and navigated our way back to safety. Some people probably had too much, but I thought it was one of the best parts of the trip. After 12 straight hours at sea, we eventually made it back to home port where we find that another fairwind boat took our mooring, so we had to anchor. Which wouldn't be so bad if the windlass didn't give out at that moment. But all was well, untill the ferries started flooring it back and forth creating hurricane like wakes that tossed our little boat like a pancake. When we got up this morning our feet were wet. (Not a good thing to wake up to on a boat) that was from all the ferry wakes coming through the lower ports that the bilge pump couldn't keep up. But we took car of it.
Eventually we went ashore to take our last test. I got a 98 I think. I had to leave right afterwards though, but I'm on the captains mailing list if he ever needs crew for a delivery, and I'm also invited to sail with him in Boston. :)
I still don't have my land legs. I'm sitting here in the airport and I still feel like I'm rocking. It's not so bad untill I walk down narrow halways and slam into the wall. X3 it will go away in about two or three day.
I'm sitting in Newark at the moment waiting for my flight home. Back to a world of snow, solid ground and nobody knows the difference between a halyard and a jib sheet.
When I first started out, saturday I guess it was, that mother of a snow storm was still raging on and my flights were cancelled. It took almost an hour to work out a way to get to St. Thomas, and we eventually got a schedule worked out. Unfortunately the only time I could get there was ten at night. Atlantic time. I got up at 2:30 that morning. :P but I called the school and told them about my situation and he said it was fine and Captain Francis will call and work out provisions and stuff. The funny thing is, I had that captain last time, and if I knew him, he wouldn't call until last minute. That's what he did. X3
I'm glad I got that captain again, he's very committed to his job. I didn't get the same boat, but it's OK we kept making jokes about how slow it was. There was a lot of other students this time. There were 7 people on board all together. They were all much older than me. I asked the captain later how many young people took these classes and he said only about ten percent.
I have lots of stories to tell, but I can't tell them all here. I will tell you where we traveled though. We sailed out of Redhook St. Thomas to Francis Bay St. John. My first national park by the way. We did a little snorkeling. Some people said they saw some sea turtles and a stingray, but I looked in all the wrong places. :P after that we sailed back to water island by St. Thomas. I didn't like it very much really. After that we took a long passage to Culebra in the spanish virgin islands. We stayed there two days to take our navigation tests. Only two of us passed. I got the highest score of 86 or so. It was a hard test. I want to return to Culebra someday. Took some pictures, but my phone got wet and had to be rebooted. Only two survived. I'll post the nicer one later. After two days sitting on an anchor in Ensenata honda, Culebra, we sailed to a fantastic little island called culabrita. It was trecherous going in, unmarked reefs, breakers and lee shores, but it was totally worth it. The only man made object was a lighthouse at the top of the hill we took turning bearings off of to get us past the dangerous rocks. It was fun. We didn't stay long on culebrita. Some of us snorkled, but I got tired of that and swam ashore. Another ship mate and I found some turtle tracks and then just bummed around on the sand. There was only a handfull of other boats anchored in the cove. Each from another country. Eventually we had to sail all night home that evening, so I decided I had to return to my boat and swam off the beach toward it. In the middle of plotting a course out we were attacked by killer bees so we had to save the rest of the plotting underway. It was all changed around anyway of course. :P as soon as we left, all the other boats did too, probably for the same reason. We made excelent time back to redhook on a nice beam reach going at a lovely 7 knots. We actually got there too early for the night sailing lessons, so we got ourselves lost doing night time man overboard drills. (More nerve wracking than you'd think.) So we took danger bearings off light houses and navigated our way back to safety. Some people probably had too much, but I thought it was one of the best parts of the trip. After 12 straight hours at sea, we eventually made it back to home port where we find that another fairwind boat took our mooring, so we had to anchor. Which wouldn't be so bad if the windlass didn't give out at that moment. But all was well, untill the ferries started flooring it back and forth creating hurricane like wakes that tossed our little boat like a pancake. When we got up this morning our feet were wet. (Not a good thing to wake up to on a boat) that was from all the ferry wakes coming through the lower ports that the bilge pump couldn't keep up. But we took car of it.
Eventually we went ashore to take our last test. I got a 98 I think. I had to leave right afterwards though, but I'm on the captains mailing list if he ever needs crew for a delivery, and I'm also invited to sail with him in Boston. :)
I still don't have my land legs. I'm sitting here in the airport and I still feel like I'm rocking. It's not so bad untill I walk down narrow halways and slam into the wall. X3 it will go away in about two or three day.
Sonuds like you had a wonderful time...I would love to visit the Caribean!
Did you get lots of photos? :)
Glad you had fun though :3
Welcome back to land-world. :)
It's probably best to just make some stuff up and hope people will misinterpret it into the events that actually happened.
People tried to get me to read Redwall because I like Mouse Guard, but I'm the middle of another series at the moment. Hornblower will teach you more traditional nautical terms than you ever need to know. :)
glad u had a great time!