December 14, 2000
Merry Christmas!
The crew of the good ship Hawk wish all of you a joyous holiday season.
Our plans for some short winter sails along the southwest coast of Ireland have fallen victim to the wettest, stormiest fall in 300 years of record keeping. Of course, our sails have been with the sailmaker since October, so we couldn't have done much even if we had left the dock. As gale has succeeded gale, often with less than twelve hours between them, we've been grateful for our truly watertight boat, our efficient heater and the local library. Beth has had plenty of time to practice her Spanish, and Evans has already finished his winter work list. Despite the weather, we usually manage to walk an hour or more each day, though we've learned to always have a raincoat along or we're likely to return wet. We've been promised that the gales end here on St. Stephen's Day, the day after Christmas, known as Boxing Day in the UK. We remain skeptical, but take heart from the fact that the serious racing season begins here in February.
While cruising opportunities have been limited, Beth did get to travel around the southwest corner of Ireland with her sister, Leigh, who came to visit in the middle of November. Driving in Ireland turned out to be a major part of that adventure. Luckily, when we were in New Zealand aboard *Silk,* we bought a car and spent six months driving on the "wrong" side of the road. But driving in Ireland proved far more challenging than New Zealand. Major Irish roads average about the width of a country lane in the States, often with a deep ditch or stone wall in lieu of a shoulder. The Irish drive down the middle of the road until they see another car approaching, then they put their left tires right on the edge of the pavement when faced with a car coming in the opposite direction. Distances between the car mirrors and nearby hazards (cars in other lanes, walls, trees, bushes, etc.) are generally measured in inches. Yet the Irish cruise along at 60-70 mph, sideswiping bushes, bouncing off the edge of the road, and dodging trucks and buses coming the other way. Just to add spice to the proceedings, a line of stopped cars can lurk around every sharp curve due to the endless roadwork. Driving in Ireland could be characterized as tense. It's especially brutal on the passenger, who has to learn to suppress the almost constant gasps of terror as the side of the road whizzes by a few inches from the fender in front of them.
Despite the hazards, Ireland's tremendous natural beauty makes it well worth a visit. The high cliffs and windswept headlands along the Atlantic coast are a haven for bird life and offer incredible vistas at every turn. Four thousand year old beehive huts made of stone dot the headlands on the Dingle Peninsula, attesting to the span of human habitation on these wild coasts. The rugged mountains of Killarney National Park, the highest peaks of which were snow-covered when we visited, surround a series of alpine lakes. Even when it rains, the ever-changing clouds and light create rainbows around every corner.
Clinton has been greeted on his visit here like the Pope, with running commentary on the radio from the time his plane came into Irish airspace. His visit has focused on attempting to restart the peace process in Northern Ireland, and indeed there has been violence in the North while we've been here. Just today, the police arrested two men and found an activated bomb in the car they were driving through the middle of Belfast. The entire dispute seems intractable, and yet "the Troubles," as the Irish refer to the long-running battle over Northern Ireland, are as remote to us here as they would be in the States. It involves only the northern part of the country, and most of the Irish we talk to don't care much either way what happens to Northern Ireland. Economically stagnant, the North will be a drag on whoever ends up with it; a reason, several people have suggested, why England would just as soon be done with it. But small minorities on either side keep the fighting alive and hold the rest of the North hostage.
Our winter in Ireland will speed by far too quickly, of that there's no doubt. We will be underway in the spring as soon as the weather patterns have moderated, hopefully by mid- to late-March. We plan to sail up the west coast of Ireland, the part we never got to last year, and from there we'll spend a bit more time in Scotland. By mid-June, we hope to be headed for Iceland by way of the Faroes. Then our plan is to run all the way down the Atlantic, from Iceland to the Azores to the Canaries to Uruguay, and end up in Patagonia by this time next year. It will be an exciting year, the culmination of all of our planning since we first started seriously planning to sail away again. We look forward to sharing it with you.
Stay warm and healthy, and enjoy the spirit of the season.
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland
September 12, 2000
51 degrees 42 minutes North, 8 degrees 31 minutes West
Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland
Hello everyone -
We're back in Kinsale where we'll be spending most of the next six months or so. The days are rapidly getting shorter and the frequency of gales has increased to at least once a week. But the weather's still very warm, and for the most part it feels like summer here while it already felt like fall in Scotland when we left there a month ago. I still find it hard to believe we're at the latitude of the northern tip of Newfoundland and I can wander ashore and see palm trees. Ah, the wonders of the Gulf Stream! The water's warm enough the bilge no longer serves as a fridge...
We've spent the last two weeks doing some very slow, very relaxed cruising getting to know this corner of Ireland. In contrast to the rugged, remote and depopulated Scottish islands, here thousands of years of careful cultivation have created lovely patchworks of fields separated by stone fences and high hedges across almost every square mile of land. Along the southwest coast of Ireland, small villages and towns lie scattered around anything approaching a cove, and in the large, well-protected anchorages we often find two fair-sized towns. This is very civilized cruising with a store always available ashore, a choice of pub meals wherever we drop our hook and phones and post offices a short walk away. In addition to some very pleasant sailing and easy exploring ashore, I've spent most of the last few weeks writing while Evans has been organizing winter boat projects. This has been a much needed interlude for rest and reflection between our Scottish summer and my upcoming trip to the States.
There's so much history here, no one seems able to keep track of it all. Ruined forts and watchtowers line the coast, and if we ask local sailors about them more than half the time they know no more than we do. We picked up a bit of history here in Kinsale last week, though, and in this case we didn't want to know any more about it. We were raising our anchor to go get fuel at the nearby marina. I was on the bow and Evans was on the helm. The anchor seemed to be coming up a bit more slowly than usual. We had an anchor float attached to it by a tripline, and as we came even with that Evans got the boathook and pulled it up deck. But the tripline was wrapped around something, most likely the anchor chain which often happens in tidal anchorages. I took the float and kept raising the anchor while Evans went back to the helm.
By the time our 110-pound Bruce was approaching the surface, I was certain we had something caught on it. The windlass was working too hard and the tripline was still wrapped around something. As the Bruce broke the surface of the water, in its claw I saw what at first appeared to be a large log. But when I looked more closely, I saw a corroded fisherman anchor some four feet long with a cross piece of two and a half or three feet. The Bruce had neatly snagged it between the shank and the flukes and brought it up to show us.
I won't go into the unpleasant details of removing it when we were being swept out the river mouth by a two knot current and hesitated to use the engine because we still had the tripline down there attached to something else (another anchor?) which we were dragging with us. Suffice to say it took two halyards, several pieces of line, some major muscle power and a few unkind words, only once or twice exchanged between the two of us. By the time Evans had wrestled it loose, we were no longer in an anchorage but in a deep channel, so we dropped it over the side. Later, when we got fuel, the dockmaster got all excited. "We've found anchors from when the Spanish Armada were here in 1601," he said. "That might have been an antique, a real relic." He actually followed us out in his launch so we could show him where we'd dropped it. He said his teen-aged sons would love to go looking for it. The thing probably weighed two-hundred pounds and would have holed our dinghy - so I'm not sure what else we might have done with it.
Hawk handled all this commotion with great aplomb and seemed quite proud of what she'd found down there. Not only did her windlass bring it up, but despite some rather nasty banging around when it broke the water and the need to swing it away from the Bruce and around the side where it dragged mud and slime along the hull, her topsides suffered nothing more than a small scratch. We both would have been in a panic (well, more of a panic) if we'd had to worry about gelcoat or paint. We suggested to Hawk that we preferred finding our history ashore, and I hope she understood!
I'm heading back to the States tomorrow and will be there until the middle of October. Evans is staying with Hawk and will continue to be in communication via this e-mail address. You can reach me by e-mail at my father's address - harseykng@aol.com or phone - 315-446-6775. I look forward to seeing many of you while I'm in the States.
Hope your sailing season still continues,
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
51 degrees 48 minutes North; 8 degrees 18 minutes West
Royal Cork Yacht Club
Crosshaven, Ireland
August 20, 2000
Hello everyone -
We're back in Irish waters and back in shorts and tee-shirts, over 250 nautical miles south of our last reported location. Our last few days in Scotland proved as wondrous as the rest of the summer. Faced with a forecast of another week of southerly winds, we decided to explore a bit more of the Inner Hebrides while we waited for a favorable breeze. On our way north at the beginning of the summer, we had sailed past two large islands - Islay (pronounced eye-luh) and Jura - which parallel the top half of the forty-five mile long Kintyre peninsula. We now decided to take the opportunity to visit these islands and round out our summer tour of the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
To reach our anchorage on Jura, the northernmost of the two islands, we passed through the Sound of Islay, a narrow channel between Islay and Jura where the current runs at 4-5 knots, around the back of Jura and into Loch Tarbert, a six-mile long loch that very nearly cuts Jura in half. For the first two miles of the narrow loch, we dodged and wove through a minefield of partially and completely submerged reefs and rocks, lining up a series of white painted beacons ashore and following the bearing until it intersected with the next leading line. Blondie Hassler, the intrepid singlehanded racer who more or less invented wind-driven self steering, set up the original leading marks several decades ago, and hundreds, if not thousands, of boats have relied on them since. Once through this constricted channel, we found ourselves in an almost completely enclosed lake some two and a half miles long and a half-mile wide. Beyond this, a narrow channel no more than 200 feet wide which can only be safely negotiated at slack water leads to a series of virually land-locked pools. This loch feels every bit as remote as the Outer Hebrides - there are no roads and only two (apparently abandoned) buidlings. The land around the loch was also like the Outer Hebrides - boulder strewn bog with three 2,500-foot high mountains to the south - the Paps of Jura. George Orwell wrote "1984" in a small cottage near the northern tip of this island - his "big brother" technological society seems completely out of keeping with this isolated and untamed landscape.
After three days in Loch Tarbert, the weather looked as if it might cooperate soon, so we got up at 5:30 to catch the current south and raced through the Sound of Islay at 10-10.5 knots. Over the course of the hour or so as we passed under the Paps of Jura, clouds spilled out of Loch Tarbert and washed over the tops of the rocky, gray peaks like a slow-motion breaking wave, engulfing them in a swirl of white froth, then pulled back again and disappeared leaving a clear blue dawn sky in their wake.
The northern half of Islay shares Jura's topography of rugged, boulder-strewn land, steep cliffs and sea caves. But to the south, the land lowers and softens until it turns to pleasant, rolling hills covered with the gold and green of cultivated fields speckled with white sheep and brown cows. Of all of the Hebridean islands, Islay seems the most abundantly endowed for the production of whisky - with abundant water, fertile ground for growing barley and lots of peat for malting (or germinating) the barley before fermenting it. Though we only sailed around a third of the island's circumference, we passed four picturesque distilleries, their neat white buildings offering a lovely counterpoint to the lush island's golden fields and green glades. Islay is home to close to a dozen distilleries whose products contribute the smokey, peaty taste to most of the best-known blended whiskies.
By the time we reached our anchorage on the southeast coast of Islay, the forecast called for twenty-four hours of favorable winds. After a three-hour walk ashore to view the intricately carved, 1,200 year old Kildalton Celtic Cross, we raised anchor for a fast run south. We very much wanted to reach Crosshaven, a suburb of Cork and home to the Royal Cork Yacht Club, in time to rendezvous with John Neal and Amanda Swan aboard *Mahina Tiare* - a 46-foot Hallberg-Rassy which they use as a sail training vessel. Between them, John and Amanda have amassed over a quarter of a million offshore miles including a dozen roundings of Cape Horn. After sailing from Seattle in March of this year, they transited the Panama Canal in May, left the Virgin Islands in June and made landfall in Kinsale, Ireland in early August. They plan to leave tomorrow with six new crew members aboard on the next leg of their voyage which will take them up the west coast of Ireland to the Outer Hebrides down the Sound of Mull and to the Caledonian Canal. I met Amanda at SailExpo last year and talked to John on the phone the year before that - but by shoreside standards we didn't really know each other at all.
We arrived here yesterday after a 36-hour run from Stangford Lough on the east coast of Ireland, had dinner with John and Amanda last night and added a few notations to their Scottish charts over coffee. This afternoon, they spent a couple of hours with us going over their Patagonian cruising notes and sharing insights on everything from where to get diesel fuel to what items the isolated lighthouse keepers appreciated from visiting yachties. This quiet camraderie and unstinting genoristy are the hallmarks of the cruising community and one of the things we missed the most during our four years ashore.
So we're back in Ireland and back in summer weather. Somewhere between Islay and here we shed the extra layers we'd started wearing in Scotland, and today temperatures reached short-sleeved shirt and shorts weather - something that only happened a couple of times in Scotland. Amazing how much difference four degrees of latitude can make! Of course, there's a downside. It actually gets dark at 8:30 at night... We're looking forward to a couple of weeks cruising the south and southwest coasts of Ireland before returning to Kinsale in mid-September when Beth flies back to the States.
Here's hoping summer lasts well into September -
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
August 10, 2000
56 degrees 1 minute North, 5 degrees 37 minutes West
Tayvallich, Loch Sween, Scotland
Hello everyone!
Our Scottish summer has come to an end, both in terms of the weather and our own itinerary. The day Beth's parents left, the unusual summer weather disappeared as well, and we've had rain for at least part of each day since, breaking the worst drought in twenty years on some of the Hebridean isles. We're experiencing some of the first westerly winds of the entire summer season as the normal pattern of lows and fronts re-establishes itself over Scotland, moving back north from a prolonged visit to England where it created one of the wettest summers on record. As the weather changed, we changed direction, and we're now moving south towards Ireland and our winter quarters. Beth flies out from Cork on 13th September for the Newport and Annapolis boat shows, but we hope to do some cruising on the south and west coasts of Ireland before then, weather permitting.
We plan to winter in Kinsale, near Cork, on the south coast of Ireland. From there, we should be able to do some winter sailing in between boat projects (for Evans) and writing projects (for Beth). We will each spend some time back in the States over the winter, and also plan to do some land cruising in the UK and Europe. Next summer, we'll head north as soon as the weather breaks, to cruise the parts of Ireland and Scotland we missed this summer. Then we intend to visit the Orkneys, Faroes and Iceland. After Iceland? Patagonia, though exactly how we'll get from one to the other remains to be seen.
Scotland has been a delight. The Inner and Outer Hebrides form a compact cruising ground of surprisingly protected waters which can be traversed in two days but contains so many anchorages that people who have cruised here for twenty years discover new ones each season. As in Newfoundland, for every anchorage where we dropped our hook, there were another dozen we might have visited but didn't. The islands combine natural beauty with abundant wildlife and visible history. In a day's sail, we would see a castle or two (some derelict and others still inhabited), the remains of crofters cottages or a Celtic cross, seals and dolphins along with the occasional whale, puffins and guillemots and a dozen other types of birds. At night, which still doesn't come until after 9:00 PM, we might be anchored up a seven-mile long loch under low, rolling hills with sheep grazing on them or off a brightly painted town of two-storey buildings or under the mighty cliffs of a black mountain range. We were rarely alone in an anchorage, but we were rarely with more than three or four other boats. Most nights we were invited aboard a Scottish boat and sampled a wee dram of yet another single malt while discussing local history and politics. Those with a passion for pubs or woolens or whisky or ancient civilizations or early Christianity (or sheep) will find much to occupy them while cruising here. Unlike in Newfoundland, there's a wide array of chartering options...
We have been very fortunate with the weather, and we would probably feel differently if we'd had to deal with rain and fog every day. But as in Newfoundland, the hard dodger and proper clothing make most weather bearable. While May and early June were chilly, we've not used the diesel heater since the last week of June (though we've used our down comforter all summer long, unlike in Newfoundland). Daytime temperatures have averaged in the mid-sixties on the water for most of the summer - though it's often considerably warmer ashore. The tides and currents probably constitute the biggest challenge to sailing up here, but there's plenty of information on both and with time to spare we've been able to use them to our advantage. We're both sorry to be leaving Scottish waters, and we'll enjoy passing through again next season, not least because of the many friends we've made.
We hope you've all had as wonderful a summer sailing season as we have had!
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
July 25, 2000
56 degrees 36 minutes North; 6 degrees 3 minutes West
Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland
Hello everyone!
For the last week or so, we've been very busy socializing after joining some 200 boats for the Millennium Malts Cruise. Sponsored by three single malt whisky distilleries, we've been on what could be called a distillery crawl from island to island in the Hebrides. The event has given us the opportunity to get to know a large and friendly group of Scottish sailors. Bagpipes, single malt whisky, barbecues and dancing have all figured prominently in the festivities. The whole thing has been incredibly well organized, with several days between events when we've been able to get off by ourselves or with a few new friends for some quiet time. Throughout this period, we have had perfect weather - sunny, warm with unlimited visibility. Right after being introduced, every Scot we meet says, "Now don't be thinking this is our normal weather!" We've begun to think horrible weather is a myth dreamed up by the Scots to keep the tourists away.
The event opened at Craobh (pronounced cruve) Haven Marina, located on the west coast near the top of the Mull of Kintyre about twenty miles south of Oban, the largest town in this area. We filled our water tanks and cleaned the boat inside and out at this, the first full-service marina we've seen since entering Scottish waters six weeks ago. As one of a half dozen American boats that sailed across on their own bottoms this year for the cruise, Hawk garnered her share of attention. As the boats arrived and the slips filled, a carnival atmosphere developed. Bagpipes would start to play on one boat or another, people would clap in rhythm with the music, then cheer when the piper ended his song. Everyone wandered the docks greeting old friends and making new ones. Colours were piped in the morning and evening, and the yachts were dressed as they arrived until a cloud of waving flags hung over the marina.
After the opening muster, we had three days before the second major event. This took us back to the Isle of Skye where the fleet anchored off the Talisker distillery in Loch Harport for what turned out to be two days of almost nonstop events. This included a sunflower raft - where all the boats rafted together in a circle. The organizers were hoping to beat the world record of 197 boats set in 1985 by the Clyde Cruising Club in these very waters. They started at noon with the cardinal boats, four boats anchored securely at what would be the quarter points of the circle, then tied stern to one another by 800-foot long lines. They didn't close the circle until 6:00. Then boat horns blew, cannons went off, people cheered, and a helicopter flew overhead filming it all. The raft fronted the dozen or so white-washed stone buildings of the town of Carbost surrounded by the low, grassy hills at the head of the loch. Behind these rose the Cuillins, Skye's jagged mountains, black and austere against the perfect, cloudless blue sky. Though we ended up with something like 185 boats and didn't break the record, it was incredibly impressive.
That night, everyone went ashore for a ceilidh (pronounced cay-lee). The word means "visit" in Gaelic, but the event resembled an old-fashioned barn dance. The band consisted of fiddles, a tin whistle (which looked more like a flute) and drums, and they played spirited reels and jigs. Each dance was different, but the basics were much the same as in a square dance with people linking arms and swinging each other around, or swinging from one person to another right down the entire dance hall. No one called the dances, however, which left those new to Highland dancing being passed from hand to hand, or spun around and faced in the right direction when they got it backwards. But everyone from six to sixty participated, with much laughter and clapping and good will. I have heard the Scots described as dour, but we've yet to meet even one who lacked an easy smile and an infectious laugh.
We had to do the distillery tour which proved very interesting. Some facts for those interested - whisky should never be drunk "neat" as the essential oils and flavors are released by adding a bit of water. The age of the whisky does not necessarily indicate its quality - as whisky ages the cask it is in breathes, losing about 2% a year and replacing it with air. This imparts distinctive flavor (in the case of Talisker - peat, iodine and pepper), but if left too long and too much oxygen enters the whisky can oxidize which ruins it. When I tasted the Talisker, I could actually feel the warm peat smoke coiling in the back of my throat...
Now we're back in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull for a CCA reception this evening. Tomorrow we'll sail to Oban where we meet my parents on Thursday. There is so much to do and see here, I'm already regretting how short their visit will be. I know dad's just looking forward to doing some sailing - he's boatless for the first time in 20 years after selling his Ericson 32 at the beginning of the summer.
Hope everyone's enjoying some sunshine and cool breezes,
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
57 degrees, 10.5 minutes North; 6 degrees, 10 minutes West
Loch Scavaig, Isle of Skye
July 3, 2000
Hello everyone!
We have had the most extraordinary contrast in the last week, ranging from a world class chamber concert in a castle hosted by the "Lord of the Isles" to a perfect anchorage surrounded by high peaks with nothing ashore except a backpackers' hut. The first occurred in Loch Dunvegan on the northwest corner of the Isle of Skye, the second in Loch Scavaig on the southwest corner, where we are now. This anchorage lies in a basin encircled on three sides by the Black Cullins, jagged, black peaks from 2,500 to 3,000 feet high. We are nestled behind a large island connected to land by a drying patch at low tide - the entrance to this snug little anchorage between the west end of the island and a drying rock might be 50 feet wide. Behind us, the walls are almost sheer consisting of dark gray to black rock jutting up at an oblique angle and separated by green flows of coarse grass and heather. As I write this, I can hear the cascade which tumbles down a narrow ravine behind us, twisting and turning in a gulch carved over eons, sometimes almost doubling back on itself. Above the ridge from which the waterfall tumbles, the highest peaks of the Cullins can be seen when the clouds recede. These are jagged, black pinnacles which stand stark against the blue sky, their peaks seeming to grow out of ancient falls of scree.
A path from the small, grassy meadow at the head of the harbor leads over a shoulder of black boulders and flat slabs of rock along a wide, shallow stream which twists and tumbles for a half mile where it exits from a long valley. In this lies an inland loch only ten feet above sea level completely encircled by peaks and ridges and surrounded by heather, grass and wildflowers in an alpine-like meadow. Almost two miles away, at the head of the valley, the mighty Black Cullins rise sheer from the valley floor in a wide curve which forms a stunning backdrop to this isolated loch. Here we are enjoying the grandeur and awesome beauty of wilderness despite the popularity of the anchorage - we have to share it with two other boats this evening!
Our experience in Loch Dunvegan on Saturday night lay in the cultural, rather than the natural, sphere. We attended a chamber concert in the Castle Dunvegan, the longest continually occupied castle in Scotland, being inhabited by the Clan MacLeod for seven hundred years. The current Clan Chief, John MacLeod, is the 29th in his line. He has kept his ancestral home at least in part by bowing to necessity and opening the castle to tourism. Outside the castle grounds lie three gift shops and a restaurant. But in giving up some of his culture, he has not become uncultured. He hosts the summer series of chamber music mostly for the benefit of himself and his family, with internationally renowned artists who (so we surmise) spend part of their summer at the castle as a sort of working holiday. A few tickets are sold to these performances, and those who attend are treated as the personal guests of the Clan Chief for the evening.
When we passed through the massive front doors into the medieval entrance hall, John MacLeod himself stood on the bottom step of the wide, red-carpeted ceremonial staircase to greet us. Our host wore a white dress shirt, cummerbund and black tuxedo trousers. His most distinguishing feature was a magnificent mane of predominantly white hair though a few black hairs still lingered. He welcomed us to his home and directed us to the drawing room. This turned out to be an intimate rectangular room about the size of a large living room with fifteen-foot high white ceilings, salmon colored walls and hardwood floors with red runner rugs along the traffic areas. The walls were decorated with a variety of oil paintings of various sizes, clan members from different centuries. Four crystal chandeliers hung from bas relief friezes worked into the otherwise smooth plaster of the ceiling.
A Steinway Grand piano sat to the left as we entered, the cover propped open with books with carved leather bindings. Beyond that, chairs were lined up in neat rows in two sections with a red-carpeted aisle down the middle. The front row consisted of a mismatched assortment of plump armchairs, mostly in shades of pink. Straight-backed chairs with cushioned seats made up the rest of the rows, with seating for perhaps 25 or 30 people. As the audience filed in, we became aware that many were regulars who greeted one another warmly and commented on the weather, their health or their particular attire for the evening. Six of us had come ashore from boats anchored off the castle. Another half dozen seemed to be tourists who'd seen the advertising that day. The rest were MacLeods or family of the musicians, including several children, who claimed the comfortable armchairs in the front row.
The performance was fantastic. The first half consisted of a song set sung by the Chief's son, Stephan MacLeod, and accompanied on the piano by Kathryn Goodson. The songs were French and German by DuParc, Wolfe and Fouré, all romantic songs of unrequited love and endless suffering including, among others Claire de Lune. I had half expected a venue for a good but not superbly talented son to make use of for the summer months. But the minute the pianist started to play, I knew how wrong I was. And when Stephan MacLeod's whole body crumbled as if wounded and his face became a mask of pain before the first words even left his lips, I knew we were in for an exquisite performance.
And so it was. Stephan MacLeod has a rich baritone voice with enough power to command the piano even at its most energetic. He sang with an absolute passion, his face and body and gestures communicating the very essence of the words and music, the soul of it. The second half of the program was Frank's piano quintet, the piano and the string quartet, called the Turner Quartet after the painter. With Stephan MacLeod turning the pages for Kathryn Goodson, six nationalities were represented - the two violinists were Columbian and Sardinian, the violist French, the cellist Dutch, Kathryn Goodson American (originally trained at Oberlin Conservatory) and Stephan MacLeod, of course, Scottish. All of the performers, including the MacLeod son, are internationally renowned, having trained in Paris and Cologne and Amsterdam. They all have busy performance and recording schedules, and have played with symphony orchestras of most major cities in Europe. To be privileged to see such fabulous performers in a salon setting where we could experience every expression and watch every gesture can hardly be described.
The most extraordinary thing, as Stephan MacLeod sang, was the uncanny resemblance between him and the portrait on the wall just behind him. The man in the portrait had the same long, thin nose, the same well-formed ear, the same black hair and dark eyes, the same full cheeks and thin mouth. He even had his head cocked at a slight angle and was looking slightly down his nose in a pose Stephan quite naturally assumed time and time again as he sang. The portrait could literally have been painted the day before using this 30th generation MacLeod as a model. Yet the man in the portrait was dressed in Napoleon Bonaparte's clothing, and even had one hand suspiciously close to the buttons of his tunic. At the interval (where we were served coffee and biscuits in the formal dining room) I had a look at the plaque on the painting. He turned out to be the 23rd Clan Chief, from sometime in the mid-1800s.
What a magical evening! We'd been made to feel as if we'd been handed down from a Coach and Four to attend an artistic soiree as the personal guests of the Clan Chief of the Castle Dunvegan. After the performance ended, I half expected them to roll back the carpets and start the waltz and minuet. Our host again saw us out personally, where the setting sun had turned the islands and the skerries in the loch a deep blue while sending sheets of flame across the calm waters where Hawk sat at anchor.
Rarely have we so appreciated our great good fortune...
Here's to where cruising can take you!
Beth and Evans
Latitude: 57degrees 20 minutes North, 7 degrees 14 minutes West
June 22, 2000
Hello everyone -
We're currently anchored in Little Kettle Pool, a small completely enclosed anchorage about 1/2 a mile across, just a mile or so from the entrance to Loch Skiport, a large fijord on the NE shore of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. We're protected through 360 degrees by islands to the west, north and east and by Hecla, a 2,000-foot high peak, and its associated ridges to the south. Katabatic winds whistle down Hecla's slopes in strong southerlies as we discovered when we arrived here two days ago. The SE winds outside the loch had been blowing no more than 15 knots, but we anchored in 25-30 which died away instantly when the wind shifted to the west.
Low green vegetation, nothing more than knee high, covers the 200-300 foot high islands around us and the ridges and mountain to our south. Gray rocks and boulders lie scattered across the vegetation, glacial erratics dumped by a retreating wall of ice; rock outcroppings cap each point and headland, scoured clean by the same glacier 10,000 years ago. The sea meets the shore in a band of dark kelp-covered rock - just a line at high water but a slippery slope some dozen feet high at low. The landscape feels over-large, constructed for giants. Nothing ashore offers scale to the eye - no roads, no buildings, no trails, no animals, no fences. It's hilly enough to provide a strong sense of depth, which gives the impression of distance, but it's not so high as to limit the horizon as in the Alps or Rockies. The sky feels grand and wide, and the land below feels boundless - the ragged end of a continent trailing off into a thousand miles of open ocean.
Yesterday we took the dinghy and ventured ashore, a daunting task where no pier or landing stage exists and the water level will change by six or eight feet if we're exploring for even a couple of hours. We landed in a small inlet after passing through a channel only a bit wider than the dinghy that we deemed to have adequate water that it wouldn't dry at low tide. Ashore, the vegetation consisted of coarse grass, thick, spongy moss and a low conifer-like bush (heather or gorse, perhaps) that came up to our knees. The exact combination varied depending on how wet the ground was, which itself went from bog to marsh to squishy and only reached damp to almost dry at the top of the rocky ridges. Marsh grass and wild flowers predominated where we were slogging through bog up to our ankles; moss and grass turned to moss and bushes where the ground went from wet to squishy; and on the sides of the hills where there was some sort of drainage the bushes predominated. Both the moss and the bushes created a deep, soft mattress over the muddy ground but offered uncertain footing. I now understand why the book we bought on Scottish Islands regularly assumes an hour per mile of walking and refers to these hikes as "scrambles."
We moved from shoulder to ridge to shoulder wherever possible to avoid the knee-deep bog of the lower ground. We passed a couple of ancient fences made from turf, now covered with their own layer of grass and bushes. We also skirted a rock walled enclosure divided into two rooms, about forty feet long and fifteen feet wide. From any distance this looked like just another random pile of gray rocks tumbled across the bog. Within ten or fifteen minutes we had climbed to about 500 feet and could see more water ahead, which Evans suggested was the continuation of Loch Skiport beyond our anchorage. But we quickly realized this water was about a hundred feet above sea level, and as we approached we could see Hawk's mast through a notch in the ridges which now separated us from the anchorage - and the water level of this lake was above our mast! When we finally stood above it, it made quite a sight. The inland loch was a mile or so long and maybe a quarter mile wide, contained by rocky shores and rugged ridges. It ended at a ridge beyond which we could see the top of Hawk's mast, and beyond that the islands, skerries and channels of Loch Skiport. Beyond that, a large headland jutted out into the ocean, and a white sail moved slowly across the expanse of the Sea of the Hebrides. The colors were all muted, the gray of the rocks, the dusty green of the foliage, the silver-blue of the water, even the soft blue of the sky, yet the air was so clear it felt as if I could close my hand over the tiny sail and pluck it from the water.
We walked further inland coming to a second inland loch, then followed a jeep track along a much higher ridge to where it ended at the edge of a cliff probably 800-1,000 feet above the valley below with a 360 degree view of the island. In the low land below us to the west, we could see another large inland loch with a small village on the far side, and then the deep blue of the open Atlantic where the island ended. To the south lay Hecla, the rugged slopes covered with scrub vegetation and round boulders fully visible despite its name (Hecla means 'shrouded in mist' - there seems to be at least one on each of these islands). To the north lay the ridges beyond Loch Skiport, then the lower land of North Uist and the open sea to the east. Both islands sagged beneath the weight of rock and ridge, and the ocean intruded deeply into the lochs on their western shores. The sun reflected off the inland lochs and the boggy ground, shimmering from a thousand pools and marshes. I understood then why these southern islands of the Outer Hebrides are referred to as "drowned islands" - the rocky ridges seemed just to be resisting sinking forever into the sea.
We returned to find the dinghy high and dry on a bed of rocks and sea grape which we skidded over to reach it. We managed to slide it the ten feet or so to water and push ourselves off before using the oars to cross the couple of hundred feet to the narrow channel now completely choked with kelp. Two hours later, the channel we'd passed through lay four feet above the level of the water in our anchorage. So much for our judgement of water depth! If we had returned a couple of hours later we would have been stranded for four hours or so...
Here's to summer sailing adventures for everyone!
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
Loch Skiport, South Uist
Outer Hebrides, Scotland
PS - Don't know exactly when we'll get to send this. We're now sending e-mail from our laptop aboard Hawk using a cell phone and an infrared port, but no signal out here. We should be able to transmit when we reach Loch Maddy on North Uist, so sorry if this is delayed.
June 12, 2000
Ardminish Bay, Gigha Island, Scotland
55 degrees 40.4 minutes North, 5 degrees 43.9 minutes West
Greetings from Scotland!
We're in Scotland! For some reason, ever since we entered Scottish waters on Saturday it has seemed positively miraculous to me that we're here. How to explain it? Six weeks ago, we were over 3,500 nautical miles from here, and we said, "We're going to sail to Scotland." And we did. It's so unlike flying somewhere. I remember all the details of getting here, the gale and the shackle breaking, the apprehension around leaving, the wonder of our Fastnet landfall, the frustration of too much motoring around Ireland. Doing what we set out to do has taken most of the last two months, not the day it would have taken if we'd flown. We did it. We sailed Hawk here. It isn't passive. It's the most decisive, active, self-determined thing you can do. We controlled every controllable aspect of the voyage. We willed ourselves to Scotland. We covered every single mile. We lived every single minute.
We left Kinsale on the south coast of Ireland two weeks ago, determined to reach Scotland as quickly as possible. The cruising season actually begins in April or May up here, and we've been advised to be well out of the area by late August to avoid the fall gales. We pushed hard with far too much motoring in light winds to get up the Irish Sea. Currents and tides dictate our entire sailing day up here. Tidal ranges vary from 6 feet to 20, which means vast amounts of water have to move through the constricted channels between islands and up and down the shallow basin of the Irish Sea. Strong currents result, with max flows of three or four knots being average and six to eight knots not uncommon. When strong winds oppose these currents, nasty, breaking seas develop almost instantly. Going with the currents means a fast ride at 9 or 10 knots for up to six hours, time enough to make many miles during a day sail. Opposing the currents not only means a slow ride but often a bumpy one while the shore crawls by at a snail's pace and you learn every crevice and boulder on a particular headland. Evans has been spending an hour or more a day calculating the currents between our departure and arrival points and determining the best time to set sail. For some reason that always happens to be 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, but at least it's light.
We had the most magnificent day Saturday when we entered Scottish waters - one of those once in a season days that we'll remember whenever we think of this summer and our Scotland trip. Hawk spread her wings wide and we flew from Ireland to Scotland. We had 20 knots of true wind dead over the stern, the main on one side and the jib on the other, and we were making ten knots with the current so we only had ten knots of wind over the deck. After having been hidden by heavy cloud for the last week, the sun fairly blazed in the porcelain blue sky painting the water blue-black except under the turning white caps where it glowed a dark green. As we closed with the Mull of Kintyre, the misty headland resolved itself into high hills, then into a landscape of convoluted folds and tucks, a wrinkled and unkempt topography, so twisted it seemed impossible to follow the line of one valley or ridge. A rich green covered the whole, though whether composed of field or forest I couldn't quite decide without the scale offered by buildings or roads.
For the first time since leaving Kinsale, we both shed our outermost layer as the sun's warm rays lured us out from under the hard dodger. Evans calculated the tides perfectly once again, and we had the benefit of three knots free while we raced around the famous headland marking the entry into the Highlands and Islands - the wilds of Scotland. We raised anchor at Brown's Bay off Larne Lough at 5:30 and dropped anchor here at Ardminish at 11:30 - over 50 miles in six hours, and almost all of it under sail. Lovely, lovely, lovely!
Compared to the islands all around us, Islay and Jura, and further away Mull, this small speck hardly qualifies as an island. No more than five miles long and a mile or so wide, it runs in a roughly north-south direction but just slightly off axis so that the top of the island is a bit east of the bottom. Though Gigha is covered with fertile soil that is in turn covered with lovely rolling fields dotted with sheep and cattle, at the interface with the water the true structure of the island can be seen. There rounded and scoured glacial scrubbed boulders are covered with a mixture of kelp, lichen and wildflowers. These brown, gray and black boulders create tidal pools around the harbor where we are anchored. The jetty where we went ashore is surrounded by these rocks, and the bottom around them consists of a fine, white sand with large patches of kelp caught on the occasional rock or the legs of the pier. The pier was constructed from four two by fours covered by asphalt to create a plank a bit over a foot wide with an iron pipe railing running down one side. The asphalt provided excellent footing on the otherwise slippery wood.
Ashore on Gigha we wandered through the sub-tropical Achamore Gardens, home to Rhododendrons, Azaleas, eucalyptus and a variety of other exotic plants all kept alive in the winter by the tail end of the Gulf Stream. We explored the tumbled sandstone remains of a 13th century chapel, now filled with gravestones dating from the 18th century. We chatted with the proprietess of the local store which serves the island's hundred or so inhabitants. Even the overcast weather and another gale warning can't dampen our enthusiasm for these lovely islands.
Here's hoping summer has arrived and sailing has begun!
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
51 degrees 42 minutes north; 8 degrees 30 minutes west
Kinsale Yacht Club, Kinsale, Ireland
June 1, 2000
Hello everyone!
We're in the midst of what we thought would be standard Irish weather, a Force 8 gale yesterday and fog, wind and rain today. The temperature's in the high fifties and outside the day has a raw, damp edge to it, but here on the boat the diesel heater's hard at work and we're enjoying a relaxing day reading, writing e-mails and listening to the rain on the coach roof. We've been in Ireland for ten days, and except for some quick showers that turn to sunshine in fifteen minutes, this is the first cold, rainy weather we've had.
It's a pleasure to be in a place where the economy is so incredibly robust. The Emerald Tiger, as they call the Irish economy, grew an astonishing 11+% last year. Job postings are everywhere, and they're actively recruiting workers from places like Newfoundland and India. Cork, about twenty miles from where we are in Kinsale, has become a leading producer of software, and we've been told repeatedly that Ireland is now the second largest exporter of software in the world. Cork's economy used to be agricultural, largely dairy oriented, but now pharmaceuticals have become a major sector in addition to high tech.
Kinsale is considered the gourmet capital of Ireland. Its dozens of restaurants include fine French, German, Chinese, American (The Shack - fantastic hamburgers!) and lots of great seafood places. We had lunch at a gourmet fish shop the day before yesterday - seafood chowder that's almost a bisque and a short list of the day's entrees all based around simple preparations of the still flopping catch of fish and seafood. I had the best Mussels Meuniere we've had since Hout Bay in South Africa.
In the pubs, the local Cork stout, Murphy's, is served in addition to Guinness and everyone asks how we like it compared to the rival stout. I find it strong and dark, without the heavy bitterness of Guinness, and both of us prefer it. But all the locals seem to be drinking Heineken. When I asked one florid Irishman about his he said, "We're EU now, remember." Another said, "Murphy's in the winter, Heineken in the summer."
Everyone insists on the medicinal benefits of stout. "Lots of iron!" "Doctors here prescribe a pint a day for pregnant women." "If the mother's milk's off, a pint of Guinness will put it right within a half an hour." We're still not sure how much to believe these local myths - the Blarney Stone is located only about twenty miles away from here at Blarney Castle. If one kisses the stone (upside down while leaning backwards holding steel rails), one gets the gift of "blarney" for seven years. Blarney is defined as pleasant talk meant to gently mislead... We can only assume that most of the locals have kissed the stone sometime in the last decade or so.
Evans went racing with the local Yacht Club last Sunday and a week ago Wednesday. They have an amazing community of racers - on Wednesday nights they get thirty boats out on the course, all crewed by not less than four people and some of the boats require 12-14 crew members. We calculated there must have been 200 people out racing. They didn't get back until 9:00, and race results weren't read in the Yacht Club bar until after midnight. But we're having a hard time adjusting to local hours. The sun doesn't set until after 9, and the twilight lingers until 10:30 or 11. We've been going to bed much later than usual for us - in the Tropics we went to bed and got up with the sun. If we did that here, we'd only be getting about four hours sleep right now, and we're still several weeks away from mid-summer's eve.
Kinsale is located about three miles up the Bander River. About halfway between the town and the sea lies Fort Charles. This "five point bastion fort" consists of an incredible series of walls, ramparts and battlements rising up from the river. It was built in 1680 to protect the town from attack by the French and a major battle was fought here when the Spanish Armada came to help the Irish break away from the British. The weight of history hangs on the hills here in crumbling and unnamed round towers and ring forts whose stories have been lost for centuries.
The town itself consists of a half-dozen narrow streets bracketed by the two long roads that line either side of the harbor. Where they almost meet at the harbor's head, they create a wedge which the rest of the streets of Kinsale connect in a sort of fan. Many of the streets are cobble-stoned, and most of the buildings are painted in beautiful but surprising colors - rich rose, pastel peach, delicate pink. Window boxes filled with late spring flowers adorn many of the houses; tiny gardens just large enough for a bench can be found tucked behind many buildings. In the late afternoon sun, everywhere you look could be a postcard.
We've been trying to arrange a European mobile phone which has kept us here in Kinsale a bit longer than expected. We'll be starting north on Saturday or Sunday, and we'll move as quickly as we can to Scotland so we can enjoy the Scottish islands for a month or so before the CCA cruise begins. As we expect to winter here in Kinsale, we'll have time to see more of Ireland then, though it's hard to pull ourselves away from such a delightful spot.
Hope this finds everyone in good health and spirits!
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
May 24, 2000
51 degrees 42 minutes north; 8 degrees 30 minutes west
Kinsale Yacht Club, Kinsale, Ireland
Hello everyone!
We made landfall on Fastnet Rock about 9:30 AM local time on Sunday, May 21st. A cold misty drizzle fell, the white clouds touched the wave tops a few miles from the boat, the silver and gray water flashed green where it turned to the wind. Out of the waves rose a jagged, black molar crowned on one side with a high white lighthouse, stark, remote and foreboding. Exactly the landfall we had both pictured - a heart stopping, awe-inspiring moment we will remember for the rest of our lives.
Four hours later, we were running under the full main and poled out jib in 18 knots apparent under a pastel blue sky with a few fluffy clouds playing tag over the mast. To port, the green and gold fields of Ireland rolled away from dark cliffs that plummeted straight to the sea. Ruined castles, towers and keeps graced every headland. Still two miles offshore and we were overwhelmed by the smell of the flowers, a heavy scent which I could almost feel as it invaded the boat overpowering the musky odor of three weeks close confinement. Not at all the landfall I had pictured, but surely one of the most lovely coasts we've ever sailed along. Not the harsh, rugged, untamed beauty of Newfoundland, but the comfortable, civilized, cultivated beauty of the French countryside made more compelling by the steep cliffs and crashing waves.
Our passage took 24 days with a 48-hour stop in Flores, the westernmost of the Azores islands. We had intended to sail north toward Bermuda before turning east, but within a day of leaving the Caribbean it became clear that the summer season had not yet settled in. Neither the Bermuda nor the Azores highs were in place, and lows were tracking across the Atlantic at 33-35 degrees north instead of 38-40 as would be normal in this season. We ended up sailing the rhumb line to the Azores through the normally calm center of the Atlantic, and spent most of our time close-reaching in 20-30 knots. We spent several days trying to slow the boat down to avoid a large low pressure system converging on us as we approached the Azores. Under staysail alone, Hawk was doing 7-8 knots in ~30 knots 60 degrees off the wind. When the staysail shackle blew up and the halyard went up the mast 60 miles off Flores, we decided we'd rather retrieve it at anchor than in the 10 foot seas then running.
So we pulled into Flores, a jewel of an island, over 100 miles west of Faial and the rest of the Azores group. A new breakwall at Lajes on the southeastern corner offered excellent protection from the strong NW winds and allowed us two nights of deep and dreamless sleep. Besides retrieving the halyard (to find the shackle broken in half from crevice corrosion), we tended to a half dozen other small fixes from repairing the webbing chafe-protection on one batten to caulking one of our fixed ports which was (believe it or not) leaking. By the time we left on the leading edge of a large high pressure system, we were rested and ready for the next leg.
The high filled more quickly than expected, so we had two days of light air. But on the third day the wind filled in again, and we found ourselves close-reaching once more. The two days before we made landfall we were making 8-9 knots under the double-reefed main and staysail with the wind just forward of the beam. We spent the entire passage expecting SW winds, and saw all of three hours of wind from that direction. So much for pilot charts and prevailing winds!
Kinsale is picture postcard perfect. We're on the visitor's dock at the Yacht Club, and enjoying all manner of luxuries from fresh local cheeses to gourmet meats to organic fruits and vegetables. We'll send you another update on the town and our experiences here shortly!
Hope this finds everyone well and warm, and looking forward to their own sailing adventures.
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
April 25, 2000
Hello everyone!
In a few days, we'll be underway for Ireland. We've enjoyed our Caribbean sojourn, but we are both looking forward to being offshore again and (believe it or not) to cooler weather. We've read enough about Scotland to be very excited about cruising there this summer, and plan to become experts on Scotch Whisky (no "e" - see, we're learning), kilts, trekking, highland dancing, bagpipes and pubs - not necessarily in that order.
Our current plan is to leave on Thursday or Friday of this week. We hope to sail nonstop to Kinsale, near Cork on the south coast of Ireland, but if we need a break we'll stop at Bermuda or, more likely, the Azores. The passage could take anywhere from 20 to 30+ days, not including a stop in the Azores, depending on how kindly the North Atlantic decides to be.
This will be our last e-mail contact until we make landfall again, so expect us to be out of touch for the next month or so. We will re-establish communication as soon as we figure out which of our international phone jacks works in Ireland.
We've spent the last several weeks preparing ourselves and the boat, and are now at the stage where we're tired of planning, talking, thinking and stowing and ready to GO! We're looking forward to this passage, though neither of us doubt some of it will be wet, cold and miserable. But Hawk's ready for the open ocean, and we're ready for the challenges and the beauty of being on our own once again.
We'll let you know when we get there!
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
Leinster Bay
St. John
USVI
April 7, 2000
18 degrees 22 minutes North, 64 degrees 47 minutes West
Caneel Bay, St. John, US Virgin Islands
Hello everyone!
We left Antigua ten days ago and have been working our way west. First stop - Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of St. Martin, where we made our first major provisioning foray in preparation for the upcoming Atlantic passage. Cruisers always try to fill up the boat where it's cheapest, and Sint Maarten is cheap indeed, but especially by Caribbean standards. Two grocery carts full to the brim, mostly of costly items like cereal, crackers, cookies and canned goods, cost me $298. Just for comparison, at the Bitter End resort on Virgin Gorda a small box of Cheerios costs $7.25; the same box costs $6.50 in Antigua. On Sint Maarten, I paid $3.40 for a large box - similar to US prices.
After a lovely overnight passage, we reached Virgin Gorda and have been cruising around the BVI for the last week. Yesterday we sailed into US waters and cleared US Customs at St. John to take care of the other necessary task before departure - US mail. We haven't had a real mail drop since I attended SailExpo in January because the mail my father sent before Christmas took six weeks to reach Antigua and we've been too much on the go to plan another pickup. We also needed to have some spare parts shipped to us, which would have resulted in Customs hassles if not duties and fees on any other island. Here we walked in to Connections, the local mail drop for cruisers, and walked out with three big boxes sent priority mail a week ago for a less than ten dollars each.
We'll start looking for a weather window to depart for Ireland in another two weeks. We haven't made any decisions about stopping at Bermuda or the Azores - both are comfortably close to the rhumb line. We'll let the weather dictate when the time comes. The ~3,200-mile passage could take us anywhere from three weeks to five, with a great deal dependent on how the springtime North Atlantic treats us and whether or not we decide to make any short stops. Right now, we're at the stage of excitement and trepidation we always reach before a major passage - eager to get underway but checking and re-checking everything to be sure we're really up to the ocean's demanding standards. We're not yet stowing and organizing the boat for passagemaking, but we are checking every inch of the running and standing rigging, hoisting and inspecting our storm sails, re-fitting locks on hatchboards and lockers unused since our last passage, and so on.
Soon, we'll be exchanging all our shorts and tee-shirts for thermal underwear and wool watch caps. After our five month summer, we'll be going north into spring.
Fair winds and good spring sailing to all -
Beth and Evans
March 19, 2000
English Harbour, Antigua, West Indies
17 degrees 1 minute North, 61 degrees 46 minutes West
Hello everyone!
We're in Antigua for the third time this season. The combination of good cruising grounds, good friends and good repair facilities keeps drawing us back. After the Heineken Regatta we returned to claim Evans' new CD-ROM drive which he needed to load the software for his 1999 income taxes. Customs held the drive hostage until we freed it with a medium-sized ransom of freight and fees.
English Harbour, where we're anchored, served as the Caribbean base and hurricane hole for the British fleet in the 1800s. Nelson's Dockyard, the complex of buildings on the spit of land in the center of the harbor, used to house barracks, a sail loft, dining facilities, wood working shops, boat houses, and provisioning warehouses. Head-high capstans dot the ground ashore, and were used to maneuver the great sailing vessels stern-to the man-made stone embankment which surrounds the acre of land. Most of the rough-hewn stone buildings with their white and black hurricane shutters still stand and now house museums, restaurants and hotels. Old Admiralty traditions lived long in this insulated corner of the Caribbean, and we discovered the other night that some still survive.
Friday night we were invited to "The Tot" by a Mike, a bluff, white-haired, kindly English gentleman we met several months ago. He lives aboard his 45-foot Amel, *All Grace*, and has spent the last six months off and on in English Harbour. The Tot, as he explained to us, continues the naval tradition of the daily tot of rum for each sailor to ward off disease, discontent and mutiny. But of less importance than the tot is the toast, the daily blessing of the Queen accompanied by a different toast each day of the week.
We arrived at the Copper and Lumber Store (now a restaurant, bar and hotel) on the dockyard at quarter to six, and people were already gathering. Mike explained that most were members, which entailed participating in "The Tot" a certain number of times. "Overseas members, like me," he said, "must take part seven times in fourteen days. Resident members, those who live full-time in Antigua, must participate 20 times in 30 days. All members must also be able to answer questions about British sea-faring history. They're quizzed on the last night of their membership period, and if they pass they then return and invite everyone to participate in a second tot to celebrate their joining."
At a few minutes to six, twenty or so people filed out of the main lobby at the Copper and Lumber Store and into the restaurant where a table had been set up with iced glasses, pitchers of water, bottles of molasses-colored Pussers rum and a small wooden barrel with a funnel sticking out of it. We picked up a big glass of water and a smaller glass of rum. I was intimidated to see that the rum glass held far more than a shot - more like four. One of the members just ahead of me poured two-thirds of her rum into the little wooden barrel. She saw me watching and laughed. "Sorry, you’re not allowed to do this. Members only!" We went through a doorway and found ourselves in a small flagstone courtyard surrounded by a few plants at ground level and a balcony one story up. We arranged ourselves in a large, somewhat ragged circle.
Conrad, the proprietor of a local restaurant and the master of ceremonies, began by asking for everyone to introduce their guests, of which there were six. Mike introduced us, mentioned *Hawk* and our sailing background. The enthusiastic tinkling of water glass against rum glass followed the introduction of each guest. Then Conrad read from a ledger-sized, tattered book describing the events of the Admiralty from that day in history. A French fort had been taken in some remote island 150 years ago or so and the British had gone away with the French colors - that brought a round of "Hear, hear" and glass tinkling. A British Man of War had been sunk in another year, which raised a series of groans.
Then Conrad set aside the book and raised his water glass and silence descended. "Clean your palates," he called. Everyone took a sip of water. He raised the rum glass, and we all recited, "To a willing foe and sea room... and the Queen, God bless her!" I downed my rum in several unladylike gulps. Within an hour I wondered how anyone could do this 20 days out of 30 and continue to function. Once was enough for me!
Fair winds,
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk
English Harbour
Antigua, WI
March 2, 2000
18 degrees 05 minutes N; 63 degrees 05 minutes W
Marigot Bay, St. Martin
Hello everyone!
We've been enjoying Caribbean cruising at its best. Since leaving the Saintes, we've continued to wander around the Leeward Islands, spending time in Guadeloupe, Antigua, St. Barths and now we're back at St. Martin. Our sailmaker from Quantum Sails, Bill O'Malley, is here for the Heineken week regatta, one of the largest and most presitigous of the Caribbean winter season. He is tactician aboard the Santa Cruz 70-something, *Donnybrook*, and offered to have a look at our sails while he was in the neighborhood. We've now put 7,000 miles on the Spectra main and jib, and were glad of the opportunity to have a professional check how they are holding up in preparation for the Atlantic crossing in a few months. That motivated us to get here for the regatta, and we're looking forward to watching some of the racing. I'm most interested in seeing the Tall Ships - they race right around the island on Sunday after a parade in the morning.
Our trip from Antigua to St. Barths on Saturday was the best sailing we've had since arriving here in November. We've spent all our time in the Caribbean this year in big seas and 20-30 knot winds, all too often going to windward. But we left Falmouth Harbour, Antigua at about 4:00 PM on Saturday with a forecast for 12-15 from the northeast, and that's exactly what we had. We had almost forgotten what a joy sailing in a moderate breeze and calm seas can be. We were reaching under the full main and jib, averaging a bit over 8 knots, under a star-spangled sky and then a bright half moon, without a single squall. *Hawk* was throwing up phosphorescent fireflies in her wake, and I spent a lot of time sitting on the bow pulpit watching the black velvety water open in front of us. One of the first times this season when being in front of the mast didn't entail a soaking. Absolutely ideal.
On Wednesday, Bill managed to disentangle himself from all of his responsibilities on *Donnybrook* (in addition to tactician he's second helmsman as well as sailmaker - he arrived with three sails for that boat) and reached us about 4:30. He had a quick look at the main where some stitching tore out on a reinforcing patch and confirmed for us that it wasn't anything serious. Then we dropped the chain in the dinghy leaving it to guard our anchor and headed out.
We sail, Bill races. The sails are, to him, flexible membranes which can be manipulated in a dozen different ways to reach an ideal shape which translates into "fast." We had every one of our sails up for twenty minutes or so, and in every case Bill crawled beneath, sighted up the sail, examined the shape and then made suggestions.
"If you tighten those checkstays more, the staysail will set up much better. See, you've not lost anything on the main by doing that and you've really increased the efficiency of the staysail." "The draft in the main has moved aft a bit. Nothing compared to what a Dacron sail would have done after 7,000 miles, but if you were racing I'd suggest you get the sail recut. You're not planning to stop in Annapolis on your way to Scotland, are you?" "If you sheet that storm sail to the toe rail, you'll be able to get it a whole lot flatter which is what you want if you're ever going to close reach into 40-45 knots." After he'd finished, each sail looked as if it had come to attention, like a sloppy soldier sucking in his belly and straightening his spine for company inspection. Our knotmeter showed improvements with every string we pulled.
All too quickly, our precious time with Bill came to an end. As we took him back in to the dock he laughed. "This is the furthest I've ever come for sea trials!" *Hawk* seemed quite disappointed when we returned without him.
Fair winds and full sails,
Beth and Evans
Bourg, The Saintes, Guadeloupe
15 degrees 52 minutes N; 61 degrees 35 minutes W
February 5, 2000
Hello everyone -
We're just back from a lovely early evening walk ashore on one of our favorite islands in the Caribbean. Bourg, the only town in this archipelago of a half dozen small islands located 15 miles south of Guadeloupe, combines French sophistication with Caribbean flair. One-person wide sidewalks line narrow concrete streets wide enough for one car or two vespas. Everything spills out onto the sidewalks - the tables and chairs of cafes and restaurants, the batik clothing and postcards of tourist stores, the gold and green watercolors and silk screens of art shops, the freezer cases and fresh produce of grocery stores - forcing pedestrians into the streets where they weave around parked cars and dodge tooting vehicles. People on foot and on wheels share the streets with the animal population of Bourg - heavily plumed roosters, a huge variety of dogs and the occasional fleet feline. Music seems to come from everywhere - the steel band practicing down by the waterfront, the church bells chiming the quarter hour, wind chimes sighing from doorways and windows, the rustle of palm fronds. Except for siesta from noon until three when the streets are practically deserted, the town has a festival feel to it, whether at 7 in the morning or midnight.
Bourg's main street runs for about a mile along the waterfront; its town square consists of a small brick plaza off the ferry dock surrounded by restaurants and snack shops. Caribbean gingerbread-style architecture dominates. On our walk ashore this evening, the setting sun lit the tops of the buildings drawing our eyes upward to the tracery of woodwork around many of the eaves, the carved railings on the small balconies and the decorated shutters on each window. The Caribbean palette of pinks, blues, yellows and greens made rich by the slanting sun only enhanced the beauty of architectural details we'd hardly noticed before.
The restaurants range from top quality French cuisine through creperies to traditional creole fare. But for us the Saintes' most irresistible culinary delight is ice cream. Ice cream is not common to the Caribbean and most of what's available comes in the form of outrageously priced Dove and Nestle ice cream bars shipped from the States. But the last time we were here, cruising friends introduced us to a little snack bar tucked away from the main street which made its own ice cream - guava, passion fruit, pineapple, coconut, nutmeg, cinnamon - all the tastes of the islands. This time, we've found the ice cream market has positively exploded, with just about every restaurant, snack bar and creperie boasting a full complement of homemade flavors. When we went ashore yesterday afternoon just after the siesta, two women not ten yards apart on the main street were selling ice cream straight from the ice cream maker sitting in a small hand cart. Some cruisers might be able to resist the lure of homemade ice cream, but we are not among them.
Though the town caters to tourists, it refuses to become quaint. On either end of town, a huge fleet of gaily-colored working fishing boats make their home in shallow fishing harbors. Go ashore early enough as we did this morning, and you'll find a burly man the color of coffee cutting the head from a still flapping dorado three feet long. The restaurant owners compete in the bidding against a few half awake yachties while the man carves huge, bloody steaks from the quivering flesh. Walk up the hill behind the main street and the souvenir shops disappear within half a block, replaced by traditional Caribbean housing from tin-roofed wooden shacks to elegant stuccoed two-story houses. Hibiscus climb concrete walls and twine around iron fences behind which fruit trees of every type can be glimpsed.
Of course, it's not all sightseeing and no work. We spent several hours today playing musical halyards. We finally installed a two-to-one halyard on the main having decided we'd like to test the idea cruising around here for a bit, then change back before the Atlantic passage if we don't like it. We had to replace the rope clutch for the main as well because of the smaller diameter halyard we used. We used the old main halyard to replace one of the spinnaker halyards which had some chafe on it. Then we had to get rid of a messenger line that had gotten wrapped around several of the halyards inside the mast and was causing great trouble getting anything up or down. That all took from 9 this morning until 2 this afternoon. Beth took Evans to the top of the mast twice and about a third of the way up three times. We're debating which of us is more worn out or sunburned this evening.
But it's been wonderful to be through with responsibilities in the States and let ourselves fully be on *Hawk.* For the first time since we got here in November, we're finally doing what we most enjoy - sailing in the tropical winds and sunshine, dropping our anchor where it pleases us, taking a swim or going ashore for a hike, shopping every few days for fresh fruit, veggies and bread for the next few days, spending a day or two, then off to the next harbor. We're enjoying a month off, a vacation of sorts - our next writing deadlines are March 1.
As we close this, the joy-filled sound of a steel band dances around the anchorage. We're just cruising. Wish you were here.
Beth and Evans
January 17, 2000
18 degrees 05 minutes N; 63 degrees 05 minutes W
Marigot Bay, St. Martin
Hello everyone:
We've just been through a most unusual Caribbean gale. A front wandered down from the temperate latitudes and after it passed by a high pressure system with a center pressure of 1040 mb filled in behind it. The winds have been blowing an average of 30-35 knots with higher gusts from the NE or NNE for the last 36 hours, and now have moderated to 25 knots. When we arrived in Marigot Bay on the northwestern side of St. Martin on Friday, we worked our way into a spot close behind the small breakwall that's only recently been completed. The breakwall protected us from the waves and swell that built up, but we were exposed to the full force of the wind. Of the hundred or so boats in the anchorage when we arrived, only about 30 are still here. About 5 AM yesterday boats were dragging left and right, and those not in behind the breakwall found themselves in the surf line as the waves started to break a half mile from the beach. Most boats went around to Simpson Bay on the southern side of the island or into Simpson Bay Lagoon.
Our 110-pound Bruce held perfectly. We've become quite dedicated to this anchor, which has now held us without dragging in Newfoundland gales, hurricane Lenny and this gale; in sand, mud and kelp/rock bottoms. We hate the weight on the bow when we're sailing, but it's worth it for how well we sleep at anchor even when the wind's howling outside. A good anchor is really worth it's weight in gold!
By late yesterday afternoon, seas were reported to be running 18-20 feet. Search and Rescue boats and planes were fully employed trying to find an overdue yacht and someone from a charter boat who'd been swept overboard. This morning a huge freighter is on the rocks just outside the breakwall and a yacht's on the beach in Simpson Bay Lagoon. Everyone else is heaving a huge sigh of relief and thinking that reinforced trades of 25 knots are not so bad after all. Evans and I both wonder how often they get gale warnings here - maybe once a decade? There's now a cold front stretching from Barbuda to the ABCs, a most unusual occurrence as well. And it is cold - relatively speaking - we've been sleeping with two light blankets as temperatures fall into the low sixties at night. Everyone's wondering about the strange weather.
We arrived on St. Martin Friday afternoon after an overnight sail from Barbuda, which we'd been trying to reach since before Lenny in November. The island was as beautiful and unspoiled as we remembered it from our last visit back in 1995, and we had the 11-mile long, perfect white sand beach on the northwest side of the island all to ourselves while we were there. The sand above the surf line was so soft and deep it felt like walking in fresh snow. Our feet sank in six inches and the fine sand filled in on top of them like powder. Barely thirty miles to the south, hundreds of boats sit in Falmouth and English Harbour, their crews complaining because the anchorages are so crowded...
Before we left Antigua, we had one more try at getting our prop pitch right and finally succeeded. Evans had increased the pitch when he hauled out while I was home over Christmas. When I returned, we discovered that the engine belched thick black smoke under load, starting at about 1,900 rpm. We both suspected the prop pitch was now too great and we were overloading the engine, but to be sure we had a Yanmar dealer go over everything. He pulled the injectors and found two of them to be fouled, probably from running the engine under too little load for all that time when the prop was under pitched. While that helped, it didn't cure the problem. We hauled the boat one more time, dropped the pitch back, and finally we're right where we should be. We can't redline the engine but we can reach the rpm recommended by Yanmar, and we can now motor along at hull speed even in a chop. It's taken two years and four tries, but we've got that problem sorted out.
I'm flying home for SailExpo at Atlantic City on Thursday and I look forward to seeing some of you there. When I get back, we plan to head south for a couple of months to visit more of our favorite Caribbean spots - the Saints south of Guadeloupe and Dominica among others.
We wish everyone moderate winds and good holding...
Beth and Evans