Granada to Puerto Rico

NOTE: Somehow I got ahead of myself last week. Here is what should have been posted.

Sick At Sea
11/2/92 Lat. N  W 66 07.0' Off Shore

The sail from Trinidad to Grenada was eventless. I suppose that was what was wrong with it. A sailor needs to have something traumatic happen before he has a really good sea story. Just to say “we had an eventless trip” will bore everyone to death.

At Grenada we filled our water tanks and prepared for a voyage direct from the island to St. Thomas, USVI. The night before leaving, we went to a movie, and then enjoyed a Chinese dinner.

As the sun started to clear the night sky we headed out the channel for the open sea. I did not feel too well, but thought I would be better after another cup of coffee. As we got farther from shore I became sick to my stomach. Sea Sickness? I really didn’t think so. The only times I felt the least bit sick was when we are in big storms and I stop concentrating on my charting in the cabin. Then thinks can become bad.


By after noon I had it all: nausea, fever and diarrhea. I could hardly move. We discussed going back, but I declined to do so. It was, or so I judged, food poisoning from last night’s dinner. But why did not Judy have the same thing.


I made it though my watch and Judy shooed me off to bed. I had not been in bed for two hours when Judy got me up.


“Ames the engine does not want to run.”


Just the thing I wanted to hear in my condition. Our engine has a transmission that we have to cool every eight hours by running the engine. I could have installed a shaft brake on it, but I didn’t want to spend the money. The engine did not run so I had to get up to check out the problem.


After checking out everything, I saw I had turned on our starboard tank, when the port tank was full. There is only one return line to the tanks and it goes to the port tank. Since it was full the fuel could not flow.


I took the top off the port and starboard tanks and we shifted the fuel by using a cup measure and a bucket. I changed the tanks so just the port tank was being used, and flopped back into bed.


The next afternoon I was feeling better and was able to give Judy a much needed rest. That night we dodged the cruise ships, which would leave an island port and sail far out to sea and back so they would not have to pay the high docking fees. Normally, for them the trip between islands would be a matter of an hour. I guess their passengers thought it was a long way between harbors.


By the next morning we were passing between St. Croix and St. Johns.


Taxi Drivers


11/5/92 Lat. N  W 66 07.0' St. Thomas, USVI

After anchoring we went ashore to change some money, we had no US currency left, and to clear into the US. The lines were long at the money changing bank near the cruise ship dock. It was very late by the time we were able to change the money and I had to clear in by five. If not we would have to stay here an extra day.


While Judy returned to the boat, I took a taxi for the Customs office several miles down the quay. As usual I settled with the driver for five dollars to take me there. It was a high price, but not bad for St. Thomas.


We had gone a block and he saw three Japanese tourists. He stopped.


“Where you go, mon,”


“We want to see the other side of the island,” one replied in broken English.


“Get in,” he tells them, knowing he can get a huge fare from these guys, and then he looks at me. “Get out. You can take a bus.”


I was speechless, and angry. I was being dumped. “What?”


“I said get out, Mon, and don’t slam the door.” The cars in the Caribbean and South America are made with very light weight doors and the get out of line easily.


I got out and slammed the door as hard as I could. He was cussing and swearing as he drove off.



I caught a bus and arrived at the office with less than a minute to spare. I was lucky, a good natured officer, had me fill out a form and then stamped our passports.


“They Did Not Give Me Any Charts.”

11/6/93 Isla Palominos, Puerto Rico

The next morning we were off down wind past Culebra Island. The wind was blowing between fifteen and twenty knots. I was nervous about a reef that had a narrow opening. I searched for the passage, but it was only at the last minute did I spot it two hundred yards off my starboard.



I wrenched the helm over and plowed through the opening at about six knots. On the other side we altered course for Isla Palominos, were we anchored for the night. We went ashore for a walk on this little island, getting our feet wet in the clean white sand. When we returned to Butterfly a thirty-foot sailboat was anchored next to us.


We dinged to their boat to say hello and found a very nice young couple aboard. They had chartered the boat for a week and this was their first night. He asked me if I thought they needed a chart.


I thought about the reef and the difficult entrance we had made earlier and which I could not have done without a chart, and then asked him what charts he had on board. He handed me a street map of Puerto Rico which showed some of the islands nearby. Luckily he had not gone any further because he was right on the edge of a long reef.


We invited them over for desert that night, and I showed him the reefs all around the area. He turned pale.


“They didn’t give me any charts. I don’t even have dividers or parallel rules.”


“Perhaps you might go back and buy some.”


“It’s a long way back,” he said.


“We’ll go back,” his wife said giving my chart another look.


“I guess we will. I appreciate your help.”


We left early the next morning bound for San Juan, and work again.