Sailing Miles

Hello, fellow map nerds. (My people!) We receive many comments from people who are interested in where we are and what we have done. I thought I'd like to put together a general path of our travels, with the hashtag #whereismiles. We may need to do some catching up here, but I wanted to start with the season we're in now. March finished off an amazing three months in the clear waters of the Bahamas. We headed down to the Dominican Republic, and then to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. We left from pretty far north, compared to most cruising boats, but we wanted to top off our diesel tanks before the four-day trip to Samana in the Dominican Republic. ***** The sail was fun, with a good weather window. Our friends on S/V Motu were just ahead of us, so we had a great idea of what to expect.  We fished, cooked in the sun oven, and split the shifts between Steve, Cindy, and I. The nights at sea were star-filled beauty, with no ambient light around us. ****...

What do you do when your spare propane tank runs out before you had a chance to refill the main tank? The stove and oven won't work without propane, so what do we have left? Eating cold canned food? Not quite that bad. We have a microwave, and we also have a plethora of fresh fruits and avocados from the "boat boy" who kayaks to our boat in the mornings and sells us as much fruit as he can talk us into buying. You google "breakfast meals in the microwave" and you end up making banana-avocado-coconut oil "muffins" in the microwave (that turned out more like a banana-avocado souffle) and scrambled eggs in the microwave, something we now remember we used to do on the truck. And of course, green Tabasco and fresh avocado slices for the eggs - to add the green. It looks like it will be leftover spaghetti and canned corn for dinner. A very respectable option, given that we let our main cooking source expire. We have advance reports from cruising friends a st...

SV Miles had a great sail from Martinique to St Lucia. We saw twenty dolphins, four brown booby birds fishing for over an hour, and caught ten pounds of Sargasso weed on our fishing lure. No fish, though... Now we are enjoying Marigot Bay. Although the climb to the grocery store is about 300 feet gain in only a half-mile.  Of course, if you do the climb, you get to enjoy the view. See Miles? The road was a bit intimidating. When we got to the top, a lady in a food truck asked if we needed something cool to drink. Cindy thought she was a good salesperson. I thought she might call an ambulance.⛰️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️🥾 We had sailed the Caribbean some years ago on two of the Windjammer Barefoot fleet. Windjammer went out of business in 2007. Another business, Island Windjammers, connected to the fiercely loyal Windjammer fans.  Sagitta, waiting on a refit, is one of their tall-mast ships. ⛵⛵⛵ Spectacular sunsets are in...

 We made it from St Bart's to Antigua! We anchored by the light of the waning gibbous moon at 02:00. Steep seas and close-hauled winds made for a bit of a slog, but we were not in a hurry. We watched brown booby birds fish alongside us for miles. I think we were stirring up the flying fish for them. We ended up with ten fish on the deck, but none on a fishing pole. 

 This Facebook post was from a couple of years ago, but since we celebrated Stephen's birthday yesterday, I thought it would be fun to share the snip of the post.

  The sail from St Martin to St Bart's is not long, only about 20nm. We had a couple of repairs to accomplish before leaving, and wanted to provision before heading south. We decided to split up. I installed replacement sliders so our sail could go up, and got the wind-speed/direction device to work with the charts. We ended up getting to St Bart's just before Customs and Immigration closed. We called them on the VHF. They were very friendly, and said we could check in after a night's sleep.

 We said goodbye to the USVI with a beach walk and hike in Leinster Bay, then motored around to Long Bay for a snorkel. Today we leave for St Martin! Whoo-hoo! No anchoring in Leinster Bay, you have to use a mooring to protect the sea bottom I'm the National Park. Boaters pull their dinghies up on the beach. The USVI and BVI are very close here. A glimpse of SV Miles The ruins on top of the hill are "The Big House." I guess this one is "The Small House." We had just rounded "Privateer Point."  We decided not to raise the Jolly Roger. A new island for the SV Miles' crew.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdGEfXjJ/?k=1 

NOT the Miami dolphins. Atlantic spotted dolphins, we think. They didn't actually introduce themselves. Our first day two-handing our boat went well. A few challenges, but that comes with the territory. We were thrilled with our choice of weather windows, and we made better time than we anticipated. Click here to see a You Tube Video of our dolphin day.