finding the perfect hurricane hole...

Amaris Sails the planet

Marigot Bay - St Marteen (French side)

February 24, 2014

finding the perfect hurricane hole...

Although it is only February, we have started looking for our hurricane hole for the summer.  Hurricane season begins June 1st and lasts through October.  June and July have less likelihood of hurricanes - so we feel as long we watch the weather closely and have defined "hurricane holes" in mind, we could cheat our way through June...  That is, if we haven't settled into the perfect hurricane hole by then.

Hurricane holes are spots that offer natural protection from hurricanes.  One example is Marigot bay on St Lucia.  This particular harbor is surrounded by hills on 3 sides and is open only to the west (typically hurricanes blow from the east).  The bay is also surrounded by mangroves where boats can tie extra lines to their exposed roots.  It is said that during the last hurricane that came through St Lucia, the peak winds in Marigot bay were 30 knots (33 miles per hour) with virtually no waves.  Many islands have such safe harbors.  

Other islands are outside the defined typical hurricane path (Aruba or Grenada for example) and could be sailed to within 24 hours if a hurricane is predicted.  (The joy of a fast boat...)  We have friends on an Outremer 55 that have stayed in St Martin in previous years knowing that they could sail to Grenada in 30-36 hours-thus using a defensive strategy of just "getting out of the way" and having the beautiful islands to themselves during the down season.

Shawn and I have been discussing our season's hurricane hole.  Priorities include...  in no particular order;  1-Safe from the hurricanes!(and other weather...  ie lightening - we do have a pretty significant lightening rod)  2-Spanish speaking (we both want to enroll in an intensive Spanish class) 3-Interesting culture to explore, which may put us near a larger city? 4-close to a major airport.  We plan on flying up to Seattle for the month of September and down to Peru to explore Machu Piccu for a month as well.  5-good security for the boat while we are gone.  6-good exploring by boat when there is no threat of hurricanes.  

Enter our current choice for hurricane hole...  Rio Dulce Guatamala!  Plenty or exploring both by boat and on land.  Good safe marinas.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_River_(Guatemala)

Turn up the power

Amaris sails the planet

Feb  22, 2014

St Martin, Caribbean

Turn up the power

Power management is always a concern when yachting.  Although we have a generator, I dislike running it daily to keep the operations of the boat with power.  Not only is it noisy, but it burns diesel, which i would rather not do.  Many cruisers need to run their engine once or even twice a day to recharge their batteries.  It seems an abomination to me to sit in a beautiful anchorage, mother nature's beauty all around, perhaps a few other souls drifting by in kayaks and needing to run a generator.  UGH!  

When we took delivery of our boat, I doubled the solar panels to help with our energy generation.  To put things into perspective for you - my dear reader...  I will simply things by saying we use an average of 400 amps/day (when we are on board using all the gadgets-opening the fridge all the time, turning on lights, etc...).  Our solar panels make between 250-300 amps/day.  Recall that it is winter right now...  so this number should improve in the summer.  This configuration left us needing to run an engine or the generator daily for just under an hour - or (perhaps the better solution) going out to eat so we didn't use the water pump, lights, radio, etc.  

We were about 100 amps short of being energy independent.  Introduce wind generator!  Although let it be said, i think "wind generator" is a misnomer.  It doesn't generate wind...  it generates power from wind.  Shouldn't they be called "power from wind generators?"  After literally days of research - I chose a wind generator made by silent winds.  For my cruising friends, this generator was chosen with priorities to 1-power generation, 2-weight (6.8kg as opposed to the second highest producing generator the d400 which weighs in at 17kg), 3-integration with current systems, 4-sound production, and 5-cost.  The silent winds is a top energy producer, one of the lightest models, and true to it's name - is quiet thanks to its carbon fiber ultra rigid/strong/light blades.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the help of my friend Maas (actually he did most of the work), we were able to get the new generator up in a couple of days.  I believe if we were to re-do the instillation now we could do it in 5-6 hours.  And of similar importance, should something go wrong with the unit, I could swap it out in about an hour (even without my friend Maas).  But i suppose 1/2 the fun of an instillation such as this one is the engineering and design.

Fortunately, here in the Caribbean we are exposed to the trade winds - which have kept that generator humming!  I believe we are making better than the 100 amps that we needed to bridge the gap to energy independence.  We will need to run the generator for hot water-cause someone in this household (boathold?) needs to have hot showers once in a while!  That said, once summer comes, I think we will have enough power to run a load of laundry or run the water maker for an hour each day!  How cool will that be!  And - at that point we will want COLD showers!  

Long time no blog...

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I wish I could say I have a good excuse – but I don't.


We had a busy last few months - several trips back to the states (Holidays, work, and the loss of Shawn's Grandmother to Alzheimers), our first charter, some good sailing, and a lot of maintenance/repairs to Amaris. All that said- I think the biggest factor in my lack of blogging is that we are settling into “cruising life.”


Like it or not, we are now getting up with regularity for the local “cruiser's net.” Although we have made suggestions to move the daily net from 7:30 to 8:30, these suggestions are sadly unanswered – so we get up and have the first cup of coffee at the early hour of 7:30. The net is basically a daily conference call that happens over our vhf radios. Discussions begin with weather, security issues (mostly theft), announcements (usually people offering to do some type of trade to stock their cruising kitties... we tried offering tax prep with little luck), barter or trade (where we were able to lighten our boat by giving away a printer, some cruising guides (that were all in French), and our old stereo.


We have also started developing friendships with other local cruisers – which begins to occupy our time as some of the “group leaders” put together activities such as hiking, happy hours, pot lucks, etc. Shawn and I recently participated in a hike that started at top of a local “mountain” and was to end up near where we all left our dinghies. This seemed like such a great idea – a nice walk down a hill right? Well, because all of us are basically “in transit” the knowledge is sometimes... a little suspect. The first trail was wrong and ended up hiking UP to the top of another hill. Great views, but we were certainly going the wrong way from our dinghy. The second trail seemed to go in the right direction, but after 3 miles of down hill hiking we ended up at an old plantation. Not the right hill. The group of 20-30 hikers then had to head back up a very steep hill to hopefully find the right trail. Shawn and I gave up and had a wonderful lunch at the plantation and took a cab back to the dinghy. Glad we didn't lead that trip! We also decided not to have all the hikers over to our boat for happy hour – lots of sweaty stinky dirty people!

After nearly a month here in St Martin, we are getting itchy feet and hope to be exploring some new cruising areas for the next week or so (while we wait for more parts to come in... for more repairs! Joy. We still haven't determined where we are going... I suppose we will see what the wind is doing this afternoon...