Log of Sea Wings

July 23, 2008

At Anchor

Groot Baai, Sint Maarten

18 – 04.33N

63 – 05.41W

Fast Boats and Spanish Treats

We have at last arrived at Sint Maarten, (essentially) the end of the Thorny Path and on schedule for our only schedule, the wedding of Casey and Steve on Saturday. For those of you who have not followed our logs, Casey and Steve got engaged on their way to our boat in Washington, DC and we hosted their engagement party on Sea Wings that night. The path down for the wedding in Sint Maarten has been very thorny at times but it pales in comparison to the thornless interludes along the way.

The weeks since our last log have taken us from Ponce, PR to Esperanza, Vieques in the Spanish Virgin Islands, a very ‘thorny’ ride but well worth what awaited us in Esperanza. An old sailing friend had advised us that friends of his from North Carolina had moved to Vieques and opened a “restaurant/bar” on the malecon in Esperanza called el Quenepo. Everything we have read in magazines, books, or cruising guides describes Vieques as an island decimated by years of use as a bombing range by the US military but now recovering (the bombing ended several years ago and the remaining unexploded ordinance is slowly being removed) and trying to build a tourist industry on the island. The cruising guides note that it was a locale normally skipped by the cruising community, but that it might be a place to look for a few quiet days away from the tourist crowds on many of the adjacent islands (US and British Virgins). So we were expecting a sleepy, beachfront anchorage with locals trying to peddle goods to the few cruisers stopping in. And we expected to sit at el Quenepo with our feet in the sand and while away the hours, beer in hand gazing out at the Caribbean Sea. What we actually found was quite different.

As we walked into town from the dinghy dock we were met not with a sandy beachfront and bars in the sand but a more formal, hardscaped malecon with restaurants and bars more reminiscent of Key West than a sleepy, Spanish fishing village. We easily found El Quenepo expecting a bar stool and a cold beer but found instead a lovely restaurant (actually it does have a very small bar as well) tastefully decorated from the linen tablecloths to the hangings on the wall………….and open only for dinner. So we headed up the malecon to Duffy’s Bar and found ourselves with an American bartender and the voices of the other patrons clearly speaking English, not Spanish.

At dinner that night we found, to our delight, that el Quenepo was decidedly not a beach bar but a truly wonderful gourmet restaurant. Kate and Scott Cole in their travels in the Caribbean had recognized the potential of Vieques now that the military was gone and the island mostly protected parkland. Scott, a chief, and Kate, an interior designer, sold it all in the US and bought el Quenepo, then a rundown bar that also sold some food. The restaurant was a success, filled each night with tourists visiting the island. But we still didn’t get it, how could this supposedly sleepy island, visited only by a few cruisers, many of whom are on limited incomes, successfully support a restaurant of this caliber?

Kate filled in the blanks for us. While the cruiser community is only now slowly discovering Vieques, the rest of the world already had and the island now nurtures a steady and growing tourist business. And not the rowdy, drunken tourist crowd you would find in a Key West. With a large portion of the island untouched by typical development, it has a number of unspoiled beaches and bays. And one of these, Puerto Mosquito, is the third largest bio luminescent bay in the world. Locally know as Bio Bay, it is one of the key attractions bringing in a more sophisticated, urban, eco-tourist. With an infrastructure of small hotels and B and B’s, and glowing references in major urban newspapers and magazines, Vieques has become a destination for well heeled urbanites seeking something new and different in their leisure travel. Normally the first to ‘discover’ exotic new locales, the cruising community has clearly dropped the ball on this one. But the yuppy eco-tourist has not.

And so el Quenepo can thrive in a “sleepy little Spanish fishing village”. And thankfully so, because the food is absolutely fabulous. In fact it was so good that we were actually stunned by our first meal there. Later that night we tried to figure out if it was really that good or were we just so used to our usual fare of burgers, fries, nachos, potato skins, chips and beer (a good balance of yellow and brown) that we had forgotten what truly artistic food tastes like. While certainly not renowned world travelers, we have dined in fine restaurants in France, Belgium and Britain (OK, let’s forget Brit food) among others. Our very easy conclusion was that no, it was not a lack of exposure, this was easily the best food we had ever tasted. Mixing Continental, Asian, and Caribbean cuisine into a menu that Scott calls “fun, funky, island food”, the food is extraordinary. We could not get enough of it and of the five nights we were in Esperanza, three were spent enjoying the pleasures of el Quenepo. If you are ever anywhere near Viequez and you do not enjoy a meal at el Quenepo, it should be one of the biggest regrets of your life.

But as enjoyable as Esperanza is, the bay it fronts is not. A quick note about Cruising Guides here. Each guide comments on (anchor) holding and comfort (rolling) in each anchorage. If the guide says the holding is good and you drag onto the rocks, a crafty lawyer might find the author libel (Americans are known to sue anything that breathes). So they describe a bottom where an anchor casually thrown over the side will hold in a Category 5 hurricane as “good holding”. Anything less is “poor holding”. Not as likely to be libel for your comfort at anchor, and wanting to have you patronize all the local businesses that have bought ads in their cruising guides, descriptions of comfort are somewhat less conservative. Therefore, an anchorage where you will be rolling so violently side to side that your decks are awash is captioned “can be rolly”. Esperanza is noted as “can be rolly”. Use the adjacent, better protected bay with a longer dinghy ride and stay longer.

Fortunately, we had much to look forward to on down the path, one of which was a rendezvous with Richard Skinner, my most recent employer and his good friend Peter Bailet. Peter’s son Zack and two of his buddies rounded out the crew chartering a 53 ft yacht in the BVI for a ‘boy’s week out’. We joined them in Cane Garden Bay,Tortola, one of our favorite spots in the Virgins and enjoyed their company for several days. It was great to see Richard and Peter and catch up on what was going on with their families, my colleagues at RSA, our favorite clients and in Jacksonville in general. It is particularly nice to see each other in such a beautiful place.

We enjoyed sundowners on Sea Wings and dinners on their boat Ayla and had enjoyable conversations of home and politics late into the night. We moved on from Cane Garden to Jost Van Dyke for an afternoon at the world famous Soggy Dollar Bar. It was a bit breezy, but an easy off wind run, and as cruisers are always anxious for pictures of their own boat under sail, we suggested having cameras ready to take pics of each other as we sailed side by side.

We motored out of Cane Garden slightly ahead of Ayla and rolled out our sails. We quickly trimmed sail to the wind as we did not want them to blow by us before we had our camera ready. We know Sea Wings is fast for a cruising boat but we expected them to pass us very quickly as they had a longer waterline boat, a newer design, more sail area and a young and fit crew to do all the hard work. But they didn’t. And didn’t. We looked astern and they actually seemed further away. So we paid attention to the sails and waited for them to catch up. And they didn’t. Looking astern again we saw they were getting further and further behind. We called them on the radio to see what was wrong and they said they were sailing as hard as they could.

So we rolled in the head sail and sailed on the mainsail only. And we still were gaining. Ultimately, we had to do a U turn, sail back to them and do another turn so that we could sail side by side for pics. (Honest, we have the evidence from the track on our chartplotter, see pic) Still under main only, they finally passed us and we got our pictures and sailed on into Great Harbour and rode the dinghys over to the Soggy where we spent a pleasurable afternoon poking fun at the slow pokes. OK, OK, I guess we are picking on them too much. When they finally passed us we noted that they had the ‘dinghy brake’ on. Where we lift ours out of the water when sailing, they were dragging theirs. And they did not tilt up the outboard on the dinghy. More drag. And we have a feathering prop and they probably did not. So it was not our impeccable sail trimming skills, or our hull by famous racing designer Bruce Farr, it was simply the fact that they had the brakes on! But even if they hadn’t, we know we would have beaten them anyway. Dig, dig. Jab, jab.

The next day we said our sad good byes as that darned wedding was still looming over us and we still had an eighty mile open ocean crossing of the often nasty Anegada Passage (known among cruisers as “Oh, my Godda Passage) to get to Sint Maarten. So we moved on to Trellis Bay (Beef Island) and then to Leverick Bay (Virgin Gorda) to stage for the run to Sint Maarten. At a bar in Trellis we met a Moorings captain who had made the crossing many times and told us we did not even have to use a chart to get there. He said just point the bow square into the wind and the waves and in 12 hours you will run into Sint Maarten. Great. More motoring down the Thorny Path.

That captain reminds us of what a small group the cruising community really is and how we meet each other. We met Warren at a bar at the Loose Mongoose while enjoying a cold one with a group of ex pats. He was captaining a charter that was anchored on nearby Marina Cay. While the guests were ashore for dinner he had escaped for a quick drink at Trellis. As he walked up he looked like a beaten down man who had just lost his last friend on earth. Warren is probably 6’ – 5” tall and the Moorings had stuck him on a thirty two (yes, 32) foot boat with a family of two adults and two very irritable children. How he managed it we can’t imagine. I don’t think he could even stand up in a 32ft boat. But we chatted for several hours and gave him our boat card before he left.

Next day we moved on to Leverick to get ready for the crossing and he moved on to Bitter End YC with his charter. Escaping again to the bar at Saba Rock, he met Chris and Kathy on Jule who were also staging for Sint Maarten. He gave them our card and they later took their dinghy over to Leverick , found our boat and introduced themselves. We were both leaving the same day so agreed to keep an eye on each other on the crossing and in Sint Maarten became fast friends. Where we ran into mutual friends Chris and Pam on Wildcat who we had not seen since Luperon in the Dominican Republic and the three boats spent an enjoyable week together before they got a window to move on to Antigua. So works the cruising world.