svindulgence.com Blog

Well, it’s a new year and it’s warm and tropical outside.  Inside, we are watching family movies that John made when the kids were very little.  In the movie, it is March, in Maine, and we are sledding.  It’s fair to say, we are missing Maine somethin’ fierce, mistah.

Jasper’s birthday was simple, but greatly enhanced by the presence of a slew of kids from Asteroid, who just happened to pull into the harbor that afternoon.  They all came aboard Indulgence for cake and ice cream, made possible by the generous loan of some freezer space aboard Wind Dancer (Dan and Sue).

The kids have done remarkably well adjusting to downsized birthdays and a very scaled back Christmas.  They had a ton of  fun shopping for the family in the little tourist area of Coral Bay, St. John.    Christmas Day, with a fraction of their normal ”haul” of gifts, saw no complaints at all.  They are, however, already making their lists for next year, expecting, no doubt, for everything to be back to “normal”. 

I have recently been enjoying a few days filled with nothing of consequence.  I have watched the sunrise with G, had my morning coffee, read a book, pet the cat a bit, checked my e-mail and blogged.  John refers to this as ass-sitting.  Georgia has decided to create a web-site devoted to the promotion of ass-sitting throughout the world.  Perhaps she could sell big cushy chairs, Tolstoy novels, palm trees, ‘do not disturb’ signs.  Because she has been taught not to repeat rude language, she intends to call her website A-sitting.com.   John has offered to pay for the domain name.

Happy New Year!

We are currently at a mooring off Marina Cay (Pussers resort island). I have visited all the Pussers locations in 3 months, except one (Leverick Bay because it was closed for the moco jumbies…recall the dentists in skirts). I think this is quite an accomplishment considering that one of the locations is in Annapolis, MD.

I did not have this as goal, it just happened. We realized it when we were talking with the Starbound crew over cocktails one night; we have hit all the locations in the BVI’s (Sopers hole, Road Town, Marina Cay, and Leverick Bay). We mentioned that Lorri and I had dinner at the one in Annapolis (the first time we left the kids alone on the boat…we brought a VHF radio so they could radio us to resolve any disputes). So, if you include Annapolis that is all the Pussers. I think I am “pusser’d out”.

Not that Pussers is anything great, just that after spending 6 weeks here you manage to hit all the places. It is definately time to move on. We have an appointment to get our autopilot fixed on the 4th, then we wait for a good weather window to make the passage to St. Martin. We are looking forward to change.

After St. Thomas, we went back to St. John. I managed to get in a great hike around Cinnamon Bay. After St. John, we went to Peter Island as the winds were focasted to pick up (20+ knots). We spent two nice days there and then decided to go somewhere with internet…and we arrived at Pussers.

The entire BVI’s have filled up….there are tons of charter boats and mega yachts. Every anchorage is filled to capacity. This is a radical change from a week ago. All the moorings at Pussers are filled and boats are anchored all around, event though this not the best anchorage. I am thinking about heading into Nanny Cay eary to work on some boat projects. Definately time to move on.

PS: Pussers Rum is OK…I still like Mt. Gay better.

Right now, we are in St. Thomas, USVI, the shopping center of the Caribbean. Can you believe that they didn’t have any good DS games the day after Christmas? Seriously, they only had stuff like “Dora’s rainbow adventure” and “Rudolph the red nosed reindeer”. Well, I got my early birthday present, the game of Risk. But, now we’re leaving, so I’ve gotta go!

P.S. We saw the Disney cruise ship and watched its movies with binoculars.

We are currently in the city of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. We need to purchase a few things and this is an ideal place.

We had a delightful xmas on St. John. The crew from Starbound had us and the crew from Asteroid over xmas eve dinner (thats 15+ plus people). It was a great xmas eve.

A couple of nights before, we had the kids from Starbound over to watch Rudolf the Rednoise Reindeer. Ironically, one of the previous owners of Starbound was Burl Ives.

my family and i visted the donkey place, and looked around for the donkey that drank beer and decided that there was no donnkey that drank beer or dogs that sang so that was the end of that.

the snokling here is pretty good but the water is getting  a little cold but i can manige.you see alot of sting rays and baracootas down here but its still cool.right now im sitting in a pussers(wich is famous for rum) store lisening to my dad pester me with ideas for this blog.

We spent 5 wonderful days on St. John. Three of them with Starbound (another kid boat from the 1500). Starbound happens to be wood Spray Replica from Brooklyn Maine.

We returned to the BVI’s to finish up the autopilot work….unfortunately the part we were waiting for failed to arrive. This means that the earliest I can the autopilot work done will be sometime after the New Year.

We are in Sopers Hole trying to figure out where to go next. On the plus side we have reconnected with Starbound.

Just follow the Sommers around and you’ll see plenty of excitement.  After a hike one afternoon (to the ruins of a sugar mill on St. John), we returned to Francis Bay, tired and ready to head back to Indulgence.  But getting a dinghy off of a beach, against a beating surf, is easier said than done. 

John, as usual, insisted on calling the commands.  He assigned us our places, he instructed us to run like crazy on his command, pulling/pushing the dinghy into the surf,  and he said to get into the dinghy only after we were beyond the surf.  He was completely confident in his strategy. 

 It all went according to plan, until Jasper happened to look up and realize we were about to be pummled by a large incoming wave.  Jasper has a strong self-preservation instinct  – he abandoned all attempts to push the dinghy through the wave and jumped into the dinghy to save himself.   Georgia, having far more sense than should be apparent in a ten year old, sidestepped the impending fiasco by letting go of the dinghy and running out of the way.   The dinghy, by now, was twisting sideways to the breaking wave, and beginning to bear down on me – still doggedly trying to push the thing forward.  At one point, John began screaming  - what he said, I have no idea, because I was listening to him under a great deal of water.   When I emerged from the water, John was apoplectic, the dinghy was literally half filled with water, the gas tank had overturned, the children were mildly chagrinned, and we were finally beyond the surf.  Only after I climed into the dink, did I realize I had somehow, in the chaos, sprained my finger.   It was probably when I made a vain attempt to prevent my hat from washing away.  Twenty-four hours later, the camera (which was in a Ziplock bag in the dinghy), stopped working. 

Tomorrow, I will take my fat finger and my wallet into Road Town, and buya new camera.  Waterproof.  And maybe bulletproof.

We are currently back at Nanny Cay having the autopilot work done. Unfortunately, one of the parts was the wrong size so we’ll be back after xmas to have the work finalized.

Its very nice here in Nanny Cay and we are meeting up some friends from the 1500 (Asteroid and Rhythm ). We also have connected with another boat from PYC that has kids (Snowbird). We spent 5 days on St. John and really enjoyed that, nice beaches, clear water, empty anchorages, great hiking. I managed to catch some conch. I soon learned that was the easy part; Turns out, getting the Conch out of the shell is quite an effort. Then you have to use a meat mallet to smash the conch to make it edible. After all that, we agreed that we didn’t really like conch. I’ll have to look up some recipes because what we did wasn’t very good…we fried it. The worst part was the slime….tons of it and it stuck like glue. Apparently if you take too long to get the conch out of its shell, it will slime you.

We’ll be here until Friday or Saturday and then head back over to St. John. Most likely we’ll be there for xmas….we heard that there are several gatherings in Maho bay for cruisers. We’ll then head back to to the BVI’s and then start working our way south. We have really enjoyed the Virgins and love reconnecting our friends from the 1500.

In just ten days we’re going to have to leave the Virgin Islands because we can’t stay more than a month. But there are tons of things that my dad still ”wants” to do  including a donkey that drinks (slurps) beer which of course sounds ”interesting”.Plus ”singing” (howling)’ dogs,and which we already saw, the ”Moco Jumbies” people who are on stilts and are SUPPOSED to ”dance” but all they did was move thier arms back and forth and shake their you know whats.We also had some lobster which was big enough to split between my parents ,it was a bit salty but definately good.

We had a great couple of days in Agenada. The beaches on the other side of the island were amazing. We had a nice taxi ride in the back of ford F150 across the island to the beach….nothing but scrub brush. The only real redeaming features of the Agenada are its unspoiled beaches…and they were incredible.

The saying that cruising is about fixing your boat in nice locales is very true. As I fix one thing, two others break and the thing that I thought I had fixed breaks because I did a half-assed job the first time around. Today while sailing back from Agenada, while reaching with the spinnaker, the spinnaker suddenly lets go and the whole sail is in water. We manage to get the spinnaker back on-board and find the source of the problem…the spinnaker halyard had chafed through and parted. Next we fire up the engine….Lorri and Georgia complain of a rubber burning smell…I had been having problems with a loose belt and had tightened it before leaving Agenada…this is the half-assed part…it turns out I didn’t do a very good job and now have the replace the ripped up belt while under way. This means that I have to work on-top of a hot engine, remove the water pump and fridge belts to get to the problem alternator belt. I manage to get everything back together and make the decision to detour to Pussers on Marina Cay (I was running out of Rum and knew that I really needed a rum this evening…and pussers has lots of Rum).

As I was using the head, I noticed a small leak…this job will have wait to tomorrow.