Typical Earthling Life

How would you feel and what would you do, when you have an uninvited visitor fly into your boat?

It’s morning, the current is pushing the boat one way and the wind the other. Suddenly the oil lamp in the cockpit gets knocked down, Kelly starts screaming, and a big fish is flapping around in the cockpit. It all happened within few seconds. The shock and excitement was incredible. What should we do?! Grab the camera is the first thing that comes to mind. The young wahoo flapped around and made the floor slimy and stinky, until it was tired and then it went into the bucket (Check out the video). To me it just looked like great dinner! Thank you god for sending us a fish without ever needing to put out a line. This is what we do with unexpected visitors, we let them flap around till they are dead, filet them, grill them and eat them!

Life on Earthling is becoming more and more self sufficient. Beside the Wahoo jumping  in the boat for dinner, we also make our own bread. Kelly made some delicious bread in the pressure cooker. Making bread aboard costs us 1/5 of buying it in the store, and it can be made to personal preference. It requires time, but hey, as a cruiser, you have the time of the world and why not make your own food from scratch? Kelly also made my favorite brownies mixed with Persian walnuts. The baking experience is still in the beginning stages and will be improved as we go. Maybe we’ll start trading Earthling bread for a bottle of Rum soon! We catch rain for drinking water, get energy from the sun and wind, make own food, and grow sprouts for salads and sandwiches. In other words, we are trying to live in a small utopia. 

The last event in Christiansted for us, was the Christmas boat parade. Down here in the Caribbean, Christmas spirit is somehow absent, at least to us. We grew up in the northern climates, where there is snow in December and Christmas is associated with that. Down here in the Caribbean, it’s always summer and Christmas is never in summer! Anyhow, during the Christmas boat parade aboard Tony’s motorboat, “Sweet Pepper”, the Christmas spirit was finally felt. Twenty plus boats from 15ft to 50ft were dressed in lights and did a parade by the boardwalk. There were thousands of spectators and aboard Sweet Pepper, there was a trio of trumpets playing Christmas music. Sweet Pepper won the prize in it’s class and it was great to have dinner with the crew, afterward, at Green Cay Marina.

There have been 3 anchorages for us in Christiansted, St. Croix. The last one is right by the Seaborne Airlines dock. There are seaplanes landing, taking off, and turning around from early morning to sunset just 50 yards from here. One of the pilots is Wayne, we have raced on Cayennita Grande. We are waving at eachother everyday and it feels totally like home here in Christiansted. Tonight he gave a private farewell show for us, you can check out the video on Youtube!

The next blog update should feasibly be from St. Martin/St. Marteen. You can follow our trail on spot connect on Tuesday Dec 13th after 6pm Eastern Standard time.   

Love from Christiansted

Salamati

Approaching St. John, Virgin Islands

It feels great to be moving on and sailing to new ports. Earthling’s way of cruising is to move on every few days, to not be anchored in one certain place more than 10 days. However, sometimes you have to stop in one place for longer, to repair your vessel or just work. We had to stay in St. Croix for one month to get the boat “a little more ready”, and even though all the things on the list are not accomplished, time is up and we have to move on. Our friend Tony Sanpere, has his race boat, Cayennita Grande, stored in Nanny Cay, BVI and it will be launched soon. We will then sail to East End, Tortola, to do a race with him. We better get first place, because Tony always comes in first! Cayennita Grande was just freshly painted white on the hull and bottom with a nice thin red water line. She looks super sharp!
It is also great to have a guest aboard here on the mothership Earthling. We haven’t had many guests aboard since returning to the boat after hurricane season.  Tony is here now and we are pleased to have him aboard. 
Even though Earthling is yearning to sail south to St. Maarten and further, we can’t do it quite yet, since solar panels that were purchased a month ago, have still not arrived in St. Croix. So we must return there to pick them up within the next couple weeks. Meanwhile, we are going to cruise to explore and take advantage of the time we have further in this area. There are many places that we have not seen yet, such as the island of Culebra, which leads us to new crossroad.

Love for Nanny Cay

View photos on the facebook page

Jump Up

There are different kinds of ceremonies held annually in Christiansted, St. Croix. Yesterday was Jump Up, where we saw the most people ever on the streets of Christiansted. Jump Up is a carnival kind of a party held four times a year, there are bands and musicians playing along the board walk and the street corners. Street vendors selling different merchandise and food, and the Mocko Jumbies dancing around. A Moko Jumbie is a dancer that walks on stilts (pillars) attached to their leg. The Moko Jumbies we saw were really tall, they were standing on 8-10 feet stilts. They have been part of the Caribbean culture for 200 years.

The hot dog vendor crew

And then there was a hot dog vendor and our friend Ryan was craving for one, so we stopped there. Standing there reminded me of my time in that business, selling hot dogs and brats on the street of Gothenburg in Sweden. I did that for a few years, employed over 10 people and made a pretty successful business. In 1995, during the World Championship of Athletics in Gothenburg, we sold around 15,000 hot dogs and brats in 8 days! It didn’t take long time before I was behind the hot dog stand in St. Croix, grilling and serving customers. And It all came back like it was yesterday, I took over the grill for an hour and served at least 30 hotdogs, and Kelly, Ryan and I ate 6, free of charge. The lady that was running the business wanted me to work for her, if I’m here next time I will work a full shift for you, I said.   
The night was full of excitement, we ran into almost everyone we know on the Island. Rain poured down a few times and one storm lasted for an hour. It didn’t even cross our mind if we had closed the hatches on the boat or not! As we got off the dinghy and walked onto the boat, we see everything drenched. All the hatches were open. We had to sleep in the v-berth on wet cushions and that was a lesson learned. November is the rainiest month in the Caribbean and it has poured rain at least once a day for the last few weeks. Every time we leave the boat, all the hatches and windows have to be closed, even if we leave only for an hour. But yesterday we forgot. Now floor mats, rugs, and sheets are hanging out side in the cockpit, just like a typical gypsy home.

Love from Jump up    

The World Awaits

Sunrise

It is astonishing to get visited by a big white, spotted stingray everyday. He is here below our boat swimming in these waters as if he owns them. He has been here the longest and this is his home more than ours. Thank you Mr. Ray for visiting us and letting us stay in your home. How does it feel to see a Falcon flying around, and sit on the spreaders of different boats every night and occasionally make noise at sunset? It’s breathtaking! The Falcon and Mr. Ray are some of our Earthling neighbors. Others are the live-aboards at this anchorage, whom seem not to move or sail their vessels much. Like the old man that is so weak that he can’t even row to shore, or some of the boats around that don’t even have a mast, or a boom, or sails. Then there is “Mendocino Queen”, which is owned by Allen and Kate from California, and they have been sailing and cruising around the world on and off for 20 years. I can see cruising around the world for that long. We have been invited to Mendocino Queen but unfortunately have been so busy working on the boat that there has not been enough time to visit them.
Projects are never ending, and you can be working on your boat for years before you feel it's ready to set sail. Since we got down here to the Caribbean we have been working on the boat as a full time job. You mention it, wiring, reinforcing, sanding, cleaning, caulking, varnishing, painting, installing, changing, eliminating, polishing, and many more doings. Still, we haven’t installed the solar panels since they seemed lost in the mail and we don’t have them yet. Neither have we gotten all the tow rails sealed. There is still so much to do on Earthling before it is ready to sail off again. Sometimes you just have to get up and go, otherwise you might never take off. I could still be in Chicago dreaming about this adventure if I wanted everything as perfect as I desire. Sometimes we get so caught in the moment and comfortable in one place that we lose sight of our goals and missions. It requires a certain courage to break ties loose, pick up your anchor, and move on, like a Gypsy does! We are the Gypsies and in a few days it’s time to leave this beautiful home and anchorage to a new destination. The rest of the world is waiting and we will be there.

Love from Christiansted

Back In The Saddle

Earthling is launched and it feels great. The bottom is clean with a new layer of paint, the top part of the hull is waxed, the zincs on the prop are changed and all the through hulls are inspected. We have lots of mosquito bites on our legs and arms, since Earthling was stored by a swamp! But when she was launched and as soon as we left the marina and got to our anchorage, it was all worth it. There is a lot of work involved to keep a vessel maintained, especially when you have very limited access to resources. When this is the case, you have to do it yourself.  And if you are not handy or rich then forget about it!

Our first overnight anchorage by Norman Island, BVI was quiet, beautiful, calm, and excellent weather. It was a little taste of this adventure before we had to get to work on the boat again.
The first passage from Norman Island to St. Croix involved some 8-10 ft waves and wind gusts up to 27 knots, a few wash-overs and we are salted again.  Now we are in our Caribbean home, St. Croix. We call it this mostly because our friends Tony and  Ellen live here and St. Croix is also part of the US.  As we are pulling into the anchorage area in St. Croix, I'm taking down the main sail and Kelly is behind helm, and next to us is Ron & Karyn on Equinox... these are friends we met 8 months ago in Turks and Caicos. What a small world! Tomorrow we are invited for dinner aboard Equinox.

We will be staying here in St. Croix for the next few weeks to work on Earthling, which involves installing new equipment and repairing. The biggest project is sealing the toe rails and stanchions. This project is estimated to take 7-10 days.

Aboard we have had visitors since we got here. The 2 visitors have been keeping us entertained and they made us throw some of our food away. They must have helped themselves to the boat during the last 4 months. These mice were on the boat before we got back and they thought we were visitors! I like pets but so sorry, not mice. A couple nights in a row we couldn't really sleep peacefully because as soon as we went to sleep these guys would come out and play around in the galley and jump around up and down the stairs. Finally,  we had to get a mousetrap and capture these creatures and feed them to the fish.

The last few days it has been windy. They call them the "Christmas Winds", which is good for us because the wind generator is keeping the batteries charged. No need for fossil fuels to generate energy!

Love from St. Croix