suzsemo

June 17th, 2011; 40 miles outside of Lunenberg Like any final moments of any experience coming to an end, each one is becoming more precious and special. Yesterday was a windy, dry day on watches except for the sprays that were going over the focsle head and midships. Our watch also did a "white unicorn" which is the similar gift exchange as when our family does the "white elephant". The sun set during my helm hour (#1) and everyone was gathered in silence on the port stern to watch it - gorgeous - with a layer of stratus cloud above it - melting orange sun into the horizon. The watch went by fastest ever and it was the coldest ever requiring multiple layers. The "white unicorn" - during 3 rd hour was hilarious with lots of ... read more

This morning was the funnest sail handling watch ever. We are riding up on the east side of a low pressure system which is giving us a force 5 fresh breeze and squallies. There were multiple squalls wthat blew through and loads of snappy sail handling and I finally did a royal stow chase and T'Gallant stow chase which redeemed myself form missing the last 2 opportunities - luckily (unfortunate for Nadja) she couldn't go up which I think gave me the chance for royals because my automatic thought is "there's probably already enough people running up/I'm too slow" but, I actually caught up to Pania and we did a rockin' fast stow! That was definitley a boost in confidence and accomplishment because I'm feeling like I'm starting to catch up/keep up with the more seasoned ... read more

Today is our 4th day at sea since leaving Jost Van Dyke (we spent our last night at a deserted little island to have one last bon fire – hootenanny with just us ship-folk) and it hasn’t taken long for us to resume our at-sea-ship-rhythm. To be honest, I haven’t felt well until today – perhaps it’s taken those few days to fully recover from Jost. Today is also our 2nd attempt at sailing – the wind has been dead aside from 2 hours of squalls we sailed thru during my 8-12 night watch 2 nights ago (that was pretty fun). But, the theme of little wind continues – I can hear the water lapping up against the ship as I write this – we’re probably going a couple knots. As I mentioned before, we officially ... read more

May 18, 2011 Wednesday Today marks there being a month left before our arrival to Lunenberg, Nova Scotia – craaaazy. We are now in Bequia, one of the Grenadine islands just south of big ole St. Vincent. I am noticing that as we make our way more northward, I am seeing more tourists/yachties and the prices are going up. Grenada, the southern most island we visited, known for its spices – and I definitely stocked up. I also gained a deeper understanding of our cook’s cooking seeing how Donald is from Grenada (bay leaves with almost everything, curri rotis, lots of spices). The market in St. George kinda reminded me of the market in Vietnam in its hodgepodginess of all kinds of random things. But the theme of spices including nutmeg, mace, curries, cinnamon, chocolate balls ... read more

May 2, 2011 Gustavia, St. Barth’s The next morning, all hands mustered at 8am for our departure to St. Barth’s. Dan and I managed to squeak out a run before this (it felt so good to run again! Despite how much it kicked my butt not having done it in a while). The sail to St. Barth’s was for another Classic wooden boat regatta and the passage, as I remember seemed to be uneventful. We arrived late on a Thursday afternoon, I think – anchoring in the harbor the first night. That night us folks that were off watch went to land to scope it out. Holy cow, we were first directed to find an art studio where a welcoming party was taking place for the regatta. Upon walking thru the harbor streets to find this ... read more