Auld Langsyne

When you think about where you’d like to spend your New Years Eve, what comes to mind? I’ve certainly had years that involved being around way too many people. However, in the end I’d always want to be with Rick. I also like to be in the thick of things as well, so I could amend that by saying Rick and a party.

This year was again a new experience for me. We sailed from Chatham Bay to Clifton, the main harbor on Union Island. We spent one night here to get some additional groceries and have a look around the town. It was a very pleasant town and everyone was very friendly.

The harbor is protected by a reef to the east. There are two small islands within the reef. The first is Green Cay and the second is Happy Island. Green Cay doesn’t have much on it other than crabs, palm trees and the occasional Cocker Spaniel. Happy Island is just a bar. I’m not kidding. The entire island is a bar and you can only access it via your dinghy. Everyone there certainly seemed happy – we observed from a distance.

The next day we left for the Tobago Cays. When you’ve spent so much time in the Caribbean, you start to realize that the names of places don’t always give you information on where they are. For example, you might expect the Tobago Cays (pronounced keys) to be near Tobago. But they are actually part of the Grenadines and are nearly 100 miles north of Tobago. I guess in the scheme of things, they are close – but it can cause confusion for family and friends when we tell them where we are.

The Tobago Cays are described as “serene anchorages in gin-clear turquoise waters, good holding on sandy bottoms, scenic coral reefs, all caressed by the constant trade winds.” I’d describe the water as vodka-clear, but despite that small change they lived up to the description. They are protected by a reef to the east which is unlike most anchorages that have an island to block the wind and seas. This allows for beautiful sunrises and a clear view into the Atlantic while the seas are very calm.

We had a quite New Years Eve with Chris and Margit in this beautiful anchorage. We departed on New Years Day for a short sail to Petite St. Vincent and spent the night there. The following day, we made our way to Carriacou, which is an island that is north of and part of Grenada.

(written in February)
We ended up spending quite a long time in Grenada, but have decided it was our second favorite island save Guadeloupe. Will write more to detail what has happened since that time.

Keep the comments coming. Don't be shy.

Ogling the Caribbean from the "Eyes Of The World" by a Chain Flaker in Training

Jim's Comment: Another guest blog from my Uncle Steve

VHF Radio: "Eyes of the World, Eyes of the World switch 14"

My first adventure in the Lesser Antilles began when my America Eagle ATR72 TURBOPROP (travelling panache to give the illusion of experience) flight from San Juan landed in front of a solitary building that looked very much like Aunt Pearl’s cinder block house in the mountains of south central Pennsylvania. So this is Melville Hall (the name of the airport in Dominica) I thought.

I then arranged with Fred (I dunno, short for Freddo?) my taxi driver to take me to the police station in Portsmouth explaining to Fred that I wasn’t a parole violator or otherwise wanted but instead my nephew had instructed me to meet him there as the easiest destination in Portsmouth that could be described without a chance of confusion.

This trip of an hour that required crossing the mountainous northern neck of Dominica from west to east allowed me to view the beautiful natural beauty of Dominica

The Sisserou Parrot, probably the oldest species of Amazon parrot in the world, is protected and it is found only in Dominica.

The plant honored as the National Flower is a wild one known scientifically as Sabina Carinalis, commonly known as Carib Wood or Bois Caribe, it was legislated as the National Flower in 1978.

and at the same time the devastation wrought by hurricane Dean, the third most intense Atlantic hurricane (tropical cyclone in the Caribbean) ever to make landfall.

It also gave me a perspective of the poverty of the island that does not have the beaches that are so necessary to develop the beach resorts that attract so many tourists’ dollars to the Caribbean.

Interestingly in spite of its poverty the Dominicans (the people of Dominica not the Republic nor the order) have an excellent longevity.

"To us, she is the oldest person in the World, Elizabeth "Pampo" Israel, Born: January 27, 1875!"

Arriving in Portsmouth my expectations based on the many different Portsmouths I have visited in the English speaking world were let down to find a very third world looking town. (But then again Dominica is Creole French speaking.) Fred pulled up to the police station, which as far as I was concerned could have just as well been a bar, and there was Jim sitting outside.

Jim’s timing introduced one of the many skills of Jim and Rick had honed on the sea and on the land in the Caribbean, i.e. being able to calculate the timing of a series of events which could easily be interrupted by all kinds of variables, such as the weather, inefficiency, animals on the road etc.

Jim then with a fluidity of motion (which also became typical of so many series of actions that Jim and Rick performed from sailing to cooking to cleaning out the plumbing [the most fluid of all], gave me a hug, took my bags, pointed me in a direction to walk with him to the dingy, lowered himself in the dingy, positioned the dingy so I could lower my bags and then myself into the dingy (at the best angle to prevent me from falling in the water in despite my clumsiness), start the outboard, head for the Eyes, position the dingy so that I could step onto the Eyes and lift my bags to me. All of the above actions involving the dingy introduced me to a very important dimension of the sailing life, that being the “dingy.” As a result I am contemplating making my fame and fortune by writing (after more dingy research) the definitive book on dingydom,

especially since I have been told that my idiosyncrasies are well suited for such a topic. For intellectual property protection reasons I am putting Jim, Rick, Margit and Chris on notice of my intentions to also cover “dogs in dingydom.” (Margit and Chris are the extremely talented and charming friends of Jim and Rick who are sailing their own single-aluminum- hull [sailing penache to give the illusion of experience])

Once on Eyes my trip in Dominica paced that of Sue’s as she has described it in her blog and picks up again in Martinique.

Sue’s and Sam’s last day on the Eyes was spent in St. Pierre which was destroyed by Mont Pelée’s infamous eruption in 1902 in the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th Century when the eruption caused about 26,000 to 36,000 casualties in St Pierre including people from neighboring villages who had taken refuge in the supposedly safe city, except for one man, a prisoner by the name of Louis-Auguste Sylbaris who was protected by the walls of his solitary confinement (how’s that for irony or maybe masonry), who survived. He later toured the world with the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

So naturally Jim, Rick, Sue, Sam, Margit, Chris and I decided to risk the wrath of the volcanic god of Mont Pelée by climbing the last 1,000 feet of altitude of the Mont. Even though such risk may have been satiated by his emotional outburst of over ninety years ago, the risk may have been exacerbated by Chris, Margit, Sue and Sam picking carrots growing from its slopes which could have been considered by said god tantamount to pulling ear hair out of his ear. (It’s this ear hair thing which tipped the scale in favor of my designating the deity as male rather than a female). By the way, the carrots ended up into the best carrot soup I have ever had and was prepared by Margit.

However after about climbing about 400 feet of altitude towards the peak we ran into a somewhat bedraggled French speaking hiker coming down the Mont who gesticulated that he had tried to get to the peak but was frustrated by a “you can’t see your hand in front of your face” and “it was very cold up there” gestures, so we turned around so as to eat carrots another day.

The next day after visiting Fort de France, Martinique’s largest city and capital- Jim, Margit and I drove Sue and Sam to the airport outside of St. Pierre for their return to the U.S. Driving to and from the environs of Fort de France (as well as St. Pierre) I was impressed that if I didn’t know better I could have easily been outside any small prosperous city in many countries (you could tell by the Costco store).

The contrast between the third world of culture Dominica and the first world culture of Martinique presented the familiar tension between the close to the earth simplicity of the third world and the modernity of the first world. The contrast was heightened by the fact that Dominica and Martinique and neighboring islands no more than twenty-six miles apart.

The modernity and wealth of Martinique was exemplified by the trip to the Galleria in Le Lamentin outside of St. Pierre by Jim, Rick and I for a typical upscale experience of grocery shopping (exemplified by fashionably dressed customers, e.g. women shopping in high heels),

compared to the open market buy what’s available experience in Dominica and a breadth of selection in the Martinique grocery store from foie gras to designer clothes.

Back on the Eyes I encountered trouble with my head (not as in headache but as in my bowl runneth over).

Sue mentioned that I love telling the story thereby co-opting me from telling it here but also saving you from the scatological details.

Suffice it to say that I was on one hand admiring of Jim’s and Rick’s efforts, as they each took turns of forty-five minutes to an hour in the water at night with a flashlight in their mouth trying to snake out the plumbing blow out valves at the water line of the Eyes as they treaded water with their legs with nothing to hold on to and with the best prospect of their labors being a shower of black water. But on the other hand I was trepidacious that my turn was coming next. Finally Rick decided to take the plumbing in the head apart and clean up the mess afterwards.

So you think sailing is romantic. It should be noted that it seemed that either Jim or Rick or both were involved in an arduous or complex job of maintenance every day I was on the Eyes. In performing such maintenance each seemed to be fully knowledgeable and competent to take the Eyes completely apart and put it together again. All of this in addition to their sailing and cooking skills while participating in their state-side businesses and being excellent hosts at the same time. For me of all the wonder I beheld on the trip, this was the most memorable.

This sentiment brings me prematurely to end my description of my wonderful, beautiful and adventurous sailing trip on the Eyes because of all the beauty, adventure and good times that occurred until the trip ended, the above sentiment is the salient note to end with.

I departed the Eyes leaving something behind (which evidently is yet to be found) so as to have an excuse to return to the “world of the Eyes.”

VHF Radio: "Switching back to Channel 16"

“Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has its seasons, its evenins and songs of its own.“
(Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter - 1973)

You Put Da Lime In the Coconut

Jim's Comment: This is the promised blog from my Aunt with whom we had an incredibly good time in November. Thanks, Sue!

The two weeks I spent in November 2007 aboard Eyes of the World in the company of the skippers, Jim and Rick, my dear sister-in-law Sam, and my husband Steve, are deeply etched in my consciousness.

How’s that for an intro?


I’d like to make this a pitch for anyone who has the chance to visit them – do it! In my many years of life (64, to be precise), I’ve very rarely experienced such a welcoming, attentive and considerate pair of hosts. It takes a lot to make me totally comfortable and able to let loose – it happened on Eyes for those wonderful fourteen days.


Images: the strong helping hands offered to the landlubber, boarding and alighting from various vessels; the excitement of casting off and setting sail for the next destination – with Jim and Rick totally in charge of our fate (my job was to secure the wine bottles and hold onto the dogs); the absolute freedom and exhilaration of sailing silently and peacefully over the bounding main ( I have a new appreciation for that term, by the way, but scopolamine patches took care of it); the cozy and comfortable accommodations with framed photographs of family so appropriately placed in our cabins, and even in the head; snorkeling with guys who have their knowledge and appreciation of the reefs and sea floor honed to perfection – and can dive 20’ down without a thought, to bring to the surface a wonderful critter we surface-snorkelers would never otherwise see; climbing a trail on Goat Island in Les Saintes with Chris and Margit, sweating all the way but marveling in the sights and the history; the market in Dominica and “Big Man” who found his match in Steve; the joy of spontaneous hugs and laughter (encouraged by mysterious rum drinks) and tropical rainstorms on the Indian River cruise; sleeping on the nets with Sam, with or without rain showers, [batten the hatches!], watching the passage of Orion and the incredible swath of the Milky Way; exploring Martinique on our own – our brave hosts driving, finding an abandoned carrot patch halfway up cloudy Mount Pelee, followed by a wonderful lunch in a restaurant by the sea; the history of the Caribbean! Oh my – “concise” the book was not, but for a totally left-brained person such as me, learning of the tragedies of these islands was essential. The monument of the shackled hands said it all. I could go on and on with the images – the photos don’t begin to tell the tale.

And there are a very few regrets:

(1) Despite our careful use of toilet paper (OK: two women, two weeks, only ½
roll!!!), we apparently left Eyes with a clogged holding tank. Steve witnessed
the amazing clearing of the same after Sam and I left, and loves telling the
story. Into the briny deep went our heroes, in the dark, checking valves,
disconnecting pipes, shoving hands into tanks…ok, maybe no more detail is
needed. They fixed it, of course – as they kept all of the complex systems on
Eyes going (see Rick’s previous blow-by-blow accounts on this blog).

(2) Wish I’d learned how to sail – oops, just remembered the instruction I received from the guys – how tightly I held onto the wheel and watched the compass and GPS – then came back up from a trip to the head to find autopilot doing a much more competent job than I had, thank you very much.

(3) Wish I’d conveyed more emphatically to Jim and Rick how much I enjoyed those 14 days.
Summary: the ease of daily life on Eyes with Jim & Rick. Let me repeat that: the EASE. So rare, so wonderful. Thank you, my dears. As our Governator says, “We’ll be back!”

Love, Sue (Jim’s aunt)(She married them)(and is very proud of that)


Comment from Jim: The "Coconut" song became a nightly even during which everyone sang and raised their hands in the air.