Well it's January 2011, a new year, and we have decided to bring Meercat home. Glenn flew to Spain to
join three people we had arranged to join him on a sail across the Atlantic to Barbados the first leg of our journey
to bring her home. Janice had to stay in Florida and work for tax season. Something's unfair here! He spent
a couple of days painting the bottom and buying supplies for the journey. Then the day they were supposed to leave things
started happening. Issues came up which I won't air here but the next thing we knew it was down to Glenn and a nice
man we met who is from England, Dave. I was unaware of all of this as it was happening as we only had satellite phone
communication. We're sorry things turned out as they did. Dave wants to make the trip for the experience of crossing
the Atlantic Ocean. It was now down to Dave and Glenn and they headed out for Gibraltar on Thursday the 6th. Next
thing they know one engine conks out. It appears that the water pump broke. Glenn got the engine going again but
we now have repair #1 - water pump replaced with the replacement that we carried and a new alternator was put in.
Thursday found them 125 miles from the marina at anchor as the winds were so high and ----WHAT?----on the nose. So they
anchored for the night and got on the way again Saturday. More winds are due tomorrow as they make their slow way.
This year certainly doesn't seem to have the charm that we had the year we crossed over to Portugal. Meanwhile Glenn
has asked me to meet him in Gibraltar. Well I'm here in Florida working, commited for tax season. I had been working
3 days when I get an e-mail asking me to join him. My boss was, quite reasonably, not too happy about that. I
am guessing as to when they will make it to the Canaries but I don't dare wait too long for a ticket so I bought one today.
Did I mention that I hate to fly and have never, ever flown alone? I have now reserved a ticket that involves 2 planes
and 11 hours in the air. I am nauseous. I really, really dread this trip but I don't see any way around it. It's
the airplane trip I'm speaking of here, not the sail. There is no way that two people can cross. I really miss
Glenn and am glad to be joining him but I wish I didn't have to take this flight. I'll just put it out of my head for
the next two weeks. Ha! Stay tuned and I'll let you know how I fared.
1/9 the spare head is refit.
The trip has been extremely cold at night, with the wind constantly on the bow the entire way to Gibraltar.
1/10
the winds hit 31 KTS on the nose so they pulled into Motril marina for the night.
1/12 arrived at Gibraltar
at 2:30 a.m. Phase one down.
1/13 Nico, from Sante Carle marina in Spain, arrived to become the fourth
crew member. He wants to be a sailing instructor and this trip will be great for his resume.
1/14 - the
water pump, alternator and starter spares are replaced and Glenn and crew go shopping in Morrison's, the
English grocery store. Dave has been doing the cooking and is an extremely good cook. They have been eating English
style, steak and kidney pie (without the crust), bangers and mash, and lots of tea. Nico has brough SPOT with him so
our location will be sent to friends everyday.
1/15 After fueling Meercat leaves Gibraltar with the wind on
the nose. They saw 2 sharks and it was again a very cold night.
1/16 They are now traveling parallel to the
coast of Africa near Casa Blanca.
1/18 - 1/20 no wind on the nose! No wind - they are now motoring.
1/21
In the middle of the night Meercat arrives at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. They tied up to the fuel dock at 1:30
a.m. and made it to bed at 3:00.
1/22 9:00 a.m. the marina opened and they are moved to their dock.
We had to pay a $200 lighthouse tax. I guess making your entry at night makes you appreciate lighthouses.
1/24
I made it! My flights were actually quite pleasant and I wasn't nervous at all. It helped that the 9 hour flight
was during the night and I managed to find an empty row of 3 seats to lay down on. I arrived in Las Palmas at 5:30 with
Glenn and Nico meeting me at the airport. We took the bus and then walked a moderate distance to the marina where Dave
waited with a beautifully set table (with placemats) and a delicious meal of bangers and mash. The galley was
clean as a whistle, the boys were all settled in, and they showed me where all of the food was stored. There was
even a "treats" bin set up under one of the seats. It was filled with snacks and cookies (or should I say biscuits?)
We went to the marina bar and had a Guiness and into bed by 10:00.
1/25 We explored the choices of grocery
stores for our big shopping before we left and had a late morning snack of the local specialty - wrinkled potatoes.
They are small potatoes steamed and served with green and red mojo. Glenn and I took a bus tour of the island.
It wasn't what I was expecting. I was thinking of the Azores, sparsely populated and quaint. Instead we found
a beautiful city, reminding us of Barcelona.
1/26 We did all of our grocery shopping today in a local fresh
food market. All of our food will be delivered to the boat. We got lots of fruit and veggies, 3 dozen fresh eggs,
steak, kidney, chicken and unsmoked bacon. Glenn and I took the local bus to the mall where we ate in a non-tourist
restaurant and then walked back to the boat. Our last good exercise for quite a while.
1/27 and we're on our
way. We had huge swells that, of course, made me sick. I had a patch on and wore one for 5 days, trading
it 3 times and I was sick the entire time. If it wasn't huge swells, it was high winds with lots of waves. I finally
took the patch off and took Stugeron and actually felt slightly better, as long as I kept taking pills. We motored most
of this time trying to get south away from heavy weather that was headed down the coast of Africa.
2/1 The
weather caught up with us. We had 2 1/2 days of constant hand steering as we had 25 KTS of wind (gusting to 30 at night)
on the stern and 9 - 12' waves banging on the boat. No autopilot can take heavy weather on the stern. Nico had
periods of feeling great and then just running to the side to vomit approximately every other day during this time period.
He seemed to feel worse when the engines were on during the huge swells.
2/3 We finally came in to
St Vincent at the Cape Verde Islands approximately 125 miles off the coast of Africa. The weather was still heavy and the
sky was hazy from the winds blowing the sands of Africa over the islands. The islands people are a mix of Portuguese
and African. They speak a dialect of Portuguese. Glenn and I tried to sleep after we tied up but there was too
much noise from the creaking lines tying the boat to the dock, caused by the huge surge coming in. So we got up
and Glenn went to take a shower in the COLD water offered by the marina. I towel bathed and began to clean up the boat. I
did laundry, cleaned the refrigerator and washed dishes in fresh water! I actually felt weak as I was doing this minor
work. I hardly ate anything on the trip down, including 6 crackers on one day. I had managed two dinners during
the swell period. Dave is such a wonderful cook I wish I could have taken advantage of it. He has taken over all
of the cooking and Nico helps him with the cleaning up. We went on shore and walked around checking out the town and
the grocery stores. It is a very poor island, the haze of dust constantly blowing and flies all over the fish (without
ice) at the fish market. We stopped for a beer, Nico tried the local rum. I wiped the mouth of my beer bottle
on my shirt as the labels was sliding off of this obviously re-used bottle. I noticed that Nico did the same.
We went to Club Nautique for an early dinner. It is a bar set up between two buildings with no roof and quite old and
grungy looking but the food was good. We had rice, garlic potatoes, lettuce and tomato and either tuna or chicken.
There is a vote on Sunday and the two political parties are having rallies. They have set up band stands a couple of
blocks apart and the bands are playing. The streets are absolutely packed with people, I don't think that anyone is
at home tonight. The reform party seemed louder so we walked to that one. One interesting thing that I noticed
was that absolutely no one is smoking. This huge crowd and I don't see a single cigarette. The music was nice
at first but after awhile it degenerated to rap. At 10:30 Glenn and I headed to bed. The speeches had started
by this time and continued to 12:30. This is one of the disadvantages of being in a marina. It is noisy.
2/4 Dave didn't feel well today and stayed on the boat. The other three of us went grocery shopping.
The fish had no ice and lots of flies and the meat just wasn't appealing. We stocked up on apples, oranges, onion, peppers,
carrots and lettuce. That was really all that we could find. I had a cheese crepe for lunch at Club Nautique and
then we went back to the boat to find homemade soup. Dave was feeling better. He makes such wonderful soups!
2/5 We left around noon. We had to wait for immigration to open at 10:00 as it was closed on Friday.
We were also waiting for the waves to go down after the heavy weather we arrived in finally passed last night. Now there's
a sentence "waited for the waves to go down." This trip isn't what was advertised. Contrary to the sailing
we have done in the past for some reason the winds come up every night to 26 - 30 KTS and calm somewhat during the day.
We have had horrid, horrid smashing waves, and a lot of handsteering. Dark clouds and heavy winds come up every night.
Even in the daytime it is dark and stormy looking with only an occasional peep of the sun. Dave kiddingly complained
that Glenn promised him reading on the bow with his toes dangling over as he watches the dolphin swim with the boat.
This is supposed to be the nice tradewind "Milk Run." On February 10th we had 35 KTS of wind and again had
to handsteer with 2 hour shifts. On one night all three men were in the cockpit. We had several waves crash
over in to the cockpit at one time putting a foot of water in the cockpit before it had the opportunity to drain. The
handsteering finally ended on the 15th. We had spent this entire time with no main sail (the wind was from the rear)
and three reefs in the genoa very occasionally going down to two reefs. Everyone was exhausted. Meercat held up
all though these heavy waves and performed admirably. I have to admit that for the first time I was actually afraid
but there was no damage to or failure by the boat.
We are now withing five days of St Lucia and the winds have settled
down. We had two days of pleasant winds with mild waves from the right direction with the sun out. This is what
we had expected for the entire trip. We did get to see dolphins a couple of times, we caught three mahi mahi, saw two
small whales and lots of flying fish. It wasn't all bad. One night Dave and Nico were having their midnight cup
of tea when they heard this loud whack and then flap, flap, flap. It scared them at first until they realized that it
was a flying fish. They managed to rescue it and get it back into the water. Another night Nico had just come
up to relieve my watch and he jumped up, yelled and started scrambling his feet. I thought something was biting him.
A flying fish had whacked into his chest and then landed on the floor at his feet. We managed to get that one back in
the water also. Unfortunately, there were quite a few on other nights that didn't get rescued.
2/16
For the second day in a row we have seen a shark. This one is a 20 foot long, 3 foot wide great white that circled the
boat twice, followed for a while and then left. That was scarey. Nico spotted it first and thought that it was
a whale.
2/17 During the early morning the port engine stopped with a thud. I knew that sound.
We had something wrapped on the propeller. When the sun came up Glenn prepared to go in to cut the fishing net away
from the propeller. He got out a couple of knives and a pair of steel clippers, put on his wetsuit and got out his snorkle
and fins. I slowed the boat, turned it at a good angle to the wind and stopped the remaining engine, waiting for
our forward motion to stop. I stood on the seat at the starboard aft and Dave stood at the port aft to watch for sharks.
Nico got on the sugarscoop to hand Glenn the cutting implements and to be prepared to help him get out of the water quickly
if need be. I swear, 15 seconds after he went under water Glenn was back up climbing in the boat. The fastest
I have ever seen him cut debris from the propeller. What a relief. We were all very nervous. We tried to boat
hook the net into our boat but it sunk down several feet below the surface and we just couldn't reach it. Nico decided
to bake a chocolate cake today. It was his first and it was interesting but it sure was good. We are now down
to no wind and traveling by engine only. There wasn't much in between this trip. Glenn missed his 3:00 a.m. watch
as a cut that he had on his knee that had healed when we were in Cape Verde was red and swollen and hurt to move it.
By morning he had a fever of 101 degrees. He also had a swollen thumb that had also had a small cut on it.
2/18
Glenn's fever is up to 103 degrees and he doesn't feel well at all. He has stayed in bed all day and isn't hungry.
We called a doctor in Spain, a friend of Nico's family, and put him on a broad spectrum antibiotic that we had on board with
aspirin to reduce the fever and swelling.
2/19 Glenn is still in bed and the red on his leg is spreading.
His fever goes up and down depending on the last time he had aspirin. His leg is severely painful to move and he can
hardly walk on it.
2/20 As Dave said, "We saw three people in a boat today. The first three people
he's seen in two weeks." I haven't quite figured what category we are in, if not people. Anyway they were
in a single engine, 24' open skiff fishing 50 miles from shore. We also saw two whales. This has been an exciting
day. We will be ashore soon and it is a good thing. Glenn's leg is now red from mid-calf to mid-thigh and very
swollen. It is really scaring me. We finally pulled into Rodney Bay Marina at about 8:00 at night. Another
night landing, another record - the most night entries we've had since we started sailing. As soon as we were tied up
to the dock we walked out to the taxi stand and got into a taxi headed for Tapion Hospital. I won't go into all of the
personal medical information but he was admitted and ended up staying three days with three different antibiotics being pumped
into him and his leg elevated as he lay flat on his back. The swelling is still quite a lot and the area of redness
minimized greatly but it is a lot darker now.
2/23 Glenn is dismissed from the hospital and we are
on the boat completing the finishing touches to closing up the boat. Dave, wonderful Dave, had done all of the work
cleaning and putting away. He is just such a wonderful man. We couldn't have made this trip without him.
I packed and then found that our zippers were broken and had to repack leaving practically all of our clothes on the boat.
We are all so excited about going home. It has been a trip of 45 days for Glenn and Dave for a total of 4,000 miles.
2/24
After an uneventful flight we are home. Glenn is laying around with his leg in the air and Janice is back to work tomorrow.
We want to thank Dave and Nico, one more time, for making this trip possible. They survived very difficult weather conditions
with strength and total responsibility. Dave's good nature and nuturing personality was a wonderful balm to the stress
and anxiety of the trip. We will be forever grateful.
