It’s red, it’s plump, it’s a rusty sailing lump

Shame on me! Our boat, once our pride and joy, is now a flagship for the adage ships and men rot in port. Okay, my wife says I haven’t rotted that much, God love her, but she does agree that the boat is a mess. Now, thanks to a friend with a space in his construction yard, things are about to change. You could be forgiven for thinking that living in what is dubbed The Yachting Capital of the Caribbean; it would be easy to keep a boat maintained. But times and boats have changed. Fiberglass, money, and, yes, respectability is the name of the game. The days when a St. Maarten boat yard (note: I say St. Maarten and not St. Martin) would haul your steel boat and let you cut, weld and grind, are almost gone. You can’t blame them, who wants rust marks all over the topsides of their recently sprayed boat? Still, it doesn’t change the fact that cruising, as we once knew it, has changed. Banging on the boat with a chipping hammer brought back memories of clouting my wooden boat with a mallet. Bang … whoa, what’s that? Thunk … shit, that sounds expensive. Not surprising, then, that owners of older fiberglass boats spend so much time poncing about sailing, while us diehards are character building 

A time to sail, a time to broadcast

Blame it on the Heineken Regatta! The problem with a radio station that not only has a great maritime show but a team of presenters who actually sail, is that for one week in March no one wants to be in the Island 92 studio. Usually you can’t tear a presenter away from the microphone but the Green Machine changes all that.
Before sitting down to write this I visited the yacht club to attend a press conference, and within ten minutes spoke to four of the world’s top sailors. Talk about putting St. Maarten on the map!
Talking about maps, the YachtBlast podcast goes from strength to strength and is now downloaded more than 2000 times a week worldwide. We’re lucky in St. Maarten, through the yacht club we can sail whenever we want. Technology is grand but it’s no substitute for a fair wind and a cold beer.

Hit and Run on Proselyte Reef

On Monday, I had a very angry call from the Ocean Explorers Dive Center and dive master Lucian de Lima, who told me that that over the weekend a ship had run into Proselyte reef off Philipsburg, and done a huge amount of damage to the coral. As it turns out, it wasn’t a ship but a tug probably towing a barge. Divers think the tug slowed down as it approached Great Bay, which caused the steel towing cable to sink to the bottom over the reef. When the tug accelerated, the towing cable scythed across the reef destroying three swathes of coral some thirty feet wide. No vessel should be in the vicinity of Proselyte Reef as it’s within the marine park. There is a light on the reef, it is visible in daylight, and it is marked on the chart, so you don’t even need GPS to find it. As usual, the ship failed to report the incident and legged it. It happens a lot in St. Maarten. Human nature, I guess, vessels spill oil and diesel and don’t own up. Legislation is in place to issue fines but when money is tight, there is no one to enforce it. According to the divers, the reef could be repaired, but again it takes time and money. Both are in short supply. One month from now and the coral is beyond repair and nature will have to take its course. To hear more about the damage to Proselyte Reef download the February 7th YachtBlast podcast from iTunes.

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Good deeds, bad navigation & the joys of being young

The loss of the Irish entry Cork in the Clipper around the World Race has raised some eyebrows. A few weeks back Cork T-boned another competitor at the start of the race in Cape Town. On Thursday she went one better and struck a reef in the Java Sea. Video footage released to the media showed the yacht high and dry just meters away from a small tower that marked the end of the reef. Obviously, someone is facing serious questions and clipper tells me that a full investigation is underway. Race founder Sir Robin Knox-Johnston said Cork was the first yacht they have lost in over two million miles of racing. Let’s hope it’s their last.

It’s been an amazing week for sixteen year old Australian Jessica Watson. On Wednesday, Jessica, who is attempting to become the youngest person to sail nonstop and unassisted around the world, rounded Cape Horn having covered almost ten thousand miles of her solo voyage. Lot’s of people, me include, expressed concern when Jessica announced she was setting off on her record attempt and I was even more concerned after she ran into a freighter during a training voyage in the dark. Well, you’ve got to hand it to her, as she seems to be proving us all wrong. Why the detraction? Because we wish it was us! Go Jessica …

Members and staff at the St. Maarten Yacht Club have come together to help the people of the devastated island of Haiti. Brad and Tara, who run the yacht club bar and restaurant, donated a percentage of Saturday’s bar receipts to the cause, and well know St. Maarten yachtsman Ian Hope Ross donated fifty buckets from his construction company. The buckets were washed out by volunteers, filled with goods, clothes etc., and given to the Red Cross for shipment to Haiti. The collection goes on all week and it’s nice to report that there is more to our yacht club than sailing and cold beer.

Laser me, Baby ... ouch!

I went sailing in a Laser this week and I still haven’t recovered. It was one of those snap decisions; the keelboat we usually take out on Tuesday afternoon was stuck at the far end of the lagoon. Evidently the family who had rented it had ripped the jib and found it impossible to beat back with just the main. Kathy, my sailing partner, said: “How about you join us tomorrow on a Laser instead?” and without thinking, I agreed. I last sailed a Laser 25 years ago when under the influence of strong drink. A friend and I ‘borrowed’ one from a beach in Antigua and took off on a New Year’s Eve cruise around Falmouth Harbour. Lasers, drunks and Christmas trade winds are a wonderful combination and we spent half the time trying to climb back into the boat. Great fun until I realized my once full pockets were now empty and my wallet stuffed with cash, cards and various forms of ID was now being dragged across the sea bed by a crab. Anyway, I’m now sailing a laser and if my cuts, bruises, and sore backside have healed by Wednesday, I’ll be out there again. The reason I’m telling you all this is that when it comes to sailing it’s never too late to change direction and although I’ve been hobbling around like a cripple for a few days, when the wind filled the sail and I took of down wind, I felt like I was sixteen again :)