Speedy Haul-out or “on Vacation” in Philipsburg?

Irie had a little problem with one of her engines. Actually, Irie has a few problems with her engines, but this one became a bit more worrisome when the blue turned black saildrive oil also rose in level. This indicated one thing: salt water was coming in. The only way to deal with saildrive issues is… to haul the boat. Didn’t we just do that a few months ago in Grenada? Yep. We just had to do it again. Luckily, there is an affordable boat yard in St. Maarten and Irie snugly fits in its travel lift.

On the first day of spring (after a winter that never came), Irie and her crew left the lagoon, heading for Philipsburg. Mark and I felt a bit excited about finally leaving the nasty “pond”, albeit for the wrong reasons. The cleaner water in Great Bay invited us for a swim and the long boardwalk and wide beach called Darwin for a long walk. Even the chaos of the cruise ship passengers and ferries couldn’t spoil our fun of being in a relatively beautiful place again.

When Monday morning came around, we moved Irie towards the fairway at Bobby’s Marina. A heavy cross wind caused us problems to dock the boat and, with only one line attached to shore and a port engine that suddenly refused to work, Irie turned sideways, creating a bit of a panic. Luckily no substantial damage occurred and we managed to dock safely in the end. Once hauled out of the water, we noticed that the propeller of the port engine had come loose, the reason it didn’t work properly when engaged… An easy fix, especially on the hard.

From the moment Irie arrived at her spot in the yard, Mark and I got to work. We were committed to spend as little time as possible in the hot, dusty and grimy boatyard. Darwin was placed in the shade with a blanket and a bowl of water and he was extremely well behaved. While he rested and stayed put, the humans in our little family scraped barnacles, fixed the prop, disassembled the sail drive, sanded some areas where the paint didn’t hold up and painted them, cleaned the waterline, filled the tank, sun showers and jerrycans with water, waxed a few spots, flushed the fridge hoses, equalized the batteries and cleaned Irie’s deck and cockpit.

In the meantime, a Yanmar mechanic picked up our saildrive and managed –with some effort and time-to replace the worn gaskets. We were ready with all the chores on our list by noon on Tuesday, but had to wait another couple of hours in the dust (this is the Caribbean!) before we got “splashed” again. Out and back in the water in less than 30 hours and for less than $ 1000! Not bad…

That afternoon, we treated ourselves to some peace in the anchorage, a swim to remove all the dust and another long walk with Darwin. Philipsburg has its charm and we were happy to enjoy some of it, too tired to make it back to the lagoon the same day anyway. That was the plan for Wednesday morning. We returned to our usual spot off Explorer Island and got back to The Wirie business. Our “being out of touch” for three days, prompted people to inquire about our getaway and ask us how we enjoyed our “short vacation”. In a way, we did enjoy it, actually!

St. Maarten: Our Mad House for a Few Months

Roaring planes, wake creating dive boats, plowing ferries, passing tenders of all sizes, buzzing jet skis resembling annoying mosquitoes and groups of sailing dinghies make up our surroundings in Simpson Bay Lagoon, St. Maarten. The contrast with previous islands –especially Barbuda – couldn’t be bigger. This is going to be our home and office for a few months and even though getting back here was somewhat of a shock, we knew what to expect. Just like last year, we anchored off Explorer Island, one of the quieter places in the lagoon and far away from all needed facilities. But, there is a little beach on the island and that’s where most of our daily trips lead to, thanks to Darwin.

Mark and I are here to work - to “replenish the cruising kitty” - and we took that task seriously from the moment we arrived. Instead of spending an hour or two a day on our Wirie business in the States, Mark now spends most of his day behind the computer, communicating with Tim, researching ideas and products, advertising, improving the website, understanding the competition, reacting to unethical, untrue statements on forums and message boards, communicating with journalists and providing customer support. The list goes on. Nobody said running a business was easy, let alone from a boat in the Caribbean.

I found a temporary job in a fun bar called Lagoonies for three 7-8 hour shifts a week. Never before was I a bar tender and if anyone would have asked if I’d ever do it, the answer would have been “no”. The person running the bar is Ellie, a friend of ours from last year. Another friend, Christine from Gypsy Cat, started working there before our arrival and one thing lead to another… I like to try new things and although the pay was low, it was an interesting experience and mostly enjoyable, depending on the customers. Last Saturday, after six weeks, I decided to quit for reasons that will become clear in a bit.

The main motivation for our extended time here is The Wirie. At this time of the year, a lot of sailboats stop in St. Maarten. We started building, advertising and selling our marine WiFi device again and it is still successful. We actually met a few sailors that bought our unit online from the States. Now they can hang out with fellow cruisers that obtained The Wirie from Irie in the past and exchange WiFi information or convince new and prospective owners of The Wirie’s capabilities. A big chunk of our days go to ordering parts, retrieving packages from the airport, manufacturing Wiries, communicating with retailers about wrong deliveries (and trying to figure out how to get the right parts here as soon as possible without losing too many sales, spending plenty of money for extra shipping in the process) and talking about our product.

Of course the daily errands can’t fall behind, we need to get and haul water, fuel and groceries from shore to Irie and, ideally, Darwin leaves the boat three times a day. Sharing one dinghy in a big area like the lagoon and each having our own commitments makes things a bit more challenging, especially when I had the night shifts. Add plenty of boat projects and quite a few unexplainable problems to the mix and you start to understand why our life has become stressful once again. As a matter of fact one of the engine problems calls for another haul-out in Philipsburg. Annoying and expensive, especially since we spent enough time in the boat yard in Grenada, less than five months ago. The idea for Irie was to not leave the water for two years…

The bright part of the story is the presence of people we know. Over the last month, time and schedule permitting, there were many evenings we enjoyed the company of our “Luperon friends” Ed and Emily from Nini and Dave from Tatia. Our Israeli friends Tania and Oren from Renata already left again, but Angie – Darwin’s best friend – is still here for a bit. I even went to Ladies Night (free drinks for the ladies!) again with even more tiredness as a result.

All the work and chores add up and it became impossible for me to combine my different jobs (I forgot to mention I want to write more and sold another article), so choices had to be made. It also would be nice to do something fun once in a while or hang out with Mark and Darwin, but that has less priority for now. Not healthy, nor good, I know, but when life is hectic and demanding and our personalities consist of being responsible, genuine and nice, it is hard to change things around. But, I made some time to finally write this blog, so the future is looking brighter already!

Barbuda: A Peaceful Place in the Caribbean

When Mark and I left Guadeloupe northbound, we had two options: go “through the middle” with a visit to Montserrat and a short stop in St. Kitts and Nevis, or sail to Antigua and Barbuda for a few weeks. The volcano on Montserrat was acting up, with ash being spit out on boats in the vicinity, followed by days of cleaning up for the owners. That, and the fact that visiting Antigua and Barbuda on the way north is easier than on the way south, made us decide to go this route.

We had heard a lot of nice things about Barbuda and this island was our main goal, but first, we spent two nights in Antigua, where it is easier to check in and out. We anchored in Falmouth Harbour with the big objective to visit Nelson’s Dockyard National Park. This Heritage site of restored colonial buildings houses shops and businesses and creates a good feel for the old days. There is a short walk to fort ruins from where you have a nice view of English Harbor and its many anchored boats. This area is also very popular with the mega yachts and mega they are. During the day your neck gets stiff from looking up the immense, tall masts and at night the sky is dotted with red lights so planes don’t crash into them.

The day we sailed to the sister island Barbuda, was pretty much perfect for this. We followed the west coast of Antigua, noticing quite a few attractive bays near shore and once we hit open water, the wind was a steady 15 knots on the beam (side). Our little Irie was pushed forward at about 7 knots and life was Irie! After cruising along for a couple of hours, our clothes pins snapped, meaning we caught a fish, or some other big thing. When Mark reeled the heavy hand line in, we saw a huge barracuda appear. In his struggle to get free, he had caught our other hand line, creating a giant mess. We managed to get the extra line off him, but needed to release him by cutting the hook. Nobody wanted to get close to those giant teeth and take the hook out. Then, when I pulled the other, damaged line in, something tugged on it… Totally unexpected, we had captured a tuna! Within a minute, we let go of one fish and caught another. Thank you, Mother Nature!

The tuna came in handy the following days, since we didn’t provision in the expensive French islands before visiting “remote” Barbuda. It fed us for three meals, including a sushi dinner. Barbuda is one of the few places in the Caribbean that is very low and therefore hard to see from a distance. While other, more mountainous islands are visible from 20, 30 or even 40 miles away, we didn’t spot Barbuda until we were within 5 miles of its shores. Once safely anchored, all we could see was sand, brush and water.

We spent our first night near Cocoa Point on Barbuda’s southwest coast. The long, quiet beach there has very soft sand in which you sink up to your ankles. When the wind picked up, we moved to the south coast, where the water is very protected. We had to maneuver through some reefs to find our preferred spot and got settled for about a week. Walks on shore revealed nothing more than barren land with sand, rocks and brush. There are a couple of salt ponds and nice views from a sand dune. Spanish Point offers a good look out over the crashing waves. Wild donkeys, horses and chicken roam the area and make up the other life to be found in the vicinity.

Low Bay on the west coast of the island is situated along an 11 mile stretch of pinkish sand. We expected other boats there, but in contrast to the other areas with a maximum of five boats, there was only one here: Irie! The beach was ours and we thoroughly enjoyed the solitude and the long walks with Darwin. Mark and I needed this little vacation away from it all to prepare ourselves for the busy times to come in St. Martin. Our stay in Barbuda truly charged our batteries and the fact that we were out of propane gas, fresh food, toothpaste, paper towels and other necessities didn’t matter that much. At least not for a few days.

On the first day of February we sailed our last long trip in pretty light winds. We made it to St. Barth before nightfall, saw jumping whales along the way and caught our first mahi mahi (dorado). The following day, we reached the familiar lagoon in St. Martin and reunited with many friends, eager to join the fish feast on Irie. It is great to see this whole group of sailing friends again and have a good time. Another working era has arrived and we will be doing just that for about three months before picking up the cruising life again. And, in the evenings, there are plenty of opportunities to socialize!

All is Irie with The Wirie

Over the last few months, Mark and Tim have been working extra hard on improving The Wirie and the website. From his nice, comfortable house in cold Massachusetts, Tim communicated over Skype with his brother Mark in the meager living space of Irie, located in the warm climate and pretty environments of the Caribbean. Together, they figured a whole bunch of stuff out and shared their thoughts and ideas during daily chat sessions. I helped by reviewing documents, writing some PR stuff and making Mark’s (sometimes frustrating) life a bit easier.

The result of our effort, time investment, research and team work is an improved Wirie ready for sale on the website (www.thewirie.com) and for the press. The new stainless steel bracket is custom made to fit horizontal and vertical poles as well as standard antenna mounts, a higher power 1000mW WiFi unit replaces the 500mW unit, the website focuses on Wirie use in the boating and the RV (recreational vehicle) world, Windows 7 got its own manual and the manuals for all the other operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac) are updated. The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page is enriched with extra information, other long range WiFi solutions were researched, the product comparison chart has more competitors on it, our customer service department is constantly providing advice and help, more unsolicited testimonials show how pleased our customers are and many more positive changes have been made to the site and the business operation.

Mark and Tim also tested a new WiFi unit that claims to be 2 Watts and supports the N protocol. It didn’t take them long, however, to discover that the internet connections with this unit lack reliability and are actually weaker than the 1000mW unit when used with the more frequently available B and G protocols. They concluded to not use this unit until improvements are made and results show that it is indeed better than the unit we currently use in The Wirie.

Working from pretty places scattered through the Caribbean islands over the last months has been enjoyable enough, but now it is time for the “real world”! Once in St. Martin, Mark and I will have a full time job taking care of boat projects, getting our life back on track, earning some money doing random jobs, advertising The Wirie and running the business with Tim.

With this different kind of blog, I wanted to give some insight about what else is going on in this little boat and this big world of ours. It’s not all sightseeing, relaxing and fun here on Irie, although we can’t complain about this last week. Mark and I decided to go on vacation to Barbuda and actually try to relax a bit. We did succeed splendidly and even read a couple of books, until we found a great internet signal in front of an 11 mile deserted beach! Well, I guess the beach isn’t totally deserted, based on that one building a couple of miles down. That Wirie, I tell ya…