After snorkeling in Francis Bay, St. John’s on Monday morning, we enjoyed a brisk sail over to Jost Van Dyke. With winds gusting to 27 knots, we sped along at nearly 8 knots while flying only the mainsail and staysail on a beam reach. This, along with the fast sail from Jost back to St. […]
Audentes
Audentes journal entries
Easter in St. John’s
On Tuesday, I returned to St. Thomas, my recent home away from home. After clearing in, I met up with several friends from my last visit. One of these, Zach, had three of his friends visiting. Colin, Jay, and Eugene were on Spring Break from Northwestern, where they are getting their masters degree in biotechnology. […]
Relaxing in the BVIs
On Monday, I endured the first rainy day since I arriving in the Virgin Islands three weeks ago. Beating my way to Virgin Gorda, named by Columbus because he thought the island resembled a fat woman, the island is famous for The Baths, a collection of giant boulders strewn along a section of the shoreline. […]
Exploring the Virgin Islands
After an enjoyable week in St. Thomas, I decided that it was time to visit some of the other Virgin Islands and test my solo sailing skills. My departure from Red Hook Harbor in St. Thomas was anything but pretty. Overly eager to raise the sails, I flailed for a while until I was able […]
Passage to Virgin Islands & Departure of Brian
The trip from Trinidad to the Virgin Islands went as smoothly as could be hoped for from an offshore sailing passage. We departed Thursday morning expecting the trip to take four days and were pleasantly surprised by consistent winds that allowed us to reach our destination in 3.5 days. Our new bottom paint and the […]
A Dangerous Summer
Ernest Hemingway Scribner, 1960 I finally found a book by Hemingway that I don’t like. “A Dangerous Summer” recounts the summer of 1960, during which Hemingway followed the bullfighting circuit in Spain. As Papa Hemingway notes, he has already written Spain, both in “The Sun Also Rises” and in “A Farewell to Arms.” He should […]
Out of the Boatyard & Into the Frying Pan
Our last week in Power Boats, Trinidad’s hottest boatyard, saw enough accomplished to allow Audentes a taste of water after a month on the hard. We made a great stride toward this goal on February 17th, when we managed to reinstall the mast. All the other yachties we’ve talked to have nothing but praise for […]
Carnival Ad Nauseum
A week is enough time to gain sufficient perspective on Carnival. It kicked off with the NFL Superbowl on Sunday night, which we watched on a Mexican channel in a local bar. We missed out on the commercials, but we did manage to catch some off-air chatter between the commentators, who discussed whether or not […]
Carnival in Trinidad
We were somewhat mislead concerning the nature of last Sunday’s Viey La Cou. In our minds, “theater” means a performance with a plot. In Trinidad, it apparently refers to several different groups of people in costume walking to and fro on a grass field. The first section, from 1 pm to 4 pm, was a […]
Toil and Trouble
We’re quickly forgetting how to sail and fast remembering how inept we are at fiberglass work. Still, we’ve managed to overcome our incompetence and are only a few nuts and bolts from completing the reinstallation of our deck hardware. This has involved plenty of drilling, prying, hacking, heavy-duty gluing, and liberal use of our hammer, […]