So Apparently You Need Locking Bolts in the Propellor Blades

Just a quick update before we set off again.  

Got back to the warmth of St Lucia at the start of the week which was a welcome change.  Had a great time in New York but we were all ready to get back onto the boat.  Calley in particular had a nasty cold which started to clear up immediately when we got back.  We managed a quick trip up to Mystic Seaport in the week before we left which was really pretty although the Maritime Museum we wanted to visit was shut.  A huge thank you to Lars, Diana and family for putting up with us for the extended period and best of luck with the remaining winter months.

Mystic Seaport

The boat went back into the water Tuesday and we have been trying to get things squared away.  Looks like we will be moving on again on Friday.  

So it seems the mystery surrounding the propellor blades was solved.  The locking bolts securing the blade hinge pins had not been installed.  It was lucky we did not loose all four blades!  Scott is suitably humbled at the moment.  A good few years ago in Fremantle he managed to half fill a diesel tank with water by mistake.  That caused a promised beautiful long weekend sailing to be turned into a long weekend cleaning diesel tanks.  He thought it was impossible to eclipse that incident but apparently not.  Anyway we live and learn........hopefully.

Boat has come together well.  (Always a bit nervous saying that as it seems to be testing fate).  All the systems came back online as they were supposed to including the watermaker which we had to decommission before we left.  Even the fridge and freezer seem to be working better than ever, so much so that we are running on a single compressor on the freezer for most of the time.  Had been having nightmares about the yard power failing and us coming back to a boat filled with defrosted rotting food and the whole boat stinking.

Everyone onboard is well and the kids are sporting new haircuts.  Calley opted for a short haircut so she looks more like a boy and does not have to comb it as much.  Now we have to get back down to school as we are about a couple of weeks behind after our extended stay in NY.  No oneis really looking forward to that.  We were hoping that we may come across a teacher treading the quayside looking for a crewing position for a couple of months.  Ideally they would have a partner who was a chef.  So far no luck though.

Last piece of news is that Dulcinea is on the market through a broker based out of the UK.  We have begun to accept the inevitable and that the end of the journey is in sight.  We have about 11 months left onboard and the target is to be back in Australia for x-mas 2014.  So anyone looking for a marvelous boat feel free to give us a call!

Trapped in New York

The blog title is probably a bit misleading as it was our own decision to stay in New York for another two weeks due to a delay in the delivery of the propellor blades to St Lucia.  Latest news is that the prop parts will arrive probably tomorrow at the shipyard if they can clear customs .  Amazingly it was dispatched from Ipswich on Jan 9th one day ahead of schedule.  It then went to Heathrow, and was in Barbados the very next day, only 80miles from St Lucia.  However from there things went a little awry.  The package went onward to Venezuela (approx 500miles from St Lucia), then further away to Panama (over 1000 miles from St Lucia), before coming back to Venezuela then onto Trinidad and finally arriving in St Lucia.  Am sure there are some good reasons for the circuitous route to do with transport efficiency and central distribution hubs etc but it is very frustrating when you are trying to track your shipment and it seems to be following a tourist route rather than a direct course.

Anyway there are certainly much worse places to be stuck than New York.  

Red Mill at Clinton NJ, near Lars and Diana's house.

The big dump of snow which they had forecast did eventuate later in the week and we had around 8 inches overnight to wake to a fantastic sight the next morning.  It really is a beautiful scene with the landscape covered in thick snow and a clear blue sky.  Unlike in the UK, the US authorities had done a superb job on the roads and there was very little disruption around our area. I guess its great as long as you are not the person who has to clear the driveway.  Lars was out for nearly an hour at 0700 with a mechanical snow blower trying to clear his driveway before managing to get the car out and get off to work!

The Morning After

Man vs Snow

It was however bitterly cold but that did not stop the kids from going sledging on the first morning with us all rugged up as if undertaking an expedition to the South Pole.  

Calley sledging 

Under those clothes is Sam

We had decided against the drive to Canada and instead took ourselves into the city and stayed there for the following week.  It was a great choice as even though we have been to New York many times we have never stayed in Manhattan and there were lots of things the kids had not seen.  Nic found a nice hotel in Midtown between the Empire State and the Chrysler Building close to Central Station.  The next few days were spent walking the city, visiting various museums, buildings, toy stores and eateries and all the time trying to stay warm.  

Wise words from the Guggenheim

The temperature at the beginning of the week during the day was down to -15deg C at one point due to what the weathermen were calling a “Polar Vortex”.  Not sure exactly what a “polar Vortex” is but it is certainly very, very cold.  Any exposed skin as dangerously cold after only a few minutes of exposure.  We were lucky that Lars and Diana had plenty of ski gear which they had loaned us for the trip to boost our flimsy bits and pieces we had brought from the boat.  The high point of the visit was a walk around the Guggenheim Museum and taking the kids ice skating on Wollman Rink in Central Park on a glorious sunny day at the end of the week when the temperature had risen to a balmy 0degC.

Skating at the Wollman Rink in Central Park

So into our final week in New York.  We are again based at Lars and Diana’s house and will do a couple of day trips out and about the adjoining states.  We are scheduled to fly to St Lucia on Monday 20th Jan and hope to be in the water again the following day.  We need to get back soon because apart from the cold, our bodies recognising the onset of winter have begun storing up the fat at an alarming rate in preparation for the anticipated bleak months ahead.  I think we will be twice as heavy getting back on the boat compared to when we left.  Luckily while we are here the layers of clothing mask the effects but the first few weeks in the Caribbean are not going to be pretty.

Happy New Year

Quick update just to say Happy New Year to all our friends and family.

We have been in New York for the past 10 day or so and have spent the time with Scott’s brother Lars and his family, and Scott’s mother who is over from Denmark.  Its been really great and everyone (well Scott anyway) is glad all the X-mas/New Year celebrations are over for another 12 months.

We left St Lucia in a bit of a hurry as there was a mix up with the boat lifting times.  As we did not have a functioning prop Scott was pretty anxious about manouvering into the lift out berth and wanted assistance from the yard.  Eventually we managed to organise escort tenders and got into the travel lift about three hours before we were due to leave for the airport for our flights to NY.  After sorting the boat out, getting power on, cleaning up etc we were an hour late leaving in the taxi from the North of the island.  The airport is in the South of the island.  Luckily Baptiste, our taxi driver, had some Le Mans experience and managed to get us to the airport only 5 mins after the checkin closed and with a bit of persuasion we were allowed to board the flight.

Whats left of our four bladed prop

Touched down in the evening in NY’s JFK airport to snow on the ground and a temperature hovering around freezing.  Kids were thrilled to see the snow and managed to get some sledging in at Lars’s place the next day before it all started melting.  The snow was gone in a few days but there have been some really cold days.

Calley out sledging

Christmas and New Year were family events and it was good to have everyone on the Anderson side together again.  One year we may manage to get both Australian and American families together.  We even managed to have snow on X-Mas and New Years Eve although it wasn’t a tremendous amount.  It’s pretty cold but the cold is a nice change for us after being in the islands for the last year.  We just have to put on all our available clothing to keep warm.  The snow is especially magical especially since we do not have to try and get on with everyday life around it.  Am sure it gets a bit old pretty quickly for the residents.

Choosing our tree

Having been in the Caribbean for the last year its amazing coming to the States and to see the range of shops and what is available in the shops.  In one supermarket isle we counted 47 different kinds of peanut butter!  And that’s replicated across all the food available.  There is so much choice , it’s astounding. It’s also very cheap compared to the islands. In addition, there are people and cars everywhere and most of them seem to be in a rush, not in a bad way but just busy and pre-occupied with their own lives.

So its now New Years Day and we are off into New York tonight for dinner at one of our favourite restaurants -  Tribeca Grill.  The weather is supposed to turn tomorrow with up to 8 inches of snow forecast and temperatures dropping to -17 degC.  We are due to return to St Lucia on the 5th Jan however we may delay as we are waiting for the spare propellor blades to be dispatched from the UK.  In the interim we will probably take a road trip to Montreal which is only about 7 hrs drive.

Hope everyone had a great New Year and are ready for a fantastic 2014.  We will be in the Mediterranean for most of the year so hopefully we will get to see some of you.  Have put together some thoughts on a year of cruising below.

Reflections on a year afloat

When we first joined Dulcinea a year and a half ago Skip (our friend from Newport) warned us that it would take us a year to get to know the boat and he was not far off.  Its not only the boat we had to get to know but also the routine.  Although life onboard has now become normal for us, it seems like an eternity since we started and it is hard to envisage “normal” life at the moment.  

Obviously the last year and a bit has been amazing for the whole family.  There is the tangible side of the trip which we talk about mostly in the blogs; the places we visit, the people we meet, the friends we have onboard and the experiences we have.  We are extremely lucky to be able to have experienced this but even more lucky to have done it as a family. There is also the intangible stuff which does not get mentioned that much.

One of the reasons for doing the trip initially was always to do something as a family before the kids got too old and it was impractical to get away.  I think there is no doubt that this has been a huge success.  We have been together 24/7 for the past year and at times we each in turn drive each other crazy and get driven crazy but generally we have all learned how to cope and are still learning.  The kids especially have just grown in confidence.  At the start of the trip Scott and Sam had a few run ins primarily due to Scott trying to adapt rather than any fault of Sam’s but now they seem to understand each other better.  Sam is growing up quickly and he is indispensable when it comes to helping around the boat.  He still has a lot to learn with the sailing but he is getting there. Main issue is that if he keeps growing at the rate he has done we will need a bigger boat by about April.  Calley probably wants to be a boy more now than when we started.  She is super confident and most of the time a real pleasure to be around.  Even if we had to end the trip tomorrow we have achieved the family goal.  Its hard to know exactly how much of this the kids will remember or be influenced by but I think they must have benefitted from it.

Both Nic and I are amazed to think that we have traveled close to 5000 miles in the last year and are past our midway point.  It was not that long ago we were sitting at anchor in Newport contemplating setting out alone for the first time.  In fact, it was not that long ago that we were sitting in Singapore wondering if this was really doable.  At that point the Caribbean seemed a very distant goal but here we are now.  I think we have had our fair share of luck during the trip and hope this continues for us next year.

So some of the highs and lows.  One of the highlights has been hosting friends and family onboard at various times during the trip - Dan “The-Man-Meggitan” Meggit; Nina and Walt; our other daughter, Beth; the New Jersey Andersons; Atlantic crew member Steve; Mark and Rosie; Gayle and Cameron; and, of course, Peter and Claire (official crew). Although its great with just the family onboard, being able to share this with others is pretty special and we hope that we will see more people next year.  We have the Atlantic crossing coming up and thankfully have a full complement for that.

Also the other cruisers we have met along the way and continue to meet have been great fun and really special people - Windchaser, Magic, Veritas, Bliss, Aeeshah, Talitha Koum, Whistling Cay, Celise Spirit, Rafiki, Troskala, Innamorata.  Because the people we meet are all “in the same boat” so to speak there is an immediate common bond and a camaraderie springs up straight away.  There are very few cruisers who we have met who we did not take a liking to (Beth, you know who we’re talking about!).  The friendships are kind of tenuous as inevitably you part ways pretty soon after meeting and thereafter rely on e-mail contact.  Then there are all our friends we made in Grenada.

The boat has been wonderful.  Dulcinea is a superb vessel both in terms of a living space and as a sailing boat.  We have had some rough weather and seas but she has handled it all and no doubt could take more if required.  She is extremely strong and robust and handles beautifully.  Obviously, as has been commented on, things do break down but this is only to be expected.  Luckily there have been no really critical system failures which we could not get around and this is due in no small part to Heather in Newport who nailed the work which had to be carried out prior to the trip starting.  One thing about the boat being a custom build is that every part needs to be sourced individually which is a real pain in the ass especially when we are floating around the Caribbean.  On a production boat you can get any part number straight from the manufacturer.  But the plus side is that Dulcinea is pretty special and we continuously get complimented on her where ever we go.  The lay up in Grenada was good for us to get some outstanding bits and pieces fixed and to tart the boat up a bit ready for the next year.

The biggest challenge about life onboard for us has undoubtedly been the schooling which takes up an enormous part of our daily routine.  We were very glad to get the first year under our belt but starting at lesson 01 again this year is a bit depressing.  Still we know the system now and are confident we can get through this slightly easier than last year.  

So its onwards to 2014 and our last year of cruising.  Big event this year will be the crossing of the Atlantic.  As mentioned we have a crew of seven to complete the voyage and we are really grateful for their help.