Costa Rica!!!

I guess a lot has happened since I posted last.  We cruised around most of the virgin islands and hit a lot of the highlights that I only vaguely remember from our family trip down to the islands.  I broke my camera and had to buy a new one..... and I bought a ticket to Costa Rica! 

Jim's wife flew down and sailed with us for a couple of weeks.

I found a conch so I cracked it open and boiled it up.  Not bad, but very tough.

We saw people kiteboarding at the Bitter End so I went to check it out.  This old guy was about to launch his kite and we could tell he didn't exactly know what he was doing.  After the guy launched his kite I heard him yell "'I would've voted for you if i was an american citizen"'.  Turns out it was John Kerri.  ha 

He wiped out pretty good and they had to come get him.  Very amusing!

On to costa rica.  I've been here 5 or 6 days so far and it's been a blast.  I flew into San Jose and stayed for a night in a really nice hostel.  It's really easy to meet people in the hostels and I haven't actually traveled solo since i've been here.  I left for Arenal volcano with Yohanus from germany and Seria from california.  Seria has been here for 8 months teaching english so she speaks spanish fluently which is very nice.  The pic above is a rope swing we found our first day at arenal.

Arenal volcano

Leona and Haley.  Two New York Girls who i hitched a ride with to Monteverde.

Getting ready for the zip line tour in Monteverde

I've done zipline before in guatemala, but this was a whole new deal.  They had one line that takes you a full kilometer over a beautiful valley.  You can also see the ocean in the distance.

We hiked to this tree that was once strangling another tree.  The other tree died and now you can climb up through the hollow area where it used to be.

Here is our current traveling team.  Starting at me going clockwise...Eli from New Hampshire, Harvey from england, Haley and Leona from New York, and Judith from Holland.  Really fun group of people.  We'll be heading to the coast tomorrow

St Thomas

We've been in Charlotte Amalie (St Thomas) for three days on a dock so we've had plenty of time to explore the town.  It's got some pretty touristy parts since this is where most of the cruise ships come in.  This morning we'll be taking off and doing a lot more anchoring and hopefully get to do some snorkeling.

 Dave and Jim rented dirtbikes the other day.  We weren't sure if I could rent one or not, but Jim and I decided we'd rather split one anyway.  I've never actually ridden anything other than a moped so I had to get used to the motercycle style shifting as well as driving on the left side of the road.  It comes to you pretty quick actually.  This was the highlight of the trip so far.  We circled the entire island and climbed to the top for some spectacular views.  I actually got up the next morning at 4:30 and took it for a spin under the stars.

 The view of the harbor from Bluebeared's Castle

 Free rum tasting!!!  ha  I actually sort of snuck into one of the castle tours since it was just about closing.

 We had a line snap on us so I got to go up the mast for the repair.  We had to run a line down the mast so I was actually hanging there for well over an hour.  Pretty nice view from up top.

Brett this one's for you.  I don't know where this phrase comes from, but it made me laugh when I saw this bar   :)

I think I like it here :)

Well, we left Norfolk on Friday the 5th and arrived at St Thomas about 10 and a half days later on Monday the 15th (1500 mile trip).  The winds blew strong from the northwest the entire time which made for a quicker trip than expected.  I'll say now that the weather was perfect, but the third day may have been an exception.  We had been heading south along the coast for the first two days but had to cross the gulf stream (which flows north).  The forcast didn't look great for crossing, but continuing down the coast would point us SW so we decided to cross anyways.  By the time we were in the stream the winds were 20-25 knots from the NW (bad) and throughout the night they were consistently in the mid 30's (very bad).  The highest reading we saw was 45 knots!  Needles to say, the waves were really big.  We're guessing they got to about 15-18 feet.  Sitting at the helm a few times, I kind of got the feeling the boat was being dropped down a cliff (especially at night). We just had a scrap of jib out, but when surfing with the waves there were times when the boatspeed got up to 12 knots.  I'll admit, at the time I was a little bit worried, but looking back on it I'm actually glad we got the experience.  The rest of the trip felt like a cake walk.  Winds were typcally between 15-25 and always behind us.  We actually never even used the mainsail.  We just used the jib and tried out the spinacker on light wind day.  I was expecting to see more boats, but we only saw two big ships the entire crossing.  Other than that, a lot of sunsets, and a little bit of sea life.  I saw a sea turtle and a shark early on and we've seen plenty of flying fish.  I thought these things just jumped out of the water, but they actually fly (often about 100 yards).  We've even had a couple land on the deck of the boat and Jim claims he got hit in the face by one on one of his night shifts.  My favorite wildlife encounter so far has been the dolphins.  A couple times we've had a group of them come and jump alongside the boat and follow us for 5-10 minutes.  Pretty cool.

In 30 to 40 knots of wind, this is plenty of sail.

 Just to give you an idea of our path

People always ask me what I do all the time on the boat so here goes.

-cooking- oatmeal, oatmeal pancakes, grilled sanwiches, fried veggies, pasta.  Nothing to fancy, but I enjoy it since we do have a lot of free time
-reading- a new hobby of mine
-playing ukulele-  Jim brought a ukulele and taught me a few songs and chords so I can play some of my guitar songs.
-sleeping- I've been taking dramamine and it seems to make me very tired because I'm always napping.  I sleep in many different places (I counted 10) depending on which way we're heeled over and how wavy it is.
-at the helm-I spend a third of my time at the helm.  We take three hour shifts which can get pretty long, but it's nice having 6 hours off between shifts.  I didn't really like night shifts at the start when it was still cold but once we got south I've started to like it.  I usually put my Ipod in and star gaze.  I've gotten pretty good with the constellations and seen the international space station a couple times and tons of shooting stars.

The last couple days the wind kinda died so we gave in and started motoring.  Not exactly sure where the doldrums start, but we may have hit them.  We've got about 45 gallons of diesel on board though so we could afford to motor the last hundred mile leg.

 I talked Dave into letting us go for a little swim out at sea.  Water temp, just under 90 degrees :P

Volcanic islands are sweet!

I'm not sure how often I'll have internet access down here, but I'll try to get a post up from time to time.  As of now, I'm thinking I'll come back just before Christmas but that's still up in the air.

Exploring Norfolk

Being stuck in Norfolk for a week actually makes me miss Oswego.  It was a much better place to be stuck.  You'd think that Norfolk would be cool since it's a bigger city, but I'm finding that's not the case.  Our harbor is kind of in the middle of nowhere, so I've been getting pretty familiar with the bus system.  I took a couple buses to get over to the coast (which was the only place to rent a bike) and it took about two and a half hours one way.  A bus to downtown Norfolk takes about an hour.  I've also found that most buses I'm on, I'm the only white person.  I just checked out the demographics for Norfolk and wasn't surprised to see that 45 percent of the population is african american.  A little change from any of the cities I've lived in.  I have found a few fun things to do though.  I've been to the virginia zoo, chrystler art museum, went to a movie, and went to a little concert in downtown Norfolk.  I also went to work at a habitat for humanity house in virginia beach, close to where I rented the bike.  I spent the day hanging sheet rock two girls (Monique and Rosalyn) who were there with a group of volunteers from a navy base.

 The highlight of my zoo experience....the newts were pretty cool too

 Is Broccoli still good for you when you deep fry it?

 They had some really interesting digital mirrors in the chrystler art center.  You stand in front of it and slowly your image appears.  Then every time you move it gets messed up again.

I've never actually seen one of these remote controlled sail boats until now.  New item for my christmas list.

Norfolk, VA

We made it to Norfolk, Va about 47 hours after leaving New York City.  The wind was offshore and often blowing around 20 knots so we were able to sail about 6-7 knots most of the way down.  We took three hours shifts at the helm which was nice at night since you got to sleep almost a full 6 hours at a time.  This was my first time doing an overnight shift.  The first night I had the 9-12 shift as well as the 6-9 in the morning.  The next night, I had the 12-3.  I kind of like being at the wheel all by myself at night, especially with the full moon. 

 Leaving New York we sailed right by Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

 I missed my sunrises and sunsets being on the Erie and the Hudson for so long.

 Every once in a while we get these little guys who come hang out on our boat for a rest.  They'll plop right next to you within a foot and just hang out.  I think they're trying to catch a free ride south.  Anyways, this one was brave enough to fly into Jim's cabin in the front of the boat.

 There are military stations everywhere in Norfolk and this one is actually right in the same harbor as us.

We leave Norfolk for the Islands on the 2nd and we might have company.  There is sort of a race/cruising group that head's down south on the Caribbean 1500 so we're going to try to leave with them.  In the mean time, Jim and Dave both flew home to see their wives so I've got the boat to myself  :)  There's not a whole lot close to where we're docked, so I took a couple buses over to Virginia beach yesterday to rent a bike for the week (purple beach cruiser).  Still not sure exactly what I'm going to do the whole week, but I'm in the library right now scoping out the area.  Weather's been sunny and 80 so far although I know it's supposed to cool down later in the week.  Still it's a great change from the cold weather we've been having.

NYC

We made it to NYC.  For some reason I was under the impression that the landscape would settle down as we went south but it kept getting more spectacular.  A lot of rolling hills with fall colored trees and cool rock formations.  I've been to New York City when I was really young, but I really don't remember anything about it.  I was amazed when I saw the skyline.  This place is huge!

 This is about 20-30 miles north of NYC

 I've been pretty lucky about crossing paths with friends on this trip.  I got to see Mary in Detroit, Evan in Troy, and now Emily.  Emily is actually a friend from Belize.  She was there for two years in a volunteer organization and was working at the same school as me in Punta Gorda.  She's from long island, so she was my tour guide for the day and drove me around the city.  I have to admit I could never drive in downtown New York City.  I was nervous enough in the passenger seat (even though she was a terrific driver).  As cool as it was to see the city, I definitely could never live here.  Too big.

 Here's time square.  You can sort of see the ball up on top for new years.  We took a bus downtown today and just walked around.  Some of the places we went: central park(amazing...except they made me take my slackline down), chrystler tower, grand central station, a couple huge churches, and a huge library.  Fun day, but my legs are tired.

I couldn't resist :)

So tomorrow morning we're taking off for Norfolk, Virginia.  It should be about 3 days offshore so we're all pretty excited.  It will be a good warm up for the next leg (virginia to St Thomas).  We'll have to take night shifts and get used to sleeping out at sea.  We should also be sailing by the statue of liberty tomorrow morning which we have yet to see.  Then on to the ocean.  The weather is calling for strong offshore winds, so it should be good.

Down the Hudson

We're finally heading south!  We got our mast put up yesterday morning and got all the sails back up so now we're heading down the Hudson.  The hudson has been really nice with all the fall colors and mountains to the west.   

 First day with the sails up there was no wind, but I couldn't be too upset with a perfect sunny day.

 Here's our mast going up.  It's amazing how quick and easy it is.  The tough part was the rest of the day that we spent putting the radar up, sails up, and rerigging everything.

 I noticed this morning that our speed over water was faster than our speed over ground, which meant that the hudson was actually flowing north(by about 1 knot).  This chart on our GPS shows how the changing tide affects the Hudson's current.  I thought this was really interesting considering we were still at least 100 miles from the coast.

We got to our marina and were a little discusted at the segal crap all over the dock.  It got worse when a rat came out from under the dock and started feasting.  The marina was actually pretty nice though and we're the only boat here.  Tomorrow we should be getting to New York City (or just north of it).  We're all pretty excited to sail by the statue of liberty.