Jump to content

dlatin

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    233
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by dlatin

  1. That’s awesome. It definitely takes a certain type to live on a boat, even vacation on one. We are pretty laid back low maintenance so it limits who we would consider spending time with in such little space. We thought this family was probably one of the rare few. It ended up being about as good as it could be expected, rolling with your own tribe on the boat is greatness however. I actually enjoyed it because I’m a doer and this was their first time in St John so I had a group I you could share it with while my wife was content just chilling on the boat uninterrupted. My kids loved both sailing trips, this is probably my favorite picture from our trip to the BVIs in 2017 (moored at Cooper Island). They were 10 and 12.
  2. I’ll also say I felt a bit of pressure being responsible for 9 (2 families). I didn’t sleep as well on this trip as I was always listening, feeling, getting up to check on things. We also had a pretty dicey situation on Day 9 that made me really need to step up and take charge with decisive quick decisions as we got caught in a pretty big storm as we were sailing down wind with a lot of sail out. The winch set up was challenging and they were lacking clutches I thought was needed to perform tasks efficiently. Then at the end of that same day we had another crazy situation I had to handle that was for me just as scary if not more. I learned a lot about my abilities and was proud of how i captained the boat.
  3. This is our 2nd bareboat charter. I would do sailboat every trip if I could but it can be a bit pricey. We eventually plan to live on a boat. This trip taught me I need a lot more practice on a Catamaran. Not sure if it was the boat or what but I thought it was challenging. When we chartered the Mono in ‘17 I essentially handled that with no issues the whole 10 day trip. We sailed the entire time absent 1 day we had to motor due to no wind. The water maker we had on this boat was a game-changer. It will be hard to charter a boat without ones. I think most boats out of STT have them, not so much out of the BVIs.
  4. The running beef I have on our lake that started a few years ago with all the newbies coming here is the peeps that decide the best place to float and swim is right in the middle of the lake by the damn. We are on a small lake so this puts them right in the middle of all the traffic, toobs, surfers, etc. Not just off the edges or back behind areas coves buoyed off for boating. If you look around, you would notice where all the other boats that are just floating/swimming are parked. It pretty obvious. I had this one guy literally swimming across busiest part of the lake. I barely caught his small head popping above water and it freaked me out how easy it would be to run him over, again, this is a small lake. I stopped to tell him what he is doing is extremely dangerous. He just waved me off. We didn’t see him a bit later and I was convinced he had indeed been run over and I was sick to my stomach. We did end up seeing him. That was crazy.
  5. Driving to the marina to turn in the boat [emoji22]. We sailed a 42’ Fountaine Pajot Austrea catamaran for the last week or so, 4 bedroom 4 baths. We stayed on mooring balls just off some of the prettiest beaches in St John for 9 nights and we spent 1 night on a ball off Great St James that is just off St. Thomas. We originally planned to sail British waters too but stayed in US waters due to Covid. We spent 3 nights at Maho, 2 nights at Trunk, 2 nights at Salt Pond, 1 night at Little Lamshur, 1 night at Honeymoon (STJ), and 1 night at Christmas cove. We’ve been coming to STJ for 20 years and it was great to see it from a different viewpoint.
  6. Sailed to Trunk Bay and got a ball. Got to stay on the beach for sunset.
  7. We had a captain on the boat for about 24 hours the last time we did this and I learned a lot. I bet having a captain for a day would have been a huge benefit and made me more confident. Right now we are just sailing with the headsail downwind. I didn’t want to worry about jibing.
  8. We have a 2 drawer fridge, a separate stand up freezer, plus another cockpit fridge. There is also a counter ice maker and the boat has a water maker that is a game changer.
  9. After the hike we spent the day on the beach. We’ll be sailing today, hopefully back to Trunk.
  10. I’m a relatively new sailer with little experience so I’m probably not the best judge but I will say it doesn’t seem to sail too well. This is my first time really sailing a cat. We’ve had strong wind a couple days so that scared me so we’ve motored a bit. On the flip side, when I sailed a 46’ monohull in the BVIs we only motored once in 10 days and it was for lack of wind. I’ve heard these are not built for sailing and I think that’s right. It sure is comfortable though. Since you are not moving most of the time getting a boat that’s comfortable makes sense. What blows me away is this boat does not have a single cup holder on it. Crazy. We stayed 2 nights on this ball in Salt Pond. We did the Ram Head hike yesterday early.
  11. Beat upwind for a long time until we dropped sails and motored the rest. Got lucky with a ball at our desired destination. We may spend 2 nights here.
  12. STT, staying in US waters, St. John. Maho yesterday.
  13. Got 1 of the 4 balls at Trunk Bay. We left Maho by 7:15 am and rolled up to 4 empty balls. We were shocked and then we had great weather all day.
  14. Bareboat, first time doing at cat. Thankful to have someone that knows a little about sailing on the boat to help as I try to figure it out. The last time it was just me, wife and 2 young kids and I didn’t ever feel concerned. We had some rough water to start the trip and was sailing in 20 knot winds at times yesterday. Here’s yesterday at Maho.
  15. Day 2 - We did a hike we’ve always wanted to do then sailed to Honeymoon Beach to moor overnight.
  16. Here’s moar…slept at the marina day 0 then got out at noon day 1.
  17. We made it, let’s do this, 10 days!
  18. Looks amazing! [emoji7] Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
  19. We find evenings are pretty good for surfing because a lot of boats leave and it almost always gets really calm, regardless of how windy it’s been that day. We always talk about getting out early but it never happens. Sunday evenings are great.
  20. I agree, my favorite time on the lake is from 6-10.
  21. Lake living is nice. We can jump in the boat and catch a sunset as often as we like. The down side is the family takes it for granted. I could do it every night.
  22. Saturday was a good day, about 10 hours on the lake with about and hour break to grab food and restock. End of day sunset is the best.
  23. Maybe you can start another topic on this as I’m very interested to learn more. My wife is very interested in sailing the Bahamas. Our plan in a few years is to move onto a boat and we would likely want to sail those waters. I’d be interested in doing a charter there before we do that. The waters look amazing.
  24. mchookem - I saw on the PR thread you are thinking September for travel. I probably would not recommend USVI then due to hurricane season unless you feel comfortable with your trip insurance. I’m going late July and I’m stressing about it a bit. September is in the heart of hurricane season for that area.
×
×
  • Create New...