Errol Flynn Marina and Port Antonio 2nd week April 16-25

Errol Flynn Marina and Port Antonio 2nd week April 16-25, 2009

There are many things to see and do in Port Antonio Errol Flynn Marina. A boater could just sit on board watch the shore and listen to the happenings around the harbor as we do for hours each day. The marina is an isolated place-a gated entrance out to the road.

There are few Jamaicans in the marina itself who do not work there. We hired some of the men to wash, wax and shine the stainless on our boat and they did a great job. It would have been hard to say no, as they are very persistent in their offering and willing to bargain. We hired Hulk and Presley for the wash and wax and Donovan for the stainless. They were professional and entertaining, both. We learned to wash our hull with vinegar before waxing to eliminate the white chalky film that was on it and -they sold us our new reggae CD’s! These guys are entrepreneurs and inventive when it comes to making a few dollars and always seem to be in a good mood with cheery “Hello, M’ Lady” or Hello, Captain.”

Right next to the marina is a small harbor area for the police boats, the worst offenders when it comes to waking (rocking) boats tied at the dock. Behind them is a sparsely treed park with benches and colorful flowers. The park has gazebos where men or families congregate to stay out of the sun after work and toward evening. At breakfast at a two story building right outside the gate, Dan and I were seated overlooking the park. There was a Rastafarian man all dressed in black clothing, barefoot and hair wrapped into a two foot tall turban, straddling a branch of one of the bigger trees and apparently sound asleep, not stirring as hoards of chattering people passed ten feet from him!

Right now, day time, there is reggae music pounding from shore, possibly from the high school that seems to be having a function today. I keep hearing “and there are going---going –going, ah yes, they run!” It could be a track meet or something like that or perhaps a land crab race. I can’t tell from here. Another boater heard music from shore and went to investigate. He saw a parade with the high school band and dancing girls and discovered to his surprise the parade was a funereal procession. Different cultures are fun to explore!

One of those cultural differences is the the use of ganja. There are colorful characters here in Porti and the smell of ganja is present in many alleyways and street corners, shops and entertainment spots as you walk past. Though technically illegal, it is said that if you are not selling it and you pay the cops….
Our boat is on a mooring and behind us is a sandspit that starts in some mangrove trees. There is a Rastaman who said he was forty-seven, a man with long dread locks, who apparently lives in those mangroves and visits the boats to chat each day. He sold us some mangos and told us “goodbye, I will go now and have a J and meditate.” He appears to be a peaceful man but the young men in town apparently give him a hard time. He says the bad ones have killed some of his dogs, and they keep stealing the boards he gets to make himself a proper house. He paddles around the bay areas, even going fishing on his long, narrow bamboo raft. His oars are split bamboo sticks. I read that the Rastas are in tune with their natural surroundings. I feel sorry that this man lives in the open as the rain we have been having lately is torrential. It has raised the water level and the ground is soggy for a long time after the rain. At times it has rained so hard I had to bail out the dinghy with the pump three times in one day! The weather never seems to bother him when he comes around. He was standing at our boat when the Swift US vessel left for sea. (see below) His response, “Goodbye to you, war monger. If no America, no war, right?”

There is music playing mostly all the time in the town of Port Antonio- Porti for short. All night on the weekend there was such loud music I was unable to sleep. Of course we assumed it had to be from a huge and popular nightclub. We found out the sounds were from a one room bar and pool hall on the second floor of a building with the speakers turned toward the anchorage bay-and everybody is just going to live with it because it’s “no problem, mon.” The marina operators listen to the cruiser complaints but they really can’t do anything, and the cruisers move on anyway.

Last night a coast guard vessel left its two week berth at another part of the harbor. The First Mate was a young man from Jamestown, RI and when he saw the homeport on Sea Star he stopped and invited us for a tour of the HSV 2 SWIFT, a 160 foot aluminum catamaran Navy vessel. The tour was informative and the ship space-age! Apparently the motion of the ship underway in large seas is not the most comfortable to these highly experienced seamen. They have nicknamed it the “Vomit Comet” for obvious reasons. The chart plotter and navigation equipment were interesting. The ship doesn’t have a wheel to steer it. I guess it’s like a video game using three toggle switches and lots of computer assist. This is a swift vessel; it can cruise at 46kn! It has guns mounted forward and stern but says Swift wouldn’t have to use them, she is so fast. The crew were about to change after a 90 day rotation and were heading north last Friday.

A few days ago a Transcaribe rally from various islands arrived at Errol Flynn and the marina was a full as it has ever been. The rally brought in 20 sailboats; some cats and some monohulls. The marina operators and owner Dale and manager George were quite excited to entertain all these boaters and hope the Errol Flynn Marina is becoming a destination. There were two nights of special events livening up the marina area. Most of the rally boats have left for Cuba or other islands east, like the ABC’s- Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.

Cruisers need stuff so we venture into town regularly. We are lucky it is so close that walking is easy. It’s always an adventure to go to town. An important fact from the daily newspaper is that the police have reduced crime by 56% in Port Antonio. We want to travel in the country a bit and visit the Blue Mountains so we went into town in search of a roadmap to plan a trip. Where do you get a map? Maybe a book store-“Yeah mon, deas a book store up them steps but they ain’t open no mo, deas downstairs now.” Ok, so we look for the bookstore downstairs at the far end of the market street. To get there we walk on sidewalks and down into the gutters and around poles supporting upper floors of buildings and through the ladies hawking their vegetables and fruits and around the guys selling videos, cell phones and whatever to find the store really has closed, but there is another one back at the other end of town at the pharmacy. That now required a trek back through all the previously mentioned and then, “No, suh we don’t got no maps here, try the shell station down over there.” Finally, Dan did find a map at the Shell station, and a good one, too. It only took about two hours.

It seems by searching and asking around we can get some basic things we need. We are trying for hamburger tomorrow. That should be an adventure. Today Maggie is in dire need of kitty litter so off we went on the same trek as before after getting directions to the “pet store.” That sounded promising, and we did find the narrow kinda hole in the wall store where the sign said “Farm chicks and ducks.” We peered in at a single file line where the clerk behind the counter is told what is needed and she gets the items. “We ain’t got some. Tomorrow. De guy he go Kingston and I call him. Yeah, we get shavings, dey look like dis.” She held up a bag of birdfood. So what were we to do? We haven’t a clue what will show up tomorrow, but I hope Maggie likes it.

There are some clothing stores, grocery stores, pharmacies and bulk liquor stores where you bring in your own bottle to fill or you can walk out with a case of soda. I went into a fabric store today. A cruiser I met is returning to the states for her daughter’s wedding in May and needed a dress. She tried the clothing shops but was not inspired. The stores seemed like mini Walmarts to her and she was getting worried that her daughter would be upset with how tackily her mother dressed at her wedding! While walking on the market street she saw a sign Charm’s Dressmaking. Under a staircase in a tiny shop she found a seamstress named Charm and Charm made her a simple sheath dress -in one day from fabric she selected-for under $15.00. It was cute! I decided to have a few tops made from light weight material because all my clothing is too hot. Charm took me to the fabric store and for the equivalent of $6.00 I selected the material for two tops and a cotton dress. I will have them on Wednesday, she says.

As we learn what is available in the town, we do a lot of walking to explore historic areas and see the views from the highest hills. We have visited an island once owned by Errol Flynn and later turned into an exclusive resort- but the buildings are now closed and decaying though the foliage is lush with wonderful shades of green, especially after a tropical downpour of which we have had a few.
Walking to the Titchfield High School above the bay we find it was built right on and within Fort George, built by the British. The old cannon were there and still pointed at the narrow bay entrance.

Above the market in town about a mile up a narrow one lane road there was again a closed hotel/resort with a 360 degree view of the lovely entrance bays to the Port. That road was great for bird watching as the steep ravines covered in tall trees entwined with vines, ferns and umbrella sized pacas and ivies were lower than the road we walked up so we could look down into the canapy.

Sea Star, Windsong and Tregoning crews are all having similar experiences here in Port Antonio. We get together about once a day to go out to eat or walk or share our stories or the latest information although we have met many other travelers going south or east from here. We took a fun rafting trip on the Rio Grande together and are planning a trip into the mountains. More on these in my next writing.

Here are a few pics!

errol flynn

Great Inagua, Bahama to Jamaica April 11-15, 2009

Great Inagua, Bahama to Jamaica April 11-15, 2009
Four boats, including Sea Star arrived at Port Antonio through the Windward Passage leaving Great Inagua about 2:00PM and arriving in Port Antonio the early morning of Easter Monday, a legal holiday in Jamaica, under quite calm conditions. We had traveled within sight of each other; a very nice sail under a moonlit sky for the first hours of our 47 hour trip. For another 8 hours or so we had less than 6 knots of wind and were traveling very slowly. Finally, one of our flotilla, Navy Blue, suggested maybe we should GET there, so we turned on our engines and traveled at about 5 knots. Having had favorable current of about .5 knot the current opposed us toward Jamaica, but the seas were calm-perhaps a four foot rolling swell- very easy. Our AIS system had informed us of as many as nine ships traveling along our route, but because of the traffic separation scheme none of them were a threat to us, well, maybe the one that came close to Windsong was a bit scary. Another bloat of our flotilla, Tregoning, saw a marlin swimming around their boat! Sea Star was the only boat of the four who had its own private raincloud for awhile. Thankfully, the rain washed away some of the trip salt.
Beautiful and majestic were the inadequate words that came to mind when the Blue Mountains and the coast of Jamaica appeared in front of us on the horizon, and a few hours later the mountains appeared lush, green and tree covered as we passed Navy Island and Errol Flynn, the 1930’s actor’s old estate. After the low, sandy islands of the Bahamas Jamaica was a delight to approach and our excitement grew as we skirted the West Harbor and then motored to the East Harbor where Errol Flynn Port Antonio Marina was located.
At the end of our travel we looked forward to resting in Port Antonio. The marina was full and we took a mooring in the mooring field. We understood we couldn’t get off the boat until we had cleared in. I just wanted to sleep. We thought, “It’s a holiday, so no one will want us to check in today.” We were wrong. The Quarantine officer was basically waiting for our little flotilla. To go ashore to the marina required lowering the dinghy, putting on the motor and ferrying the official to examine the boat . He checked the boat for produce, meat and contraband then quickly allowed us to take down the Q flag while waiting for Immigration and Customs. The charge was $25.00US. No problem, mon- you’re in Jamaica!
So here we sit after a full week now. The warm sunshine wakes you in the morning and the reggae beat reverberates from the nearby shore throughout the night and into the wee hours. There is friendly service and amenities at Errol Flynn and a wonderful restaurant with lovely frozen drinks on the property. The US and Jamaican Coast Guards have been practicing maneuvers this week from the nearby dock.
We have ventured out into the town of Port Antonio for site seeing walks and marketing. Excellent fruits and vegetables, tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, peppers, bananas, plantains, apples that had not been so readily available throughout the Bahamas are available as well as many fruits and vegetables that we have never encountered. At a local breakfast spot Dan and I had stewed chicken,(yes, for a typical Jamaican breakfast,) with sides of steamed yellow yam, bammy (a bread made from cassava), a corn meal dumpling called festival, and another tuber I can’t recall the name of.
Our first outing into Port Antonioa was to the ATM for Jamaican “Jays” and to scout for jerk chicken. As we arrived at the square a young, street hustler introduced himself and stuck like glue to the new gringos. He just took over, leading us around-to the bank, the jerk chicken on the street (just happened to be his uncle’s street stand)-chicken cooked with wood in a half of a 50 gallon oil drum and served in tinfoil with hotsauce poured onto the already spiced meat. Ok! This is going to be a wonderful town for eats! We ambled back to the marina and began to figure out what we had been letting slide on our boats. I needed to do wash, clean the fridge and freezer and basically make the boat look like a home again.
The next day we again choose to have a meal out. We were greeted at the square entrance by the same hustler who had seen us coming from wherever he was hanging out. He knew we had two vegetarians in our group and he led us to a wooden building containing Mr. Dickson’s wonderful vegetarian restaurant. Inside it was tiny but a very popular place with the Rastafarian population, many of whom are vegetarians. Customers selected what appealed to them from the cases and ate upstairs where there was a nice breeze. We tried various dishes such as hot Jamaican Patty, curried tofu, fritters, fried yellow yam- we loved everything we tried- and topped it off with a homemade ginger soda drink that was very potent. We will surely go back during our stay in Jamaica, which will probably be until mid May.
Hopefully you can see the pics and watch the sunset on passage!

Jamaica

Conception Island, Rum Cay, Samana Island, Bahamas March 28-April 6, 2009

No- we're not in Jamaca yet, Mon..

We are on the way by way of three more Bahama islands. Our next stop is Inagua where we will check out of Bahamas- then the "Windward Passage" to Port Antonio, Jamaca. We are anchored with two other boats at a beautiful island called Samana. We walked on the island today and met two local men who shave the bark off a tree that grows here called Cass that is then sent to Italy to make a liquor called Compare for a living. They soak the bark in salt water, beat it off the stalk in chunks, dry it in the tropical sun and stuff it into huge bags. We see a 16ft. skiff on the beach in front of the wooden fishing shacks that are shared by locals when they are on the island. The wooden shacks are built right over the limestone rock ruins left by Loyalists and later plantation owners in the early 1900's.

Our trip over to this island, Samana, after Conception Island and Rum Cay was 70 nm and took us a long day at 5kn. We started at 4:00pm and arrived at 11:00am, motor sailing in light winds. There was a 6ft swell and some wind chop, even though there was not enough wind to sail. Makes you wonder how the locals managed to arrive in a 16 foot skiff. They said they had prepared to be on this island for a three month time. The island is uninhabited, so no supplies are available. The closest island to this one is 20 nm away! We are going to talk to them some more tonight just to be friendly.

It's hot here in the southern Bahamas. We try to keep cool in the water, but the second you come out you're hot again. Barracuda and at least one ?shark visited us when we were snorkeling and we felt chased out of the water. I will get more used to the "wildlife" as we spend time in its domain. We wish Steve and Tom, our two sons, could come and spear us some fish.

On the way from George Town around Cape Santa Maria at Long Island to Conception Island, Dan landed a nice dolphin fish, not an easy task from a heeling sailboat. It was beautiful; brilliant yellow and green, and I have to admit, very tasty. We shared it with another cruiser who is traveling with us to Jamaca on the Morgan 41ft., Tregoning, with Alison and Randall aboard. Conception proved to be a beautiful island with an interesting inland mangrove creek where we dinghied and watched hawksbill turtles scooting in the shallow, emerald colored water. Sea Star stayed at Conception where other cruisers dove a recommended wall, and we snorkeled, hiked and visited on other boats for two nights and then moved on to Rum Cay.

Rum was an 18 nm motor sail from Conception, to a reef strewn anchorage in front of a lovely white sand beach. The wind became light at Conception and continued light at Rum which improved the access to snorkel spots. It took some doing to weave our way in through the coral heads and reef to the beach where the protection was better and would prevent some of the swell from rolling us. We spent two fun filled days snorkeling with Tregoning. We have been somewhat disappointed at the variety of fish we see when snorkeling. Some reef fish seem to be missing, such as Angel Fish and even Sargent Majors. The Lion Fish I wrote about earlier seem to be on many reefs, so we wonder if they are eating the young. Some patches of corals are just lovely; alive and colorful, and some stately Elkhorn. We haven't seen an abundance of any fish and few lobsters or crabs. This does not mean they are not there, but that we haven't seen them at mid day when we are most likely to snorkel. Dan can dive down to look into the caverns and limestone formations. He will tell me when he sees something-like when he told me he saw a 14 ft. shark at Samana! He later reduced the size, but he and the shark-we don't know what kind- were very surprised to see each other. The shark just swam away and we returned to the dinghy.

After two nights at Rum Cay, Jamie on Windsong rejoined us after dealing with receiving a package in George Town after our scheduled departure. He had to wait there until it arrived two days later than expected, then sail to catch up with us at Rum Cay.

Our three boats moved to the other side of Rum Cay where there is a very well kept marina and terrific restaurant where we were served conch fritters, and cracked conch or chicken dinners. I enjoyed a night out of the kitchen, (whoops-galley), before our planned departure at 4:00PM for Samana, which was expected to take through the night, arriving in good light to see the fringing reefs and squirm into the anchorage. As we left the shallow anchorage in front of the marina, we tried to follow what seemed to be marker bouys and Sea Star actually went up onto a coral head and had to back off. The scraping noise was quite noticeable so we checked our bilges carefully for any sign of a leak for the next few hours and seem to be ok.

We did arrive as planned, but met with some scary navigation anyway as we began to plan our approach into the Propeller Cay anchorage. There was ocean swell and a west setting current as we arrived. It was also close to low tide. Tregoning was the first boat and Randall and Allison looked at the entrance. It seemed narrow but Allison went on the bow and they slowly began their approach following the path around the coral. Sea Star was right behind them as they negotiated the tricky entrance. They touched on a coral head and Randall yelled to us on the VHF-I've touched. ABORT! Abort!

Dan quickly turned to Port and using full engine and bow thruster, turned us around and miraculously got us back out to the deeper water. Tregoning bumped off and continued on in to the anchorage without any more problems. They quickly dropped the anchor and took down their dinghy to come back out and guide us in and around the coral that they hit. After a few passes with a hand held depth sounder they figured out the route to take us in. Windsong with less draft was first to follow the dinghy in, then Sea Star and we all were safely out of the coral and in the anchorage, exhausted from our night of travel, but safe. The anchorage was blue meaning sandy bottom. We couldn't wait to get into the water- well, we needed to check the holding on the anchors. We then dove to look under the boats for any damage. We were both scratched on the hull but no serious damage is evident.

We will leave Samana on Wednesday for Great Inagua.

Pictures are somewhat out of sequence

Leaving Bahamas

Back to George Town March 20-29, 2009

After our wonderful visit with Tom and Anina, Dan and I decided it was time to get serious about moving on South. After a great deal of thought we have decided on Port Antonio, Jamaca, as our next major stop.

Our plan was to leave Black Point, Exuma, revisit Farmer's Cay on the way and return to George Town, (remember the cruiser Mecca?) to re-provision and begin to look for the weather window needed to move south, planning daylight travel, when possible. We had read the guidebooks and despite some inconvenience we wanted to visit a few really out of the way places- as we had in the Jumento chain. We loved the solitude and scenery and especially the underwater world available there. This time we hoped that we could visit more places where the expectation was for great snorkeling, (or diving if you prefer that.)

Conception Island, located about 35 miles east of George Town is a nature preserve area and an island with a reputation for excellent snorkeling. Dan had been watching the weather to see when we could sail there for some time, and also Rum Cay, another 18 miles southeast from Conception, and on our way south.


When we arrived in George Town after a sloppy motor sail we had lots to accomplish before we could go out again to where ever we were to go. First our 120 day immigration permits were about to expire, meaning we had to leave the Bahamas before a certain date or extend the Visas. We needed fuel for Sea Star and the dinghy, we needed internet access for bill payment and taxes, food, I had just about hit bottom on the items stocked from the huge Florida shopping trip in November. We needed laundry done and various odds and ends on the boat required attention.

Some things are "Better in the Bahamas" but businesses have a hard time with supplies. We heard by radio that the one place to purchase fuel in George Town by the standard method of pumping fuel directly into the boat tank- was out of diesel and would be for "awile." We have learned not to wait for vague promises. Each day as we began our two mile round trip into Victoria Harbor from the Monument anchorage, we joined plenty of other cruisers bundled up in foul weather gear and carrying four or more five gallon jerry jugs for water and diesel. We feel lucky to have a watermaker on board, especially when we see the other couples hauling it to their boats- and it is not free.

The jobs could have been made a bit easier by less wind! The first day we bounced in with spray covering the dinghy and us in 20 knot winds and choppy seas. We decided that was enough and we wouldn't put ourselves through that again. The next day to fill up our diesel jugs for the second time, we decided to drive the big boat into the harbor and anchor closer, temporarily. With our two jugs and two borrowed ones, we made three trips to the one gas station where there was diesel, lugging the empties out- the full back to the closer harbor, to the bouncing Sea Star -still by bouncing dinghy, and it was blowing like stink- then pouring the fuel into the fuel tank while it sloshed from the containers. That chore finished, we dinghied back to town and visited Immigration and they courteously extended our Visas.

It was too rough to stay overnight near the town, so we returned to the anchorage. We couldn't help feeling sorry for the boats tied up at the marina near town. Sailboat or power yacht they could not purchase fuel, and they were pounding on the dock and bouncing worse than we were- and paying for the privilege! We had a well deserved Happy Hour that night with the Island Packet 440 who loaned us their jugs on the boat, Wind Whisperer. It was an exhausting day moving the boat, filling the fuel tank and then returning to a safer anchorage, BUT we had our fuel and met some new people, so all was well.

The following day was still very windy and choppy. Our friend, Jamie, on Windsong, a C & C 30' sailboat, was heading to town to do some of his chores and we tied our dinghy on the back and moved closer to town with him. We still had and adventurous dinghy ride ahead of us but this time it was to do our laundry, purchase propane for cooking, and go to the internet building. Well, one out of three is not too bad. A business called J and K Enterprises provides a wooden building and a plug-in for your own computer, but the internet was not working that day. The man who sells propane was sick and in the hospital so nobody knew when the tanks could be filled again. The laundry was washed and almost dried by the time I wanted to go back to the boat. The dryer wouldn't stop spinning while I caught the flying clothing. It may be spinning still! It took a black construction bag, brought from MA, to get the laundry back semi-dry.

No- I'm not done yet!

The next day we needed to "provision" and do some other errands. That means to buy food at one of two markets in George Town; the Exuma Market and the Shop Rite. On the out islands there may be small markets, but rarely with the items needed by full time cruisers. Many prices are more than those paid in the states by about a half, and of lesser quality. The produce has to be brought in by mailboat from Nassau. I don't know how the typical Bahamians afford to eat. We filled the dinghy with cat litter, cases of tonic water, soda, a case of oil, some liquor and lots of filled canvas boat bags while searching for things on my grocery hope list. We did quite well at the Market and then we drove back out to the anchorage with the supplies protected somewhat by the big plastic bag. We hauled them aboard and as I put things away I noticed we did not have this, that etc. Recheck the list and back to town we bounced, taking air like at a rodeo- to the other market and filled the dinghy again, then back to the first market because they had some things that I passed by before.

Yes!! Another chore completed!

Days ran together at anchor. We met with a group of boaters who were like-minded about moving on south and decided to go together to Conception and Rum Cay, then if possible Samana- an island in contention for where Columbus might have first landed in "Hispaniola", and on to Great Inagua. Another day we listened to a fellow cruiser give tips on fishing and show gear he uses for Wahoo, Mahi mahi, and Tuna. That reminded us to install our fishing rod holder and large reel, and think about how in the world we could fish from a moving sailboat without falling off. We really haven't solved the issue.

We changed the engine oil, hiked a bit, ate lunch at St. Francis Resort and shopped for a new bathing suit for Dan with no success. Seems it flew off the life lines while in the process of drying. Luckily he had an old one on board. We went to town one more time for a barbecue to support the town police department-yummy! Steak, peas and rice, mac and cheese, and a small ear of corn. It was well worth the $10.00 and the trip.

On March 29th the weather improved and we left George Town and sailed to Conception Island.