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Letters Home
When we were
last back home, Carla's Mom showed us a notebook with printouts of every
email we had sent to her. As we read through them we laughed and
thought these would be a great addition to the site.
May
9, 2003
Hello All,
We're
back from Europe. We loved the cities, the architecture and the
museums and have strengthened our resolve to take Ellos to the Med next
year.
For
the first time I feel really pregnant. Even my stretchy non maternity
clothes don't fit but Ross cheered me up by taking my maternity shopping in
Paris. The baby moves all the time and our favorite evening
entertainment is watching my belly jump around. She is so real to us
now...I got a little carried away and bought up most of the baby girl
clothes in Paris.
We
fell in love with Paris. Ellos has too deep of a draft to bring her up
the Seine but we will be sure to take the train from a seaport where she
will fit and spend some more time in what is now our favorite city
(Seattle excluded) in the world.
Florence
and Venice were amazingly crowded. We thought that with the war and
SARS less people would be traveling and we were right however, we didn't
realize we were in Italy during a five day Italian holiday. The lines
were long but moved fast and we saw Michelangelo's David (wow is he
BIG--17 feet tall. What did you think I was talking about??);
Botticelli's Birth of Venus (needs cleaning) and Spring (my
favorite because all the women are pregnant), the Tondo Doni (Ross's
favorite) by Davinci and more.
We
enjoyed Tuscany with it's poppy fields, olive groves, vineyards and tiny
hill towns that look as if they've been there for thousands of years (they
have). I got to see the real French Riviera in Nice. Marina's
abound so I'm sure I'll get to see even moe of the Riviera next year.
Keep well,
Carla and Ross
April 8, 2003
Hello All,
We spent our last day
on Martinique exploring. Somehow we
managed through bad French and flailing gestures to rent a car and set out
on a thorough investigation of the area around Saint Pierre.
Habitation Ceron a
sugar plantation that survived the eruption of Pelee was our first
stop. We were drawn by the
descriptions of the gardens though the stone ruins and riverside setting
above the sea were reason enough to visit.
We wandered from one building to another trying to figure out the
sugar refining process. Deciding
that a walk in the gardens might clear our minds we moved on the a lush and
tropical forest with pathways meandering in and out of the mango, mangrove,
goyave and flame trees to peek at the river. Fast water tumbling over rocks, the sounds of the birds and
the occasional swish of a bird flitting through the bromeliad blooms were
the only sounds that accompanied us.
We had the entire garden to ourselves. Side by side we sat on a big flat rock dangling our feet in
the cool water watching fish dart in and out of the shadows and bright
orange freshwater crabs skulk beneath rocks and the tangle of tropical
roots at the water’s edge. We
spotted a tarantula resting on the bark of a large flame tree and spent the
next ten minutes trying to get a good photo for the website without getting
too close.
We left the plantation
and pointed our little Renault Elf toward Mount Pelee. Words cannot describe the road. Stifled gasps and terrified gurgles might
best convey the stomach dropping ravines, and grades beyond anything we’d ever
seen. Up and up we chugged until St.
Pierre was a matchbox car set and the Caribbean sea a mere lake beneath
us. The weather changed from dry
and hot to cool and misty, lazy rain sprinkling our windshield. We passed tomato farms clinging to the
slopes and the occasional cow or goat nibbling the thick grasses beside the
rare flat spots in the road. 3 kilometers from the top the road ended and
we piled out ready to hike the rest of the way--until we read the map
posted at the trailhead. Over the
next mile and a half the elevation gain was 1300 feet. Basically straight up. We gave it a good shot but after a half-mile
we decided we’d seen enough of Pelee and clambered gingerly down.
The ride down Pelee was
no less heart stopping than the ride up but soon we were tooling along,
brightly colored fishing boats bobbing in the surf their nets strung out to
dry along the beaches to our right, enticing little towns and homes
covering the hills to our left. Our
next stop was a rum plantation and I can safely say we’ve seen both ends of
the rum-making spectrum. Like the distillery
we toured in Grenada, the Depaz Plantation ran its cane crushing machinery
from steam but there the resemblance ended.
Everything at Depaz was
smarty painted, beautifully maintained and clean. Our self guided tour followed a red pathway that took us past
the Chateau Depaz built in 1920 after the Pelee decimation of the original
plantation, along the manicured grounds, through the factory, into the
storage facilities leading us eventually to the gift shop and tourist
center. Placards in French and
English described each step in the rum making process. Delighted with the detail, Ross took
copious mental notes and suggested we install a rum tank in place of the
suddenly unnecessary day fuel tank. Carla, surprised and mildly alarmed at
how close the red path led to the crushing cogs, cutting blades and boilers
pulled him from one signpost to the next.
In the hour or so it took us to complete our tour we saw only one
worker. Ross dutifully sampled rum
in the tourist center stating that since he was installing a rum tank, he didn’t
need to stock up and left without a souvenir bottle of Depaz rum.
Our last stop of the
day was also the hardest earned.
After hours of traversing mountain roads, backing up, turning around
and backtracking to the tiny blue line on the map we finally found the
canal de Beauregard. Built by
slaves in the 1760 the stone lined waterway brought irrigation to the upper
slopes of the region. We’d expected
a canal the size of a one-lane road, which explains why we passed the tiny waterway
twice. Once found though, we
delighted in strolling along the 18-inch wide buttress above ravines looking
into valleys shrouded with tendrils of smoke from the farms inhabiting the
shady recesses.
Exhausted by the day’s explorations
we returned to Ellos with fresh baguettes, sliced ham and Emmenthal cheese
for an omelets dinner and watched the sunset for the elusive green flash. We then made ready to set sail first
thing in the morning for Iles Des Saintes, Guadeloupe.
I hope you enjoyed our travelogue.
We’d love to hear from you so please let us know what you’ve been doing.
Keep well,
Carla and Ross
April 2, 2003
Dear Mom,
We had a great time
with Mike and Lisa who took a ferry back to St. Lucia on Sunday. We
spent a lot of time in bakeries, sampled ice cream from island to island,
did some shopping in Fort De France (Martinique) and Castries (St.
Lucia) and in general, relaxed.
Now, for the first time
in a month we are alone on the boat and we hardly know what to do with
ourselves. Truth be told we tried laying about like lizards soaking
in the sun, swimming and reading but Ross couldn't resist the lure of the
zillions of boat projects still awaiting us. Right now he's changing
the oil on the engine. Earlier he re-routed the inverter through our
E-meter so we could have a true reading of our electrical
usage. He mentioned something about turning the nav station
into a work area later. I get tired just watching him.
Shamed into action by
Mr. Boat project, I cleaned the heads, vacuumed the cabin, organized the
kitchen and baked banana bread. Then I updated my journal and worked
on the web page. I'm putting off doing the pile of laundry that accumulated
over the past week.
Tomorrow we'll leave
Martinique for Dominica where we'll stay overnight then continue on to Les
Saintes a group of tiny islands off the south coast of Guadeloupe.
Ross read an article about Les Saintes years ago in Cruising World and
we've both wanted to see them ever since. From there we'll head up to
the Dutch/French island of St. Martin.
I hope all is well at
home. I'm dying to know if Jane has another cousin yet. Keep me
posted.
Love,
Carla
March 21, 2003
Dear Mom,
After three days of
glorious sailing we met Mike and Lisa in St. Lucia. The day after you
and Dad and Linda left we did a 30 mile passage past Tobago Keys, Mustique,
Canouan up to Bequia. The sailing was amazing. Finally we got
to do something other than beat into wind and heavy seas. About an
hour off Bequia we saw a pod of Pilot whales and right behind them a pod of
Dolphins. It made our day!
We overnighted in
Bequia did a bit of provisioning and set sail for St. Vincent mid
day. We arrived in Wallilabou Bay about 2:30. It looked odd,
sort of deserted and very very old which didn't match the description from
the guide book. We went ashore and learned that Pirates of the
Caribbean had wrapped up filming a few weeks beforehand and what we were
seeing was the set for the movie. Disney came in and remade the
entire waterfront to look like a scene from the 1800's!
We left St. Vincent
early the next morning and did another 30 mile run to St. Lucia. We
sailed right into the bay where Mike and Lisa were staying. Mike
spotted us immediately and we were so eager to see them we swam ashore
rather than take the time to launch our dingy.
We've been on St. Lucia
for four days and have moved to Rodney Bay, a nice marina with lots of
services. The services were necessary as I accidentally ice
picked the refrigerator coil and ...well lets just say Ross wanted to get
the problem fixed right away. (OOPS) We haven't seem much of the
island other than the Hilton where Mike and Lisa were staying and the
inside of a few bakeries. Today we're going to the beach and maybe
tomorrow we'll take a tour of the island.
Hope all is well back
home. Am I a new aunty yet?
Love,
Carla
March 9, 2003
Dear Bryan and Brandon,
Grandma, Grandpa and
your mom made their first big passage yesterday, six hours from St. Georges
Harbor in Grenada to Tyrell Bay on Carriacou. Undaunted by 6 to 8 foot seas and winds gusting to 25
knots your mom actually fell asleep on deck while we negotiated past the
roughest parts, over Kick 'em Jenny an active undersea volcano.
Uncle Ross and I are
finally getting the hang of our roller reefing, so we made sure to make our
sails smaller before the wind heeled us over to "panic" stage as
Grandma has termed it, where the water on the low side is coming over the
rails.
As we watched Grenada
fade into the horizon, your mom and I spotted flying fish. They leap
out of the water and fly along the surface for 50 to 300 feet.
Grandpa thought we were making it up and spent most of the trip laughing at
us when we claimed to see one. Eventually we made him sit in the fish
spotting position where he shouted in disbelief as one fish after another
took flight next to the boat.
After we anchored we
had dinner, sat around on deck talking about the great sailing and bought
wine and oysters from the boat vendors who dinghied out to welcome us to
the island. We were all too tired to go ashore so we watched a
movie and crashed.
Today we're going to
explore a mangrove swamp where another boater told us he saw a shark and a
turtle. Your mom is planning to dive with the stingrays on
Monday. We'll do our best to keep her safe but she's
fearless.
Thanks for letting us
have your mom for a few weeks. We really like having her on board and
are not sure we want to send her back to you.
Love you,
Aunt Carla
PS Grandma and Grandpa
say hello.
March 7, 2003
Hello All.
We made our first
big passage on Feb 28. We left
Trinidad at 8pm in 20 knots of wind with seas 6-8 feet. The wind was supposed to be out of the
east but it was more northeast so we spent 18 hours beating into wind and
waves until we gratefully dropped anchor in Prickly Bay Grenada. An engine problem, then weather, kept us
in Trinidad four days longer than we anticipated so we arrived Grenada only
hours before my parents and sister-in-law! Their trip was shorter and
definitely more comfortable.
We slept for a few
hours, did our best to clean up the boat and made our way to the
airport. My tiredness fell away
when I saw our guests. We piled
into the maxi taxi, made the 15-minute drive back to Prickly bay, enjoyed a
celebratory drink at the tiny bar then rowed out to Ellos for our first
night at anchor.
On our first day we
went to Grand Anse beach, a two-mile stretch of powdery pink-white sand and
sat under a grape tree, sipping drinks and soaking up the island air. The next day we took a round the island
tour. Errol, our driver took us to
a rum plant and we took a tour of the factory, which is undergoing an
upgrade of their machinery—the current gears, conveyors and distillery are
run by steam and were installed in the late 1800’s. This plantation makes most of the
island’s rum.
From there we
climbed high into the mountains in the interior past nutmeg and cinnamon
and cocoa trees and banana plants, to Concord falls where we cooled off in
the clear blue water and took turns daring each other to swim under the 60
foot falls. Unfortunately our
digital camera broke so we didn’t get any pics for the web site.
Next we went to a
spice factory and were surprised to see workers sorting cocoa, mace,
nutmeg, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon bark by hand in the natural light
from the open doors. Every bit of
the nutmeg pod is used—the soft exterior is peeled away and made into jams
and jellies, the bright red flower that wraps around the nut is removed and
dried into mace and the nut is grated or ground into nutmeg.
The building seemed more like a barn than
a factory and we learned that spices have been cleaned, dried and sorted
this way for 100’s of years.
Baskets of freshly harvested mace sat in a stream cleaned by the
gently moving water.
Later we drove
through the Grand Etang Forest looking for monkeys. We used banana as bait and waited for a
bit but the monkeys were shy that day so we enjoyed the misty heights and
natural foliage sans monkeys.
Mom has done her
part for the Grenadian economy buying enough spices to last the rest of her
and all her lucky friends for the rest of their natural lives. She’s browsed the t-shirts, leaving slim
pickings for the cruise ship passengers arriving daily who have come behind
her.
Last night Dad
treated us to dinner at a wonderful restaurant overlooking Grand Anse
Beach. We ate lobster cocktail,
lobster salad, lobster spaghetti…and came back to Ellos sated with just
enough energy for a nightcap on deck before we tumbled into our berths.
Tomorrow we hoist
sails and make way to Carriacou for some snorkeling, diving and
fishing. Grenada, the spice island
has been a great stop and we’ve enjoyed every inch of it.
Take care to one and
all.
Carla, Ross, Gary,
Sandi and Linda.
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