Posts

Powering a cruising catamaran It is 9pm Thursday night, Hurricane Matthew is breaking all sorts of records and is starting to pummel Florida with category 4+ fury. But, here in Prickly Bay on the south coast of Grenada, 1700 miles to the south east, we are finally having a nice calm anchorage. I am lounging on the front deck, sipping a local dark rum on ice and thinking about our generator; reminding myself that the water for the ice maker, and then the ice and the electricity for my Mac were all made on Ad Astra.

Matthew is Coming It is sunny at moment, but with fat low clouds all around; Ad Astra is tucked into the hurricane hole of Point Egmont, the winds are from the north at 6 mph, temperature 86 F, humidity 84% and the barometer is at 29.86 inches of mercury, and falling. The tropical depression that will be called Matthew* later today is north east of us at about 100 miles east of the Windward Isles and is aiming to hit Martinique hard with the full force of its right cross coming anti-clockwise.

Lionfish Feeling really productive down here in Bequia. Yesterday we hunted Lionfish, these creatures are amazingly beautiful but they are an invasive species that are rapidly tearing apart the ecosystems across the reefs of the Caribbean. Everyone is encouraged to hunt them as much as possible. Ideally, humans would hunt 25% of the population each month — just to keep the population from further increasing! If you haven’t seen them in the wild, they are really interesting.

Ad Astra Sailing Adventures July 14th 10am — Offshore of Tortola’s North Coast On the way to Bubbles We are currently speeding from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke to Trellis Bay, Beef Island running both engines at maximum cruise of 2800 RPMs, delivering 8.0 kts against 15 kts of headwind a 1.5 kt counter current. We were delayed leaving JVD by a series of morning rain showers, but now it is time to hustle and get Truman Clark to his flight.