holy cow! tell us the story about catching the giant yellow fin tuna plz.

photos look amazing. i'm so jealous

i have lived in st. thomas since 2001 (except for trip around the world)

i have never actually been to bombas - 1 of the few places i haven't been to in the bvi's. spent plenty of time @ foxy's, willy T etc..

no Ferrari's on the north side. guess they were gon when i got here?

i like bushwackers, just not on a daily basis.

still plenty of crime, but mostly amongst west indians.

male female ratio is actually pretty good here now.

never hiked to the end of magen's, but i have been around it by boat.

You have to check out Bomba's on a full moon party. One of the coolest places I've ever been.

Sounds like crime might have died down some there, like the rest of the country, as the crack thing stabilized. When I was there things were pretty ugly. Lot's of crime against West Indians and whitey.

The m/f ratio was so bad when I was there. It was an inverted OOT scale. 3's became 7's and 7's became 10's. Not fun. Basically the crime kept a lot of chicks who didn't have boyfriends away.

You can drive almost to the end of Megan's. There's a little park there. But getting there is tricky as there are several unmarked turnoffs. Then you can hike another few hundred yards to the tip. What's really cool is to go on a full moon so you can see where you're going. Also the tide is up, so the waves are banging against both sides of the little spit of rocks you're standing on. It's pretty incredible.

(Obv. all these are assuming things are still the way they were 15 years ago.)

Oh yeah, does the Walgreen's still have Louis XIII for $600/bottle?

Edit: this post mentions Ferrari's. So do some others. You might ask about it. The veal saltimbocca and lasagna were incredible, especially the lasagna.

Did you ever get any flack for being american? How did various people react?

Please describe fishing set up.
Wtf do you do with 100 pounds of yellowfin in the middle of the pacific?
What did you catch beside tuna, shark, billfish?
Ever sell your catch? Share with other boats? Trade for beer/water?

What was the longest you went without speaking to your brother?
If you had a wife, could you imagine doing this with her?

Describe navigation equipment. Assuming gps, could you imagine going without it? Did it ever fail?

What food did you take with you? How much water?

I like this pic a lot.

Have you done much sailing off the coast of south america?

Have you ever been boarded by the coast guard?

Have you ever run across modern day pirates, or heard any first person accounts of encounters?

If ever boarded by the coast guard was your boat searched?

How easy/difficult do you think it would be to smuggle 10-20 kilo's or so of cocaine from a country in s. america to the states on a sailboat (assuming you had a safe connection to purchase down there)?

Wow, Captain.

Just looked over the photos and am pretty excited about hearing more about your trip. Please PM next time you come to Vegas because we definitely need to have a beer.

I am currently in the "learning to sail" part of your plan and will someday circumnavigate with my special lady friend. I trip reported my only trip as skipper in El D's forum.

Can you tell me more about your process in choosing a boat? Why a ketch vs. sloop? Why a mono-hull vs. a cat or trimaran?

At my embryonic stage of seamanship I would choose trimaran>catamaran>sloop>ketch to live aboard and cross oceans so i'm intersted in how you made your choice.

Thank you,

Irieguy

Suzzer,
don't you owe oot some pics?

Did you encounter any bad storms while out on the water?

surprisingly no, people were really friendly & helpful. Most people really went out of their way to be helpful.

we ate sushimi till we were sick! we stored probably 50 lbs in the fridge & freezer & shared w/ friends in panama.

we caught lots of tuna, dolphin/mahi mahi, wahoo, 1 swordfish, sharks. we we were very popular w/ other cruisers, because we always caught more fish than everyone else combined. we would be invited to other peoples boats for dinner every night because we brought fish!


generally we trolled 1 or 2 rods w/ 50 or 80 lb test & we also pulled 2 flat lines. Flat lines consisted of 20-30 yds of 600 lb mono cleated to the stern w/ a piece of bungee cord to help absorb shock when the fish struck. we would get "strikes" a couple of times per week by fish so large they instantly snapped the 600lb line.

my brother & i never really went more than 4 hrs w/o talking because when you come on watch the person gives you some basic info. some days we spoke very little though. Don't get the wrong idea, we got along very well & had a great time.

If i had an adventerous wife, definitely. many people do this as couples.

we had gps / color chart plotter, 2 hand held gps for back up. paper charts for everywhere, c-map on the computer & a sextant w/ all the pertinant info to use it, if we really had to.

Looking for them every day with stalking camera ready. Of course this is the longest I've gone w/o seeing them. I fear they may be done. Also my work is making me come in a little earlier. I may tell them I'm coming in later and try some staking-out next week.

not much, sailed off the coast of venezuala. Sailed into & out of panama in central america - have friends who have spent alot of time there.

i have been boarded by the coast guard, but not the us coast guard. I have been run down by the us navy.

impossible? i would guess your chance of success at less than 5% . it is not the 80's any more. the US tracks everything coming past cuba & approaching the coast.

You mention being caught in a major storm -- was it ever possible you could get capsized or swept overboard? If so would there have been any way to recover? Did you plan your trips to avoid storms or is there really nothing you can do?

When you were in port did you still sleep on the boat, or did you stay in hotels/hostels?

Really interesting thread, anyone who hasn't seen the photos yet you are missing something.

would be fun to meet you, as well as other 2p2'ers, for a beer in vegas. i come out pretty much every other month. will be there some in may & all of june. pm will be sent.


Didn't really know what i was doing when i selected the boat. i was looking for something sturdy & comfortable. i wish my boat had a little deeper draft for offshore sailing, but it did very well. choice of a ketch divides the sail plan up, making the sails smaller, thus easier to handle.

for living aboard comfort i would choose a catamaran. for cost & overall safety i would choose a monohull. a trimaran would be my last choice - they are very large in relation to their living space & probably the least safe, in my opinion.

What did the navy want/do with you?

What fish and where can you eat raw?

Were you always able to i.d. fish, if so how, does it matter?

Did you try any exotic fish, especially in raw form?

it was definitely possible, even probable @ 1 point off the coast of South Africa. we were in several severe storms, but the 1 off th coast of africa was by far the worst & for about a 12- 15hr period i would have put our odds on dying at 60 -40, only time i ever really thought i might die.

In theory, if th boat rolls it will right itself. if you ever get seperated from the boat your best option is to exhale & dive as deep as possible hoping to drown your self & minimize your suffering.

you do try to plan ahead & get weather forecasts via ssb radio, but when you are at sea for weeks at a time, there is only so much you can do. you can't outrun the weather & it does change, so you are stuck to ride it out.

always stayed on the boat except for 2 nights the whole trip. staying on the boat is cheaper & allows you to kep an eye on things.

big fan of your avatar by the way!

mainly tuna. i can usually identify most fish by sight & at least pick out the common/best edible 1's. if i couldn't identify it we didn't eat it

i did alot of sport fishing over the past 7 years so i can identify most pelagic fish.

not really anything exotic - people do get really sick - the last thing you want to be at sea is really sick!

Seriously? If you fall out of the boat it's over no matter what or do you mean if you get miles away from the boat or do you mean in a storm there is just no way to re-board the vessel?

Are you rich?

Absolutely amazing photo album...

1) Trip report of your worst day at sea? (other than the storm)

2) How low did the outside temps drop late at night?

3) Did you buy the boat specifically for this trip, and if so how much would you say it's value has depreciated due to wear/tear/miles, etc?

4) What brought you to St Thomas? What work do you do?

5) How many books did you read on the journey? Top 3 books?

6) What did you do for exercise/physical activity while at sea?

sounds like a sweet experience.

not rich, just made sacrifices to make the trip happen.

1/2 serious about falling overboard. generally if you fall overboard it would be impossible for the other person to turn the boat around & come back & find you - unless he was standing right there, in broad daylight, on a calm day - maybe.

in reality it would be rough, probably night time & the other person might be sleeping & not discover that you were gone for a couple of hrs. imagine trying to find a volleyball floating in the ocean within a 25 mile radius, in the dark, in 10' -12' seas with the search area rapidly expanding. you just aren't going to find the person & that is assuming a shark hasn't found him already.

consider too, if you fall overboard, the boat is still moving along at 4kts +. there is no way you can swim fast enough to catch it. that said, we did trail short 5' -6' pieces of line w/ a loop in the end, from each side of the stern. the theory was if you fell overboard, from somewhere other than directly astern, you might be able to grab 1 & hang on. it was a last ditch survival kind of a precaution, but you take lots of precautions & run throug lots of what if scenerios.

pretty amazing trip report, enjoying seeing all the answers to the questions could you google an earth map and mspaint your route pretty quickly? would be pretty interesting to see

1. there were quite a few bad days & lots of great days. other than the storm, 1 that stands out was on passage from fiji to australia:

we had been in a severe storm for several days, which had taken its toll on us & the boat & we had been having electrical as well as steering problems. not having steering was no big deal - as long as the auto pilot worked. it was really rough for days, causing the auto pilot to work harder & take more electricity.

in the course of about 24 hrs, our generator broke, the engine wouldn't put out power to charge the batteries, the solar panels weren't putting out power because there was no sun.

the auto pilot crashed the battery bank, so now we are 1000nm from nowhere & we have no autopilot, no steering, no generator, can no longer start the engine & we have been in a storm for almost a week!

at about 3 in the morning we had to hook up the emergency tiller to keep the boat on course (which required 1 person to actually steer non stop w/ a lot of effort) & then start trouble shooting the electrical, generator, steering etc.. then at 1st light i climbed part way up the mizzen mast (in the storm) to reverse the blade on the wind generator so it would run going down wind (reverse) to charge the batteries. it took us about 3 days of almost non stop work to get all systems up & running right.

2. temperature never really got cold, except off south africa where it might get down to 60f w/ water temp of 50f

3. did buy the boat for this trp & spent almost 4 years getting it ready. older boats are similar to houses in that if you maintain them they only depreciate to a certain level.

4. came to st. thomas for the boat. i found the boat online & flew here to buy it. i play poker (mostly live)last 1 1/2 yrs. before poker i sportfished & worked on boats. before st. thomas i had a very small construction company in the states.
5. read lots of books. worked my way through many of the major works i had failed to read - anna karrinnina (sp?) shogun, war & peace, etc., etc.. probably read 300 + books on that trip. it was not unusual to go through a 1000 page epic in under 3 days.

top 3 - hard to say - great gatsby, maybe catcher in the rye, i like several of douglas couplands books, harrington on hold'em? (didn't read this till after the trip).

6. push ups sit ups, curls, stretching, reading & power naps.

uh, no. i have never mspainted anything in my life, sorry. that said, if necessary i could, but it certainly wouldn't be quick.