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American Spirit II - Day 459; Joel Hikes Up Grand Piton & We Have a Rendezvous Dinner Party; Friday, April 10, 2015



One year ago today:

"Day 97; Drift Snorkel Ahe Pass, Swimming with Sharks & Heading to Rangiroa; Thursday, April 10, 2014. Joel and I went in water at 9:30 AM to survey the anchor and chain before trying to weight anchor. A 12 inch remora was swimming under boat, looking to attach itself to our boat. Remora attach themselves to sharks and live off their scraps. We've had remora attach themselves to our boat before, thinking we're a large fish. Took us 30 minutes to get anchor up. Not bad. Nexus had similar experience, but Vivo took 1 to 1 1/2 hours to free their anchor. They were anchored in deeper water, 70 feet, so more difficult, in part because they couldn't see the chain and anchor on the bottom. Joel hopped in the water and helped direct the anchor chain retrieval process. Their chain was on one side of a giant coral head and the mooring line was on the other. So pulling the mooring line to free the anchor was not going to work. Once they got free we all motored to Ahe pass, where we were going to anchor and drift snorkel the pass on the incoming tide. However, none of us could find a place to safely anchor, so we decided to keep at least one person on each boat while the others boarded Nexus's dingy (really a motor boat, it,s so large). to drift snorkel the pass."

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Up at 6:14 PM. I start coffee then breakfast right away. Frank from Chicka-lu and Eric from Nexus join Joel and me for breakfast: 4 bacon, 3 eggs, potato and chilled mandarin oranges. At 7:00 AM they leave to drive to and climb Grand Piton.

From 8:15 AM to 1:15 PM I reconcile expenses spanning 2 months and 3 different currencies - the Brazilian Real; the Eastern Caribbean; and US dollars. Its raining on and off all day. That peaky tropical trough I'm sure. After that I spent some time using my I Pad to lay out a route from St. Lucia to the BVI; and from the BVI to Florida.

Joel returns at 4:30 PM and says that the hike was arduous, but that they made it to the top; with a hike that was mostly not raining. He takes a nap as I go to the Parade of Sail skipper's meeting at 5:00 PM.

Rally control gives us a set of printed instructions on the World ARC Parade of Sail, which include:

The order of boats, which is by size, the smallest first: Saphir (Norway), Folie a Deux (USA), Free&BrEasy (Canada), American Spirit II (USA), Merlyn of Poole (UK), Ghost (UK), Polaris (Germany), Adela (UK), Civetta (Slovakia), Boingo Alive (Germany), Avocet (Ireland), Alpheratz (USA), Festina Lente (Italy), Celebrate (USA), Nexus (USA), Chicka-lu (Germany) and NDS Darwin (Argentina). The Rally started with 43 boats and is finishing with 17, 5 of which are USA registered. Some boats dropped out; other (12) headed off to New Zealand for a year; and some were only going to go half way and stop in Australia.

The other parts of the Parade of Sail instructions cover: Timing(parade starts at 10:30 AM); Communication and Control (VHF Channel 72); Order (by size); Speed (5 knots); Sails (mainsail); Dressing Overall (flying flags and Rally banner); Local spectator craft; Finish Line (2 red buoys in Rodney Bay); Photography (by Suzana and a press boat); Berthing (assigned on sheet); Berth allocation (3 free nights); Power (European or American); Registration; IGY Welcome Back Drinks; and Final Dinner (Royal St. Lucian Hotel). Suzana took pictures from a small St. Lucian military or police vessel.

The party at 6:30 PM started with an open bar and was followed by seating in round tables with a buffet for dinner. The buffet consisted of chicken, fish, vegetables and salad; but no dessert. Seated at our table besides Joel, Darlene and myself were Charlie and Cathy from Celebrate; Nikki from Rally control; and Tim, Tracey, Brian, Tracy and MK (Brian Ramsey's girlfriend from back home)from Follie a Deux.

We were back on the boat by 9:30 PM. Reading was the order of the night until bed time between 10:50 PM and 11:10 PM.

Brian Fox



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