Issue #92, January 2006 - Gemini Gems

Cruising PlacesCRUISING THE BAHAMAS AND CARIBBEAN IN A GEMINIPart Four by Pat (Baasel) Tillis and John Tillis, ICON DUET, Hull 407 (3400)Part IVAlthough John and I had each gotten certifiedfor scuba, we prefer to just snorkel. Thereare so many nice snorkeling spots you can visiton your own with minimal equipment and expense.Probably the most outstanding snorkelingwithin the lesser Antilles was in the Tobago Caysin a wild-life protected park in the Grenadines,between St. Vincent and Grenada, but there wasalso a lot of good snorkeling in St. Lucia, Martinique,Antigua, as well as many places in the Virginsand Bahamas. I never tire of snorkeling andeven in places where there are not a lot of fishand snorkeling isn’t on the list of local attractions,you just never know what creature will suddenlyshow up. I’ve swum twice with a large ray swimmingjust beneath me, one of them a colorful eagleray. We see squid, octopus, eels, sea cucumbers,starfish, sea turtles, and on one occasionsome sea horses as well as countless varietiesof colorful fish, corals and sea fans. We’ve encounteredsharks while snorkeling in the Bahamas.If they are anything other than a nurseshark lazing on the bottom, I stay still as they goby and leave the area when they are out of sight,but we’ve never had a frightening experience. Inthe Bahamas we also saw a lot of barracudawhich never bothered me except for one time inthe Berry Islands when a five foot barracuda wasresting in the shade between our hulls, with histoothy mouth just a few feet from the swim steps.As long as I was looking him in the eye and sawhe was staying still I didn’t worry, but when Iclimbed the steps to get into the boat and couldno longer see what he was doing, I did scurry upthe steps! We’ve had many experiences of havingpods of dolphins swim with our boat, but I’venever managed to swim close to one.Most of the Lesser Antilles islands retainEnglish as their language along with Creole, butare independent nations that have elected toshare a common currency, the EC dollar. Guadeloupeand the Saints (one nation, but several islands)and Martinique are actually two departmentsof the nation of France as Hawaii andAlaska are states of the U.S.A. Here they notonly speak French and use the Euro and Frenchpostage etc., but they also use almost entirelyproducts produced in France. This makes forspecial pleasures and frustrations when shoppingin the French Islands.We kept our boat in Grenada from springof 2000 to December of 2002. We had canvaswork added to the boat in Grenada. We addedfull battens to the main, had both sails washedand stitched, had lazy jacks and a sail pack installed.We are pleased with all these additions:the sail handles better with the full battens andwe can lower sail without having to roll and tiethe sail on a rocking deck before entering theharbor. We had a full set of custom-fitted cockpitcushions made with a flow-through foam thatdries quite quickly. We had our master stateroomqueen sized mattress segmented so we couldfold it in three parts if necessary to dry the mattress.One year in St. Lucia on the way south, askidoo skimmed past our boat and threw itsrooster-tail spray right through our stateroomhatch and soaked our mattress. We couldn’t getthe mattress out of the boat to air it out!We installed a manual windlass on theforedeck before starting the journey north, just incase we should need it. So far, despite a severedrotator cuff and consequent shoulder reconstructionsurgery a couple years ago, John stillprefers to haul by hand the 35 pound Delta withits 106’ of 5/16” (8mm) chain and 150 ‘ 9/16” nylonrode. I guess I should mention that webeefed up our ground tackle again after our anchorline parted and we began drifting in the middleof the night in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia. At thattime, we had 66’ of chain and 150‘ of rode andthought we were anchored in an all sand bottom.It turns out there are a few coral rocks in that anchorageand after several weeks in the same1456