Hello All!
We are currently on a passage to the British Virgin Islands. We have 20-25kts of
wind from behind, sunny, 86F, 7+kts of boatspeed. In other words, perfect
sailing conditions! This is our first night passage since crossing the Atlantic:
all the other islands have been close enough for day hops.
Sorry for the lack of recent updates: both of our laptop computers died, which
took our mailing list, too. The better one we got fixed under warranty in the
USA, but Federal Express lost the package! Now I'm stuck with this stone age
clunker from two years ago.
We spent over a month in St Maarten: a small island that belongs to both France
and Netherlands. Nikki and the boys visitied grandparents in Florida while I was
doing all sorts of boat projects. Besides that, I watched the Heineken Regatta,
did some single handed sailing to neighboring islands, and a shark feeding dive.
The boats here (St Maarten and Antigua) are just amazing. We are clearly smaller
than average. There are many 60+ foot Swans, and lots of megayachts in the
100-300ft range.
We will probably spend two weeks in the Virgins before heading to Bahamas. I'm
not sure if I mentioned it in previous emails, but we will not be sailing to the
Pacific Ocean. Instead we will sail from here to Florida, and the up the US East
Coast as far North as we can make it, hopefully at least to Cape Cod, where
Nikki and I first met as high school exchange students.
Ahoy,
Crew of S/Y Amati
P.S. The boys are having fun with lots of playmates. Antti was just asking today
if we could buy a new boat again and sail all the way around the world.
Apr 29, 2003
This is our third day of passage making from the British Virgin Islands to the
Bahamas. We have left the Caribbean Sea and are back in the North Atlantic.
We are sailing past US and Spanish Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican
Republic, and Haiti. We don't want to visit any US territories, because that
would mean undertaking the big hassles of importing the boat (we'll do that in
Florida). Dominican Republic is on the piracy list and Haiti is off limits for
insurance, so we are staying well clear of those coastlines. This means a long
passage, and we aren't even quite sure yet where/when we will drop the anchor
next time.
This is a very deep (deepest?) part of the Atlantic, with over 9 km of water
under our keel. Quite a contrast, because soon we will be challenged with the
very shallow Bahamian waters. We had excellent winds, but right now we are
motoring in sunny calms: it's 93F (=34C) inside the boat, a bit more than Nikki
can put up with. Nikki is sleeping and the rest of us are just lazing around.
Yesterday Matti caught a BIG wahoo, so we'll be eating fish for some time.
We had a great time in the BVI with all the excellent snorkeling and diving
spots. The waters are quite protected, much like the San Juan Islands back home,
so we got to do some smooth water sailing for a change. Sadly we had to say
good-bye to our long time cruising companions on Canina, who are heading back
home to England in their 29-footer.
Ahoy,
Crew of S/Y Amati
May 2, 2003
After 5 days and nights of sailing of over 700 nautical miles, we are hopefully
finally in an anchorage where we can sleep the night. This is Clarence Town,
Bahamas, where we just arrived at 8 am this morning. Yes, we are tired, but the
kids are wide awake! Life so far in the tropics has been easy, so I suppose it
was time to have a few challenges along the way. Here was the biggest one as
described by Matti:
Dear Friends,
last night we had the worst storm yet. Lightning was surrounding us, zaping the
water. We were the only boat here. The winds howled from 40 to 58 knots. The
witecap waves were clashing into us. The wind was so strong, the paint on the
outboard peeled off. Our anchor dragged, and we were getting closer and closer
to shore. My dad turned on the engine so we wouldn't move to shore. Things were
flying around inside. My dad finaly decided to lift up the anchor. We were all
worried that he would be hit by lightning, because the lightning was right above
our heads. The rain was so hard, you couldn't see a thing. Luckily we motored
out of the storm without anything being struck by lightning. We were
reeeeeaaaaaaaalllly lucky. We were anchore in and luckily not on Crooked island.
We are now in Clarence town with Snowcat. Hope you have a good trip/week. Matti
One night at 3 am between the Dominican Republic and Turks & Caicos when Nikki
was on watch she saw a white light kept creeping closer. The radar confirmed
this, too. Nikki woke me up and was feeling really uncomfortable about it. We
tried to turn away and increase speed, but the boat still came closer. We
decided to do a 180 degree turn and shut off our navigation lights. The boat
didn't follow, which was a big relief. In the morning we caught up with the boat
again, which turned out to be just a regular sailboat (Tayana 37 I think). It's
amazing what darkness can do to your imagination!
The next day we arrived at Turks & Caicos. We anchored on an unprotected shore
(all the sheltered anchorages were too shallow for us). We read that you can be
fined up to $40,000 for damaging coral with your anchor, and even though we
dropped the anchor on a patch of sand, sure enough the chain got
snagged on a coral head. We decided to just go for a quick swim and
snorkel, and within half an hour we were back sailing and heading for the
Bahamas.
The following day we failed at an attempt to find shelter in French Wells. The
channels here have no markers and the sands are shifting, so it's strictly
eyeball navigation: watching the color of the water. We got stuck in a sandbar
at the entrance with a big power boat behind us, who had decided to use us as
their pilot. Thankfully we were able to power ourselves out and started looking
for a next possible anchorage.
The only anchorage that we could make before dark was at a beach with coral
reefs, quite open to the sea. However, the forecast was calling for light winds
from south east, so it seemed ok for us. That's where we were hit by the
thunderstorm...
After getting out of there, the next possible anchorage was described in our
guide book as a small "fishing village" whose fishing traps are always piled up
on the shore, and the "fishing" boats include a camouflaged speed boat with four
250-hp outboards on the back. The guide book advices to go there only in a dire
emergency. So we didn't...
To add to the anchoring challenge, our friends on Snow Cat said they had sighted
sharks in their anchorage. The kids had been swimming away from the boat, the
parents saw a shark, and immediately called the kids to calmly and slowly swim
back. The kids refused, because they were having too much fun in the water. So
the parents yelled "Shark!", and the kids virtually flew across the water back
to the boat. We will be keeping a sharp lookout for sharks when we go swimming.
Luckily the water here is so clear that it's not a big problem.
Well, we are looking forward to some more pleasant sailing in the Bahamas...
Ahoy,
Crew of S/Y Amati
Jun 31, 2003
We arrived in the USA (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) on May 18! This was two days
before Thomas' passport expired, but we weren't counting. So, it took us almost
a year to complete the sail from Finland to USA: a trip that takes 10 hours on
an airplane. But we did take the scenic route and saw many things along the way!
And yes, we have traded our floating home to a rolling one for a while. It feels
strange to travel at 50 knots no matter what the wind is. We decided to give up
on the idea of sailing up the U.S. East coast for several reasons. 1) There's an
excellent float on/float off yacht transport service from Fort Lauderdale,
Florida to Vancouver, Canada, which we will utilize to get Amati back home. 2)
Nikki really can't handle the heat here, and it would be silly to install air
conditioning for just a short time. 3) We don't fit in the Intracoastal
Waterway: we're too tall at 67 feet and it seems to be a pain to find marinas
that are deep enough for us. Well, maybe these are not good enough reasons to
become landlubbers, but this is only temporary of course.
While waiting for the transport ship to come beginning of July, we rented an RV
(a motor home) with similar conveniences that we had on Amati (no washing
machine or sauna, though). Upwind performance is guaranteed by a 300-hp V-10
engine that will help rebuild the Iraqi economy for sure. We are planning to
drive all the way up to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and also visit my sister,
Jaana, in Kentucky.
Our cruise on Amati through the Bahamas was fabulous. Not since the
Finnish/Swedish archipelago have we seen such pristine and seemingly endless
cruising grounds. To contrast this, we also stayed two nights at the famous
Atlantis resort in Nassau with incredible water slides, aquariums, and displays
of the underwater world.
Ahoy (or is it yee-haw),
Crew of R/V Amati
P.S. I'm too embarrassed to mention that we are in Disney World right now in an
RV Park.
Jul 31, 2003
All of Amati crew is back home. The boat is on its’ way to Vancouver, Canada,
inside a transport ship. We’ve been busy getting ourselves and the house back to
normal (I just got the Internet hooked up to send this mail).
Ahoy,
Crew of S/Y Amati