Kudos to Carrie Graham and TD Bank Lucan Ontario Canada

2014 03 05
Jolly Harbour, Antigua

With respect to the theft of our money by CIBC International Banking subsidiary First Caribbean Bank we are pleased to report that TD Bank, Lucan, Ontario Canada has saved us harmless.

Carrie Graham branch manager reported today by email that she had completed an inquiry into the actions of CIBC First Caribbean Bank and that money wrongly taken from us by CIBC First Caribbean was being returned to us.  Initially Ms. Graham thought the inquiry would take weeks but I think she turned on the afterburners.

We used an ATM maintained by CIBC FIrst Caribbean in Jolly Harbour Antigua.  We requested $2,000 EC but the machine gave us no money.  The bank, CIBC First Caribbean did, however, take the sum of $2,000 EC from our bank account.  When approached CIBC First Caribbean told us they had no responsibility and any relief would have to come from our home bank.  Odd since CIBC First Caribbean had taken the funds.

One CIBC First Caribbean representative even told us it was illegal for them to give us our money back.  Can you imagine?

Lucky for us the tough ladies at the TD Bank in Lucan, Ontario are more than a match for a bunch of overfed pompous bank staff in Antigua.  

Our thanks to Carrie Graham and her staff.  

Fixing Your Boat in Exotic Places

2014 03 05
Jolly Harbour, Antigua



Above is Jolly Harbour, Antigua a pretty decent place to end a transatlantic.  Especially if you need work done to your boat.  As it turned out we needed a lot of work done.

We spent twelve days under sustained high winds, at least they were high for us: winds of 30 to 45 knots apparent carried us quickly but uncomfortably from Canaries to Cape Verdes islands and then very uncomfortably from Cape Verdes towards Antigua.

The winds refused to conform to the grib weather forecasts and rather than winds off our stern we had beam on winds and so we had beam on waves - tossing the boat wildly from side to side.  Our tactic is to reduce sail dramatically in winds of 30 knots or more and we were making 4 knots for most of the first week and a half out of Cape Verdes.  While it may seem silly to go so slow in bad weather we find the slow speed reduces wear and tear on both the boat and ourselves.

One morning on the usual rounds we discovered small cracks in a pad on our bow to which the bowsprit was attached.  We reduced sail even further and took down all foresail.  This was precautionary only as we did not consider the slight cracking in the gelcoat to be significant.  It was of course and under the sustained onslaught of wind and wave the cracks grew.  The growth was infinitesmal but undeniable.  It was also disturbing.  Under the sustained  beating the rig was taking the bowsprit was moving, not something a bowsprit is ever supposed to do.

Here is what we found on arrival Antigua:

Aft Pad

Forward Pad

 The bowsprit was showing some damage from water incursion:

 

The holes are supposed to be round not oval.






Because the pads were full of water and rotted the stainless steel bolts which held the bowsprit in place had corroded to the point of uselessness.

All in all we were very lucky.  Of course we travelled for ten days on a triple reefed main with every halyard and piece of usable line tied to the masthead and then to a forward cleat.  

Because we were in Antigua we were lucky.  Antigua is one of the best refit and maintenance destinations we have ever visited.  

A trip to Chippy the woodworking shop produced some professional repairs to the bowsprit itself:

The usual repair: rot drilled out and
new teak dowel glued in place 

Damage to the foreward boltholes was so severe
it required a double dowel to replace the rot

The square patch was dug out and new teak glued in place
for a tight strong fit

Getting ten inch long half inch bolts was not going to be a picnic but without them the whole exercise was for naught.  Trevor Machine shop machined new bolts for us out of 3/4 inch stainless stock the closest diameter we could obtain on the island.

Trevor in His Shop.
And He does not fix lawnmowers

Finally we used Tony Fibreglass to remove the damaged deck pads, remove the wet core and reglass new pads without plywood core.  The factory used plywood, we used laminated fibreglass peaces.  Our luck held and the water in the plywood core of the pads had not migrated to the deck coring.  Had it done so we would have been removing and replacing soft decking.  You gotta know what constitutes a win and we won big.  We had the whole deck sounded by George of Jolly Harbour Woodworking and got a clean bill.  The survey from two years ago was also clean.

Tony Fibreglass at Work

Removing the old core - soaking wet plywood

Tony Strikes a Blow for Freedom and a Sound Boat

Finished Job

Finished Job 2 - Nice Toenails

Sailing the Atlantic from Canaries to Antigua - The Jaded View

2014 03 04
Jolly Harbour, Antigua

Here is the abbreviated version:

The Map Legend:

Diamonds are actual position at about 1700 UTC each day.  Blue dots are the planned route.

Bad Weather - Wind over 30 knots for an extended period in any day.  Winds not off the stern and waves from anywhere the wind damn well pleased.  In our case every night the wind was 30 plus from dark to dawn, most nights 35 and 40.  Maybe not life threatening but very unpleasant, wet and cold.

Mindelo bites.  

Good Weather: steady winds of 25 to 30 knots off the stern.  Waves behaving and off the stern quarter.  By the time we got to good weather and settled winds we were too tired to give a damn.

Antigua: yeah well...pretty well fungible with any Caribbean Island.  

A (Short) Tale of Two Cities

2014 02 27
Jolly Harbour, Antigua



One, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, was the best of places:

Santa Cruz de Tenerife viewed from the Wifi deck of the marina

The other, Mindelo, in the Cape Verdes, was the worst of places:

Just a Regular Day in Mindelo.  A blanket of  Saharan sand, camel dung,
dengue fever virus particles and whatever other obscenities
Africa sees fit to spew into the atmosphere obscures a mountain only half a mile away

Leaving Mindelo was a pleasure, the first time we had experienced such emotions in Europe or Africa.  Our departure, as Dickens suggested was a far far better thing we did than we had done before.

Culture

Santa Cruz has a local waterfront Opera House served by its own local opera company.

Mindelo offers this on its waterfront, an eagle I think poised to take flight from a pile of ... well mud is the charitable thought:

It has long been our view that the best part of our tour of the Mediterranean has been the Atlantic Islands: the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries.  Arriving at the safe refuge of the Canarian island of Graciosa in strong winds and just ahead of a three day blow we quiMckly came to appreciate the benefits, not only of the islands but of the people who inhabit them.  

Parts of the island chain are massively touristic, several towns consist solely of overbuilt Russian quality mass housing for the Euro mass consumer market.  You just avoid those places.  

We chose Santa Cruz de Tenerife, capital city of this island protectorate, on the recommendation of friends Stephen and Nancy on Fairwyn.  What a joy it was.  Clean air, beautiful mountains, half a dozen well stocked chandlers, urbane lifestyle.

This city is one we will revisit.  A winter apartment in Santa Cruz would be a joy.

Connie Accessing Email on the Wifi Deck

Another Sunny Day in Santa Cruz

Mindelo offers much less.  One of the claims to tourist fame offered by the Cape Verdean government is that six islands in the island chain are uninhabited.  The government suggests this makes them perfect places to enjoy some quiet sailing.  My view is that the six islands are uninhabited because they are uninhabitable.  

Hiking is big on the list of people who enjoy their stay in Cape Verdes.  CIty dwellers and consumers of culture will be less favourably affected.  That one or two islands might be great refuges for the lulu lemoned among us is not a big selling point in the book of moi.

Here the wind blows at 35 knots all the time, the air is nearly unbreathable on most daysfilled as it is with saharan dust and byproducts flung into the atmosphere by Africa and carried hundreds of kilometres out to sea.  The marina has a hellish surge and broken dock lines are the norm.  There is a grocery store but prices are not terribly good and there is no cafe culture whatsoever.

Cape Verdes has no extradition treaty with the USA and this accounts for some of its popularity.  I figure the US government takes the view that any white collar criminal who holes up in CV has exiled himself to near prison like conditions so why punish the poor bugger any more.  

The nicest bit of Mindelo were the colourful fishing boats which lined the shore:

The waterfront grocer

The Marina at Mindelo

The Marina Bar at Mindelo

Connie Gives a Canadian Flag to the Marina Bar for Display

Antiguan Bank Scam - First Caribbean Bank Steals Our Money

28 02 2014

Jolly Harbour, Antigua

 Until now we have used the system of ATMs around the world to obtain local currency from our Canadian based bank accounts.  No need to bring large amounts of cash when we traveled; we just hit the local ATM and withdrew funds as we needed.  The exchange rate was pretty decent too, much better than the VISA card fees.

Yesterday we had $2,000 EC stolen from us by First Caribbean bank.  

We used the First Caribbean Bank ATM at the Epicurean Market in Jolly Harbour to obtain cash to settle accounts we had with local tradesmen.  The ATM processed a $2,000 charge against our bank account but it did not give us the cash.  The machine kept it.

We contacted the bank immediately and were informed by them that they would do nothing about it but maybe my bank in Canada would do something.  According to the Antiguan bank representative "it is illegal for us to pay you the money we have kept from you.  Even if we went to the machine and found your claim was correct we could and would do nothing."

In Canada the law says stealing my money is a crime.  In Antigua the law says that a bank that steals a foreigner's money is forbidden to return it.

We are working with our bank in Canada to try to obtain some kind of relief but this is a months long process and success is not guaranteed.  In Antigua the banks are the biggest crooks and they always get away with it.

Universal Constants

24 02 2014
Jolly Harbour, Antigua

Meredith is once again a North American boat.  De facto not just on paper.

A couple of articles are due and are coming.

It was a crossing we are glad is over.

Arriving Antigua we chose a marina wihich offered "Free WIFI" pronounced W eye F eye over here and not the much smoother but wimpy W ee F ee used in Europe.

It is a fact that every bar and coffee shop and every ten year old boy with a jug of water on his back slugging glasses of H2O to weary caravans at 2 cents a glass can provide fast,efficient working internet to their customers.

No marina anywhere on planet earth, regardless of how much they charge for rent, can provide any internet of aerny kind for any period of time.  They do however maintain a list of excuses that similarly are universal.  Insults such as:

It is working. (this one works short term.  Soon people start showing up with their laptops and tablets in the marina office.  When this  Tppens the staff move to this:

The guy is coming to work on it this afternoon.  This works for about a week and then staff move to excuse number 3:

It is not us, it is the ISP or its less frequent variant We are changing services and there will be a brief outage.

So we sit in peace and quiet and calm, protected by marinas from any contact with the rude and annoying outer world.

Time for another beer.  I will check messages tomorrow.

Changing Your Mind: Never an Easy Process

2013 12 25
London, ON Canada

Here I sit before a nice gas fireplace, my tummy filled adequately with the best of all possible Christmas meals.  The comfort and sense of well being is enhanced by the collateral sounds of a successful family get together; my wife finishing up the cleaning of the house after dinner and the children and in laws all typing madly away at their laptops.

How easy it was to put ourselves here.  Once we understood.

On November 20, 2013 Connie and I left Santa Cruz de Tenerife headed for North America on our beloved sailboat Meredith.  Plan was to land in the Caribbean in time to be home for Christmas.  That plan did not succeed.

Our weather forecast was best described as indifferent and unfortunately it played out badly.  For the first eight days we had wind for only 36 hours.  Virtual calm held the remaining 156 hours in a narcotic pall.  After 8 days our progress was but 500 miles; on one of those days our distance made good was a mere seven nautical miles. 

Our eighth day began, as every day began, with the download of a new 8 day GRIB weather  forecast.  Reviewing the forecast  brought no warm comfy feeling.   Wind was indeed to come but from the wrong direction.  A lot of wind and no way to avoid the consequences.

Consequences we knew were not life threatening but did involve our struggling to make adequate headway and the struggle was maintained only with a tremendous outlay of physical exertion both from handling the boat in high wind and seas and in handling the rough motion created by that wind and those seas.   Checking our calendar it was clear that we would not be anywhere near the Caribbean in time to arrange a flight to Canada for Christmas.

While the implications of the weather forecast were clear it still took the remainder of a daylight day, granted only seven or eight hours at this time of year, to understand that not making it home for Christmas was unacceptable to us.  The thought process was fettered by native stubbornness.  We do not quit.

This time however it was vastly more important to us to be home for Christmas than to get across the Atlantic so we turned about.  It seems odd to us now that it took almost eight hours for us to see what was completely obvious.  In fairness we both did see it at different times during the day but we just never held the same view at the same time.  

During the day of dithering we did not make much forward way.  Day eight produced the same light winds we had enjoyed for much of the previous seven.

Once we both admitted to ourselves that we must abandon our plan it did not take long to act.  We swung the boat around and headed for the island of Tenerife.

As so often happens nature weighed in and commented on the correctness of what we were doing.  Concomitant with our turning about the wind picked up.  In minutes the daylong calm picked up to blow 15 then 20 then 25 and finally 30 on our stern.  This wind was on our stern but had we not turned about that wind would have been on our nose.  So too would the wind driven waves that quickly rose to accompany the wind.

It was bizarre.  After eight days sitting motionless on a dead ocean we were now furling our headsail, dropping our main and finally putting a reef in the staysail.  Once again we were a sailboat and a pretty lively one at that.

in the end we needed only four days to retrace the five hundred miles back to Tenerife.  We arrived in rain and fog with the wind still blowing twenty plus on our stern.  We were met on the docks by friends Stephen and Nancy Carlman from the Canadian yacht Fairwyn.  Life was good again.

In one day we had arranged long term stay at the marina and our flight home was booked.  We enjoyed a few days of cafe life and exploring the island of Tenerife.   Nancy and Stephen were stalwarts and a mainstay of our short sojourn in the Canaries.

 Later, we were party to a Ham Radio conversation in which our decision to return was discussed.  No one knew we were the people who had turned back.  The group agreed that what had befallen us was "tragic".  This determination was a bit shocking to us.  It seemed more comedy than tragedy to us and really the whole thing fell under the category of good decision making in our books.  

Good decisions are not without costs; they are good in spite of them.  We may be slow but we have few regrets.