Oak Ridge,

September 7, 1996

Shortly after we arrived in Barbados Claire made a quick trip to Oak Ridge and rejoined E. Galois toward the end of January in Bequia. With Nova and Baron Rouge we slowly moved up the Windwards, stopping briefly in all the Islands. We kept meeting old friends from the Med. In Martinique we rented a car, with Baron Rouge and Kwa Heri. At this stage Kwa Heri decided, after long discussions with John and Francine, that they would return to Norway..., by going west!. We were fortunate to be able to stay in touch with Kwa Heri, via the radio, until after they had crossed the Panama Canal and recently received a nice letter from the Marquesas.

In Antigua we said good bye to Layla and Rigoletto and headed for St Kitts. From there we went to St Martin and on to St John. After a few days in St Thomas we left for Jamaica, where Christine, Greg and our three grand daughters were to join us for 10 days. On our way there we sailed the South coast of Puerto Rico, that we enjoyed very much and after a stop at Mona Island we went to La romana on the South coast of the Dominican Republic where we were treated with suspicion by the omnipresent military. We left for Port Antonio in Jamaica, avoiding Haiti. In Jamaica, as in the Dominican Republic, you need to clear in and out of almost every anchorage, but the officials were more friendly. We spent two weeks in Discovery Bay, on the North coast of Jamaica, enjoying the swim around the boat with the kids, the trips inland and the good meals in their rented house above the village. Two of the grand children were sleeping on board with us every night.

We waited for charts to sail around the West end of Cuba (initially we had thought that we would come back via the Bahamas but did not feel like beating around the East end of Cuba). We wanted to visit Cayman Brac but we only spent a night on a dive mooring: the surf was too strong to land. We therefore left for Cayo Largo, off the South Coast of Cuba. We were well received. Cayo Largo is only a tourist resort, therefore we did not see much of the real life in Cuba.... We were granted permission to anchor where we wanted to on our way around the West end of the island from where we sailed directly to Fort Myers in Florida. In Cuba we anchored many times behind the coral barrier reefs and often had the visit of fishermen bringing us lobsters and coral fishes in exchange for bottles of rum, cloths, even an old bicycle! On these occasions we really deplored not speaking any Spanish! From one of these anchorages we spotted a village 2 miles away and were anxious to have a look but were denied permission to land. We guess that the local Guardia Frontera had never seen a foreign cruising sail boat and did not know what to do.

On May 11, in the Fort Myers Marina our engine problems began: the engine did not want to start! Three weeks later and more than $2000 lighter, the engine restarted. We left rapidly for Mobile, thinking that everything was fine but now the engine was burning oil at the rate of one ounce an hour and there was pressure in the crank case! We decided to try to keep on going up the Tombigbee. At Demopolis the engine began to spew black smoke and soot when starting. On June 21st we decided to leave the boat at Ditto Landing, a marina near Huntsville, Alabama, 200 river miles from Oak ridge. We returned to Oak Ridge by car. To make a long story short E. Galois made it home 2 months later with the help of many wonderful friends, borrowing pick up trucks, John boat and outboard engines. We took the engine out of the boat and brought it to New Jersey, to the largest US Yanmar distributor, in the back of a friend's pick up truck. We are just back with a reconditioned engine to replace the one that worked so well for 5 years.

We have no definite sailing plans in the near future. Work needs to be done on the boat. Maybe down the river again next spring, crossing Florida again on the Ochechobee river and North to Canada...