Category Archives: travel

Weights and Measures Onboard

Here is my working space onboard. In yacht parlance it’s called the main saloon (I have always pronounced that ‘salon’), and it is the main living space down below on Pandora. It is connected to a small galley, and there is an aft cabin toward the stern, and a ‘main stateroom’ forward of this room. That’s a glamorous phrase for where we sleep. It doesn’t seem ‘stately’ at all.! I am very good at making a huge mess of our limited living space. We had a couple of days of calm conditions in Deshaies, and I took good advantage of it to finish the first part of this tapestry that I started in May of 2020–more than 2 1/2 years ago. My heart has not been in it, perhaps because of some bad memories of that year. The odd thing is, when I sit down and work on it, I enjoy it. Go figure.

Now I am ready to slide the woven section partially around to the back of the loom in order to keep weaving. I hope to do that today, when I finish this post. The conditions in Les Saintes are not nearly as calm as they were in Deshaies, and that is why I have not gotten back to work on this piece. I’ve been lucky to knit, which was only once. Otherwise, I’m just trying to keep my balance onboard!

Weights and measures have factored rather significantly over the past few weeks. First I attempted to weight the merino/silk top I was spinning because I wanted to have an equal amount of singles spun on each bobbin in order to have equal amounts to ply together into finished yarn. Have you ever tried to weight something on a boat? The gentle, and not so gentle, up and down movements on a boat raises havoc with a scale. On the scale the read out for my merino/silk to cycled up and down by about 10 grams. I usually just try to pick the number in the middle. When baking a cake it’s far more important to get it right! Here was my guess for baking a quiche. It was not perfect, but we certainly thought it was good.

I also wanted to measure the length of that newly spun and plied yarn. Luckily Bob found PVC pipe at a hardware store just outside Falmouth, Antigua, and he made one that has a central arm of 18″. The yarn winds four times around that central core, for a total of 2 yards per single go ’round. I was able to measure that my merino/silk skein is 840 yards, plus or minus probably 10%. I can’t measure this accurately until I get home. Winding on a niddy noddy, or anything else, depends on the tension you use to wind. Too tight, and you’ve got quite a bit less yardage than you think. It’s hard to wind too loosely because of the nature of this repeated action. In general, we all tend to get tighter and tighter even when we are trying to avoid that. I took my time and tried to ‘stay loose.’ We’ll see.

This niddy noddy absolutely will not come apart, even though it is not glued. I wonder if that is due to the heat and humidity of the tropics. I padded one of the arms with a folded napkin, hoping that would give me some ‘wiggle room’ to get the yarn off when I finished winding. It worked.

We’ve been in Les Saintes for three days. The conditions here are rough, but the place is scenic. You can’t have everything. Below is a chart that our good friend aboard Kalunamoo created to measure of how UNcomfortable the ‘harbors’ down here can be. Most places are not harbors at all, simply coves or bays in which you can throw down your anchor, but there is no protection from the sea conditions. In Antigua, we were in real harbors, both in Falmouth and English Harbour. That’s a great way to start a winter of sailing, and really quite a come down for the rest of the trip. Deshaies, Guadeloupe is between a 3 and a 4 on Bill’s chart. In Les Saintes, we rarely get a mooring ball right near the village on our arrival, so we have to spend at least one night anchored between the islands of this archipelago. The roll conditions are consistently between stage 5 and stage 7. It’s awful. One night while I was sleeping a book jumped right off the shelf above me and clobbered me in the head! It was a rude awakening. The next morning I discovered that my glasses came down with the book, and I had fairly mangled them by tossing and turning all night on top of them. Bill Woodroffe writes a great blog about the lifestyle of living on a boat here.

Luckily we only spent one night on anchor, and early the next morning we were ready to head closer to shore in the village (Haute de Terre) to grab a mooring from anyone who was heading out. We were on a mooring by 7am.

One thing I measure while we are traveling aboard each winter is the home ports of all the boats that are anchored or moored nearby us. Antigua had a predominance of Union Jacks, in all the varieties that signify the colonies and protectorates of the UK. There were some number of French flagged boats, as well as Canadian, and Norwegian/Swedish/Danish, with only a few Dutch flagged boats. I saw a few Swiss and German boats in the mix. The past decade of sailing in the Caribbean has honed my flag recognition abilities. In the French islands, the French flags outnumber the British, as do the Scandinavian boats. I’m used to looking up the variations of the Union Jack when I’m curious about exactly where some of these boats call home. Yesterday I saw a variation on the Norwegian flag that caught my eye. It is currently the most beautiful flag I have seen!

I know it’s hard to see the detail on the flag. It was waving in a fairly strong breeze, as I attempted to catch it mostly open. It’s a Norwegian flag with a triple swallow tail, something I’ve never seen before. Usually swallow tail flags are associated with yacht clubs. This flag is the ensign of the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club. It’s a beauty, even though the boat is not.

The beautiful center crown and IVI design was Haakon II’s royal emblem, which he granted for use to yacht club members starting in 1906. This image shows a standard flag. The triple swallow tail has the two red points and center blue point with a narrow white outline. This image is from wikipedia.

Identifying the flags of countries in all the places we visit keeps me entertained. In these islands not many natives speak English, so using my almost non-existent French keeps me on my toes, and is something I am attempting to improve–therefore, another form of measurement. Food words are somewhat easier than everything else, since I have a moderate familiarity (and love) for French food! Everything outside of food is quite a challenge for me!

Bob measures more things than I do. He’s constantly tracking how much electricity we have made with our solar panels and wind generator, and when we are motoring, how much power the engine made. He weighs that constantly against our usage. We now have a star link gadget for the internet and that is big energy guzzler. We need to make hot water for showers, we need to make that water (!), and we need lights at night and energy to run our gas stove to cook. It all adds up, and Bob spends a lot time measuring the input and output of energy. He says he enjoys living off the grid. I say give me a light switch and instant access to heat and electricity. It’s quite a process to start cooking on Pandora, not to mention taking a shower or any of the many things we want to do daily. I am not an ‘off the grid’ kind of girl.

Here are some scenes from Haute de Terre, in Les Saintes. This was the view from our table at breakfast this morning.

Pandora is out in the distance. She’s light grey and just forward of the bow of the boat in the foreground

How about a close up?

Pandora has a light grey hull, in the distance, just forward of the bow of the boat in the foreground.

This is an idyllic place, and it would be perfect without the wind and the rolling conditions. Photographs are also a measurement of sorts. We take the ones we love, and sometimes we share them. Au revoir for now.

A new venue

As happens every year in January, I have changed venue from my messy studio in Connecticut to a tiny living space and studio aboard our boat Pandora, in the Caribbean. It’s now mid-January, and I have been in Antigua in the West Indies for two weeks.

We arrived by plane on January 30, with one day to move into the historic English Harbour for the annual New Year’s Eve’s fireworks, after first having a memorable French dinner at La Brasserie. English Harbour is where Lord Nelson protected this island’s sugar cane plantations before he was Lord Nelson. He made a name for himself here which catapulted his career. Over the past 60 years Nelson’s Dockyard has been carefully restored and is now a UNESCO site. It’s a dramatic place, and also quite lovely. There is a strong sense of the 18th century here, amidst some modern conveniences, like running water and electricity for the boats on the dock!

Dinner at La Brasserie and the fireworks afterward never disappoint!

But my real story here is how I plan to continue to work while I am living aboard. I often get lonely over the winter because I miss ‘my people,’ those I meet with at groups throughout the year. They are the spinners, weavers, lace makers, and others who work with their hands who inspire me and learn with me. Down here people do plenty of work with their hands. Just keeping their boats running is a huge job, and often there are women who do handwork as well, which includes knitting, crocheting, quilting, embroidery, and other kinds of handwork, and even more pressing work like sail repair and canvas work on their boats. Sadly, in the 11 years we’ve been doing blue water sailing, I have yet to meet another weaver.

This year a friend of mine who is down here for the first time aboard her own boat, with her husband, has started a needlework group that meets twice a week. Now, why didn’t I think of that? Every Tuesday and Thursday we meet for at least two hours. The group changes week by week as some sailors move on to different harbors on different islands, and some new comers join us. It’s been fascinating. We actually have a member who lives here in a house, although she’s also quite an accomplished sailor. I definitely look forward to this creative time with new friends each week. Thank you, Ellen, for making this happen!

The restaurant of the Antigua Yacht Club allows us to use their space to meet. How generous! Our surroundings are amazing so sometimes we just have put down our projects and admire the views.

I have been bringing my tiny Nano 2 e-spinner to some of the meetings. This is my first spinning project on this little gem, and I was concerned about stressing it by filling the bobbin too full or spinning too fast. It can handle anything I’ve done so far, and I think it’s perfect for spinning in small spaces.

The second bobbin is almost full, so Bob will soon be ’inventing’ a lazy Kate for me to hold the bobbins while I ply the the strands of yarn together from each bobbin. I knew I’d forget something! I’m looking forward to seeing how the plied yarn turns out. I believe I know what I’ll do with this yarn when I get access to my looms at home.

This old fashioned hot water bottle cover was the first thing I finished during the first week of January. I won’t need it down here, will I? Still, it was something that caught my eye before we left home, and I enjoyed knitting it! To make the opening I knit one round in waste yarn, only on the front half of the stitches, and then unpicked the waste yarn to separate the front into two pieces for an opening.

As I unpicked the waste yarn I picked up stitches on both the upper and lower sides of the knitting. Then I could knit ribbing on the lower half and ribbing plus a button hole on the upper half.

And here is the finished hot water bottle cover. I just need a button. I will block this on the actual water bottle when I return home.

Yesterday was my birthday, and I woke up to two surprises. One was a decorated main saloon on Pandora! Bob bought these fun decorations in the US before he sailed down here. How thoughtful! It feels like party, although I do not! I awoke on my birthday to some kind of very nasty bug. I hope it’s only food poison, but in the middle of the night for the past two nights I’ve imagined myself dying of ecoli or some other horrible thing. Surely, I’ll be on the mend soon!

And how about these fun knitting inspired presents? I love them! This is a journal in case you’re wondering.

In the meantime, I had a wonderful zoom call with family and a couple of close friends. The joys of keeping in touch with loved ones, from such remote places, is priceless! This year Bob has just installed Star Link. So far, so good! It’s struggling with streaming video so far, and it requires more of our battery power than he realized. Thank heaven for solar, wind, and lithium batteries. I have been trying to catch up on the videos I missed from Giovanna Imperia’s class for the American Kumihimo Society’s recent online event. But I’m not discouraged yet! It’s interesting to hear the small white Star Link disc change direction as Pandora moves to and fro at anchor.

I hope to back to normal soon so I can finish spinning and move on to other projects. I wish you well in your own endeavors in the new year.

Two Weavers of Montserrat

It was a banner day when we got ourselves back to Montserrat and managed to visit the Sea Island Cotton studio. First, it was my birthday. Second, Montserrat is not an easy place to visit, even by ferry as we’d done the week before. It was a miserable sail there, and I suffered a bad case of mal de mer. Predictably, the anchorage had some waves rolling through, and getting on the small dock with our dinghy was less than ideal. But once I stepped ashore the possibility of getting to meet the mother/daughter team of Sea Island Cotton buoyed my enthusiasm!

Look what a charming place it is!

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Hey, Baltimoreans and bird lovers! Take a look at the local oriole.

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Anne Davis, the mother of the weaving duo, started this business in the early 90s, when her studio and home were in Portsmouth, the capital of Montserrat that was destroyed in the eruption. After that eruption, she lost everything and had to relocate and start again. About two-thirds of the inhabitants who lost their homes decided to take advantage of government funding to move to the UK. The island population still has not recovered from this large exodus. Anne never considered leaving the island. Her studio and house are now located in the small village of Salem, which is not particularly close to where tourists arrive by ferry or by their own boats.  You’d have to know about her from guidebooks and get a cab to visit.

Back to the start—Anne learned to weave from a local weaver resident who was originally from Canada. The government provided funding for this Canadian weaver to teach local women to weave. I didn’t get many of those details about that project, but Anne said she is the only student who continued to weave after the course finished. Anne and her daughter Lovena now have two looms: a LeClerc counter balance loom with a weaving width of about 36”, and what looks like an ancient 4-shaft Baby Wolf by Schacht. The identifying herd of sheep that is branded into the castle on the loom is mostly gone.  Perhaps it’s just the tropical climate that makes the loom appear older than it may be! Both looms were empty when I visited. Anne was planning to put a warp on the LeClerc in the next day or so. Lovena weaves on the Baby Wolf.

Only Lovena was in the shop when we arrived. I called ahead, using the phone that the cab driver offered when I told him where I wanted to go.

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The hanging rods had many beach cover-ups, scarves and shawls, all woven in what looks like a gauze structure to me.

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Then there are shelves and shelves of table linens in many different structures. It was hard to choose, but I was not going to leave empty handed. All the table linens are finished with fringe, which is a bit of pet peeve for me. But they were all so beautifully woven, with great selvedges and in beautiful weave structures and colors, I had to overlook the fringe. I’ll deal with hems when the fringes begin to wear out.

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Unfortunately, there is no longer any sea island cotton to be had. The cotton industry died along with many other things after the eruption. Anne and Lovena order cotton yarns from Camilla Valley Yarns in Canada. Wow!—same company I’ve used on numerous occasions! Small world. Lovena didn’t seem to think shipping from Canada took long, but I imagine she has a more easy going outlook than I do! We have exchanged email addresses so I think I will give her links to a few of the larger US weaving suppliers– and maybe some of the not so large vendors that I enjoying using.

Bob surprised us all by inviting Lovena to come out to Pandora for a glass of wine when she closed the shop. She accepted the offer and decided to close early and get her mother to join her. I wasn’t sure what they’d think when they arrived at the harbor in Little Bay and saw how large the waves were coming through the bay. Anne showed some concern and wanted assurances from Bob that the dinghy would hold all of them! I’m impressed that both women braved the unknown to visit us.

The most interesting part of our conversation was when we told both women that we’d been on Montserrat about a week earlier and mentioned our disappointment that our tour guide would not stop for a visit.  Lovena remembered seeing both our faces in a passing van!  She remembered mine from the middle of the van–a woman who looked bugged eyed at her as we passed.  And she remembered Bob in the very back of the van, looking back at her as we passed.  She told her mother she was certain that they were about to get van full of customers….and then they didn’t….

I’ll post a photo of my treasures if I can get them loaded.  Everything about this post has taken ages (speaking of

We’ve definitely started an acquaintance, and I’m looking forward to a budding friendship with both women. What a birthday treat! It doesn’t get any better!

Memory…and Text (or lack of it)….and Textile

These first few days of the new year have been a bit of a roller coaster. As the east coast of the US was plunged into a weather condition called a ‘cyclone bomb,’ Bob and I were enjoying mild tropical weather in Antigua, where we celebrated the new year with fireworks that we watched from the deck of Pandora at midnight, shortly after the rise of the first super moon of the new year. All week the moon rose each night, well after dark, for such a display of lunar magnificence—exactly what the doctor ordered on these long nights—although noticeably shorter than January nights in New England. We’ll have a second full moon at the end of the month. A month with both a super moon and a blue moon—what might that conjure up for me?

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Two days later I saw the moon rise over Bob’s shoulder as we had dinner at a local restaurant in English Harbor.

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And one last photo–the moon rising over the courtyard of Copper and Lumber, in English Harbour.

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I have not made a new year’s resolution since young adulthood, after doing so throughout childhood and early adulthood never gave  me the desired results. That doesn’t mean I don’t think about resolutions at the start of every year, as well as at the beginning of September each year. Those shortened days in late summer/early fall, along with the start of a new academic year, are always a time for me to reevaluate and take stock. So here I am again, at the start of another year, thinking about another set of priorities and ideas that I will refuse to call resolutions.

Being away from home is also a time when I take stock of my situation and think about re-prioritizing. Years ago, I read The Artist’s Way, and writing the morning pages has always worked a strange magic on how I think about work and get things done. For some reason, perhaps that heady mix of being away from home mixed with the exercise itself, morning pages have a stronger effect on my thinking while we are away each winter. It’s working its magic again this winter. In addition to that exercise, I have started reading Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. A dear friend gave it to me for Christmas, and it rekindled something I’ve missed. I started that book many years ago and never got very far, in spite of thinking it was a great tool. I lost track of the book and haven’t seen it since. What a pleasant shock to receive it again. I am enjoying it and have added its exercises to my morning routine. Of course I hope this will lead to good things and good work!

Yesterday several cruisers joined us in taking a day trip by ferry from Antigua to Montserrat. Most of us have been hoping to visit Montserrat for a number of years. It is a difficult place to visit by boat since it has no protected harbors. You need calm winds and no northern swells in order to safely anchor there and get ashore in a dinghy. Even if you get one perfect day, like yesterday, it’s not enough, since you need to spend at least one night there in order to have time to also get ashore to see the sights.

The biggest sight is the volcano, which of course you can see as you sail anywhere in the area. It’s a huge mountain whose summit is always lost in the clouds. Those clouds are usually emissions from the volcano itself—sulphur dioxide which you can smell if you are downwind.

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Our friends and we decided that the weather was not going to be perfectly favorable at any time in the next week or so, and that we should take the ferry across from Antigua for a day trip. In order to get the most out of our day we decided to hire a tour guide. There were eight of us. The cost of this outing was rather steep—just shy of $400 for each couple. We left Pandora at 6:30am and did not return until 8pm. The downside was that out of that 13 ½ hour day, we spent 8 ½ hours either waiting on various immigration and customs lines, or sitting on the ferry. Our tour was only 5 hours out of that long day! Still, we can now say we’ve been there, and the sights were as amazing as we’d always imagined!

Here is the track of the washout that occurred when the heavy rains began — the rains that came down once the fiery ash rose into the colder atmosphere above and caused massive electrical storms.  20 years later, look at that dry bed.  It’s hazy from the gases being emitted.

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The volcano overshadows every vista on the island. It is present, always. The smell of sulphur is always present too; it just depends which direction is downwind. We drove around the outskirts of the devastated capitol city, Plymouth, that was buried under ash from the last several eruptions during the mid-1990s. The islanders have not yet declared where they will rebuild a new capitol city, so it still feels like they live in the midst of this destruction, over 20 years later. This ruined city held most of the population where many people worked in government offices, schools, and the university that were also part of the city. Although very few people died in the eruption, the population has dwindled by 2/3’s of what it had been beforehand. The loss of homes and jobs forced many people to move elsewhere, and the English government subsidized moving people to England if they chose to leave. It was stunning evidence that what humans have achieved over the millennia is so fragile compared to the force of nature.

Last year when we attempted  a plan to visit Montserrat, I read about a small weaving business on the island called Sea Island Cotton. Before the eruption Montserrat was known for having the best quality sea island cotton, which is cotton grown in soil high in volcanic ash. The fibers of this kind of cotton are finer and softer than cotton grown elsewhere. A woman named Anna Davis started a handweaving company, using this special cotton to weave table linens and personal items. She lost her looms and shop when the volcano erupted, but she has started over in the small village of Salem, and her daughter Lovena has joined her in the operation. Last year I wrote about how much I hoped to meet her.

Yesterday, I finally made it to the island, but our tour did not allow for a stop for one person–me!—to indulge in such a wish! At the end of our tour we stopped at the botanical garden and our route took us right by the shop! I was excited to see it and also miserable that I could not get there! There was a set of Sea Island placemats for sale in the gift shop of the botanical gardens. They were summery yellow and white, in a weave structure called Ms and Os. I loved them, but they were finished with a fringe, which is a pet peeve of mine. I looked at the fabric and did not think the edge pattern could suffer being cut off and hemmed. I didn’t want to buy them just because it was the only thing I could find of the mother/daughter weaving duo! But now I certainly regret it…. We passed the shop again on our way back to the ferry terminal, and it was closed. What a missed opportunity!

Yesterday’s trip was a good way to take my mind off  the first anniversary of my mother’s death. I don’t think I will mark this day in the future, but the first anniversary of a death is always a day when you cannot ignore the significance of what happened one year earlier. I could not help thinking about how people live on in our memories, and it is how we keep them with us. Ancient cultures had no other way of keeping the memory of someone alive since they did not have written language to record these things. Memories tended to die when the last person who knew the deceased personally passed on. To extend memory the Greeks began to sing about their memories, and these songs might outlive the last person who actually knew the subject of the song. It certainly worked with the stories and characters in the Illiad and the Odyssey. When I think about these ancient sotries, which I so much enjoyed reading and studying in my youth, I think about the phrase “Sing you home.” It was the only way humans once had of keeping someone alive, and perhaps a way to send them to the Elysian fields.

So the death of my mother has rejuvenated my erratic attempts to design a tapestry to sing my father home, after his death more than six years ago. This is something that has emerged and reemerged during my ‘morning pages.’ Text and textile and memory. Like song, textiles often served as a story telling method before there was written language, as you’ll remember from more recent times when large tapestries were woven that told stories for the many non-readers to view and understand.  Text and textile and memory intertwined.

Earlier this week I warped my little band loom from handyWOman on Etsy. I made a warp based on examples from the book Norwegian Pick Up by Heather Torgenrud.

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I am enjoying weaving onboard! I’m just practicing a bit of plain weave before I attempt some of the pickup patterns that are given in the book. It’s nice to be weaving something relaxing and a bit mindless. At this point I do have to pay attention to the rhythm and movement of using the shuttle and opening the shed since it is so very different from loom controlled weaving, and consistency is vitally important to the look of the band and the selvedges!

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When we are more settled (whenever that might be!) I will turn my attention to the two small tapestries I have onboard. One is getting so old it is embarrassing me! The other is fairly new. I thought about doing a photo record of all the projects I have with me, but I haven’t gotten to drag everything out of their storage places and take the photos yet. And I’m sure it will just annoy me at the end of this winter to have a record of all the things I didn’t accomplish!   But since it’s also the beginning of a new year, when I am writing my morning pages and reading Twyla Tharp’s book, maybe there will be good work flowing off my looms this year. Fingers crossed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antigua, Ho!

My trip to Antigua went smoothly.  Once I arrived at the airport in Baltimore, I connected with another sailing friend, Judie.  We made our connection in Miami, and even enjoyed a couple of leisurely hours in the American Airlines member lounge!  There is a saying among sailors that “nothing goes to weather like a 747.”  It’s certainly true!  While Bob had his easiest passage this year, there was still one long day when he and his crew had to schlog through 20 squalls.  My passage was much shorter and much smoother than Bob’s!  His journey took 9 days, 23 hours.  He had estimated 10 days, so how’s that for accuracy on something as hard to predict as sailing conditions and boat speed?

It is shockingly hot here, but lush from all the rain during hurricane season.  Antigua has had little damage compared to its close neighbor Barbuda whose entire population has now been evacuated.  We spoke with a waitress who is from Dominica who said that the rainforest, the best in the Caribbean, has been flattened.  No one here has gone untouched by this year’s violent weather.

I have made things as cozy and homelike as I can for the moment.  I’ve put out the little woven table mat that I bought from Chris Hammel during the Greater Boston Open Studios a few weeks back.  It is just right for our dining table aboard Pandora.  I hope she knows how much I love it!  Bob got fresh bougainvillea for the table to greet me when I arrived, as well as a vaseful of pale pink oleander.  He knows I love flowers!

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The day before I left home I visited the Hartford Artisans’ annual weaving sale with my friend Jody.  We both bought some great treasures, and I bought this kitchen towel to put onboard to help me remember fall at home….there are no naturally occurring autumn colors in the Caribbean, so this feels a little like New England in November. It’s the towel on the left.

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Our mascot, the little sailing mouse, French Louie (who came from a shop in St. Martin, but is originally from Denmark!), has a new hammock.  My friend Mary made it for me when she was trying out her skills at net making.  She did a fine job, and Louie and we love his new spot for relaxing! Thank you, Mary!  Sadly, we will not be visiting St. Martin this year due to the hurricane damage suffered there.

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Before he left on the long passage, Bob made a lot of entertainment plans for the boats arriving here.  There has been cocktail party one night, and a ceremony by the Antigua and Barbuda Royal Navy Tot Club last night.  We were guests at their daily meeting, where in historic fashion one of the members reads from the logbook various events that took place on this day over the past 700 years or so, then toasts enemies and lost friends (Thursday’s toast-there’s a different one for each day of the week) and the health of the Queen, and THEN we each take a tot of rum, all in ‘one go.’  For men, a tot is an 1/8 of a pint.  That is 1/4 cup of rum, straight, all in one go!  For women guests the tot is half that.  Well, let me tell you I failed at getting it down all in one go, and I decided not to attempt the rest of it.  I gave it to Bob, who was successful at his own full tot.  Sheesh!

Here is Bob in the white shirt at center, thanking the Royal Tot members for their hospitality in hosting us for their daily ceremony. It’s a beautiful setting in the Copper and Lumber historic site that is now an inn and restaurant.

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Tonight, Saturday, Bob has arranged another dinner, the first of three. Tonight we will be having fresh sushi, Caribbean style.  There is a traditional Caribbean dinner coming up on Monday to welcome the rest of the arrivals–boats who had various equipment problems and boats that are simply slower or had weather issues getting here.  One of the restaurants here in Falmouth Harbor is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday for all of us who will not be home for that holiday.  There are plenty of English and Canadians in our sailing group who will join us for this holiday dinner. Other boats in the harbor are flying home port flags from Sweden, Holland, and France.  As the weeks go by there will be more and arrivals from many other places.

For the moment Pandora is in Falmouth Harbor, where we spent a few days on the dock, enjoying the ease of stepping ashore for me, in addition to being plugged into electricity so that I had some air conditioning to help acclimate to this tropical climate!  Now we are off the dock and anchored out in the harbor.  There is plenty of breeze, but it still takes some getting used to!

This lovely water garden is near the entrance to English Harbor, just a short walk from Falmouth.  I would love to add something similar to my own garden next summer. I know I’ll have to settle for something far less interesting than this giant iron pot that might have been in use when Lord Nelson was stationed here.

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My last post had a photo of Pillars Restaurant where we had dinner after my arrival.  Pillars is equally beautiful before the sun goes down.

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Before I left I had three wonderful days with our son and his wife, and our adorable granddaughter Tori.  She is getting cuter and cuter as well as bigger and bigger! I’m so glad we will see her again over Thanksgiving weekend.

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In fact she will be our Princess Tori when she has her christening day on Sunday after Thanksgiving.  And speaking of royalty, we have been hearing for days that Prince Charles will be visiting Antigua today as part of a tour to see the hurricane damage among islands that were once British subjects.  I am keen to see him!  Wish me luck!

 

Changing Gears

Tomorrow at this time I will be in the air heading for Antigua. Hard to believe that time marches on as it does.  For weeks now I’ve been entirely focused on other things–things with deadlines that had to happen before I took off to warmer shores.

First!  The dress fits!  Can you imagine what a relief this is???  I am not an experienced seamstress, and not particularly knowledgeable about how quickly a baby grows during the six weeks since I fitted the muslin to my granddaughter.  I thought she might get taller, but I was counting on her NOT getting wider in the chest.

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She is such a beauty!  –not that I’m partial or anything!  I owe the success of making this dress to my sewing teacher Marie, and to my lace mentors, Mary and Clare.  This dress was beyond my limited sewing skills, so I’m lucky to have found such a great teacher!

At this point I don’t even remember what projects I put onboard Pandora before Bob left to sail south.  I will have fun discovering what’s waiting for me.  I will bring Tori’s Mini Mouse dress to finish during the 10 days we’re there.  I decided not to bring my new band loom on this trip.  I’ll wait to let Bob help me with the logistics of that when we return at the end of December.  We will be in Antigua for only 10 days before we come back for Tori’s christening and to spend the month of December celebrating her 1st birthday and the Christmas holiday.  Our younger son Chris will come out for both the christening and Christmas, so I’m thrilled we will all be together twice in one month.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be arriving here.  Bob says we are one of only a handful of boats on the dock right now.  It won’t last as the super yachts will be arriving everyday now, until the docks are full of mega-yachts.  We’ll move off the dock and out into the breezes in the middle of the harbor after I arrive.  But tomorrow I will move aboard while Pandora is at the dock…

…and we will enjoy dinner together at Pillars on my first evening there.

I imagine I will have a bit of culture shock as I transition from all the conveniences of living on land along with the transition of late fall into tropical weather.  Now I’ll be in permanent summer, while living off the grid.  When I get used to it, it does have its pleasures, but I never get entirely beyond missing home.  One thing I cannot live without these days is good internet!  I need to get photos of my Tori Tiny Super Moon at least once a week!

Women’s Work

Today’s mail held a treasure I’ve been looking forward to seeing!  Last week on Etsy I found a vintage bedsheet with matching bolster pillow that had been embroidered in counted cross stitch and bordered with laddered hemstitch.  The sheet itself is a luxurious, heavy weight French ‘metis,’ which is 65% linen and 35% cotton. According the to vendor, Hanky Heiress, this fabric blend was developed to be an ‘easy-care alternative’ to 100% linen sheets.  Look how beautiful it is!

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Here it is opened up across my bed.  The blue and orange cross stitch look wonderful on my vintage, machine woven, overshot bedspread!  I’m thrilled!

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The seller of this sheet and bolster set believes it’s from the 1960s, and she speculated that that they have never been used.  Now that I’ve seen it firsthand, I agree with her.  Who knows where it originated; by the time I found it, it was residing with an Etsy vendor in Cheshire, England. What a sad thing that it may have spent 50 years in a drawer or closet.  I have been imagining various scenarios in which this might happen, and the only that makes sense to me is that someone made this as a gift for someone else.  Perhaps it was a wedding gift, with the two initials signifying the union of two different names.  I can only imagine that the woman who did this put so much love into this gift.  It is truly a treasure!  And I’d like to think that the woman who received it loved it so much that she was hesitant to actually use it.  Well, I intend to use it, and I intend to enjoy it.  I will always think of this story that I have created to go with it.  I feel it has good potential for being true!

It amazes and inspires me that women (and men too) have been making and embellishing textiles since the dawn of humanity.  There’s a reasonable chance that textiles are older than pottery, as Elizabeth Weyland Barber has speculated.  It seems we are hardwired to surround ourselves with the work of our hands.

In early April I learned that our friend Hank, had arrived in Havana on his boat and would soon try to deliver all the all donations of lace-making materials to the woman I met last year.  I wrote about the lace makers last year while Bob and I were visiting Cuba on our boat. Due to lack of communication in Cuba as well as while sailing offshore, I did not get confirmation of the delivery until mid-May.  What an emotional moment that was for me!  And I understand there were few tears shed by Hank and his wife, along with the women who received this bounty, and even the male interpreter!  I cried myself when I saw the photos and this wonderful video that Hank and Seale made for me.

When Bob and I first hatched this idea of sending materials to Cuba, neither we nor Adriana fully realized the effort involved.  I had been quite saddened to see the poor quality materials women had access to–sewing thread used in multiple plies for embroidery and crochet, and poor quality knitting and crochet yarns that looked like some Russian version of Lily’s “Sugar N Cream” yarn–and only available in one color  —  Ecru!  Mailing gifts is simply not possible, since all mail is opened and usually the contents are ‘re-purposed.’  Even making a face to face delivery had a high degree of risk for confiscation.  Adriana and Hank worked out the best plan they could come up with, and still both of them were worried about being discovered.   It is forbidden in Cuba to have guilds or groups, so the women who meet to do various types of lace together have to be quite careful.  I am so relieved that this venture was a success!

This is now my favorite photo of Adriana, where she looks like a young woman again, full of excitement for the many projects that lay ahead for her and all the other women she tutors in lace techniques. I can almost see the ideas starting to swirl in her head!

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Here is photo of the stash before Bob and I packed it up in four extra-large vacuum seal bags.  In early January, Bob sailed to the British Virgin Islands, where he transferred the stash to Hank’s boat.  In early April, Hank sailed for Cuba as the leader of a rally of sailboats that would spend two weeks in Havana.

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Best of all, here are some photos of Adriana’s lace work that I bought from her last April.  First a Torchon  doily that I gave as a present at my lace group’s annual holiday party.

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And two pieces of Adriana’s tape lace that I kept for myself.

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The work of our hands–across the decades– and across the world.  And this is just the tip of the tip of what is out there in the world.

 

 

Dominica, Our Final Destination

This is the final week of my Caribbean winter.  When we left home in January, we had no idea how many islands we’d get to visit.  As it turns out, it was less than we imagined, but what a trip it’s been.  We have only been through the Lesser Antilles, or Leeward Islands so far. Dominica is our final destination before turning north to return to Antigua in time for my flight home this Sunday.  It is magical place that has entranced both of us.  We will be back again next year.

In the past Dominica had a reputation as a trouble spot for cruisers.  A group of locals realized that Dominica is such a gem with so much to offer tourists, as well as so much of traditional island lifestyles that could support the locals, it was worth making an effort to make this island a safe place to visit.

Bob and I arrived just a day before the weekly Saturday market in Portsmouth.  We learned that almost everyone on the island has a little plot of land, a small ‘farm,’ that may be only a small fraction of an acre, but is bountiful in supplying so many crops and a few chickens.  The market is full of tropical fruits and veggies, like pineapples, bananas, sour sop, Caribbean pumpkins, coconuts, nutmeg, along with plenty of European vegetables like carrots, onions, corn, peppers, eggplant, and even some cold weather veggies like lettuce and cabbage.  Many people also have jobs in tourism or government offices, but they all get up extra early each morning to tend their farms.  It is quite impressive.

Look at all these coconuts!  There were several trucks like this at the market on Saturday morning. We learned that Dominica used to be the biggest exporter of coconut related things until coconut oil took a serious downturn years back during the ‘fat scare.’  Now there are more coconuts than the locals can keep up with, and every time a coconut falls to the ground it germinates into yet another coconut palm.

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The tomatoes and cucumbers here are beyond belief–even better than home grown.  How do they do it?

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This woman was selling flowers along with food.  She would not allow us to pay for the flowers, and when we added a few ECs (Eastern Caribbean coins) to her total she threw in a few bananas.  She is stunning in the traditional madras head covering.

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The next day we hired Faustin Alexis to take on a river tour of the Indian River.  He is an excellent guide, so if you find yourself on Dominica you should ask for him.  All the guides through PAYS (Portsmouth Association of Yacht Security) get training, and in Faustin’s case, he has become very committed to the traditional way of life and wants to return to it himself while also helping others preserve it for future generations.  His enthusiasm for the plants and animals of the rainforest was moving, and it was impressive to see his knowledge of plant life, birds and bird calls, and fish.  He says he’d like to return to living in the rainforest when his children are grown.

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No motors are allowed on the Indian River, so after Faustin picked us all up from our boats (8 adults and 2 toddlers, plus Faustin which made 9 adults) he walked to the front of the skiff and began rowing into the river.  In spite of rowing upstream, he kept up an ongoing conversation, pointing out plants, birds, and bits of traditional lore.

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As we entered the river, another tour boat was exiting.  I think these tours are highly organized so that there are never more than two boats on the river at once.  We could not resist getting a shot of these adorable kids on the other skiff.

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We had our own adorable kids onboard as well.  They belonged to two Dutch families who happened to meet just before their Atlantic crossing in the Canaries.  I hope someday we can share this wonderful experience with our own granddaughter, Tori.

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These amazing trees were all along the river.

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There was lots of bird life that we saw and sometimes only heard.  There were parrots in the upper story, although we could not see them.  But we saw the shore birds feeding along the river’s edge.  Here is a white heron looking at the little crayfish at the water’s edge.

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And a green heron.  There is even a type of duck in Dominica, but I missed the name.

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And there were so many plants that Faustin identified for us that are used for food or medicine or for general health.  He often jumped off the boat to peel some bark from a cinnamon tree, or to pull a branch of bay for us to smell, or a nutmeg laying on the ground, or to show us plants used to make poultices to heal wounds, and the bright magenta leaves of another plant that would be used to wrap as a bandage around the poultice. His knowledge seemed quite encyclopedic.  He told us that the older person on record came from Dominica and was a woman who lived to be 127.  His own great uncle lived to be 115. Faustin showed us which trees are used to build the traditional houses and which trees are prone to termite infestations.

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At the farthest point of the tour upriver we stopped for a bit of a walk, and explored a set of traditional buildings where a couple of men served flavored rum to the tourists and demonstrated how they make it.  Here is a big batch of gooseberries being boiled down to flavor a new batch of run.

4-1-17a 080We all enjoyed the day’s drink offerings which were a coconut rum drink or an ‘ultimate’ rum drink.  I also had a small taste of the medicinal rum that Faustin had– flavored with ginger root, nutmeg, bay leaves (a very pungent type of bay that must not be bay laurel), a few ingredients I’ve now forgotten, and ganja!  What a surprise!

The next day we arranged for Faustin’s nephew Fitzroy to take six of us on a walk through the rainforest up to an impressive waterfall.  There were Carol and Bob from Oasis and Dave and Chisholm from Pantine, along with Bob and me.

Fitzroy had a similar respect for the wonders of Dominica as Faustin has.  He was an excellent guide.  He recognized many bird calls and pointed out to us that the main birdsong we were hearing was that of parrots.  They were all around us!  After straining and straining to see them in the canopy of leaves, two parrots took flight and shocked all of us with their bright flash of color.  No one got a photograph.

This is the forest we walked through.  Sometimes there were openings to the sky as here, and sometimes we were in deep shade with the canopy of the trees about 150 feet above the ground.

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Looking up into the upper story where plants get the most light, we could see many orchids and bromeliads growing on the tree trunks, as well as huge vines.

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In the deep shade there was plenty of plant life too.

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There were places with great vistas–

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And places so deep in the understory that it drew our focus into the details.

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There are even wild amaryllis in the sunnier parts of the rainforest.

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Bob and I were particularly on the lookout to see orchids and tree ferns, and there were plenty of both.  There are traditional uses for tree ferns in Dominican culture.  What we know it best for is a planting material for epiphytic orchids.  Fitzroy was surprised to learn that is all we used it for back home.

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Tree ferns are very ancient plants, older than humans.

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There were plenty of orchids too.  Bob was thrilled to find a few brassavola nodosa in bloom on his previous walk, and plenty that would soon be blooming.  We saw lots of orchids on our walk to the waterfall, but none in bloom.  There were some very tiny orchids and some very large terrestial orchids.

The goal of our walk through the rainforest was a large waterfall.  The path we followed crossed the river several times, the final time involved swinging across the river on a large vine, Tarzan style.  Here is Bob swinging through the air.

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And we’re on our way to the waterfall along the relatively dry river.  The rainy season will come in another couple of months. That is our guide Fitzroy in the distance.

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You can see how high it is based on how small our fellow travelers are!

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Along the edges of the forest there are houses and small farms, places where the locals have burned a bit of the rainforest to create a small plot for growing their own food.  Here are lots of banana trees, coconut palms, and plots of vegetables.  This plot which was labor intensive to start is for a type of yam vine.   Each tuber was planted into its own mound of soil.

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And the locals are growing coffee plants and cocoa plants.  This is a branch of unripe coffee beans.

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–and a branch of rather ripe cocoa seeds.  Inside these pods are strands of thick cocoa.  I bought some in the market and they have a deep chocolate aroma.

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At the end of the day Fitzroy asked me what I use all the plants for that I grow.  I was left a bit tongue tied by that.  Use?  I grow a few herbs and vegetables, but mostly I grow plants for the sheer enjoyment of it.  That is all I could tell him.  He was surprised by this.  What a very different culture we were experiencing here on Dominica.  This is my lesson from visiting this place.  Perhaps I can figure out how to be a bit more conscious how I can be more self sustaining.

Yesterday we began the trek northward so I can catch my flight home on Sunday from Antigua.  We have returned to Terre de Haut in the Saintes and treated ourselves to a wonderful dinner out last night at Bon Vivre.  We were happily surprised when Judie and Phil from Rum Runner walked into the restaurant shortly after we sat down.  We shared a table together, and tonight we will have them aboard Pandora for a last dinner before we each head our separate ways.

 

 

 

Textiles in the Caribbean

Time to get back on track a bit and talk about textiles!  It IS the driving force of my visits to any location, so I’m always on the lookout for any kind of textile handwork.  And I have not been disappointed this winter!

Some of the places that are well known for handwork have not fallen in our path this winter.  They will be on my list for future visits, but I’ll still mention them here.  Perhaps the most intriguing place is the island of Saba, which lies off the coast of St. Martin.  It is one of the many volcanic islands that make up the Lesser Antilles, and may be the mmost dramatic.

It does not have a good harbor, so sailors must carefully choose a weather window for visiting.  That did not happen for Bob and me this year, although we could have taken a day trip by ferry to visit.  This island has underwater volcanic mountains with coral reefs, so it is also known as an excellent dive site.

In our sailing guidebook (Cruising Guide to the Leeward Islands) I read that Saba is only 5 square miles but rises to 3,000 feet in that small area.  It was settled by Dutch, Scottish, and English farmers, along with their African slaves.  Over time they all worked side by side to eek out a living on this steep and rugged island.  These settlers became fisherman and farmers and boat builders.

Until the 1940s, all ships came into Ladder Bay, on a dangerous shore that provides little shelter from ocean swells, where access to land was via an 800-step track that was cut into the rock.  Really!  I’m almost afraid to visit and be found to be the biggest cream puff the Sabans may ever encounter!

In the 1950s, some Dutch engineers determined that the island was too challenging to build roads, so one elderly local took the initiative to study road building via correspondence class and shortly after, with his knowledge, the Sabans hand-built their road, finished in 1958. I guess they don’t easily take ‘no’ for an answer.  The women have become skilled in needle lace which they originally learned from lace makers in Venezuela.  Since living on Saba is very isolated, over time their designs have taken on a specific nature that makes it truly theirs.

I found some images online and links to information about lace making on Saba, but most of them will not open since we have slow internet here.

The inactive volcano on Saba is named Mount Scenery, and I bet it is quite a scenic place!  There is a museum on island that I look forward to visiting someday. You can read about the museum here and their collection of lace here.  And, lucky for me, since it is a Dutch museum, I bet the information will be in English!–a nice change from the French islands where English is not an option.

I should mention that although Iles des Saintes and Marie Galante (the islands just south of Guadeloupe) were discovered by Columbus, they have been French since very shortly after they were colonized.  Until recently, the fisherman here used boats like their fishing forbears from Brittany used.  I am sorry I did not get to see a fleet of those boats. When we arrived on Terre de Haute a few days back, I took some photos of the textiles inside the church in the center of town.

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From the back of the church seeing this altar cloth drew me right in.

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and from the back entrance I thought the pulpit drape might be filet crochet.  I’m glad I took a closer look because it is needle lace.  I have no idea how Saban needle lace differs from other needle laces, such as this, and hopefully I’ll learn a bit more about that on future visits.

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Along the road to the church there are many shops, and one of them is a clothing and accessory shop, called Maogony where everything is dyed blue.  The two owners, Annie and Chakib, use three colors of blue dye to create garments that reflect the colors of the Caribbean waters that lie right outside their store.  Annie and I talked a bit, and I tried my best to understand her excellent English.

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When she described her process, using blues she called cobalt, indigo and turquoise I began to think she and her partner might be using Pro Chem MX dyes.  She said they set the colors in the sun and then finish with a hot mangle before washing them. Their mangle is against the back wall in this photo. They work with garments made from cotton, silk and linen.

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Just east of Iles des Saintes is an island called Marie Galante.  According to legend, Columbus had already used the names of all the saints that he cared about, so had to resort to some other source for a name for this island. Marie Galante was the name of one of his ships.  There is an indigo dyer on Marie Galante, and I believe she uses the natural plant dye for her work.  I know nothing about her, but am certainly hoping that I’ll meet her next year!  She has a website and a facebook page called Maison de l’Indigo.

Another island we did not get to visit this year is Montserrat, which still has an active volcano on it, Soufriere Hills–the only active volcano in the Leeward Islands, and perhaps in the Caribbean. The original settlers were Irish, and today Montserrat is known as the ‘other emerald isle.’

I have heard there is a mother/daughter weaving team here who weave with sea island cotton. I found Sophie Bufton’s description about her visit to the weavers. This photo is from Bufton’s site.

What I learned from this limited and torturously slow internet search is that the sea island cotton on Montserrat had the longest fibers of any cotton in the world, and that was due to the volcanic soil on this island.  The cotton plants and the spinning factory were destroyed in 1995, the first eruption of Soufriere Hills which destroyed the capitol city of Plymouth where the spinning mill for the cotton was located. This eruption not only destroyed the cotton crop, but also two-thirds of the island.  In the early 2000s, the dome of the volcano collapsed, after a few more years it seemed that the volcano had become inactive.  In 2006, there began to be activity, and another eruption in 2008, has put that theory to rest.    Yet it appears that the weavers are still working with sea island cotton.  I’ll write more when I can get better access to the information.

The internet can be such a treasure trove.  I found this stamp with an image of a spinning ginny and a young Queen Elizabeth.

Madras fabric, originally from India, is considered the national dress of several of the islands in this area — Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dominica.  You can buy almost any kind of souvenir in madras, including plastic key chains and serving trays.  Our granddaughter Tori will be getting a madras sun hat in a couple of weeks.

This part of the world holds a fair amount of geographical confusion for me.  We are in the Caribbean at large, but the particular area we have traversed this winter is known by several labels:  the West Indies, the Lesser Antilles, the Leeward Islands (as opposed to the Windward Islands).  It’s a lot to comprehend, and I just keep looking at the charts to orient myself.  We are in the southeastern part of Caribbean island chain, just before the chain heads due south ending at Trinidad, near Venezuela.  These islands are known as the West Indies because there were slaves brought here from India, and that culture has lived on in West Indian traditions such as food and music.  There is plenty of African cultural influence which melded with the India culture to create something entirely new.  There are so many labels that include ‘west’ and ‘east,’ and also also ‘leeward’ and ‘windward’–how can I keep up??

A few days in Iles de Saintes

We sailed to the archipelago of the Saintes that are just south of Gaudeloupe, about five days ago and have spent time in a couple of different anchorages among these idyllic islands.   It’s no lie that the farther south you go the more pristine the islands become!  For the past several days we’ve been on a mooring off this charming village on the island of Terre de Haut.

The town is nestled into the shoreline with mountains rising up all around it.

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There are several markets and boulangeries, so we’ve been able to buy French cheeses and olives and plenty of baguettes!  There are wonderful restaurants as well.  As with most of the villages we’ve visited, the church tower dominates the skyline.

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Typical island structures are brightly painted homes with a bit of gingerbread trim.

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3-26-17a 030 Just above the village is one of the highest points of the island, so naturally that was a good choice for a fort.  It is Forte Napoleon and it has been very well preserved and houses a museum.  Yesterday we rented a golf cart with fellow cruisers Corey and Dale aboard Hi Flite, to visit the fort and tour the rest of this small island.

Here is the dry moat that used to protect the outer walls of the fortress. The inner castle is dated 1867.

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The museum that is housed in the inner castle has very little information on the fortress itself, and focuses on island history instead.  I would like to know a lot more about this fortress so I’ll look into it when I can.  Meanwhile, although the building is barely more than 150 years old, the techniques used to build this impressive structure are much older.

The grounds within the keep.

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I can’t resist windows and doorways and views from both–

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–especially this view through a narrow gun slit that looks across the way into another narrow window.

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Here are some of the interior rooms now used for displays.  This is the hearth in the kitchen.

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The grounds were beautifully kept, and there is now a project underway to create a botanical garden of ancient native plants.  Here is one flowering tree.

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There were plenty of bromeliads and epiphyte orchids with large bulbs and very long flower spikes.  Bob thinks they are encyclias, but we could not find any nursery personnel to answer our questions.

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The views from the fortress covered most of the shoreline of Terre de Haut.  It would have been easy to defend this island from this vantage point.  Here we are looking down into the mooring field where Pandora sits off the village of Bourg des Saintes.

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The rest of the day we drove along all the roads we could find through island.  Terre de Haut is ringed with beautiful beaches. Here is our chariot of the day.

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We had lunch on a vibrantly colored pink and green patio cafe overlooking this beach.

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We stopped along the road to take this panorama. You can click on it to ‘biggify.’

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We ended the day with a collection of driftwood and sponges from the beaches for me, which I hope will help my friend Mary create some beach themed centerpieces for our upcoming bobbin lace retreat.  Corey got a great cache of sea glass, and we both picked up a few shells and sea urchins.  We returned tired and happy, and got together for sundowners with Carol and Bob from Oasis, who left this morning to sail to Dominica. We hope to follow them tomorrow.  It was a very full day of sightseeing that left us wanting to know more about the history of this place, but well sated in beach combing and good food.