travel – Page 6

Time

April 30, 2023 | Leave a Comment

Time is so fluid, sometimes so insidious. Some days time moves so slowly and those slow days pile up while I’m thinking about what I’ll do with time when…. when I get home, when spring comes, when I finish this project…

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” Yes, but as someone else said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I’m a much better pilot now that I’ve got so many decades under my belt, and so little time left! This was better said by Machiavelli: “The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.” I’ve got time on my mind because of the slow winter when I kept dreaming of things I’d do when I returned home. Now I’m here and time is flying at lightning speed. How I want to slow it down.

The TWiNE exhibit ends today. It has gotten a lot of traffic over the month that it has been on view at the Barnes Gallery in Leverett, Massachusetts. I gallery-sat last weekend when about 12 people visited over the afternoon.

My three small pieces in this exhibit: Clockwise from Left “Blown Off Course,” “Entangled,” and “Mind the Risks.”

I was particularly thrilled to have some of my friends from the Connecticut guild stop by. It’s a commitment to drive to Leverett and these friends made a day of it. Lucky me that they chose the day when I’d be there. I hadn’t seen these friend since I left last fall to spend the winter living aboard Pandora. Behind us are three stunning tapestries by Minna Rothman. The photo was taken by my dearest, oldest friend who also came to visit the gallery that day. On top of the five friends, there were seven or eight other visitors. Someone did a great job promoting this exhibit!

I had planned to jump right into so many things when I returned home. High on the list is finishing the paper placemats that I left behind last fall. I had carefully retrieved the weft out of the first placemat when I inadvertently ran out of weft. I need to dye it in order to keep going, but I cannot find my indigo kit anywhere. This happens every time I reorganize things in my studio! I have no idea where it can be, and so the project sits waiting on my smaller loom.

To keep busy while I forage for that indigo kit I’ve been doing some sashiko embroidery. This is a project I made more than 25 years ago, when I knew nothing about sashiko and there were no Japanese fabrics or traditional sashiko threads available. I just used some denim fabric, probably from JoAnn’s, and I have no idea where I got the thread. It is thinner than the sashiko threads I can find now, but at least this thread had a wonderful matte finish so it looks quite traditional. Somehow I found these traidtional patterns and transferred them to the fabric before I began embroidering. I have no idea how I did this or how I found about sashiko back then. I made this bag to hold my marudai, and I made a kumihimo draw string for the bag.

Fast forward 25+ years and I have returned to this technique. Now there are books galore on the subject and even online shops that carry kits. What a world! Last fall I took an afternoon online class through Tatter on making this small cross body bag. The teachers were two Japanese sisters from California, Marico and Toshie Chigyo. My stitches are far worse than what I did a quarter century ago. I wish I’d had the option of a cream thread rather than this blinding white. I wish I understood how to transfer the pattern to the fabric. I used a bone tool to impress the fabric, but the impression was not sharp enough for my aging eyes. One of my weaving mentors (Sr. Bianca from the Weaving Center in Tarrytown, NY) gave me this sage advice. She noted that when I did the large bag for my marudai I was a beginner who worked slowly and carefully. I should have had that attitude in returning to this technique. I am still a beginner and should have worked slowly and carefully yet again. She says it looks like I worked this piece as if I knew more than I really do! It’s so true. I also think the pattern is out of proportion to the size of the bag. I should have reduced the size of the sashiko pattern. Next time. And I will take it slowly (speaking of time!). And... I realize I can make my own flat woven braids on my taka dai for future little bags. What a thrill!

Here is a kit I bought from Snuggly Monkey. In highsight, I how know that I prefer sashiko done on indigo cloth with light thread. This kit has a printed design that will disappear when the fabric is soaked in water. It felt like cheating, but I realized I needed some practice. This seemed like an easy way to get that. I have no idea what to do with this little project. It looks like a pillow cover, but I don’t want that! I am considering making it the bib of an apron. I’ll have to back it with much sturdier fabric for an apron–maybe blue mid weight linen.

And the spring gardens are a great distraction to me right now. Spring always passes much too quickly. If only winter could be shorter to allow for a longer spring!

Last fall Bob repotted our collection of amaryllis into three different pots. It looks like he got all the reds together, in spite of not knowing which bulbs were red vs. all the other colors we have.

This morning my newest amaryllis bulbs are about to bloom. These are two bulbs labeled “Chico” and “Wild Amazon,” the only bulbs we have with labels. I don’t know which one this is. I love the varieties that are less hybridized and showy. These look quite exotic with flowers that are a mix of green and burgundy. Tomorrow it should be fully open.

And so time marches on…sometimes far too fast for me, and sometimes drudgingly slowly. It’s Sunday morning, and shortly I will drive back to Massachusetts to the Barnes Gallery for a business meeting of the TWiNE group and then the job of taking down the exhibit. Tuesday I leave for Japan. Yes! Japan! I’m going on a textile tour! I registered for this last November and the time has dragged on and on waiting for the the moment to leave! Now it’s just days away.

This tour is being led by Tom Knisely and Sara Bixler. Will I get a chance to tell him of my paper placemat saga? I hope so! We will be visiting a sakiori workshop, kasuri dyeworks, a workshop where kimono fabrics are woven, and various other sites. When we are not visiting textile workshops we’ll visit gardens. It’s the perfect tour for me and a weaving friend who is also a weaver and a gardener. Last week I discovered that two other good weaving friends will be on this tour! What an amazing time we will have, and especially by being together! I haven’t seen these friends since I moved to Connecticut, 11 years ago. I hope time will pass slowly during May. I want to savor every moment of it.

Retrospect

March 31, 2023 | 1 Comment

Today is the last day of March, and even in the Caribbean it is going out like a lion. Tomorrow I will start the new month (fully spring!) by flying home to New England. I’ve been counting down the days for the entire month of March. I’m now at that final number: one day to departure.

Twice a year my life takes a sharp turn from living in a house surrounded by my looms, my spinning wheels, my taka dai, my dyepots, while surrounded by good friends and family, to living on a boat with very little space, no looms aside from a copper pipe loom, a newly acquired tiny e-spinner, knitting and embroidery, and a few friends that are not often in the same anchorage I am. I take stock. Each year in winter I take stock of the things that consumed my time at home, and now at the beginning of spring I take stock of what I managed to accomplished while living on a boat. It’s my semi-annual retrospective of my goals and my priorities.

Meanwhile, the first things I’ll do on my return are thrilling events I’ve been thinking about all winter. Tomorrow my guild’s biennial exhibition will open. I won’t be there, and I don’t have anything in that show, but I am looking forward to seeing all the works when I visit early in the coming week. I will meet my oldest friend there. For several years she had a sculpture studio at this location, the Farmington Valley Arts Center. It feels like a different lifetime when I used to visit her there. I would drive from NJ, where I lived at the time. She had a son, and I had two sons, so getting together was a rather complicated endeavor at that time in our lives, but it was important to both of us to spend time together. I expect we will reminisce about that other life we had decades ago while also seeing the works of many of my dear weaving friends.

The postcard for the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut biennial exhibition

On April 2nd, the day after I return home, I’ll drive up to Leverett, Massachusetts, to see an exhibit of tapestries by the Tapestry Weavers in New England (TWiNE) that will be on display for the month of April. I’m excited that less than 24 hours after getting home I’ll be reconnecting with good friends at this event! Due to the generosity of one of my friends, who offered to hold my pieces for the entire winter, I have three pieces in this show.

Looking back is always a bittersweet endeavor, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that. When I left home in December I had one more placemat to weave on my Japanese paper weft project. The biggest hurdle about that is the weft for that last placemat had to be unwoven from a previous previous placemat that was not the color I wanted. I will take that weft and re-dye in an indigo vat that I need to make. I am excited and intimidated about dyeing the re-used paper yarn to get the color of blue I want.

Neither my Caribbean tapestry or this sweater got finished this winter, but they both made progress. That’s all I can say, and I must make peace with progress instead of completion. As this sweater grew it got hotter and hotter to hold it in my lap while knitting, which is the main reason I set it aside.

When it became clear that I would not finish my Caribbean tapestry or the sweater above, I dug out an embroidery I started more than a year ago. I bought this design because of the sheep, no surprise! And that’s all I had finished when I put it away. I have enjoyed the few days that I spent embroidering the poinsettias and snowflakes. Wouldn’t it be nice to have it finished for the holidays at the end of this year? Not holding my breath.

In an effort to look on the bright side of my not-finished Caribbean tapestry, I plan to take it to the TWiNE show on April 22, to demonstrate weaving while I sit the gallery on that date. I’m glad I found a bright side to this disappointment.

The only thing I actually finished this winter was the hot water bottle cover I made from Kate Davies recent design group called “All Over,” a collection of stranded knitted designs. I think there will be some chilly nights at home ahead when I can use it! (Also I finished spinning about 100 grams of merino/silk hand dyed fiber…but I’m not counting that because finishing a spinning project is only the beginning of whatever project the yarn is meant to become!)

Along the way of making projects and fulfilling (or not fulfilling) goals, there were plenty of wonderful distractions, like knitting underway while listening to an audio book, which was only calm enough to do one time, when we sailed down the western coast of Guadeloupe.

Drying laundry while Bob writes a blogpost.

Lunch with friends overlooking one of the pitons in St. Lucia.

So many tropical flowers and animals

Months of beautiful views

And one of my favorite visuals: windows and shutters

Look at the view out the window at the back of the room with the open doors.

This is the kitchen at Fort Napolean on Terre de Haute, Les Saintes–another great room with a stunning window and the stark reality of getting water in the 19th century fort.

And speaking of kitchens, I often enjoyed making dinners onboard. I made a version of Isabella’s quiche (from La Brasserie in English Harbour, Antigua). It’s pretty close to hers–incredibly deep and creamy.

I was overjoyed to find mushrooms–all the way from France!–in Fort de France, Martinique. That called for chicken supremes in mustard/cream sauce with mushrooms. It was a good evening!

It was a winter full of lemons and limes. Everything is better with a little lemon or lime, and fresh herbs which grow in abundance here.

In the balance of things accomplished and things experienced, I guess there was a healthy dose of each. I would have loved more time to work with my hands and experiment with some ideas that are burning a hole in my brain! —but— it’s hard to give up the amazing experiences that kept me from working. The weather did not cooperate much this year. There was too much wind which made travel difficult and working at anchor very difficult. I live on motion sick meds every time we sail to a new location, and that takes a day or so to get out of my system. I am not patient waiting to feel better. On the bright side I listened to some wonderful books. At the top of that list would be Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton.

In retrospect I wish I had more work to show for my time here, and less days feeling the drag of mal de mer. But on the bright side, and thank heaven there is always a bright side, I am filled with ideas to pursue at home and some great memories of time spent with sailing friends and Bob.

Scenes

February 21, 2023 | Leave a Comment

It’s been a challenging couple of weeks in this part of the Caribbean, with lots of wind and lots of rocking and rolling. I have not been able to weave or knit, and sometimes not even able to read! Luckily I have a long queue of audio books that I often neglect. I was able to close my eyes and listen to a relatively new book, Stolen, recently published in English. It’s written by Swedish author Ann-Helen Staestadius and translated into English by Rachel Wilson Broyles. When I went to find the link I saw that it will soon be a Netflix film. It was good on a number of levels and it helped me pass the time. I am not a patient person when it comes to waiting out bad weather in order to get some work done! Basically, I am not patient when waiting for anything! It’s odd because whenever I demonstrate any kind of fiber work, people always say that they’d never have the patience to do any of that. Well, there are plenty of things I have no patience for doing! Waiting is just one of them!

My mood has gotten darker as each day passed with no way to work on any of the projects I brought onboard this year. Poor Bob. For two days, in Ste. Pierre, the rolling was so violent that we had to lock our cabinets and drawers so that the things inside, bashing against the cabinets doors in one direction, then bashing against the hull, and back again, would not come flying out of the cabinets. We’ve had that happen on passage in the past. One of our drawers once came flying out of its cabinet in the galley, sending forks and spoons and knives flying. We had not noticed that drawer when locking down everything before a passage. These are things we prepare for when we are sailing. This is the first time we’ve had to batten down our cabinets while at anchor.

But, on the bright side, we’ve had some beautiful sunsets. In the Caribbean it’s a tradition to blow your conch shell right after the sun falls below the horizon. Don’t have one? That’s a priority when you spend time in this part of the world. Bob got his during our first winter in the Bahamas. It’s nice tenor conch. Smaller conchs have higher pitches; bigger conchs have a lower pitch.

Since color on different monitors is so varied, I wonder if the green flash will look green on other devices than my own! I hope some of you will weigh in on what you see.

Back in Dominica, we took a tour of parts of the island with our friends from sailing vessels Kalunamoo and Roxy. It was an interesting day. I have always enjoyed taking photos of loved ones taking photos, as you may have noticed over the years. Here is Lynn from Roxy taking a photo in the foreground, as I took the same photo. Maureen and Bill from Kalunamoo are in the front, followed by Bob and Mark (from Roxy.) We’ve been cruising friends for more than a decade at this point.

This is the coast line we visited on the Atlantic side of Dominica.

The hard, smooth coastline here is hardened clay.

There is a rather interesting stairway carved into the rock. I can’t imagine it’s natural, but what do I know? Not much! Mark could not resist climbing down these steps. I was holding my breath too tightly to take a photo, and he got back up safely.

After Dominica we sailed to Ste. Pierre, and somehow managed to spend two nights there, which is where we had the worst rolling we’ve ever experienced. We decided to escape to Fort de France for the beginning of Carnival, but the anchorage was too crowded for us, and it was pretty roll-y there as well. We tried to anchor six times, and in the process bent our stainless steel spade anchor. That will cost a pretty penny to replace, and until we get to Le Marin to do that we have to be pretty careful about anchoring. So, we headed across the bay to Trois Islet. It’s been windy, but the three islands and shallow waters have lowered the waves to a chop. This is the village of Trois Islet–quite charming. This is the Saturday open air market in village square.

When Bob writes his next post there will be some stunning photos of the Martinique Yolo regatta which took place here in Trois Islet, as well as great photos of Carnival in Fort de France. We took the ferry there for Sunday’s festivities. Today is the last day of Carnival, but I’m happy to stay aboard. Our friends from Kalunamoo and Roxy have gone to see the last day’s parade.

And on Pandora, small things are happening. Our little unidentified succulent plant is making babies on the edges of its leaves. Can you see them on one of the inner leaves, to the right of center? Quite fascinating!

And here is my almost non-existent progress on my “Amphora” sweater from Purl Soho. It’s only grown about 3″ in length on the body, below the sleeve stitches that are waiting on spare needles. Slow and steady….can you see the swirls that create the increasing shape of the yoke? That’s what drew me to knit this design! You might have to ‘bigify’ this image to see the swirls.

When we get to Ste. Anne, the harbor should be reliably calm. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, we may stop at Anse d’Arlet for a night or two. I hope it will be calmer than where we’ve been the past two weeks.

News from home: the wonderful volunteers in TWiNE (Tapestry Weavers in New England) have been hard at work toward an exhibition of members’ works that will open on April 1, the day I fly home. I hope to get there shortly after the opening! If you’re in the area around Leverett, Massachusetts, I hope you will visit this exhibit.

So…although there hasn’t been a lot work accomplished here over the past weeks, there have been quite a few good scenes. Hopefully there can both from now on into March.

Working Remotely in Remote Places

February 13, 2023 | Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago Rebecca Mezoff’s email newsletter mentioned that since she traditionally works at home, when she works ‘remotely’ it means that she has traveled somewhere. It’s the first time that I realized I work remotely every winter. Many people think Bob and I are on vacation when he sails south for the winter, but it’s really our ‘other’ home. We live our every day lives, full of chores and responsibilities, from our 2nd home, which happens to float. I always bring ‘work’ with me, and am often disappointed that I’m missing some vital color for a tapestry, or a particular size of knitting needle, or some other item that derails for my plans for work. At my first home I can quickly go online and replace almost anything I’m missing within days. That is never the case here. This is a view from Shirley Fort overlooking Portsmouth Harbor. Pandora is out there!

We are in Dominica now, and have been moored in Portsmouth for the past four days. Bob’s sailing group has arranged for an impressive number of outings on this island, known as ‘the nature island.’ Most of Dominica is rain forest. Most of the hikes here involve hiring a guide. Perhaps the most intensive hike on this island is called the ‘hike to the boiling lakes.’ This hike, which I have not done and Bob regrets not doing, takes people to the edge of the volcanic caldera where the sulfur lakes are literally boiling. It’s not easy getting up to those heights, and this week’s trip was particularly hard for the hikers because it rained most of each day in heavy downpours, which made the paths and rocks quite slippery in addition to being quite steep. The hikers walked along the steep rock walls of three caldera that looked down into the boiling lakes.

From Wikipedia: The Boiling Lake is a flooded fumarole located in Morne Trois Pitons National Park, a World Heritage Site on the island of Dominica. The lake, located 6.5 miles (10.5 km) east of Dominica’s capital Roseau, is filled with bubbling greyish-blue water that is usually enveloped in a cloud of vapour. The Boiling Lake is approximately 200 to 250 feet (60 to 75 m) across and is the second-largest hot lake in the world after Frying Pan Lake, located in Waimangu Valley near Rotorua, New Zealand.

In the rainforest people clear small plots to grow all kinds of veg and fruit, and the rest of the West Indies is indebted to Dominica when the supply boat arrives in the other islands carrying produce grown here. They even grown coffee here in the higher elevations. The melons and bananas are unbelievable! I’d forgotten what non-GMO avocados taste like, and these bring back memories of the first avocados I ever tried, as a teenager, years before Haas avocados had been developed. I’m a big fan of the real ones now. And, as it happens, there are numerous varieties of avocados. We’re about to try some that are quite tiny. The one thing I cannot find–and don’t even seem to know how to ask for–is cilantro! There is an herb grown on some of the islands called “chadon beni” that’s pronounced more like “shadow benny.” It does not look anything like cilantro, but it tastes like it! It roots easily, so I was able to grow my own the only year I found some to buy.

I know that some cultures call cilantro ‘coriander,’ which is what I call the seeds of the cilantro plants. At the local Saturday market here in Portsmouth, I tried asking for cilantro, coriander, and ‘shadow benny,’ but I got no hits. I even had an image of chadon beni open on my phone for clarification. The only response I got was an offer of some flat leafed parsley! Oh well. I can’t make the guacamole of my dreams, but I am enjoying eating avocados in other ways, including the way I first ate them in junior high school, with canned tuna salad stuffed into the place where the pit was removed in the big avocados! And when you root one of these avocado plants you will get fruit on your tree, unlike Haas, which are sterile. I am making do quite well with a healthy, rooted Caribbean version of basil which is growing like it’s on steroids.

The Saturday Market in Portsmouth, Dominica

The entire Caribbean is a colorful world, as Bob captured in the fishing fleet on the dock.

At the moment I am licking my emotional wounds that I have a major set back on my Caribbean ‘postcard’ tapestry. I don’t have any white or cream weft yarn to weave the iconic church in Deshaies, Guadeloupe. I have other options, you know, necessity being the mother of all mislaid plans. I can weave a different scene from Guadeloupe to eliminate this church entirely. I’m feeling a bit negative about that since drawing the rough cartoon was quite an effort for me, with no option to resize some of my images with a printer, or even stopping into a Staples store for help. In the end I have four pieces of paper glued together to create my cartoon, and it has angel fish and turtles swimming around the postcard of the church. I just continue ‘to sleep on’ the idea of tossing out this idea.

So I’ve turned to my current sweater in progress, a design by Ainur Berkimbayeva for Purl Soho called “Amphora Pullover.” It is a top/down sweater with fun increases through the neck and shoulders that create swirls. Quite attractive on the model! Now that I have put the sleeve stitches on holders and am about to continue on the body only, I am going to test some ideas of continuing some of the swirls to create a swing style body. I can never just knit a design as instructed. Patterns are jumping off places for adding our creativity to a garment! I hope my idea works.

The “Amphora Pullover” by Ainur Berkimbeyeva for Purl Soho.

Looks like I have an opportunity to start my own small business here in Dominica!

During the past week I have been challenged by an exceptional idea that is currently keeping me awake at night, with all kinds of possibilities running wild through my mind. If you don’t know me, you may not know that I have recently begun teaching tapestry at a non-profit organization in Connecticut that is near and dear to my heart. The organization is Hartford Artisans, and their mission statement is what captured my attention: The Hartford Artisans Weaving Center is committed to being a welcoming, accessible community that actively works to create a kinder and more equitable world for everyone. Our diverse community unites people from different backgrounds and experiences to learn from each other and uncover their own unique skills. We challenge assumptions about disabilities and aging and show that everyone deserves an opportunity for creative expression. We recognize we have a responsibility not only to open our doors wider, but also to understand and work to change the racial and gender inequities that hurt us all.

The director of this organization recently got a letter from a blind weaver in the Southwest, asking if there were any audio sources for learning to weave tapestry. I have done a preliminary search and found nothing. Yet there is one weaver out there who wants to do this. There is, or was, a weaver at the Artisan Center who wove a tapestry that hangs on display in the hallway. I don’t know whether that weaver is still with the Center, but if so, I’d like to her/him. The piece is more texturally interesting and is not based on imagery. It has striking merits. As we all know, there is no one way to describe or view tapestry, and no one correct way to achieve an idea. While I was thinking through ideas, Bob googled textured tape to see if there is a tape that has bumps or some kind of measurement device done in texture rather than in visual marks. By Jove! There is! I thought about how to describe the process of making an Archie Brennan copper pipe loom without any visuals, how to describe the seine twine I’d recommend for the first few warps, and at some point, how to describe various techniques. I thought about describing the warping process in words only. Are you now thinking too? If so, I hope you’ll get in touch. Creativity should be accessible to all people, and it falls to some of us to make this happen. In the meantime, I’m going to proceed, hopefully talking to some of the visually impaired artisans about what kind of instructions make the most sense to them. I am hopeful.

I’m looking forward to getting back to my ‘real’ home, my first home, where I can be more connected and less remote! I’m halfway there: six weeks to go! And it will be almost time to garden again.

species cosmos in bloom against a wall in Portsmouth, Dominica

Weights and Measures Onboard

February 4, 2023 | Leave a Comment

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.