On the 5th November the results of the US Presidential election confirmed a landslide victory for Ronald Reagan. That same day I visited a doctor in Road Town and it was confirmed that I was pregnant and the baby due the first week in April. Jon was perturbed that this would curtail our sailing plans.
I tried to reassure him that it would be a positive addition to our lives. Jethro would be four years old in December and it was time he had a sibling. I was fit and healthy and this was not my first child – I knew what to expect. Living on board with a baby would be like having a huge floating cradle. Jethro was delighted. He started to tuck his Kermit the frog inside his teeshirt out of sympathy.
New Top Mast
Our main mast, mizzen and top mast were pulled out by the crane at Nanny Cay and we returned to our old slip. The masts and booms were all lined up in cradles. All except the top mast were quite sound fortunately. They merely needed to be sanded and re-varnished. This we did whilst we waited for Mike the surfer to fashion a new top mast. We found Norwegian Pine which had come as deck cargo on a superb brigantine tall ship we had seen in the USVI called Lindo. If this was good enough for a replacement spar for them it was good enough for us.
Scuba Diving during pregnancy?
Meanwhile I wanted to continue with my Scuba diving, but I was unsure how the pressure would affect the the unborn child. Blue Water Divers did some research and so did I. We concluded I could still join in the dives but should not go deeper than 30 feet to prevent possible damage to the embryo’s hearing. My dive buddy Jeremy had to partner up with someone else for the deeper locations. He was most sympathetic, especially since Julia was also pregnant with their second child.
She and I continued our swimming pool sessions. Jethro was by then learning new strokes. There was an American lady called Annie who gave swimming lessons. She taught Jethro front crawl by getting him to wear her waterproof watch and taking a breath every time the watch came out of the water.
Big expansion underway at Nanny Cay
Every alternate day we added another coat of varnish to the spars. There was pandemonium at Nanny Cay when a freighter carrying 180 Walcon docks from the Southampton Boat Show anchored off the entrance. These good-as-new docks were to be installed in the inner harbour. All boats had to be banished from the anchorage and all yachts in the existing slips must move off by 25th November. We got another coat of varnish on our spars before motoring round to Fort Burt.
We went ashore to have supper with Jeremy and Julia in their first floor flat near The Pub. I was granted the luxury of a proper bath while the dads entertained the boys and drank beer on the balcony overlooking Road Harbour. One Sunday we took them over to Virgin Gorda Baths for the day. Julia refused to be prized off the poop deck all day. She would not go ashore in the dinghy to explore the amazing boulders and paddle around. James was sick on the lifebelt. Perhaps it was her pregnancy or the fear of the sea for swimming, but they did not join us for many more day sails!
Still waiting for surfing Mike to make up the new top mast and not allowed back into Nanny Cay with dock reconstruction happening, we motored Camelot round West End and on to the North Shore of Tortola. There was too much swell to enter Cane Garden Bay or drop anchor of Sandy Cay. We motor sailed into Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke. Watching charter boats trying to anchor at sunset was great entertainment. We had supper on the aft deck listening to Foxy entertaining his guests with his unique calypsos.
Sandy Cay
The following day when the swells had died away slightly we anchored off Sandy Cay and went ashore to explore this idyllic desert island. There was a visitor’s trail through the inland wooded area of tropical plants. Here we found a salt pond, mangroves and a rocky shore on the northern side. Turtles were known to nest on these beaches. This 14 acre island was the private property of Laurance S. Rockefeller and he was a frequent visitor himself. So this was yet another example of the foresight of of this philanthropist. He stipulated that no buildings could be erected and that it must be maintained as a wildlife sanctuary. We enjoyed the inland trail path but were eaten alive by mosquitos and sandflies.
Launching the dinghy to return to our dismasted boat was quite challenging with the crashing waves but we managed and set off for the anchorage in Cane Garden Bay in the late afternoon. It was deeply satisfying to drop the hook of our own floating home in this beautiful bay we had admired so often from the shore.
Back at Nanny Cay Jon had a showdown with Mike who had still not made a start on the topmast. He had too many excuses: other work, not feeling well and so on but we knew the real reason was the swells had been so good for surfing he did not feel like doing carpentry. Jon shamed him into returning the deposit we had already paid and set about the job himself. He accomplished the six and half inch mortise and tenon joint with his auger drill and chisels. Then we just needed to add few coats of varnish to be ready for all the masts to be re-stepped.
By the first week in December both masts were installed with a good luck coin under each one. Jon had made new mast boot covers from the same brown Sunbrella material he had used for the Bimini. He went on to use more of that fabric to make a mainsail cover and one for the mizzen with turnbuckle closures.
Booker Line crates arrived safely
The tea chests had been delivered very promptly by Booker Line so Jon now had good working facilities on board. We had pictures on the bulkhead walls , lots of books and our favourite music on cassettes. We could blast Cat Stevens or Vivaldi through the timbers. The galley was enhanced with my favourite gadgets. I made a 15 foot sign to fix on the lifelines which read ‘SAIL REPAIRS’.
Seeing him at work had already generated orders. Jon could set up the little Read Sewing Machine on the cockpit table and use the teak decks and push pins to spread canvas.
An old Fireball crew and good friend, Ossie Stewart, arrived for a holiday and helped Jon adjust all the shrouds and rigging and bend the sails back onto the sparkling spars. It was amusing to see them handling the huge wooden blocks and sheaves on this rig compared to the lightweight stainless steel ones I was familiar with watching them use on a Fireball. The camaraderie and knowledgable banter between Ossie and Jon resulted in roars of laughter as they tensioned the huge turnbuckles and re threaded the halyards.
Leaving them to play with the rigging, I took Jethro into Road Town to the Public Health Clinic on Old Main Street where I had my first anti-natal check up. Then we went to the path lab at Peebles Hospital and he held my hand whilst I had a blood sample taken. I asked him,
“would you like the new baby to be a brother or a sister?”
“I’d like a baby donkey,” he replied seriously.
Peter Island
Sailing with Ossie over to Peter Island became a sail trimming lesson. Used to getting the most out of dinghy rigs, he and Jon would constantly play the mizzen and mainsheets to coax Camelot into optimum performance. It was decided we should add tell-tails to the self-tacking jib. We explored Peter Island beaches. On one beach was washed up a huge tree trunk of what we identified as mahogany. It was about 40 feet long, and riddled with huge beetle holes. Apparently that was damage caused by teredo worms. A salutary lesson in keeping the anti fouling in good shape was learned.
Norman Island
Island hopping, along we went the next day to Norman Island. There was a huge bay on Norman Island called The Bight. This was more than 60 feet deep so we nudged closer to the deserted shore and dropped the anchor in 30 feet of water. There were no buildings on shore at that time but a lot of other boats at anchor. White Squall II from Village Cay was there with a man overboard flag indicating they had divers down.
Norman Island was reputedly the island that Robert Louis Stevenson used for his ‘Treasure Island ‘ . Indeed when you compare the treasure map in that book with Norman Island there are a lot of similarities. Treasure certainly had been recovered from caves near the mouth, and there was historically a lot of piracy in these parts in the 17th and 18th centuries.
As we needed to update our 30 day visas again we cleared out of BVI at West End. With the Easterly Trade Winds back to normal we had a wonderful downwind run towards the capital of St Thomas and anchored in Christmas Cove off Great Saint James overnight. We heard on the BBC world service that John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York.