Where's Pete

I got a phone call from Melt about three weeks ago: "Hey Pete, want to drive down to California and fly for a couple weeks?" "Yes!" said I. I was supposed to be heading back to Trinidad but what the hell, I couldn't say no.

So I packed up my glider and gear and drove the 250km down Vancouver Island to Victoria to meet Melt. He's got a neat Toyota 4WD van with racks for his hang glider, a mattress in the back and curtains to make it a good little camper - perfect.

We caught the ferry to Vancouver and headed south over the next few days, stopping in rest stops for sleep. Or pub parking lots - a few beers, a few games of pool and off to kip in the van - whose going to question an extra vehicle in a pub car park overnight!

Anyway, all this was fine except for a huge weather front that followed us all the way to LA. We kept stopping at neat places to fly and the weather was shit. Got quite depressing, all we could do was keep heading south. We decided to visit some friends and then head for Marshall in San Bernadino. There we did get to fly - not great flights but at least we flew. Stayed there a few days. One day it blew quite hard accross the landing zone and we were able to soar the edge of the LZ and land in the carpark. Then turn around, brake the wing and let it pull us back up onto the LZ. Really good practice - I put this to good use later in the tripp.

Then we drove south to Lake Elsinore. That's an interesting site. Quite a crazy bunch of flyers down there and quite a tricky site to fly. The winds were a bit odd at the time and it's difficult to pick out the lee side of the mountain. Pilots have misjudged this and come to grief on the hillside. This was not quite the same as other sites I had flown so I didn't fly the first day, just watched and learned what I could by watching the others fly. Melt's more experienced than me and his hang glider loves a steep launch and is'nt worried by winds that worry a paraglider so he took off and had a good flight.

We camped on the LZ under a huge old oak tree. Cooked up some steaks and sank a few beers, enjoying the view over the lights of the town and the lake below. An owl hooted from the branches above, Melt and I looked at one another in supprise.

The next day we got some good flights in. I got high over the "E" launch, up to about 4500 feet - about two grand above launch I think - not sure of the height of the take off there. Two flights and both high - gotta like that!

Next day we had to start heading home so we drove up to Monterey and booked into to a campsite at Marina beach. Had a good meal in the pub across the road and hit the sack. Next day we eventually got permission to fly - problematic because the canadian flying association is more lax on getting us the right paperwork to prove our rating to the US sites. Anyway, thanks to a very helpful ranger we got the go ahead.

Miles and miles of great big dunes and a a 15-20 knot breeze. I wanted to watch other paragliders take off but there was only one other and he was in the air. Melt set up and took off. I set up and tried but I as soon as I set the wing up it would blow into a mess. The laminar flow on the dune played havoc with me. Eventually I decided if I couldn't handle my wing on the ground, I shouldn't be in the air. After a while, Jack, the para in the air, landed and he showed me how to weight my wing with sand to keep it on the ground and he anchored me as I pulled the wing up. I was ten feet in the air before I turned around from my reverse launch - it was that quick! Once in the air it was a doddle - such smooth air and what a view! I flew up and down the beach, not going far as the breeze was dropping. I got too low, started to get sucked into a gully and had to do a quick and rather ungraceful landing. I walked out onto the beach and set my wing up on the front of the dune, inflated it, flew it up the face and took off again - that was fun! After an hour in the air, the sun set and the wind shifted so I landed and we packed up and hit the road north.

We left Monterey at 6 pm and got back to Victoria at about 3 pm the next day - driving two hours on, two off, all the way up the west coast. What a trip! 5500km, two weeks and less than three hours in the air - but it was fun!

Now I'm back in my little cabin in the woods catching up on emails and planning my next move. Went into town yesterday ....... bought a unicycle !!!!

I've been away so much this summer that it seems I've been back a long time. Only ten days! Mum and dad flew back to England after there annual ten week holiday here. I've been working on projects around the property.

Weather is very changeable but fall is definitely upon us. Soon the rains will come and I will start thinking about heading south to Rocinante.

The weather wasn't the best for flying on this trip, I stayed with a friend in Golden, BC,for a week and got some flights in there. Graham and Jenny and twins headed back west about this time. Awesome site Golden, launch is at 6370 feet and weather was moving through quickly. Evenings were spent playing pool and drinking fine ale with Stephen. Spent quite a few hours with a local hanglider pilot, Serge, sitting in his car on the top of the mountain, watching the weather systems come down the valley. Thanx Serge for all those rides up the hill!

Then I headed back to the Okanagan where my friend Melt joined me for a week with his hang glider. Weather still pretty poor we had to grab what flights we could and make do with more ale and pool.

About September 10th we headed back to Vancouver Island. The three week trip netted me twenty-one flights with five hours airtime.

Finally I fulfilled my dreams of flying! Read about my paragliding adventures on the paragliding page I put together.

Well, we cruised the caribbean from November and left the boat in Trinidad on May 5th, returning to the cabin in Canada for the summer. The last three weeks we've been working on getting running water and waste water systems in place and getting a small garden going. I also started building a cute little outhouse nearby. I bought a Toyota 4x4 pickup to replace my old Nissan.

My major goal for the summer is to fulfill a dream of flying - I'm learning to paraglide. I bought a paraglider from a friend in the UK and I am in London now, for two weeks, and will carry it back to Canada with me. Then I will take a full training course to get me started safely. I dream of taking the glider back to the islands and using it down there too.

Tomorrow we fly out, on our way back to Rocinante in Grenada. I have done some updating to the web page. More when we get there. Right now we're in the cabin, madly packing our things at the last minute, wondering where we'll fit it all.

In a nutshell, we've spent the summer in Canada, building the cabin, now we're going back to the boat for six months or so. Back here to Vancouver island when the weather gets better ... about June probably!

So much for regular updates! My laptop, a Umax Pentium 233 was giving me so much trouble I pretty much gave up on it. The floppy disk drive started losing data - I'd write a bunch of stuff and take it ashore to a cafe and find half missing, got pretty fed up with that and had to give up using it for internet stuff. It was really slow too, probably needed Windows 98 reloading but I really didn't want to spend the time doing that.

Just a quick note. We're in Antigua, arrived about three days ago from Guadeloupe. Had a fantastic sail with two other boats, Dream Catcher and Dragonfly. Must write more about the trip through the mangrove river through the middle of Guadeloupe and the passage through the reefs on the North side. Quite an adventure.
Heading for Barbuda via a sandy cove or two, leaving today.
Bye for now, Pete

We're in the Iles des Saintes, part of Guadeloupe, enjoying these lovely french islands. There is a wonderfully kind family here, running a boutique called Maogany. Yves is very friendly to us sailors and has kindly given us time on his internet connection to make these changes to my pages. I can now upload changes to this page quickly whenever I have access. Maybe I will add the old news to the bottom of the document to give a good history of events.

As you know, I left the boat in Bequia, just south of St. Vincent, in mid July, under the care of a local chap I know. Well, Carolyn and I rejoined the boat in mid November and after a few weeks working on the boat and hanging out in the sun, we started to head north. Here's a map though not very accurate.

Having spent my childhood in the lower Caribbean I had heard much of the Northern Islands but had never ventured much north of St. Lucia. The vague plan is to go north as far as St. Martin, as after that the island chain curves around to the west, making the return a bit uncomfortable against wind and current. This will give us St Vincent, St Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Barbuda, St Kitts, Nevis, Anguilla and lots of smaller islands to explore, more than enough to keep us busy for a while. Maybe Monsteratt if it's not too hot.

We're not making very rapid progress, we're in Martinique, spent xmas and new year's here. As wonderful as life on the high seas may be, an amazing amount of time is spent working on the boat, we have been painting and fixing and fiddling about for more time than I care to admit to. One of the engines valves was seized on our return and it took me some time to pluck up the courage to restore the thirty year old lump of rust back into a working engine. Having two of us aboard meant we had to get the fore cabin into shape as alone I had simply bedded down on the settee and used the fore cabin for storage. So now we have a nice nest up in the bow, converted into a big vee shaped bed, with gleaming paint work on the inside of the hull and nice new bedding, what a difference from the damp dark place it was.

Here in Martinique we just bought a second 100 amp battery to replace the dead one of the two ships batteries. As it was with only one good battery we couldn't run the laptop - the voltage dropped too low to run the pentium. I'm sitting in the saloon at the new table I made, drinking coffee and tapping this in. I've got my Multimeter connected to the supply and can see the laptop taking about 1.5 to 2 amps - means we can use it pretty much as much as we like with the three solar panels arranged on the cabin top supplying more power than it is using - when the sun is out anyway.

We expected to leave Fort de France today and head up the coast but the morning brought rain and lots of wind so we will stay put and try again tomorrow. Heading for Dominica we will make short hops up the coast of Martinique. Only seven miles from here is Case Pilot, a small fishing village, we'll stop there for the night. Next and final stop on Martinique is St Pierre. You may have heard of the volcano Mount Pele which erupted in 1902, burying the whole town in ash and poisonous gas. The entire town of 30,000 was wiped out save for one man in the dungeon of the local jail. Now rebuilt though much smaller, we'll have a look around. Then we'll make the crossing to Dominica.

Dominica is a much poorer and wilder island, exbritish rather than the french of Martinique to the south and Guadeloupe to the north. We have stocked up on lots of good french food and cheap wine and look forward to wilder places.

People have asked me if I get bored or lack challenge out here chasing my dreams. But the satisfaction of getting the engine running, the pleasure of fresh varnish, a gleaming coat of paint replacing moldy damp, an electrical problem beaten, new friends, they all make it worthwhile.

Most exciting to me right now is something I didn't expect. I have always envied those with a musical outlet, it seemed beyond me to learn, there was no music other than recorded in my family in our life on the sea, away from normal schooling. Somehow I felt there was something wrong with me that I couldn't sing or play a tune, somehow I hurt a little as I listened to others play.

Carolyn is a musician with a good knowledge of music theory and her instrument, the clarinet as well as flutes, penny whistles a bit of piano and stuff. She brought her penny whistles with her and before long I was drawn to pick one up. To my surprise I am not subhuman after all and with a little perseverance I have already learned about ten simple songs. Really it's something special to me, to be able to learn to take part in the world of music even in this simple way. I feel a whole new world is opening up before me. Thanks to Carolyn!

The other worthwhile thing is to finally put my schoolboy french to use, here in the french islands. It's great fun and after all my years in Eastern Europe where I spoke none of the language, its great to be able to get by in french, however badly.

It's about time I brought my friends up to date on what I've been up to lately!

I left my little boat, "Chou" in Bequia in mid July and flew back to the UK. I bought a return ticket taking me back to Chou four months later on November 13th. I flew to England and spent a couple weeks there visiting my sister and her family and various friends around London until flying to Vancouver on another ticket on about July 28th. I fly back to London on October 29th and have a couple weeks before my flight back to the boat.

As most of you will remember, I have land on Vancouver Island, next to my brother, Graham. He is working on their new house and looking after their 20 month old twin girls while Jenny, his wife works. I have spent some time helping him with the house and planning my own on my property, currently jungle, next door. Graham and Jenny have a 27foot sailboat too but haven't been able to use it much this summer, so I spent some time on it.

In September I have been out on a couple of trips into the wilderness. I went on a 12 day kayak trip to the West Coast of Vancouver Island with two friends, Barb and Carolyn. Ocean kayaking is wonderfully peaceful and close to nature and you can carry lots of good food and drink with you. We ate like royalty and sipped good wine.

A few days after returning from the kayak trip I went off on a quick 4 day canoe trip with my friend Melt. A lake trip of about 50 km on a circular route with about 10 km of portages. It was a bit of a tough trip, carrying gear and canoe long distances but we wanted one that would be a good workout. The scenery was lovely and we camped on little islands in the middle of the lakes, ate more good food and enjoyed the tranquility before pleasant exhaustion sent us to our tents.

Carolyn and I seem to have fallen for each other and last week when I got back from canoeing I went over to Vancouver to stay with her. We just got back from 4 days at her parents summer place on the Sunshine coast, a forty minute ferry ride away. We swam in the ocean every morning, cold but refreshing and went for a lovely walk to a waterfall in the hills. The weather here has been perfect since I arrived in July, sun, sun, sun. El Nino, thank you!

Carolyn is joining my on the boat for the winter as soon as she finishes up her work here - should be joining me by the end of November.

I just bought myself a new laptop and printer, having been in the industry for so long, it hurts to lay out hard cash for what I used to take for granted at work! Here on Vancouver island I shopped around a little and bought a Umax 233mmx with 32Mb, 4.0gb drive, TFT screen, 56k modem, Windows 98 and 20x CD-Rom. And a new Canon BJC-50 portable printer - a real cute piece of kit, weighs 2 pounds and has built in battery, color print, color scanner and infrared - I can now print from my Psion or laptop with no cables at all. It's a great setup.

I'm getting really frustrated at not being able to touch type. This winter I must take a tutor CD with me to learn to type properly.

Plans now? Well, back to the boat for the winter to explore more of the islands. I really haven't decided yet, probably we will revisit the Grenadines and maybe Trinidad ( Carnival) to show Carolyn. Then I have a vague idea to head north to see Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Antigua, and so on - I've never been there and though I hear it is crowded and expensive I would like to find out for my self. Perhaps in my little boat we will find room! Other option is to explore Venezuela but that seems like hassle with visas, medical shots and possible crime. We'll see.

Then lay the boat up and back to Vancouver Island next spring. I would REALLY like to get a cabin built next year so am thinking of coming back much earlier, like the end of March, to get started. I am getting desperate for my own place to unpack into and have

as a base. I'm staying next door with Graham and Jenny in their partly finished house, generously, they have lent me one of their two finished bedrooms. I plan to have my land as a base and the boat as the winter adventure. With a small boat and no house on the land I feel a bit chaotic. Eventually, if I don't buy a bigger boat and disappear off across the Pacific, I'll sell the boat, spend summers on the land and use the coldest part of the winter to explore the southern states and Mexico by camper - with a few toys on top - mountain bikes, surfboards, etc.

Well, that's about it for the moment, now that I've got a general update done, I must sit down and reply to all the emails you've sent me. Thanks for keeping in touch, it's wonderful to hear from you all.