In Carlisle Bay, Barbados several of the boats at anchor belonged to CA members who had independently crossed the Atlantic in December 2009 and stopped in Barbados to visit the island and break their voyage before going on to the main Caribbean island chain.
The morning dawned in true Caribbean style, gentle balmy breeze, beautiful blue sky, slight swell from the North, sea temperature about 25° C and air temperature about 29° C. It was December and so lovely that three of the CA boat crews decided to go on a bus ride across the island to the Atlantic side to see how the wind and the breakers were behaving in contrast to our calmer western side. The yachts were Moonshadow Star, Spruce and Diatonic.
Having arrived at the Atlantic side beach and struggled into the local bar for a cooling beer, we wandered along the beach separately, but ended up sitting together, idly throwing stones at the sea and looking at the jetsam Sue (Spruce) had collected for her art work. The idle chat turned to discussion about the joys of being out of Britain for the winter and the fact that the CA didn’t have a section outside Europe to cater for sailors like us. Andy took a photo of us all on the beach and we jokingly told him to send a copy to ‘Cruising’, to demonstrate that there is life beyond Europe and the edges of the Atlantic. (See article in July Cruising, it is amazing how long photos take to cross the Atlantic.)
From that early discussion, Sandy and I kept deliberatng whether a CA section could be run via e mail from onboard a yacht, whilst retaining a sane crew.Having decided it was too difficult; Sandy volunteered just to co-ordinate the section leaving the main work to be done by the CA Office and other member volunteers, but we soon realised that it needed a hands on approach and ended up by accepting the job we had created.
The enthusiasm and response received from members after Jill Trew promulgated the initial set up of the BW section has been tremendous. We do hope that the section will go from strength to strength and meet most of your expectations.
Our Objectives
- Dissemination of information between Section members will be one of the key objectives, using email Q and A either on Blue Water Net or between individuals, sharing useful web site addresses including members own blogs etc.
- Newsletters will be posted on the webpage with a short email sent out informing members that it is available to download at their convenience.
- Members to arrange rendezvous with other boats sailing in their area – don’t forget two CA boats meeting constitutes a party!
- To visit current HLRs and to recruit new ones where possible and to arrange reciprocal agreements and discounts between CA and other Yacht Clubs.
- To try to recruit new members.