January 1 , 2001

Hi gang
Long time no hear from us for most of you. After our Pocketmail was stolen in New York, we had a heck of a time finding everyone's email address again. This message is coming to you via an internet mailing list service. We now have so many people on our list, Pocketmail just can,t do it. You still send
messages to us at our old address. Just to bring you up to date, after Puerto Rico and Bermuda, we did Opsail 2000 in NYC, although we didn,t do much, we like to watch. We then trundled up the Hudson for a hectic 2 months hauled out at Kingston Marina. Got a pile of work done, then headed to the Chesapeake for the Great Chesapeake Schooner Race. A lot of fun but no wind.

We,ve been in Beaufort N.C. for three weeks now as the fronts go through, waiting for a decent weather window. We had decided to go to Jamaica via the Bahamas instead of Bermuda and the Virgins when Carol fell and sprained her ankle. She,s well on the mend now. Had a great Christmas on board, little Norfolk Island pine xmas tree, lights, turkey, eggnog and Sarah's fantastic Christmas cake. Life could be worse.

Another front coming through tomorrow night. After that we,ll head for the Bahamas, either direct offshore, via coastal hops or straight down the Intracoastal Waterway depending on weather.

We will keep in touch and we love hearing from you folks but please do us a favour because our Pocketmail is limited in what it can receive and phone time to use it outside the USA is VERY expensive, US$3-4 a minute in the islands:

-Do not use the "reply" function, it means we have to spend big bucks just to read the boring junk we sent to you

-Don,t send any graphics or any message over 4000 characters. We can,t receive them, they just get chopped off and lost.

-PLEASE check our listing in your email address list and be sure that you have selected the "text only" option for us. If you haven't, we get every message twice and therefore it costs us twice as much to receive.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and we wish each one of you a very happy New Year.

Love, John and Carol ,Schooner Taio

Hi gang
at this minute we,re out at sea just crossing the 31st parallel. after much delay for gales and extreme cold, we left beaufort n.c. jan 10. north carolina was in a real deep freeze (for them). one morning we had ice all around the boat and could hear it sliding past the hull as the tide changed. brrr.

as usual, we were welcomed to sea by our buddies the dolphins. had four little play sessions with them that afternoon and night. a fabulous moonrise at sea, an orange gold moon with stripes caused by low level cloud. looked exactly like those satellite photos of jupiter. becalmed at midnight. fabulous exploding shooting star, a brilliant green-blue. ships all around.

january 11, 2001

entered the gulf stream this morning. lightish winds but still weirdly lumpy. a beautiful sunny day. the wind comes up and we,re banging along at 7 1/2 knots.

january 12, 2001
rain. a gray day. as of 5pm last night, perfect paul the computer voice giving the offshore marine forecasts, forecast light winds for the foreseeable future. by 9 am this morning he,d changed his mind (chip?) and was issuing gale warnings. 40 knots northeast in the gulf stream and highest right where we were. nasty. we,ve never had much luck with paul,s forecasts. the u.s. govt could save a few hundred million by ditching the satellites and computers and buying paul a dartboard. managed to slide out the eastern wall of the stream and began to batten down for the much advertised gale. blew like stink for 3 or 4 hours, old taio under foresail alone chugging at 4 knots in the right direction, nigel the windvane steering like a prince. carol and i happy as clams. and then the damn wind dies. this was supposed to go on for 48 hours. totally, utterly becalmed. very ominous feeling. big black squalls all around. we are not pleased. pp strikes again. then mucho lightning, two complete clockings of the wind.

january 13, 2001
all is redeemed. today we had a whale alongside spouting. wind starts getting serious so we reef some sails. this is the wind we were supposed to have last night. really powerful gusts. i look back and poor old nigel is leaning forward drunkenly. his bottom two brackets have snapped right through. god they look like they,re heavy enough but beware metal fatigue. the cycling loads on his rudder are pretty large. nigel being nigel, he keeps steering even with two broken legs. fun time. blowing like a son of a gun, rolling like crazy and have to get nigel lashed up before the bits still holding him to the boat let go and we lose him entirely. get that done
and heave to for the night. we are right in a steamer lane, dark as hell, really blowing so we turn on our new toy, radar. it,s like magic. a video game with us in the middle. we stand watch all night as always, 4 hours on, 4 hours off, but the radar has the ability to sound an alarm if a ship comes within 16 miles. and holy mackerel, it works, darn alarm goes off numerous times. we watch the ships approach and all is cool but one guy keeps coming right at us so i call him on vhf and let him know we,re there just in case we didn,t show up on his radar in all the watery chaos. but he knew we were there, wasn,t planning on running us down.

morning dawns bright, windy and wavy. before getting underway, get nigel fully secured with two comealongs and miscellaneous bits of line. a bit too frantic here to use him in his weakened condition so we get taio steering herself but maybe even a challenged nigel will be able to steer in more sedate conditions.

logus interruptus

conditions difficult for the rest of the trip to jamaica where we arrived last saturday. we will get a hotmail account going here and fill you in on the rest of the trip soon. but we are safe and sound in port antonio.

settled down in jamaica now. we go to negril in three days for elke,s wedding.

to continue the taio tales: after nigel broke things got very tedious, although taio steered herself almost all the time. we either had wind dead on the nose, calms or were hove to every day until we got the the windward passage between haiti and cuba. it was a slow, tiring, frustrating voyage.

there were some spectacular moments though. we had two bluefin whales swimming with us for about half an hour. very curious and playful, coming within feet of the boat. also a shark cruising around but he got bored quickly and left.

south of 30 degrees latitude the weather was unusually heavy, storm force winds several days and many days of gale force although we managed to miss the worst of it. one night we had a front go through associated with a storm centre. continous lightning, only a second or two, often less, between strikes, for three or four hours, very heavy winds, the suface of the sea seething with heavy rain. we were hove to so just retired to the cabin, kept a watch on radar and took turns sleeping. for some weird reason i had my best sleep of the whole trip that night. managed to contact a czech tanker that night which sent a message to the folks back home saying we were alright.

because of the head winds, we had to fight every inch of the way against wind, waves and current but had a few gorgeous starry night sails. finally made it over to the passage between the turks and caicos islands and mayaguana and got a favourable current down to the windward passage. went through the passage on a dark and stormy night, ships all around, the powerful lighthouse on cape maisi, cuba, beaming far put to sea.

once through the passage the wind really started to pick up, from the right direction at last and we blasted down to jamaica under foresail alone. the seas were getting pretty big and carol got semi-pooped, the cockpit filling with water and carol, safely clipped on, washed across the cockpit.learned later that our friends had been under bare poles.

taio is a really wonderful sea boat. we never had a moment,s concern. she is just so strong and solid.

we were a little nervous about entering port antonio jamaica with very large seas running right down the channel, the sea going from thousands of feet deep to fifty in a quarter mile or so. the waves were breaking very dramatically on the lava cliffs, but went in under foresail with engine just ticking over, no problem, mon.

pt antonio very non-touristy. made good friends with other cruisers here. good local market. beautiful 60 acre island just off the town once owned by erroll flynn. very little hassling. we,re happy, content. looking forward to seeing kids and friends in negril soon.

hope you guys are all well. love to all.

john and carol
taio

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

adios cuba
hi gang

we left cienfuegos 2 days ago and are now in cayo largo. beautiful clear water, white beaches. tomorrow we clear out of cuba, go to spend a last night out in the cayos and then it,s across the yucatan channel to isla la mujeres, mexico to see some pyramids.

our aussie friends drew and mary are making the trip with us on a big catamaran they crew on. the race is on: taio vs a 57' cat.

we have really enjoyed our time in cuba, lovely, friendly people and a very different country than many might imagine. we,re tired of the overwhelming bureacratic hoops we have to jump through all the time, even though the officials are exceedingly friendly and gracious. we hope to learn more spanish, hope the bureaucratic stuff is reduced and would then like to return.

have met some great characters and had some cool experiences. will fill you in on everything when we,re back in the land of 800 numbers.

love to all, john and carol, schooner taio socialista

June 25, 2001

Hi gang
Exciting winter but ludicrous phone rates and lousy service kept us off the air. We are, in fact, alive and well in Beaufort, N.C. After a lovely Nov and Dec up a scenic creek near Oriental, N.C., punctuated by a hair raising Miata trip north to visit family and friends for U.S. Thanksgiving, we headed out of Beaufort, N.C. en route to Jamaica with a very favourable forecast. Welcomed to sea as usual by our dolphin buddies. Naturally the forecast was out to lunch and right at the eastern edge of the Gulf Stream came gale warnings. From then on it was slogging to windward, heaving to, storm centres, very violent fronts, basically 15 days of drudgery to the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, relieved by encounters with whales, dolphins, even a shark and friendly contact with a Czech tanker with Russian crew who reported our position to the folks back home.

In the Windward Passage we finally got a fair wind, 25-30 on the stern and blasted straight for Jamaica. Made landfall in Port Antonio, a very unspoiled, real Jamaican town with a gorgeous harbour. Formerly a playground for the rich and famous, now just a funky place with very little tourism. We flew to Negril for my daughter Elke,s marriage to the lovely and talented Adrian. All my kids were there plus friends. Spent a week together in delightful surroundings. The wedding on the beach and reception were absolutely perfect. A truly magical week and we were very sad to leave everyone afterwards. Such is the life.....

We ended up staying in Port Antonio for six weeks, made great friends among the Jamaicans and yachties. Met some very eccentric and memorable characters. Took a couple of trips into the mountains which are spectacularly beautiful and must be very close to Paradise. Jamaica is a fabulously beautiful country with considerable natural resources, similar geographically and climatically to Cuba and, being theoretically democratic-capitalist, makes an interesting comparison, often not flattering, with Cuba.

Finally found the energy to leave and sailed to Santiago, Cuba,s 2nd biggest city. Had a fabulous dolphin encounter when nearing Cuba with 25-30 small ones, about 3-4'. Saw the first one about 200 yards away. He leaped real high as though signalling his buddies and the whole bunch rushed over and played with us for half an hour. Two bad boys wouldn,t leave with the rest and stuck around longer. Mucho paperwork on arrival but the officials were very friendly and welcoming. Almost no police or military presence in Cuba, little overt propaganda in Santiago. Great old buildings, sadly many in disrepair. People all looked very healthy and fit, much more so than North Americans. Education, health and dental care is excellent and people in general very well informed about the world. A stark contrast to Jamaica. Consumer goods and food beyond the basics are available but on a limited basis and you need US$ which the majority of Cubans don,t have. There is surprisingly what can only be described as a pretty large middle class. There is cafe life, lots of clubs and bars, filled with Cubans, not tourists. In general the people seem very lively, colourful and are fantastically friendly. Support for the arts, especially music, is on a huge scale.
More to follow...
John & Carol, Taio

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