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C A R I B B E A N On-line C MPASS MARCH 2015 NO. 234 The Caribbean’s Monthly Look at Sea & Shore 20TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! GRENADA SAILING WEEK 2015 See story on page 20 TIM WRIGHT / WWW.PHOTOACTION.COM MARCH 2015 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 2 KEN DYER The Caribbean’s Monthly Look at Sea & Shore www.caribbeancompass.com MARCH 2015 • NUMBER 234 TIM WRIGHT Happy Birthday! 20 Years of Compass ................ 4 SALLY ERDLE DEPARTMENTS Info & Updates ......................8 The Caribbean Sky ...............40 Business Briefs .......................10 Cooking with Cruisers ..........43 Regatta News........................ 14 Readers’ Forum ..................... 4 Destinations ........................... 22 What’s on my Mind .............. 47 Meridian Passage .................33 Calendar of Events ...............48 Cartoons ................................ 36 Caribbean Market Place .....49 Look Out For… ......................37 Classified Ads ....................... 53 A World ARC First Salty’s Beat ............................38 Advertisers’ Index .................54 First stop, Colombia ............. 16 PETER MARSHALL Caribbean Compass is published monthly by Compass Publishing Ltd., P.O. Box 175 BQ, MARCH 2015 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 3 Bequia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines. Tel: (784) 457-3409, Fax: (784) 457-3410, [email protected], www.caribbeancompass.com Editor...........................................Sally Erdle Art, Design & Production......Wilfred Dederer [email protected] [email protected] Assistant Editor...................Elaine Ollivierre Accounting............................Shellese Craigg [email protected] [email protected] Advertising & Distribution........Tom Hopman Grenada Week [email protected] Caribbean Compass welcomes submissions of articles, news items, photos and drawings. Sailing with spice.................. 20 See Writers’ Guidelines at www.caribbeancompass.com. Send submissions to [email protected]. We support free speech! But the content of advertisements, columns, articles and letters to the editor are the sole responsibility of the advertiser, writer or correspondent, and Compass Publishing Ltd. accepts no responsibility for any statements made therein. Letters and submissions may be edited for length and clarity. ©2015 Compass Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication, except short Mount Gay Regatta Nevis excerpts for review purposes, may be made without written permission of Compass Publishing Ltd. Barbados’s best! ................... 18 Stepping back in time ...........26 ISSN 1605 - 1998 Cover Photo: Coincidentally, Grenada’s annual regatta was on the cover of our very first issue as well as this 20th Anniversary number! Compass covers the Caribbean! From Cuba to Trinidad, from Panama to Barbuda, we’ve got the news and views that sailors can use. We’re the Caribbean’s monthly look at sea and shore. This 20th Anniversary issue of Caribbean Compass is dedicated to all of our late contributors, including early Compass-shapers Frances Kay Brinkley, John “John St. John” Bryan, Guy Dean, Pauline Dolinski, Norman Faria, Jane Gibb, Elisa Karnofsky, Yvonne Katchor, David Rooks, Rod Tuttle and Bob Williamson. The Caribbean was yours. Sail on. Santa Marta Cartagena Click Google Map link below to fi nd the Caribbean Compass near you! http://bit.ly/1fMC2Oy covered outside of the Virgin Islands other than Antigua Week. Six to a maximum of eight pages, it was very sailing oriented, but did have one amusing column, Mermaid of the Month, featuring a rather scantily clothed gal who was a sailor, or interested in sailing or the water. Caribbean Boating ran out of steam, Jim moved to Newport, Rhode Island and now produces Newport and Caribbean Boating on the internet. IT WAS 20 In about 1994, TP Parson decided that Caribbean Boating was too VI oriented and launched All at Sea. He said All at Sea would give coverage to not only the whole Caribbean but would also have articles covering major yacht races outside of the Caribbean and cover sportfishing, which Jim had ignored. From inception until Chris Kennan bought the magazine, it staggered along. Now it is a slick color magazine fea- YEARS AGO turing racing and always a large section of sportfishing. In 1995, Caribbean Compass was launched, initially to cover the Southern Caribbean, which had largely been ignored, and to appeal to a wide spectrum of sail- ors. Soon the area of the Caribbean covered expanded until now news and advertise- ments cover the entire Caribbean. The breadth of interesting articles is extraordinary, TODAY… something for everyone — the racing sailor, the marine-oriented businessman, the cruising sailor, the sailors who like to explore ashore, those that are interested in what by Sally Erdle is under the sea rather than on top of the sea, the stargazer, and last but not least, the kids! Every adult who cruises with children, and sailors based ashore who have sailing-oriented children, have to fight with their offspring to grab and read Caribbean Compass first! So may I introduce to you As a wandering sailor who reads free yachting publications in the States, the UK The act you’ve known for all these years… and Ireland (“Never miss a freebs, mon”), I say without fear of contradiction, Caribbean — Lennon-McCartney, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ Compass is the best free yachting magazine in the world. The first issue of Caribbean Compass — all 16 pages of it, in glorious black and After completing a six-year double-handed circumnavigation of the globe aboard white — was published in March of 1995, with the design and technical help of a our 1963-vintage Rhodes 41 sloop, So Long, by sailing into Bequia, just before young cruising couple, Mandy Pirimona and Graham O’Neill, who continued on Christmas of 1994, Tom Hopman and I wondered, “What next?” We didn’t have to their voyage from England to New Zealand the following year. Tom and I were wonder for long. pretty average sailors for the time — having cruised, raced a bit, worked in what’s On New Year’s Eve 1994, over drinks aboard our friend Elen Schwartz’s Carol now known as “the yachting industry” and been customers of marine businesses ketch, Prana, in Admiralty Bay, pioneering circumnavigator the late Bob Law of the — and we figured there would be others who would like to read the same kind of trimaran Pistachio mentioned that he had seed money to invest in a newspaper, and things we did. We roped in friends to help — Chris Doyle and Bob Berlinghof, who did we know of anyone who might be interested. wrote in issue number one, remain regular contributors two decades later — and Tom and I looked at each other and said, “Hey, we can do that!” just as friends became contributors, over the years many contributors have We had worked as charter and delivery captain and crew, and cruised the Eastern become friends. Caribbean, since the early 1970s. Along with his US Coast Guard licenses, Tom had Chris writes: a business degree in his back pocket. Before leaving Bequia on our circumnaviga- I remember the very beginnings of Compass when the pages were still pasted up in tion, I’d written freelance articles for a couple of glossy sailing magazines, as well as the office and shipped out to be photographed. Caribbean Compass has come a long for Jim Long’s seminal Caribbean Boating. We later enjoyed reading anything we way and is now the most highly regarded and popular waterfront newspaper in the could get our hands on throughout our travels, and during a yearlong stopover in Caribbean, and likely, the world. Congratulations Sally, Tom, Wilfred and the team. New Zealand I was privileged to work as a “Shoreline” feature writer for the Northern As roving reporter, occasional crime reporter, commentator, paint tester, hiker at large Advocate newspaper. Arriving back in the Windwards, we thought that, with all its and sometime trouble stirrer, I am proud to have been part of this endeavor. We have boating activity, it was ridiculous for this area not to have a dedicated recreational- occasionally righted wrongs, stopped stupid developments, and gotten politicians to marine publication of its own. listen. It has all been fun, and I am not about to give up my self-made, laminated Don Street recalls: Caribbean Compass journalist ID tag which has gotten me into boat shows and much I and many others feel Compass is the best of the free sailing-oriented magazines in more. Let’s do another 20! the world, but first a look back in time. By 1996 the Compass had expanded to 24 pages (and since doubled in size) and Caribbean Compass was not the first free sailing newspaper in the Caribbean. The was being printed on its signature “bright white” paper instead of ordinary newsprint first was Caribbean Boating, started by Jim Long back in 1978 or ’79. Jim called his — a unique magazine in newspaper format. paper Caribbean Boating but it really evolved into Virgin Islands Boating, as little was —Continued on next page MARCH 2015 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 4 Our OCEAN PLUS sails are guaranteed for five years or 50,000 miles. Built by sailmakers dedicated to building the finest, most durable and technologically advanced sails possible. Antigua & Barbuda Panama USVI St Croix British Virgin Islands Star Marine Regency Marine Wilsons' Cruzan Canvas Jolly Harbour Panama City Christiansted Doyle Sailmakers BVI, Ltd Road Reef Marina Curacao Puerto Rico Jamaica Road Town, Tortola Zeilmakerij Harms Atlantic Canvas & Sail PJG Tel: