Now this is what I’m talking about. This is the whole reason to be out
here. We had an awesome day!
At 3am, the alarm sounded. I got up and got the coffee going while
Larry tried to wake himself. He’d
prepared a bunch of stuff the night before so our departure in the dark would
be a simple one (things like removing the sail cover on the mizzen, getting the
mainsail ready to be hoisted, putting excess lines away, etc).
By 4am, he had raised the mizzen and the
mainsail and the anchor was raised. We
had the motor running because the winds were light and we were in close
quarters with other boats. We would
have shut the motor off sooner but as soon as we were in the channel and
exiting the bay, we were hit by rain and visibility dropped dramatically. Remember, it was dark enough but with the
rain, we couldn’t even see the channel markers. We motored out slowly until the rain passed.
By this time, daylight was almost upon
us. You could see brightness in the
clouds behind us. Ahead of us, the
skies still loomed with a darkness that made it difficult to see where the
water touched the sky. We raised the
headsail and then there it was … we silenced the motor. Peace at last. For the next 9 hours, we sailed in absolute bliss. We were averaging about 5 knots but at
times, we were steady at 6.5 knots.
Unfortunately, the winds had dropped at one point, which brought our
average way down. We actually thought
we were going to have to start the motor because we were moving at only 2
knots, but we persevered and soon the winds picked up again and we were back
into the 5 knot range. Our sail repair
looked beautiful and held up nicely.
Overall, it was a gorgeous day. Leaving St. Maarten, you could see St.
Bart’s to the east (we’re missing this island this time and will visit on
another trip). You could also see the
mountains of Saba and Eustatia off to the south.
We would be sailing past these two islands
and heading straight for St. Kitts. It
would be nice to visit all the islands along the way but we’re on a tight schedule
and need to get south before hurricanes hit.
If we hadn’t had to spend so much time in Luperon and St. Thomas, we
would be able to spend more time exploring these islands. Oh well … this will give us good reason to
head back here after our world cruise!
As we rounded the northwest corner of St.
Kitts, the winds/waves changed. The
mountains of St. Kitts were blocking most of the wave action (which was a nice
treat) but it meant they were also blocking most of the winds. We tried sailing but would have had to go so
far off-course to pick up the winds again, we opted to just start the motor and
drop the sails. In hindsight, we made
the right choice. Within less than an
hour, we were hit with a torrential downpour.
Visibility dropped to so little, we were only ½ mile from shore and
couldn’t even see the mountains towering before us. And then the winds came.
They topped out over 50 knots as the storm passed. We were glad the sails were dropped or we’d
probably be doing even more repairs!
But like most tropical rains, this one passed
quickly. As we pulled into the harbor
of Basseterre, St. Kitts, the sun was shining.
We dropped the anchor at about 3:15 (about 11 hours to do 55 miles … not
bad).
There are only two other boats anchored
here. It is quiet. There is a cruise ship in port but that
probably means there won’t be one tomorrow.
Not sure how it will be … will anything be open with no ships in town?
We were going to clear customs but the
customs office at the cruise port is only open until 3:45pm. It was too rushed to try to make it. There is another place you can clear (about
a mile away) but we decided to just keep the quarantine flag raised and wait
until the morning to clear. We’re
hoping we can still clear at the cruise ship terminal but if there is no ship,
we have our doubts.
We had an early evening since we were both
exhausted.
No comments:
Post a Comment