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Passage
We were planning on departing St. Martin on the weekend, but plans took a turn for the worse when a bank machine on the dutch side of the island ate my bank card, and then shut itself down for the weekend. I was stuck, no bank card until Monday. This sealed our fate for another 48 hours.
We spent the time making preparations for the passage. I still had a long list of stuff I wanted to get done, but my energy for getting it done was flagging, and Sunday nothing was open - so some things requiring purchased would also have to wait till Monday.
Monday arrived. The plan was to race out early and catch a bus to the Dutch side to retrieve my bank card,
then to the boat store to get my list of stuff for further repairs - then back to the boat for a rapid departure. It didnt work to plan. We ended up finding a recipient for our old dinghy on the VHF net that morning, so some of the time was taken up handing off that problem to the new owner of Patches. The bus ride also involved a lot of walking down the length of Cole Bay, and back as well as a long walk up the hill back to where I could catch a return bus. More time eaten. By the time I had done the boat check-out process, it
was past noon. I caught some brunch (a slice of pizza) and then filled the diesel jerrys for one last fuel run before returning to the boat. The weather prognosis had changed a bit since our earlier decision to leave Monday. Weather was now expected to be light air with a northerly swell. I rationalized that this was as good a weather for learning to sail the boat - light air means less strains and less ugly mistakes. The swell was an issue, but there had been a swell running between 2-4 metres in the area from northern Atlantic storms the whole time we had been there, and probably would continue for weeks. We were already getting rolled around by swells in the Marigot bay anchorage - and they were making Michelle seasick. Not a good start.
As the day wore on, we rushed through final preparations and hoped that an evening departure would ensure us at last a day arrival. I had forgotten just how slow a boat can go when the skipper cant remember a damn thing about the art of sailing. A boat in my hands seems to be lucky to make 5 knots of speed in ideal situations, and in light air I feel lucky to get 2 knots. Im that bad. But hoping to learn as I went, off we went.
One of the things that died on us before we set out was the primary GPS, which lost its connection to the antenna. Our backup handheld GPS became the main unit, and it had all the waypoints programmed in, On our departure, one of the first waypoints out to sea had a giant freighter anchored on it. You never know what is going to show up on your waypoint. Eyeballing is good.
As the night rolled on, we put up sails and turned off the noisy engine. Quiet ensued, and speed dropped to 1 knot. The winds were light and progress was slow. Im sure we could have gone faster. A boat that departed after us sped past with a well trimmed sail plan in effect. They left our horizon before darkness fell.
Nothing like humiliation to encourage hard work.
The night sail was marked by a few interesting and a few ugly things. The wind was too weak in my opinion to be experimenting with the windvane, so munchkin started off slaved to the wheel while I tried to trim the sails and find some combination that would give us some speed in the light air, and yet would not put us in danger should a squall or the trades heave back on the scene. It was fairly straightforward downwind sailing, except that I hadnt really sailed downwind much. We tried wing-on-wing, which left both sails slatting and banging around in the rolling swell. I also tried a kind of beam-reach using all sails, which put our speed up to 2 knots, but resulted in a lot of flopping sails as well.
By the time total darkness had fallen, I was totally frustrated with the speed and the rolling. I scrambled forward to the foredeck and started more and more (to me) daring changes of sail setup. The constant work in the dark by starlight resulted in a number of dangerous situations. One time, I accidentally clipped my harness line onto a sheet instead of the jackline, on other occasions, I slipped on a sail or line. Luckily, no man overboard situations happened. It was an annoying swell, but not yet a scary one. In the end I took the jib off of the roller furler and installed the number 2 genoa (at least that was what was written on the bag, and it was a lighter weight, yet overall heavier and bigger sail). The other jib was apparently meant to be used in combination with a "yankee" jib on the inner forestay. This yankee/jib combination is supposed to make your life easier by breaking up the sail area into 2 parts. The inner forstay covers the lower part of the triangle, while the bigger genoa does the top half. In these days of roller furling, this isnt such a big deal. I tried out the job+yankee combination, but it wasnt really the thing for downwind. Duh. In the end I got braver still and managed to untie the aluminium pole attached to the deck and get it attached to the mainmast and the #2 genoa. I then poled out the genoa using one sheet as a preventer (which holds the pole forward) and the other as a sheet (which pulls it back). The other "Wing" of the downwind "wing on wing" combination was the main, which looked aweful since it was pulled tight against the spreaders - not ideal for airflow, but a decent barn door. The result was more speed, 2 knots and sometimes 3. Munchkin and I took turns at the helm. We were on our way!
Over the course of the nightly run, a number of interesting things passed us by. At one point, I could hear a pod of what sounded like dolphins squeaking past us in the inky black water. I called out to them, and called Munchkin to the deck to see, but there was nothing to see. Later in the evening, I thought I could see a large body swimming near the boat - perhaps a dolphin, or a large fish. I may never know. It was too dark to see much at all, unless we put the awning lights on, and then it was blinding! For the most part, Michelle and I steered by wearing a red LED headlamp which we pointed towards the compass by the steering wheel, or at the GPS which ran next to it. At one point during my own steering shift, I turned off the headlamp and steered by the stars, using the Pleiades cluster (AKA the 7 sisters) fixed under the rigging as my frame of reference. For most of the night, the stars were glorious and bright in the sky. I figured i might as well use them for something!
The other thing we saw in the black part of the night crossing was ships. On one occasion a large cargo ship was on a near-collision course with us, bearing upon our rear. We hailed it to no avail, and eventually it rumbled past us on our starboard side, a huge rumbling beast. I think in the end it saw us, but only because we turned on every light we could including the new after-deck LED rope lights. One problem we had that I had fixed, but that broke again were the deck-level running lights. The fuse holder that powered those lights popped out and wouldnt pop back into its curcuit - leaving us partly invisible but for the tiny masthead light. This is one reason that we were hyper vigilant of ships on this passage. Other ships passed in the night, including a few cruise ships that lit up the night around them like small cities in the distance. Most of these behemoths were a long way off, and heading somewhere else. One ship, however, was not and seemed destined for another close call. Again, we lit up the boat with as much light as we could, and prepared to hail the ship. Luckily for us, it saw us, because it slowed down and changed course slightly , and then only resumed full speed once it had passed us - very considerate! Nevertheless, it was a close pass and we could see the smoke from its chimneys and count its decks easily in the small distance between us. The empty spaces of open see look empty, and hopelessly endless when on a passage, but it only takes a couple ships to shatter that impression and keep your eyes scanning the horizon in anxiety. The final and strangest night encounter was hard to categorize - I think it was a bouy. It had a single green light atop its shortish mass, and seemed to be motionless in the water. I passed it silently wondering what it was, thinking it was a sailboat with no sail, drifting with a light on its masthead, or a strange mid-ocean bouy. By the middle of the night watches, we were both on edge keeping our eyes peeled for lights on the horizon and staring at the red-lit compass to ensure we stayed on course in the tricky steering that downwind sailing in a swell presents. This edgy-ness contributed to my alarm at one point in the evening when I turned my head away from the compass to scan the horizon and was shocked to see a huge ships spotlight bearing down on us from above! At least, that was my first impression of the moon as she rose above a dark bank of clouds in the darkness of the sea. I had been looking so hard for the light of approaching ships, the sudden brightness above and behind be was as alarming as if a ship had suddenly hove silently into view ready to crush us! It wasnt the first of things on the trip to make me exclaim "what the Fsck is that!". Apparently, the same thing happened to Michelle on her watch shift, so I guess Im not entirely crazy to be shocked at the sight of the moon.
When dawn came, the wind had increased and changed direction slightly. We were now doing nearly 2-3 knots of speed. The rolling was getting uglier and it seemed a good time to start experimenting with the sails again. The first thing I tried was to go to a reach, which involved tying the 20ft pole back onto the deck and then putting the main and mizen sail into a "L" orientation to the hull. This point of sail is known to be more stable for roll, and it did help make the boat feel stable. Our speed also started increasing to 5 then nearly 6 knots through the swells! Now time to make the windvane work. As the daylight became more bright, it brought out the deep blue of the ocean water. Sitting on the back of the boat and staring out into the great blue with a wrench in my hand, I was moved almost to tears by the sheer enormity and beauty of that endless deep blue water. What horrifying endless grace in those waves! What beauty!
By the late morning, I had assembled all the bits of the windvane steering system and had gotten it steering the boat more or less on a straight course. I was thrilled! No more slavery to the wheel! The course of the boat under the self-steering rig was a strange kind of smooth. The movement of the waves and the wind caused an undulating corkscrew motion through the water that resembled the gyrations of a hula dancer or perhaps a leaf on the wind. Nevertheless, our speed was a constant 4-6 knots and I was something nearing pleased with the progress. The only problem was that the motion of the boat was becoming more and more estranged from comfortable for Michelle. As the wind increased, it blew up waves that were at a cross angle to the northerly swell, which made for a double motion of the boat. I think in seamans terms, this is what they call a confused sea. It certainly confused munchkins tummy - her sea sickness was now in full force, rendering her unable to eat or do much more than steer occasionally or unhook a sheet when I needed to work on the fordeck.
For most purposes , I was now singlehanding.
As the day wore on, we noticed that our efficient sail plan had one downside - it was slightly off course to the right, which meant that we were going to have to go left or get back on track if we wanted to get to the waypoint that would safely guide us through the passage into the virgin islands. Unfortunately, effforts to get back on a true course resulted in the boat heading dead downwind, which is incompatible with the reach style of sailing, and much more prone to uncomfortable boat movement. By evening, we still had more than 40 miles to go, and were struggling to keep our course.
Late in the afternoon, I decided we needed to change course and sailplan to get back on our courseline. What followed can only be described as an hour or more of controlled frustrating chaos. We managed to shave about .24 of a mile off of our track error, but the mucking about resulted in a number of accidental gybes which caused the boom to crash into our spray dodger and shred some of the dodger canvas. I also managed to nearly take my arm off with a genoa sheet that got caught, and various other scary moments on the fordeck alone while Michelle turned green back in the cockpit. In the end, I wound up emulating the downwind mode we had used before, but ended up losing most of the marvellous speed we had enjoyed before. The seas had become a confused jumble of crossing waves and swell as well, which made the boat sway back and forth smashing sails against whatever they could, and making it hard to make any headway. By the end of the day I decided to lower the mainsail, and just use the mizen sail and Genoa. The mizzen should also have come down, but to muck with that sail, one has to climb high up onto the aft awning, and I was becoming painfully aware of the danger I was putting myself into in my exhausted state (no sleep for the night, no real food for 24 hours or more), so I left it up to flap and relied on the Genoa to power the boat. The power wasnt that impressive. Despite a remaining breeze from the day, the evening saw our speed drop back to 2 knots. We were still over 30 miles from the waypoint that would get us into Virgin Gorda. At this rate, we would have to endure the swell for another whole night and day. Munchkin was green and sending regular barrages of food to the fishes. Something had to give.
At about 30 miles with the light dying and my munchkin looking greener and greener, I decided to give up on fighting sails at night and turn on the "iron wind". This is the reason why I had fussed over the engine for weeks on end back in St. Martin. Now was the time to find out if my faith in the elderly Fordson Major tractor engine was warranted, or if a mechanical misfortune was going to tell me clearly that I should have sprung for the new engine back in St Martin.
I had started the engine earlier the night before, in preparation for evasive maneuvers when the freighter had come close to running us down. I was pretty sure that it woudl start again for us. What I wasnt so sure of was the transmission. During the whole of our sail, I could hear the sound of the propeller spinning through the water, pulled into rotating by the movement of the boat itself through the water. When I listened carefully, I could almost hear the sound of the transmission (in neutral) grinding itself to oblivion. Now, some transmissions are made such that running them in a spin like that is harmless. Some transmissions however, notably the hydraulic ones, can be destroyed by this kind of treatment. I wasnt sure which kind I had in the boat, but the fact that some documentation found on the boat implied that the first owner had tried to run an alternator off of the spinning prop-shaft was encouraging. He wouldnt try that if he knew that free-wheeling the prop like that would kill the transmission, would he? Who knows. We could now see the outline of Virgin Gorda hazily in the horizon. We felt so close, but so far. Could the engine get us there?
The engine started right up, and when put into gear, the boat started to muscle its way through the waves. I kept the jib sail partly out along with the mizzen sail in order to stabilize the boat, or perhaps just to give folks on the horizon who might actually see us the impression that we were still sailing and not cheating with the dead dinosaur-burner in the bilge. The ride after that was brisk, but still a long one. The boat would plough happily through the waves at almost any course except the one straight to our destination.
When on course, the waves would heave the boat over first on one exciting cant, and then on the other before a third wave would plunge against the bow and straighten our course out once again. The tossing and turning confused the GPS to such a degree I had to average out its readings in my head as I steered in order to determine if we were actually on course, or wildly off in up to 2 other directions.
I now stood and steered as the miles ticked away. The engine ran loudly with its usual array of clanks and clicks and rumbles and squeaks. Our speed was sometimes up to 6 knots, and sometimes as little as 4 depending on whether we were surfing down the side of a wave, or plouging into one. Slowly the distance to our next waypoint ticked down from 30 to 25, and then to 20. As the huge orange sun dropped below the horizon like the coyote in some Saturday morning cartoon, I thought to look out for the famed green flash, but never saw it.
As darkness enveloped the boat again, all I had to navigate with was the distant hills of the island, and the eery green glow of the Garmin handheld GPS. The compass had no light, and the GPS light needed a button to be pressed regularly to keep it lit, so I was left again to using the stars to see my way by. The constant standing at the wheel was beginning to take its toll on my feet, but the night was alive with excitement that we might still get to our destination before retirement.
As we slowly clocked the miles down to 10, I began to feel like the passage was going faster and faster. The stress of using the GPS at night to navigate into a strange harbour is a classic folly for sailors. The knowledge that our course through the cut had to be accurate to within 1/3 of a mile, and that the cut would likely have currents and swells from hell acting on it didnt help matters. As we approached the island, I counted down the miles and beseeched our old engine to keep up the good work, and not to die on us in mid-channel, leaving us to be flushed back out to sea by the currents. One benefit of steering long hours in the cockpit of the boat is that you can hear and feel every squeak and vibration your engine makes. You begin to become intimately aware of every noise it makes. You also become hyperaware of other noises or new noises, and any dropped item on deck or new clank or buzz from the engine stepped up my anxiety another notch. A downside of the standing in the cockpit is the floor. The cockpit floor is steel, but is covered by a rubber mat with circles cut into it to allow for drainage. Standing on that mat for hours did more damage to the soles of my bare feet than miles of walking and running barefoot in the islands. Even today a day later, my feet burn with the pain of standing on that surface.
My anxiety over the engine started me on courses of handing off the helm to Michelle while I checked various aspects of the engines function, investigating all the noises I started sensing from the engine. At one point I went below to try and track a new noise and imagined I saw a pool of leaked oil under the engine bilge. At another point, I heard squeaks, rumbles, and vibrations that led me to suspect the demise of the alternator belt, the transmission, and the engine bearings, and water pump. Having no sensors to let me know the engine had actual oil pressure (or oil) didnt help. I was becoming a nervous wreck, but the engine conntinued to run. At one point while checking the back of the boat for exhause smoke and cooling water outflow, I saw the flashing glow of the famed sea plankton that glows behind ships at night when disturbed. I sent michelle to look at it, but neither of us was in much of a state to wonder at it, her being so seasick and me approaching a nervous breakdown listening to the engine supposedly rumble towards self-destruction.
As the final miles ticked down, we began steering more and more aggressively in the darkness against the currents to stay on track to our waypoints. The GPS arrow would dance to the left and then the right, requiring a mad spin of the wheel and a leap of the boat against the swell first this way and that, with an accompanying cacophony of differing noises from the engine as it labored to work at a 45 degree angle first on the port, then the starboard side. I imagined the remaining oil flying in the engine and going everywhere except the oil pump where it should. I imagined needing a tow in the middle of the island channel, and the end of my finances as I know them. I imagined selling the boat and buying a canoe. But mostly I stayed focused on our waypoints, occassionally calling out coordinates to Michelle who plotted them on a chart to ensure we were still on course.
We crossed the first waypoint within 50 feet, and then the second. Then the dance of navigation became a bit skewed, and we gave up on hitting the third waypoint because Michelle had decided that we had passed it. I reconfigured the GPS as I steered and headed directly for waypoint 4, which denotes a safe zone just adjacent to a dangerous reef just near the marina and mooring field we were headed for. We slowed the boat as much as the engine could bear, going down to 3 knots. The hour after that was a frenzy of calling out intermediate GPS fixes to Michelle, and trying to figure out where we were in the dark. Distant islands appeared closer than they really were, and close reefs were invisible menaces that by day would have revealed themselves by the mere colour of the water over them. Finally we came to the last waypoint and had to make a decision - try and pick up a mooring in the dark or head into the marina. Either gamble had its possible problems. Were there any moorings available in this busy area? Was anyone at the marina and did it have any slips available at 1130PM? We had to make a quick decision. There was nowhere to drop an anchor, and the only other option was to head out to the sea which held nothing but promises of seasickness and swell for Michelle and fear of being run down by a cruise ship or freighter for me. The passage had so far been fraught with folly and mistakes. What would this decision bring?
To be continued... |
