Reconnecting

Our last communication had Horizons off the transport and in St Thomas, USVI, planning to get to Trinidad sometime the first half of June. The time-and-distance problem at that point was 500-600 miles in 8-9 weeks, plenty of elbow room there.

A month later we are in St Martin, on the French side, and looking at 400-500 miles in 4-5 weeks. It is getting to be a snug fit.
 What have these people been doing, you well may ask. Will they ever get moving? Will they reach Trinidad before hurricane season?
 Stay tuned for the continuing melodrama.

We spent three weeks in the Virgins doing some projects to get us seaworthy for the ride south, and to move eastward from St Thomas in the USVI to Virgin Gorda BVI, to tee us up for the Anegada Passage, which is the name of the stretch of water between the Virgins and St Martin.

The water heater was 20 years old and terminal. Last year we suspected a slow leak. By the time we got to St Thomas it was speeding up very nicely and wasting more water each day than we use. So we bought a new one, as we had been planning to do all along, and had it installed by Island Yachts in Red Hook Harbor. We like the new water heater—it has rescued our fresh water system from incontinence.

Our stinker of a dinghy was eight years old and also terminal.
 Such was the opinion of the young man in Greece who repairs dinghies for a living, but wouldn't go anywhere near ours. (This was another planned improvement.) So we scouted around and got a nine-foot Caribe with a rigid bottom. Just the thing. Got a new outboard, too, to replace the ancient Evinrude.  

We use davits to lift the dinghy out of the water. Because the new dinghy is a bit shorter than the old one and the attachment points have a different geometry, some tinkering has been required, but that is under control now.

Then we discovered that the anchor windlass had failed. Island Rigging, a Maxwell dealer, did the diagnosis and repair. We had to wait for parts, so we took a week and visited St John, where moorings are available. Then back to St Thomas to install the repaired unit. A bit of provisioning, and then to Virgin Gorda.

It has been a delight not having to deal with the language barrier and foreign currencies for a change—and the speed of service and delivery was excellent.

Fortunately, all this time in St. Thomas gave us time to see not only our friends Sheeran Ann and Jim, whom we met in Turkey, before they departed for Puerto Rico on their trip to the Chesapeake by June 1, but also friends on Circe, last seen in the Caribbean in May of 2003, plus friends on Dutch Link, last seen in Turkey in May of 2007.  

Circe had hoped to be able to stay in the Caribbean for a year, but managed six. Dutch Link have been around the world, but missed the US East Coast, so hope to see the Chesapeake, New England and Nova Scotia.

A feature of our nomadic lifestyle is buying SIM cards with great frequency. In the USVI we got a new phone with cheap rates to America, nights and weekends free. A treat! Unfortunately, our five year old GSM phone seems to have bit the dust.

With all this time to organize, plan and refit we felt pretty well prepared to head east for the Anegada Passage. The 75 mile trip east to St. Martin is known as unpleasant and is done at night to avoid coming in on the shoals at either end in the dark.
 But since everything was now working and we had a forecast for about three days of lighter northeasterly winds we felt we had a good chance of actually sailing and making a pleasant trip out of it.

The first two hours were lovely, pleasant northeasterly wind, beautiful sunset behind Virgin Gorda. Laurie napped for a little time on her off watch and then sprang to attention as the first squall hit. We turned the radar on. Couldn't see any sign of the squall. The radar wasn't working properly, although it had been fixed in France in October because we use it to look for squall clouds at night in the Caribbean.

It was not a good night. We were hit by waves of squalls as clouds came through. Jack briefly saw 50 knots on the wind instrument, but mostly a lot of 25-35 knots of breeze with confused seas.
 A little before daybreak, the wind shifted to 108 degrees, which coincidentally was the same as the direction of St Martin. Stiff winds right on the nose, a named wind we remember from Europe as the Destinale. Nothing to do but motor slightly off the wind to our destination which, thanks to the lousy current against us, took us until 3 pm to make.

So now we are in St. Martin, where we have managed to get our mainsail repaired (it had ripped during the festivities), and find a very good grocery with the French frozen food we have come to love and prices on wines that are quite affordable. 
We are going around to the Dutch side after we pick up our sail to see Mark on Arcturus, last seen in Kemer, whom we first met in Martinique.  
It's good to be almost home and among friends.

We'll get moving again in a couple of days—to St Barts, 30 miles away, but not upwind—but meantime we are relaxing.

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