A Tale of Two Chemists: On passage making – Antigua to St Croix … Thurs 12th

On passage making – Antigua to St Croix … Thurs 12^th – Sat 14^th April 2018

It’s about 180 nautical miles from Antigua to St Croix. We envisaged breaking this up into two stages, with a break at Saint Eustatia (Statia). However, there are some concerns about my mum’s health and it was possible that we would need to leave the boat at a dock and fly over to the UK to visit. We had a booked a slip at a marina in St Thomas so we had a safe place to leave Cotinga in case the situation deteriorated.

On Wednesday afternoon we moved Cotinga round to Jolly harbor so we could make a quick and easy getaway early on Thursday. We spent the evening squaring away the boat and hauled out and deflated the dinghy, and lashed it on the foredeck. We made sandwiches for lunch the following day and cooked up some chili for a ready prepared evening meal. On Thursday morning we were up before dawn and on our way by 5.30 am. The forecast was for winds of 15-20 kts from ~ east and this turned out to be correct. Our route to Statia was roughly north west (down wind) so we raised full main and full genoa but sailing the direct line we had trouble keeping the genoa from being blanketed by the main sail. Consequently we poled out the genoa and sailed a more westerly route for the first 5 hours or so, with the sails wing-on-wing. At this point we gybed the main and continued on a more northerly track to the top end of St Kitts. During the day we were in contact by radio with another boat “Bebe” that was making a similar passage. We knew of this boat because it appeared in a panoramic sunset photo that I took in Des Hayes, Guadeloupe, and we had given them an electronic copy. Our tracks converged just prior to entering the channel between St Kitts and Statia and I was able to take some action shots of their boat (see below). We arrived at the anchorage on the west coast of Statia at about 4.30pm having covered about 67 miles in 11 hours, for an average of 6kts … which we thought was pretty good. It was a rolly passage but the boat and crew handled it well. There’s actually not that much to do, it’s mostly pretty boring and we just tend to veg out and Cotinga sails herself.

Immediately after dropping the anchor we were approached and boarded by the coast guard. Two officers stepped over from their large rigid inflatable and proceeded to inspect our documentation and passports. They were perfectly charming and didn’t seem to have any interest in checking our safety equipment, which I know is in good shape because of the rigorous safety inspection prior to the rally. Whilst sitting with these officers it became evident just how rolly the anchorage was. They suggested moving closer to the shore and the dock, which we did as soon as they left. It was still a lousy anchorage with the wind and significant swell coming from different directions, so the boat has a tendency to take on the properties of a metronome. I did fix a “bridle” line from the stern to the anchor chain, which does help to hold the bow of the boat towards the swells. However, at some point, maybe in light evening winds, the bridle flipped underneath the hull and was doing nothing useful. In the morning we had to decide whether to re-launch the dinghy and go check in with customs and immigration or stay aboard under “quarantine” and continue on to the US Virgin Islands later in the day. At this point we already knew that my mum’s health seems to have stabilized and so we dropped the idea of flying home from St Thomas. We weren’t that excited to re-launch the dinghy or spend another night at that anchorage, but we also weren’t happy with idea of hanging out on the boat until late afternoon. So we came up with a new plan to sail up to Saba (~ 20 miles to the north west) and take a mooring there for a few hours before proceeding onwards to St Croix overnight. We need to do this section as a night passage because it’s too long (~85 nM) to do in one daylight sail and Christiansted harbor is tricky to get into and not something to be attempted in the dark.

The sail up to Saba was fine, albeit with substantial swells and waves rolling in on our back starboard quarter. We picked up a mooring as the winds gusted to 27 knots (in compliance with Gloria’s rule) and we are now hanging out getting ready to depart around 5.30pm for St Croix. It’s definitely more comfortable here than at Statia. We downloaded Chris Parker’s weather forecast using the Sat Phone and are running the generator to try to top up our batteries prior to the overnight section, when we use a lot of power running the navigational systems, running lights and autopilot. We mostly steer by autopilot during the day, but at night it’s really invaluable.

… anyway I hope to update this blog in St Croix …

We hoisted the mainsail while on the mooring and set off at about 5 pm. With the engine engaged we were making more than 7kts. Once the fridge charging was complete we carried on under sail alone. Our route was northwest for about 18 miles (to avoid entering the protected area around the Saba Bank). We debated unfurling the genoa. Once we settled onto the final course westward, the main would blanket the genoa. We decided not to bother with it. There seemed a greater risk of arriving before first light on Saturday, if our speed was too great. The seas were fairly large stirred up by the strong breeze 15-20kts with gusts to 25kts. We were happy to have a few hours of travel in the light, to get used to the motion of the boat.

At 8pm we reached our waypoint and turned to the west. This course was very nearly dead down wind. To minimize the risk of an accidental gybe, we stayed on a heading slightly north of west. As the night wore on we got further and further from our rhum line course. Finally we gybed the main across—essentially two long gybes (or should that be tacks?) rather than going dead down wind. We stood two-hour watches starting at 7pm. Mike was kind enough to stay in the cockpit with me during my watches. Lazy girl went below to sleep on the bunk when she was off duty!

There is something un-earthly about sailing at night with strong winds and big swells. Most of the time the boat seemed to handle the swell nicely. Every so often a set of bigger waves came along and the rocking motion became quite extreme. The darkness meant that we couldn’t see the swells, just had to hang on tight during the bad ones. We saw a couple of boats off in the distance. The closest encounter came very near to St. Croix, just as the wind pooped out. We had to start the engine to get out of the path of the large commercial ship. We motor-sailed the last five miles to the harbor entrance.

Getting into Christiansted is pretty tricky. We passed between two sections of reef and followed the buoys toward shore. There are a number of different channels that lead off in different directions. Mike did a great job of figuring out the “confus-a-gram” that is the buoyage! We snuck around the back of Protestant Cay to anchor in about 15ft of water (with a fair number of other boats). We were very happy to have arrived.