Instead of wring all this again please read on, St Maarten to St Lucia arrived yesterday morning.
Hi Susie,
I left St Maarten 4pm bridge Saturday
afternoon 15th and headed on down Island with a clear 5 day Atlantic
forecast for the next 5 days! Had a really nice evening sail, but the
wind started to go into the SE and I had a problem getting to
windward of St Kits and Nevis. After achieving that I didn't have a
problem till clearing the bottom of Nevis. As that happened I was
going to clear Redonda and Montserrat to windward with plenty of room
steering 130 deg. but the wind veered back to the SSW by S giving me
a course of max 225 deg going SW !!! I thought I dont't care about
that as St Vincent is that way and could give you a nice surprise !
during the day (Sunday) the wind gradually backed round to the East
and I was then going in the Lee of Montserrat, that continued to
Guadalupe and then the wind increased to over 22knts and the seas
became very rough and confused, I was onty doing 3.5 knts instead of
about 8, so went up foreward and found my big jib ( which I hadn't
put up yet) had untied itself gone over the side and had become a
rather large drogue parachute !!! bugger, Took half an hour to sort
that, found the clew reinforcement patch on starboard side had torn
off but said I don't care and I put it up as well, boat don't like 22
knts without everything up!. continued then past Guadalupe doing 7.5
to 8.8 knots until I arrived next morning (Monday) at Dominica. That
was when I noticed the Main Sail had torn on the leech in the middle
of the panel, and only reason it hadn't gone and torn right to the
mast was the No1 batten pocket which was sewn across that panel II
Just then I was doing 8 knts so started
to slow the boat down a bit, THEN the wind just died completely! the
waves disappeared and I was becalmed!! I had to motor the whole way
past Dominica!!!! took all day, at the bottom again the wind was from
the south and again I was going 225 deg and aimed directly to St
Vincent !! so as it went dark Monday night t set Fred up and went to
bed. When I woke up 3am the boat was again doing 7 to 8 knots and now
doing 116 deg. the wind having backed round to the North East!!! I
was now heading for the coast of Martinique and had to bear away back
to my course which I was very high on. Rest of the night was a very
gentle sail until about midnight when the thunder heads with
lightening white out rain thunder the works, passed the bottom of
Martinique at approx 2am into another storm, I was now very worried
about the two sails both having damaged leeches and how I was going
to get the main itself off without tearing the sail into rags, again
I was having trouble with the wind as it had again gone into the
South East, I was babying the boat towards St Lucia Tuesday morning
and thankfully the wind went back to the East halfway across. I made
Rodney Bay at about 8 am and then tried to down all sail !! only one
more problem had come up wich again was the wind ! 24 knts in the Bay
! did the little Jib first no problem, tried to do the big jib and it
just wasn't happening, I had to go down wind, the only direction I
didn;t want to go. nearly got it down when the No.1 batten pocket
failed, the Main gradually tore itself in half with me helpless to
stop it. Managed to get the big jib off but by the time I went back
round into the wind the main had taken 2 turns right round the mast,
I had to go within 20 feet of the rocks out of the wind at Pigeon
Island and turn the boat round twice with the engine to unravel it !!
(during all this I was being watched by a young cruising couple on a
boat, they waved, I waved back ! what else could I do?) I finally
wrapped the errant sail around the boom, looked as if nothing was
wrong with it. Called Rodney Bay and booked J13 for repairs and it
was 1130am when I cleared customs ! Completely Knackered then went to
Bosun's Bar until I was drunk.
you know Susie people shouldn't ask me
how I'm doing if they don't want to read another novelette !!!
Love you but stuck here for a bit I
think !!
Roy xx
PS in Bosun's bar last night they
showed me the named storm Don. No wonder then I had all that crazy
weather! on my trip !!!
