St Thomas Update

I pulled anchor on Thanksgiving and left Venezuela, heading for St. Thomas. My plan was that if I missed St Thomas, I’d go to Puerto Rico for a few days, then head east to St Thomas. On the day I left, winds and swell were coming from the NE and I made my first mistake, I continued NE towards St Thomas. My boat got rocked for about 20 hours and I was not covering much ground. Looking at the chart plotters reminded me of when I was a kid and how I felt when we used to drive cross country camping. After a day, you’d look at a map of the US and realize you only went a ½ inch or perhaps an inch. After 20 hours, I only made 65 miles. At that point, I turned east and decided to grab as much East as I could, then head north…hopefully with a better angle on the wind and seas. It worked and half way in to the 2nd day, I made my turn north.

I had 2 days of great sailing, never touching the engine. I will say though that it was a hard sail, a lot of crashing and blue water over the bow and rails. The winds change velocity pretty quickly. One minute you have 15 kts, then, within a few seconds, it hits 30! Rails get buried and you can wash your hands in the ocean while it goes past the cockpit. Pretty scary but fun! Anyway, my only scare was when I went down below on the 2nd day and had 2 inches of water on the floor! It was all on the port side since I was heeled over and I immediately went into troubleshooting/survival mode.

First, I tasted the water to see what it was….salt, fresh or fuel. It was salt water…not good! I previously closed my thru-hulls forward before I left. They’re for the head, sink drain and saltwater intake. So, I knew water was not coming in there. I also noted the bilge pump was not going off, even when I turned it on manually, it was dry. Ok…now what? Water was not rising but I will admit I looked at my ditch bag and Ephirb and mentally rehearsed a plan just in case something gave. It didn’t and I manually pumped the water out and all was good. A few hours later, I had water again! I found out that although my boat floats, it’s not completely waterproof topside. Like I said before I had blue water coming over the bow and had my rails in the water. When this happened, salt water snuck in around the toe rails (I guess) and got into the cabin. It’s the only thing that it could possibly be. I pumped the water out immediately, then tested my theory by trimming in the sails and turning to a beam reach (wind perpendicular to the boat). Rails went into the water immediately. I held the course for a few minutes, then eased the sheets. Sure enough, water down below. Although not what you want, I was relieved to say the least!

Outside of that, the passage was pretty good until about 100 miles out. My jib (front sail) is a big 130 and in anything above 20kts, I’m way over powered. Well, I had about 20 the entire trip and just prayed the sail would hold together. About a year ago, I hand-stitched some repairs and was watching the repairs closely throughout the passage. They held but unfortunately, the halyard snapped and the sail went limp. I was having some pretty large seas picking me up and literally putting me down wherever they chose. I should rephrase that….dropping me would be more appropriate. After what felt like a 5 foot free-fall, the boat crashed and the halyard snapped. The halyard is the line that holds the sail up at the top of the mast. I thought about using my spinnaker halyard as a back-up but the seas were pretty rough and I’d need to drop the jib and attach the new line. I didn’t feel like going forward and playing around so I simply fired up the engine and motor-sailed with just the main for the last 100 miles. It worked out good as I needed to charge the batteries and make some water anyway.

My first day’s error pushed out my arrival time and when passing St Croix, I knew that I’d be arriving at St. Thomas at about 2 in the morning. I dropped the revs but still arrived before sunrise. The approach is pretty simple but I don’t like going in to new ports at night so with that said, I spent 6 hours bobbing around outside of St Thomas waiting for sunrise. It was a beautiful night so I drank tea and stared at the stars. The only place that had better stars than that night was Kirkwood’s parking lot in the winter. Anyway, the sun came up and I entered the harbor and dropped anchor.

I checked in and it hit me that after 15 months, I’m back on US (sort of) soil! Pretty cool, plus they take dollars and speak English here! I treated myself to a few drinks and some chicken fingers. After 4 days at sea with nothing but Ramon, oatmeal and Tuna fish sandwiches, I was ready for some real food. Today I’m cleaning up the boat, tomorrow, I’ll start the job search. There’s a small marina here but I will most likely change anchorages and make my way around to Brenner or Redhook Bay. They have a lot more boat facilities that hopefully need some help. More later!

Dan