Waylaid by Weather – Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands – April 6, 2023

Well we have been waiting out the weather the last few weeks and been moored hoping the wind and squall pattern changes.  We had hoped to be moving to St. Martin by now but have yet to see the appropriate window come up.  That means in the meantime, we have managed to find some pretty fun things to do here in the BVI’s.  It is a bit of a flashback of Luperon except that the BVI is 3x the price.

First off, we decided to go back to Anegada, and although it was a bumpy ride, I am definitely glad we took the only chance we had to go.  It is just as beautiful as I remember.  We rented a scooter for the day and toured the island, which we had not done last time we were here.  I even got to see the Flamingos!  Sadly they were too far away to get a decent photo but cool none the less.  The color of the water here and the white sand beaches are the most beautiful I have seen since the Exumas.  Outside of that, there isn’t much else here.

We then sailed back to Virgin Gorda to wait out the big squalls that were predicted in our nice protected anchorage.  Ron had been consulting a bit and after a day or two of catch up, we rented a car to tour the island of Virgin Gorda.  The BVI’s in general are very mountainous unlike Anegada, which is very flat like the Bahamas.  This makes the driving a bit treacherous but the views spectacular.  We even got to see how the other half live by driving through Nail Bay where an AirBNB rents for $12K a week!  It’s where Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis have vacation homes if that gives you any indication.

We also took the chance to go and see The Baths again but even though we were there by 9:00am, there was an entire cruise ship of people already there and it was PACKED!! It is a strange rock formation and no one is really sure exactly how it got there. The theory is volcanos shot these huge boulders there but others think it was aliens…who knows?

At that point we decided to go and see the ruins of one of the old copper mines on the island which was pretty cool too.  It was abandoned in the 19^th century and is currently maintained within the national park here.

As far as the after effects of Hurricane Irma (which leveled the island in 2017) and was the first category 5 to ever hit here.  The island has largely recovered but there is definitely poverty here and a very wide gap between the haves and have nots and there are still signs of the destruction and a rebuilding effort going on.  We had a chance to walk with one of the locals who was here during the storm and has lived here 20+ years.  He hid out in his cistern (which he converted into a one bedroom) and after the storm when all was destroyed, he spray painted on his room “Dad’s OK” in white as the only option to let his family know he had survived the storm.  A helicopter flew over from the news media and the photo went viral.  Since his boat had been destroyed he had to paddleboard across the bay from Biras Creek to Leverick Bay to get groceries and supplies.  Pretty interesting guy to say the least.  Outside of that, we have had quite a few days to snorkel which has been great and although there are a couple reefs that are dead there are a few others which have been beautiful.  We hope early next week we get a chance to move south.

F$%K!!!! (Captain’s View) – January 13, 2023, Luperon, Dominican Republic

Ya I know not a great way to title a blog post, but there is not a better way to describe the last four day passage. After reading this adventure I would encourage you to come up with a title of your own and leave it in the comments.

So where do I begin? I guess let’s start from a few days out. We were currently sitting in Thompson Bay, Long Island waiting for a weather window to cross over to Puerto Rico. It is about a 600 mile non-stop trip, which requires you to have a long enough weather window to make east progress into the east blowing trade winds. There are only two times you get these types of windows, and they can be rather unpredictable. When a strong cold front blows off the southern states it tends to suck all the energy out of the atmosphere. At this time, you get light and variable winds which typically last a day or two. It is where the saying “calm before the storm” comes from.

The second instance (which is more useful) is when a series of strong cold fronts comes off the states, and it tends to back the winds and reverse them. This is the ticket we needed to get as far east as we could. The bad part about these fronts is as they move in, they tend to develop strong storms (squalls) as the fronts collide. The forecast was for backing winds and isolated squalls that would be pretty small. The footnote was for us to get as south and as east as fast as possible to reduce the risk of these storms. This is the setup of the plan, seems easy right? We thought so, however the plan was wrong, so very, very wrong.

Day one, as we exited GT and headed north around long island, we could already feel the forecast not being correct, we had more northerly winds then expected were hoping we could turn, and these winds would be welcoming since they would push us toward Puerto Rico.

4 hours later, after bashing into the wind and chop, we rounded the corner and the winds start to shift east, which is again on our nose (not as forecasted). So, more bashing, an update to the weather appears to show a weaking front coming, which could complicate this window. We pressed on because we had to make progress south. Day turns into night and both boats are running full sails beating into the wind as fast as we could. No squalls are predicted, and the radar was clear. 

When the sun went down things changed and now we could see the menacing shadows of the strong storm clouds. It was time to reduce sail and in a hurry. Seconds later the first squall hit us and it was blowing 35 knot winds. Mariposa instantly stopped forward progress and the auto pilot starting showing errors, which were confusing at first. We had zero control of the boat. I was certain we lost our steering chain, so I pulled open the engine hatches to troubleshoot. Rudders moved so that was not the case, so I fired up the engines and used that thrust to point the boat into the wind so I could climb to the front of the boat to pull down the main sail. We must point into the wind for the main sail to drop, if not it just jams against the rigging and sticks. Sally at the wheel and me at the mast I start the impossible task of pulling down the main sail. As I release the halyard…nothing.  The sail is jammed against the rigging and will not come down. Then in a blink of the eye, the wind shifts and the main comes down instantly spilling into the sail bag. The crisis was averted, and we quickly gain proper control of Mariposa again. Exhausted we motor into the rest of the night dodging squall after squall. In our 24-hour period we travel 128 miles, which puts us on time.

Day two does not really change much, bashing into the wind and waves we make progress as fast as we can, to attempt to make landfall in PR. With the shift in the wind to a more north easterly direction we have to drive ourselves more south to make progress.  This in theory is a great decision, since it shortens our trip and gets us below the front and its squall potential…or so we thought. As the day wears on Sally and I do watch shifts, which are frequently interrupted by a squall that I should captain around. This was not ideal, but manageable since at any hour we will be south enough to out run the storms.

As the day two turns to black, we pull down our mainsail because we do not want another incident like we had last night, we can run the head sail alone and reef it from the cockpit with a little effort. Seems like a great plan as long as you keep up with the radar and watches. Well, around 11 pm, I am awakened to a warning of an imminent squall and an alarming increase in wind speed. I instantly jump to watch and in seconds have our head sail pulled in. It was a major effort, and we are lucky to have it tucked away before the full force of that squall hit.

Our buddy boat CD was not so lucky. As he reefed in his sail the reefing line snapped which left his sail slapping in the wind. This is the worst possible scenario since this requires you to manually pull down the sail from the front of the boat in the dead of the night, in a monster storm. Minutes seemed like days while his wife had to endure the stress of watching him struggle with pulling the sail down, while not getting drug into the ocean or injured. After what seemed like eternity the sail was safely pulled down, drug out of the ocean and secured to the deck for the night. As the captain returned to the cockpit of CD everyone breathed a sigh of relief of what had just happened and how lucky we were to have both boats and crew safe. The rest of the night was spent motoring into the unforgiving winds and waves. We prayed for the return of daylight so we could asses out situation and figure out plan B.

Day three started with clouds which would indicate that we were headed directly into the front we went south to avoid. To complicate matters, we are now in a section where the “Windy Radar” does not cover so we were flying blind with only the radar on our boat to detect the storm cells. Looking at our progress from day two, we managed a little over 100 miles of our required 130 miles to remain in a viable weather window to PR. With our buddy boat down a sail and not enough fuel to motor the required 2-3 additional days we had to come up with a plan B.

We went with going straight south to Luperon DR. It was straight south which would be a more comfortable sailing angle with the winds and waves, and was a mere 180 miles away from our location. Up until this point, our best day was 128 miles and we needed to do a bit better than that today.  Bonus requirement was we had to reach Luperon before 9am, which is when the trade winds build, and making the passage even worse. Not sure how it could have been worse, we did not want to find out.

For the next 24 hours, we ran both engines full steam into the weather and counted down the miles. At dark came, we rounded the Turks and Caico Islands for our last stretch of ocean before Luperon. Hope started to rise knowing we were only 12 hours away from a safe place to anchor and allow for some much needed rest.

Learning from the lessons Neptune taught us the last two nights, we went into the last night with no sails and only motoring. Neither of us had enough energy to endure another sail induced drama so we went for the low key route. Little did we know the sail drama was replaced by cruise ship drama. Apparently there are several cruise ships that travel the same route we were on towards Luperon, so we spent the night, dodging squall after squall and cruise ship after cruise ship.  We are the white one in the middle of these two green cruise ships.

It is an open empty ocean most of the time, until it is not, and then well it gets complicated. It was at around 2am when we had a close call with a cruise ship. I called out on the radio to make sure they saw us on AIS and got his intentions to pass green to green, which is suppose to be starboard to starboard. Easy, until I noticed that the navigation light on my boat was installed upside down and those lights were reversed!  Now, if he looks to pass us green to green every move he made to stay away from us brought him closer, which would of been a disaster for us. Turning off the navigation lights and relying on the lights of our buddy boat was the only option at that point which worked. The rest of the night was spent enduring squall after squall and wave after wave watching the clock tick away.

As morning came land was a welcoming sign, however the Luperon entrance was encased in the biggest squall we have encountered yet. It was like the final test of a three-day long exam. As we inched closer to the entrance the squall seemed to dissipate and allowed for an nondramatic entrance. safe at last.

Overall, the trip took 73 hours and covered 408 miles. We made over 180 miles on the final push to get to safe harbor in Luperon and timed the entrance perfectly. Our watch schedule worked out pretty well and would have been perfect if the weather was not as adverse. I simply needed to be at the helm during these times and that made sleeping for me perhaps 5-8 hours over those three days. Sleep was hard to come by because you are bouncing around so much you must hold on, and when I slept in the cockpit to be close to the helm in the event of emergency, I was awakened by crashing waves over the stern of the boat making it into where I slept.

If we had to describe the living conditions on the boat during this passage it is best explained by imagining yourself riding the local circus scrambler ride alone. While you try to brace yourself from sliding from side to side in the dark while in a major thunderstorm with someone randomly throwing buckets of saltwater over you. All of this with the sound of roaring wind and random wave crashing sounds on volume 100. Sleep, normal conversation and just plain day to day life becomes a challenge due to the sensor overload. Once we set foot on land it took a day for our bodies to acclimate. It was very hard to walk and keep your balance.

The “thorny path” as they call it has earned its name in our eyes. We are, however, through the hardest part and hope for the remaining part of this passage to be less dramatic. We made it!

Charter Boats Everywhere! – Wardrick Wells Exuma’s, Bahamas – December 12, 2022

We headed out early and made it across the Exuma Sound without issue. It was expected to be heavy rolling waves but wasn’t bad at all. We headed straight across, through the Wardrick Wells Cut, and picked up a mooring at the park. It felt nice to be back to one of the MOST beautiful places on earth.

We had spent nearly three weeks here last year. We did our good deed and while hiking did a trash clean up at one of the beaches. When we dropped the trash off to the warden, there was a Mega-yacht checking in who was nearly 230 feet long and they were nickel and diming the warden. I don’t get it. If you have that kind of money to either own or charter a boat like that, why not pay the park what they are owed instead of trying to negotiate them down. I mean we are talking $70 max. We waited nearly ½ an hour At least we saw our plaque at the top of Boo Boo Hill from last year and felt the need to sign it again.

Well, no good deed goes unpunished since I realized that when we got back, my glasses had fallen out of my backpack at some point while we were out on the poisonwood trails and we nearly got hit by two charter boats coming in. I am not sure if it is this time of the year being near Christmas or simply because we were not in the Exumas much last year and this is where majority of the charter boats are. I really don’t remember seeing this many charter’s last year and it is scary since they don’t know how to anchor, cannot pick up a mooring very well, and tend to leave their generators on non-stop to support their need for air conditioning. It’s scary and we always seem to end up right next to one and they are all 50+ feet.

We decided to head north to Hawsbill Cay for the night as it was a place we had not visited before and the water was incredible!

But low and behold, the other Exuma phenomina…mega yachts (also charters). One pulled in and picked up the mooring RIGHT in front of us blocking our view of the beach. Then launched his tender and proceeded to preform figure eights around our boat. Gee thanks. This one was only a 70-footer which cost only $25K a week vs the super mega charters (230-footer) which cost a million a week. I know the Exuma’s is the land of the mega-yachts but there seem to be more this year. People just have too much money. Anyway, we moved to the other side of the mooring field and enjoyed our night a bit farther away from our new neighbors.

We got up the next morning to move a bit farther north to Shroud Cay and see the turtles. You can dinghy though the center of the island and we saw about 50 turtles, 2 rays, a shark, and a handful of fish.  The watercolor was amazing, and it was essentially a mangrove nursery which you could only explore on a rising tide.  We even saw Camp Driftwood which is a campground for cruisers.  It was stunning and now we headed south and spent the night at Cambridge Cay.

Planning Plan B – December 8, 2022, Ten Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

Sailing Hubby and I spent last night at Governor’s Harbor.  It is not a great anchorage, and I don’t think Ron slept much at all in fear we would drag.  The anchorage was loud with ripping motorcycles, but they did have diesel we needed so we jerry jugged that back to the boat and filled her up along with some fresh bread and eggs.  We also found the hot sauce we had been searching out that we had a chance to try in Spanish Wells.  Excellent “Picante”!

We hiked part of the island and searched out an old US Navy base. It was used in the 50’s to listen for Russian Submarines but then decommissioned in the 80’s. We also got to see the beach on the other side of Eleuthera which was beautiful even if it was deserted. The base was fully operational and played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We saw the water source for the base, barracks, guard shack upon the entrance to the base, and one of the administrative buildings. It was pretty cool to literally step back in time.

Ron then hunted for his dinner snorkeling once we got down to Ten Bay which was a beautiful beach. He had fresh red snapper for dinner. Being vegetarian, I, of course, stuck to my tofu & veggies but we started to plan the next leg of the trip which includes crossing the Exuma Sound. While this doesn’t look very far and is only a day trip, there are a lot of moving parts to consider like the wind speed and direction, sea state, tides once we get to the cuts (which will dictate our actual path), and there is a tropical low spinning above east of us right now. While not getting to technical you can get all the travel parameters right only arrive at the cut(entrance to the anchorage) early or late and find rolling breaking waves. This make for a very tense time for the last few moments of the trip. Needless to say it is good to have plan A plan B and plan C just in case.

Based on what’s going on the tropical low is causing an agitated sea state but the waves will likely be low enough for us to go over on Friday from Rock Sound, so we are moving south today to stage for the jump to the Exuma’s. There is a bigger storm coming Thursday and we need to be inside the land and sea park, as it is the most protected place, without backtracking to Spanish Wells. There is a lot of hiking and snorkeling there and plenty to keep us entertained while we wait out the weather. We spent 2 weeks there last year and it’s beautiful. We didn’t go to Rock Sound last year, so I am interested to see what’s here. If nothing else, we will get rid of our trash before we hit Staniel Cay, where it is $6 a bag to do so. At that price, it makes us very thoughtful of our trash.

Jumping to Eleuthera – December 5, 2022, “The Glass Window”, Bahamas

We decided to move along to the island of Eleuthera and caught a weather window to cross the Northeast Providence Channel. We had a couple of nice days and spent the first night anchored in Royal Island and then moved over to “Meeks Patch.” We did a snorkel there which was incredible. I saw two puffer fish, three lionfish, a starfish which was about the size of a pizza, and tons of coral. By far one of the best snorkel’s we have done.

At that point we needed to stay in the marina for a few days with an upcoming storm coming through.  We decided to stay in Spanish Wells for the next three days which worked out great.  We could do laundry, get off the boat and walk around, and Ron was able to mount our starlink (which is working fabulously by the way).

Spanish Wells is an interesting place since it is the HQ of Red Lobster and based on all this business, it is a vibrant little town.  Plenty of restaurants, the best grocery store we came across last year, and the folks at the marina are awesome.  It was an easy couple of days and we even got to enjoy a draft beer which is not normal here!

Once the weather broke, we decided to go through current cut and anchor near “The Glass Window.” There we had a chance to beach the dinghy and see not only “The Queen’s Bath,” but also the death highway which we had to walk down to get to the glass window bridge. There was no berm, no sidewalk, or any place to walk along next to the road where cars were flying by us at 60MPH. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it.

The Glass window was kinda cool as there was a gigantic cave, blow holes, and the bridge itself was pretty cool.