A smooth trip to St Martin
Irie
Fri 11 Jan 2008 13:16
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Position 10 02 151N 63 06 06W Simpson Bay, St
Martin
Friday 11th January
The launch on Tuesday went as planned, and we moved
on to Cooper Island to finally prepare for the trip to St Martin. The weather is
the quietest it's been at any time in the Caribbean, very few showers and about
10 knots of wind. The swell has also virtually disappeared, and the
visibility for swimming and snorkelling is excellent. Sitting in the cockpit
over an evening sundowner, what seems to be a twister appears under a dark
cloud over Peter Island and St Johns (see picture). It starts as a distortion
under a cloud, grows down and then becomes clearer over a 15 to 20 minute
period, and then quickly dissipates - bizarre.
Wednesay morning, we motor up to Virgin Gorda, and
anchor off the customs jetty. The forecast at 8.30 is still good and we decide
to go. Customs are empty and relatively helpful, the only snag being the
fact that I've left a document on the boat necessitating an extra two rowing
trips in the heat. All done, we row back as three large boatloads of
trippers arrive, ferried over from the cruise ships anchored off Roadtown.
We spend a few hours in Gorda Sound at the top of the islands, sort some food
out for the night, have a final cooling swim and shower before setting off
around 15.30.
The course passes Neckar Island to Port, clears the
reefs south of Anegada, and then we're out into a long, lazy and very
comfortable Atlantic swell. There's about 4 to 5 knots of wind close off the
portbow, so it's a motorsail at an easy 5 knots aiming to complete the 80 or so
miles by daybreak on Thursday. It's totally uneventful - we exchange radio
greetings with 'Vision', an Amerian boat that slowly passes us bound the same
way, and rumble gently on through the night under the sliver of a new moon and a
canopy of stars. The wind briefly gets up to 12 knots for a while under a
dark, slightly damp cloud, but by the early hours, it's back to force 2
and rather more on the nose. We're well out of the shipping channels here,
and other than Vision and one other sailing boat's tricolour, there are no other
boats. To the south though, a number of incandescent patches just over the
horizon show the path of cruise ships shuttling their sleeping cargoes from one
day stop to another. We swap watches, see the miles tick off the
GPS and sleep remarkably well when below. The glow from St Martin is visible 40 from miles or so, but it's early
dawn at 6 am before the shape starts to emerge. We pass Anguilla
on our portside, round Pt Plum and Pt BsseTerre, before dropping the anchor
in 5 metres on the sandy bottom of Simpson Bay. We've been very fortunate. Very
often the wind blows at 20 - 25 knots from the east all through January
with a corresponding set of large waves and swells.
There is a large land-locked lagoon at Simpson Bay,
approached by a bridge, but as it's so settled - and hot - we elect to stay
outside, with the benefit of swimming in crystal waters, a gentle cooling breeze
and absence of bugs! From here we can see Saba Island, Eustacia and St Kitts,
the latter our next destination.
Boat gremlins strike when setting off in the dinghy
to clear in - the throttle butterfly has welded itself shut. One hour and a dismantled carbureter later it's fixed, only to
find the motor dies on leaving the customs pontoon. We have lunch, row back the
boat and tools to find the float chamber full of somejelly-like crud. A further
half hour and it's buzzing again. The usual ratio is well underway -
80% of the time sent running the boat / home, 20% behaving like carefree
Caribbean tourists (max). The good news is that we've bought the missing
software to connect the computer to the sat-phone, so we should not be reliant
on shore connections for the Irie mail address, thus also the web diary. Shore
connections have been more difficult to find, and the Wi-fi doesn't always seem
to connect.
It just doesn't seem possible that it's already 9
months since we were here last after coming al the way from
Antigua.
Twister over the Virgins, Saba fom St
Martin
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