17:54N 062:52W Gustavia, St Barts

Wind Charger
Bob and Elizabeth Frearson
Sat 21 Dec 2013 23:14
We popped into the very smart Lighthouse Hotel for dinner, I felt it warranted a maxi dress which conveniently knots up around my waist to avoid getting wet in the dinghy beaching while Bob carefully put his tidy clothes into a double bag and then did a strip and change on the beach by torchlight.  The staff were utterly charming with a nice little touch of printing our names on the menus.  The American style menu was limited in choice and looked very plain but we both chose a “garden fresh” salad, vegetable soup, the red snapper, expecting great things.  The salad was very chunky, and as Michele would say “not fine dining”, the soup was so spicy that even Greg wouldn’t have liked it and the poor red snapper came cremated with lumpy garlic mash and rubbery broccoli (Bob’s least favourite vegetable which he only eats because I tell him it is good for him).  At least pudding was a tasty lump of cake with ice cream (which most definitely was not home made).  “A disaster, darling”. If I told you the prices your eyes would water more than ours did when we drank the soup.
We set off very very early for the 60 mile trip across to St Barts pottering out across a turquoise sea, plotted our course to avoid the nasty rocks around St Barts, set sail and had a chirpy breakfast all before 8am.  I remarked to Bob what a pleasure it was to have a following wind and waves for a change as we undulated along very serenely.   Even Windy joined in with some eerie sounds as if wind was being blown across a bottle.
Then a dithering wind got up and couldn’t make up its mind whether to be 12 knots or full on 32 knots.  Bob kept complaining that I wasn’t holding the course.  I rather tetchily told him that the autopilot was messing about and sluggish to respond to the bumptious waves that were building up and creeping up behind us from three different directions.  We put up more foresail, we took in more mainsail, we tried with the engine started to try and balance us up and eventually it dawned on us that the autopilot had after a swift terminal illness, died.  Watches were consulted and steering watches put in place, one hour on, one hour off.  We could manage.
Then the dinghy flipped over and previous experience told us that this could easily lead to losing the dinghy entirely.  We manoeuvred into the wind on the increasingly bouncy and fickle waves and Bob manfully hauled it aboard.  Strike two.
Then the D pin on the sheet block came apart and we really were at least one sheet to the wind, the boom swinging out, the mainsail clattering, the shackle banging against the boom. We manoeuvred into the wind on the even more bouncy and fickle waves and Bob manfully hauled it aboard lashed across his torso by the jib sheet, squashed me against the wheel (at least I discovered how I had already bruised/cracked my rib because it hit exactly the same spot which made me shout), up ended himself in the cockpit as he heroically fixed the shackle hoping it would stay the course.  Strike three.
They say that things come in threes.  Not always.  When Bob had finished wrestling with steering in extremely tricky conditions, the dinghy and the shackle he put his feet up and reached for his Kindle.  It never rains ... the bloody thing was broken, just one corner of the screen displaying his book and he was 97% of the way through.
After such an enormous kerfuffle we sauntered into Gustavia, pleased with ourselves that we had overcome a whole series of potential disasters and against all odds we actually arrived in daylight, parked up alongside a herd of very big indeed super yachts and called it a day.  As night fell all the mega watt yachts turned on all their lights above and below the water.  Not to be outdone we have displayed our naff Christmas tree on deck and it is merrily going through its multitudinous colours as we tuck into a well earned bottle of wine.
A long blog today, a long day.