Heading to St. Martin: or so we thought

Bare with me as we once again enter the time machine. This blog will be about our sail from the USVIs to...well, you will see. I apologize for the delay, but I seem to need time to ruminate on events before I can manage to write about them. Of course, we have also been having so much fun in Grenada that I haven't written very much at all. Unfortunately, that means some of the details can become fuzzy. Please accept my apologies!

On this trip, we are heading back to June 2023. In fact, it is the middle of June and our insurance company says that we must have our boat below 12 degrees 40 minutes north from July 1 - October 31. That means that we need to be pretty much in Grenada. Yes, we can be a little north of there, but not very far north. So, while today, we sit comfortably in Grenada (Nov. 11, 2023) waiting to see what happens with a tropical storm that is trying to form in the western Caribbean, last June we were in a rush to make our way south from the USVIs, and as it turns out, we were racing a tropical storm. Fun times!!!

In mid-June, we were anchored in Brewer's Bay, St. Thomas. We loved this spot. There were lots of turtles. There were good breezes, and we were enjoying our new hobby of wingboarding. However, we were also feeling the push of time. We needed to get south, and time was running out. Fortunately, our new friend, Kristin, volunteered to crew for us again. She flew in from Rhode Island to help us move south. The plan was to island-hop our way south: USVIs --> St. Martin --> Guadeloupe --> Martinique --> Grenada. There is nothing unusual about this route. Sailors do it every year. It should be a fun time to explore some new places. However, isn't there some saying about God laughing at plans??

The most challenging aspect of this voyage was to be the jump from the USVIs to St. Martin. If you look at a map you will find that St. Martin lies about 100 nm to the east of the USVIs. As I mentioned above, we were in St. Thomas, the furthest west you can be in the USVIs. The plan was for us to move to St. John, spend the night, and then start out for St. Martin. The reason that this was expected to be the most challenging leg was, as mentioned, St. Martin lies to the east. The tradewinds typically blow from east to west. That means that we would be beating into the waves and winds...AGAIN. In addition, the channel between the USVIs and St. Martin, the Anegada Passage, is known to produce challenging conditions. Great...just great! Of course, we were going to pick a good weather window, but we know that forecasts are ALWAYS wrong. Regardless, it should have been about a 24-hour passage. We've done that plenty of times, so while we knew it would be uncomfortable, we knew it would soon be over. It is important to note, that due to hubris, we didn't do some of our normal passage prep. Of course, we did everything safety-related, but I didn't do much in the way of food preparation. This will be an important fact later...nothing dire, but it wasn't ideal either.

Kristin arrived without incident. We did a little sightseeing and had a good meal. It was so nice to have Kristin back on Away To Me. We thoroughly enjoyed exploring St. Thomas a little bit with her. Unfortunately, it was about this time that we started seeing some troubling weather forecasts and a bit of discussion of tropical development in the Atlantic. The forecasts indicated that the development of a tropical storm was likely and that it looked to be heading into the Caribbean. Unfortunately, I can't remember all of the details of our conversation, but I know that we decided to leave directly from St. Thomas and instead of going to St. Martin, we were going to go further south to Guadeloupe. Trust me, we were looking at the forecasts very closely. All of us onboard were discussing the possibilities, and we were discussing the forecasts with our friends in the sailing community as well. All indications were that the storm was going to head toward the northeastern Caribbean (USVI). This was to have been a 48-hour trip instead of a 24-hour trip, but still nothing to worry about. In hindsight, I should have been doing some cooking, but I was not...

The trip towards Guadeloupe was a SLOG! We were trying to go as far east as we could, but the wind and waves were right on our nose and slowing us down. What was projected to be a 48-hour trip was now looking like a 72-hour trip. Great!! Neither Kristin nor I were feeling very well. Seasickness is miserable. Fortunately, we weren't throwing up, but we weren't having a lot of fun either. When I am seasick I have no interest in eating or cooking (are you noticing a trend). So, we decided to divert a little more south toward Martinique. This would allow us to use our sails at least, and the projected arrival time was going to be effectively the same. This was also advantageous because the updated forecast for the tropical storm had it now heading straight to Guadeloupe. Martinique was definitely sounding like the better option. I grew up in Savannah, GA. I, and my family, have a lot of experience with hurricanes. I have a healthy respect for them, and I know that the forecast can change quickly. This storm was odd and the forecast seemed to be constantly changing. I have never seen forecasters be so uncertain about a storm track for such a long period of time. I, like Dave and Kristin, wanted to be well out of its path. However, none of the experts seemed to have a handle on where the storm was going. Unfortunately, it seemed determined to keep moving to intersect us. Great, just great.

When we are on passage, we take 4-hour watches. This is one reason that having crew on board is such a luxury. That means we each get 8 hours off between watches, whereas when it is just Dave and I we are on watch for 4 hours and off watch for 4 hours. This leads to serious fatigue after just a couple of days. I mention this, because of all of the watches that I have done, my watch from 11:30 pm - 3:30 am on the next to last night is the one that I remember most on this trip. That is because at 3:00 am we received an update from one of our weather services sent out an update. This update now had the storm heading to Martinique, right where we were heading. Not only that, but one of the models was predicting that it could become a category 3 hurricane before hitting Martinique. To say that this caught my attention is an understatement. Dave and Kristin were asleep. However, Kristin was about to take over the watch. I was on the verge of a panic attack. All of a sudden our starboard engine died, and my adrenalin level went through the roof. Fortunately, it started again without issue, but if I gave it too much throttle it would die again. It was now about 3:30 in the morning, time for Kristin to take over the watch. Not only did Kristin show up, but Dave was also up wondering what the heck I was doing with the engine. I told both of them about the updated forecast and updated them on the engine situation. They read the storm update. We then had a quick discussion and ran a couple of scenarios through the computer. Realistically, we only had two options. We could keep pushing to Martinique and get there just in time for a potential hurricane, or we could turn south and head directly to Grenada. If we headed to Grenada, we would arrive in the same amount of time it would take us to get to Martinique, and the storm should stay to the north of us. Grenada it is!! This had the added benefit of giving us a better wind angle so we would be able to use our sails more effectively. We made the turn and Away to Me picked up speed.

Usually, if we can manage 5 knots through the water with just sails we will turn off the engines, but we were all feeling the need to make as much speed as possible. The engines stayed on. Yes, we were still having issues with the starboard engine, but it was doing fine as long as we didn't try to run it above 1800 RPMs. We were running as fast as we could all the while continually watching the storm forecast. Our decision to head to Grenada was made at about 4 am on June 19th, by 1 pm on June 20th we had Grenada in view. I can't begin to tell you how relieved we were. The storm track was continuing to push south, but we were pretty confident that it wouldn't come as far south as Grenada. Safe harbor was in sight! It would take us another 5 hours to reach the anchorage, but we would soon be able to truly rest and relax. This was indeed true, but this passage wasn't done with us yet. Just as we were about to grab the mooring ball outside of St. George's harbor our port engine died. Yes, it started up again, but it was also RPM limited. Of course, the wind was blowing pretty hard, maybe about 20 knots, and trying to push us around. Having both engines fully operational would have been a big help. Fortunately, Dave is always cool under pressure and we were able to grab the mooring ball just as the sun set behind us. Time for a "We are there beer (thanks for the expression Julia!)" and a good night's sleep. We'll figure out the engine issues tomorrow...

As it turned out, the tropical storm continued tracking south and went over St. Lucia and our engine issues were due to bad fuel that we picked up somewhere.