Our way south

(added picture day after post)

Our last days in Georgetown were spent watching Regatta festivities & shooting the breeze with other cruisers, swimming or getting swamped in the dinghy, jugging more free water, and attempting to get our emails & publish the entry below. We took a good hike on Stocking Island and nice long walks on the beach. Friday afternoon was getting a bit choppy and we had an invitation to visit Bev & Arne, so rather than risk getting soaked during the dinghy ride, we just moved Maia back over beside them in the Sand Dollar anchorage. We had one last wonderful sunset with them and some other friends and then we headed back home and prepared the boat to leave on Saturday morning. They were up on deck seeing us off as we pulled out on Saturday morning, and it was a sweet farewell from the folks that helped inspire us to take this trip.

Our favorite (only) weatherman, Chris Parker, had been in Georgetown all week with poor internet service. Now that it was Saturday and he was back home in Florida with all of his weather data, our forecast was not as promising. We still had the same forecast for our short trip to Rum Cay, but now the weather for the big trip south was looking a little typical…winds out of the east. Oh well, the big trip still looked feasible, and we started for Rum Cay. We hailed Splendido on the VHF on the way, and they said their weather data was looking a bit more favorable for us…we decided to listen to their forecast.

Saturday was a beautiful hot day, and the sailing was wonderful from Georgetown to the northern tip of Long Island; after that however, we were dead into the light wind and choppy waters for the rest of the afternoon. We entered Rum Cay at 5pm (a little late for good depth/coral head visibility) and anchored safely at N23 38.484 W74 50.515. Reinhart was over the side before I knew it, and I joined him in the clear and warm water minutes later for a sunset dip. We touched base with Jack and Dave on Dionysus, also in Rum Cay, in the evening and we all decided that a Sunday morning departure looked perfect. Jack was seeing the same data as Splendido, and although Sunday was looking a little slow, we would have excellent winds on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This would be the first time Maia had a buddy boat; it was definitely a reassurance for a 650 mile trip.

We left on Sunday morning at 8am and ended up having a 126 hour trip which consisted of 20% lovely close hauled sailing in small seas, 60% soaking wet close-hauled sailing (or motor-sailing) into moderate seas with too much or not enough sail area up, and 20% motoring-sailing into light winds. I was fairly miserable about 30% of the time; nonetheless, it was never so uncomfortable that we wished we had left at a different time or made smaller hops along the way. No matter what we had hoped for in the forecast, we knew what we’d be getting into with this trip. We never had any of the winds anyone suspected; however they were typical winds for the area, just a little more out of the south, which was bad for us. We did a lot of wind searching and a lot of changing tacks for better sailing conditions, but each time we chose an eastward tack for a few hours in order to switch tacks for a better angle south, the wind would mysteriously just come around to our nose. Every once in a while we’d just give up and motor-sail the direct course to the Virgins, only to be fooled again by the conditions and try to sail it on very close hauled tacks. It was starting to feel like the Odyssey, as if the islands were trying to keep us away. I guess we are going to have to give up on the idea of ever becoming purists. Once we get going, we want to get there, and we carry loads of diesel to do it with. We had the opportunity to let the wind take us where we were going and get there on Sunday, but we had the diesel to get us there on Friday and that’s what we did.

We kept in touch with Jack and Dave on Dionysus a few times a day. Dionysus has a radar and they let us know how things were looking. We were never more than 20 miles apart until the very end and it was interesting to discover what different conditions we had. Wednesday morning was interesting as they had been experiencing 10 knot SE winds for several hours and we had been experiencing 21 knot ENE winds for several hours…quite a different animal just 5 miles apart. Once the sun rose we could see of the squalls around us and try to put to use the information we learned in our weather seminar. This was one big classroom and we could really see the difference in the winds in front, behind, and between the small storms. Oddly enough the squally weather in the middle of the week was a sweet ride for us, while the “settled” weather in the last 36 hours was a big pounding wet mess for both boats. We took many hard “bangs” from waves that seemed to be launching us, but nothing on us or Maia was ever broken. The seas moderated as we neared the islands. We all motored more than we had hoped for in the light winds towards the beginning of the trip, but Jack on Dionysus didn’t want to motor so hard at the end of the trip since he was getting lower on fuel than he’s comfortable with and there was plenty of wind for sailing (coming straight out of the Virgins), so they ended up tacking often in those unpleasant seas and will come in about 10 hours behind us. They said that last 50 miles was just a gorgeous sail through the islands though.

We made up our minds to make landfall at Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands while we were underway, and we arrived into Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke at 2:00 pm on Friday (N18 26.539 W64 45.114). Reinhart inflated the dinghy and went into to town to check in with customs & immigration, and to find some ice cream. Our 126 hour trip was salty and tiring and it will take a while to return ourselves and Maia back to pre-trip condition; but it was all worth it because now we are sitting in the BVIs a week after leaving George Town!