The voyage across to Bequia begins with a single step. Or mile. Or nautical mile in our case. We had, according to our iPad APP approx 80 miles to go. So we best get up and at 'em right? Right, where's the coffee Skipper?
And so we weighed anchor just as the sun was waking up, waved bye-bye to Zero to Cruising (hope to see you again and soon!), who was still snoozing (shame, shame) and started our journey down the coast of Saint Lucia,
motor sailing as we were charging up the batteries and running our water-maker.
The skies were a hazy type of grey, and the impressive lushness of Saint Lucia was not as spectacularly vivid as we would imagine it to be had the lighting conditions been better,
however still feeling very tiny and insignificant as we moved happily down the coast, crossing the miles off our journey, one by one.
After a week of hiding from the winds and weather, there were as many of us on the move (one the same leg as us) as we might have thought, however, we did come across this big guy,
who then turned towards land to the cruise ship dock, her passengers undoubtedly excitedly waiting for their Saint Lucian excursions to begin,
towards the rain forests and volcanic hikes, or better yet the pitons,
rising majestically towards the sky.
Which made me curious, what ARE pitons anyways? WIKI defines them as two volcanic plugs. Un-huh, and just what are (volcanic) plugs? Thank goodness we live in a knowledge is just a click away type of world (when WiFi is cooperating of course), where I learned that a volcanic plug is a "volcanic landform created when magma hardens within a vent on an active volcano". Thanks WIKI.
And so the pitons are now eroded cone shaped lava domes that were formed when the volcano was erupting. Innaresting... (and can't wait to come back here next season to hike, explore and inhale and bask and play on this island!)
There is Gros Piton and Petit Piton, which aptly translate to Large Piton and Little Piton (who was naming these now?), and then before you knew it, we'd cleared the effects of land, the pitons behind us,
heading towards a few hours of a crossing, and Dave says,
"Babe, look...we're just moving along..."
(hint, remember the lower number, aka speed, on the salt encrusted display)
"But, honey..." says I,
(hint, check out the SOG number)
So here's your trick question of the day today, can you tell us what's wrong with this? Sailing along (no motoring as our water tanks were full and engine was off) at a wonderful 6.6 (woo-hoo) but only doing 3.7 !! WTF ??
And here's a quick diagram, as to why,
The little black diamond shape is us. The yellow arrow is the wind pushing us along. Nice. You need wind to sail. And we were sailing along nicely (theoretically) at 6.6 knots.
The blue arrow, pointing in the very wrong direction, is the current. Current slowing our progress by an impressive 3 knots ! WOW. So we were effectively moving along at 3.7 knots speed, and having to cover over 80 nautical miles, well we weren't going to get anywhere fast. Yikes...
The cruising guides did say to "allow for plenty of time" when doing this crossing. Indeed, we had counted on plenty of time, but had not counted on doubling our time.
Oh and the red line pointing straight ahead to Saint Vincent is where we want to go. The green line pointing very East of Saint Vincent is where we were heading, how are those calculations coming along Dave?
Needless to say, after an hour or so, the current lessened. We'd adjusted our track to use the effects of the current to push us along somewhat and then re-adjusted. A bit of an S-curve if you will.
And then after almost 12 hours at sea, 81 nm later, we arrived
and tucked in nicely into Admiralty Bay, near the town of Port Elizabeth, Bequia (Bequia is the largest island of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), just before the squall hit, which thankfully washed the salts off, and
over a delicious supper of spinach filled tortellini in Shrimp Alfredo Sauce, we watched the sun set and were fast asleep before the dishes got done.