It’s almost impossible to describe the fear, the exhaustion, and the hopelessness that cascades over you as you try to coax you’re tiny life support system mile by mile across a pitching and tossing sea, lashed in the night by unforeseen squalls that threaten to capsize you, as the ocean rushes across the decks, again.
You long for the dawn to break, so you can see the sails, you can see the size of the swell, and the breaking waves, as you watch the unbelievable slowness of the progress of Picaroon on the chart plotter.
For two nights, and two days we’ve been out here, sailing so far south to get the angle we need for the northern tack that we’ve run off the chart. At times we’re over 50 miles off Cabo Beata, 100 miles south of the mainland of the Dominican Republic, and Jackie has taped a bit of blank paper onto the chart so we can plot where we are. For whatever reason Picaroon seems to get a better angle to the easterly trades heading south east, but when we turn north east we only seem to be able to go north, which is why we are so far out into the teeth of the trades, where the waves are like small mountains.
It’s the only strategy to make the pass of Cabo Beata, but we’re starting to think that this whole venture is futile. We even contemplate staying on this tack and head for Bonaire, only another 200 miles away, which is just off the coast of Venezuela, and why not, we’re already a third of the way there. It’s an irrational idea, but neither of us has had more than two hours sleep at a time in the last forty eight hours, so we’re not being exactly rational. Then we remember we have no SSB, hence, no weather information about Bonaire, and from what we remember that area has had lots of storms recently, so we ditch that concept and resign ourselves to a long tack north and east, back to the Dominican Republic coast, and hopefully when we get there we’ll have cleared the dreaded Cabo Beata.
Mastering the windvane steering has made all the difference in making this second go at Cabo Beata, it at least frees us from the tedium and exhausting business of steering, but it doesn’t take away the worry of being caught out by a squall or a sudden increase in the strength of the wind. When we’re running with all sails up, we usually have a reef, or two, in the main, Picaroon will be heeled over more than is comfortable, making moving about difficult, even just sitting in the cockpit we need to have our safety harnesses on, as the odd rogue wave will bounce us out of our seats if we’re not hanging on.
By the third night we’re both a bit despondent, and very tired, but Cpt. Morgan is going to steer for us, the skies are clear and the seas have settled a little as the trades have dropped off. We had all three sails up, with a reef in the main, and half furled jib, full mizzen and were making about four knots, slightly heeled over but not uncomfortable. Time to start our watches, so I stay up watching the Captain whilst Jackie goes below for her two hours kip.
Now and again the paddle which is supposed to lock into position on the windvane will become unlatched, and trails horizontally instead of being vertical. This requires us to keep a watchful eye on our speed and course, and to constantly lean over the aft end with a torch to check that all is well. Getting it to re-latch itself means heaving it out of the water on the safety line and letting it drop under its own weight so that it snaps back into place. It’s reluctant to engage when we’re doing four or five knots but when the speed drops off to two or three I can usually get it to re-latch. If I wait for the stern to rise out of the water and catch it between waves it goes back in a treat.
At about nine thirty, a half hour into my watch the speed drops and our course goes a bit haywire, so I lean over the stern to do my re-latching thing to discover that the paddle is still upright but one of the control lines has snapped, OH SHIT! This is a disaster, as it means we will have to hand steer her though the night as there’s no way even James Bond could climb down the cradle and tie a new knot on a moonless night and pitching seas. I call Jackie who has only just managed to drop off, and give her the bad news. Our spirits now plummet to new lows as we contemplate the long night ahead, changing wheel duty every half hour, which will mean in effect no rest whatsoever. We start the engine and decide to drop the main, to give us a little insurance against sudden squalls. Going up front in the dark is always a fraught experience, but all goes swimmingly well and the main drops neatly into the lazy jacks. Then in the torch light I can see a rope flying out away from the port side of Picaroon, it’s the main halyard that I hadn’t secured as I let the sail drop. Blast, Its caught by the wind and at least ten yards away, flailing about, way out of reach. We decide to leave it like that until morning and hope it’s still wafting about when morning breaks and then we can maybe retrieve it.
The loss of Cpt. Morgan was a body blow, but we grit our teeth and head north into the night, cursing the unfairness of it all. We motored into the dawn, and took down the sails as they were flogging too much on the course we were steering but as morning broke we went back to sailing as we needed to conserve fuel and it’s much easier to sail when you can see what’s happening with the sails and our rudimentary wind instruments of a tattered flag and a sail tie.
Morning, and at last it looked like we had cleared the Cape as we drew closer to the land but making Salinas was looking more and more impossible, so we elected to try for Barahona on the western side of the bay and only forty or so miles away. With a bit of luck we could make Barahona in the next ten hours and it was a tack we just may be able to sail. We were still hand steering and dog tired but we were now out of the woods, if we could sail until dusk that would put us within 20 miles of Barahona and then we could motor the last leg, getting to Barahona at about 1am.
A night time entry into any strange anchorage is to be avoided if at all possible, but as the sun set on Picaroon we didn’t give a damn, in fact we even had a beer, and we don’t drink on passage ever but we just needed a safe haven, and an end to this ordeal.
Eventually at midnight the lights of Barahona rose in the distance and we picked our way between buoys, confused by the million lights of a major town, to eventually drop anchor in a dark, but tranquil pool that smelt of sewage.
It didn’t matter though, we were safe and stopped, after 80 hours it was time to break out the rum, get blissfully drunk and fall into comatose slumber at 3, or was it 4am.
At 8.30 we were awakened by the Dominican Republic immigration officers knocking on our hatch wanting to see our papers, they of course had no idea of the trauma that we had just endured and we went through the procedures like robots, even to the point of unlashing our dingy which was on deck to row them ashore to complete the checking in procedure.
Once back on Picaroon we fell back into our bunks and slept until late afternoon, it would be three days until we felt almost human again, but we’d finally cracked Cabo Beata. Over the next few days we met with a couple of cruisers who had just done the same journey, both testified to the fact that it was more than very difficult, one yacht also had to turn back and try another day, before eventually making it. That made us feel much better about our own ordeal and our abilities as sailors.