Kaimusailing

At sunset a few pictures were taken of Nevis. Skipper came up and we discussed time to go to the next waypoint, the autopilot remote control, should we try to disconnect it. We compared the track on the chartplotter with that on the laptop and it was nice to see them agreeing perfectly. I went below and tried to sleep. I could sleep about 6 hours if I wanted to and then had to be on watch at 2 AM. I couldn’t sleep at all. The motion of the boat kept me rolling back and forth. Then there was a bang and I dressed and went on deck.
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The owner and his dad were on duty and said there was nothing that they knew of that made a noise. The boom probably tried to jibe, was prevented by the preventer, and slammed back where it belonged. That would make a noise. I answered a few questions about lights they saw on the horizon. On the left were lights of the islands and of a ship that looked like it was in port in St. Christopher. I said he was the patron saint of travelers. A ship came up off our starboard beam and passed us a good distance off. It was a cruise ship with so many lights I couldn’t see its side light, red.
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Skipper came up for his watch and we made coffee. Everyone was telling me to get some sleep. The lights of Saba, a small high island on our left, right across from St. Maarten on our right, made it look like a ship. I assured them it was an island, but I wasn’t so sure. As we got closer it was obviously Saba.
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We had a waypoint between Saba and St. Martin and about an hour and a half to get there at 7 knots, but I could see that we could turn a lot sooner and head to our next mark, the eastern approach of Christiansted in St. Croix, our next destination. Skipper took the preventer off the main boom and we did a 270 right turn, coming about on a new course, rolled out the genoa, reduced the engine to see what she would do under sail alone, ended up setting the engine to 1600 rpms, and rigged the preventer on the main boom, now on the starboard side.
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We were still making 7 knots with less noise down below from the engine. The ride was smoother with less rolling. We had two sails up to steady the ship. The ETA at the approach was about 10 AM.
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It was now 2 AM, the beginning of my 2-6 watch. Skipper was off duty and went below. We had observed a vessel approach from the North on a Steady Bearing Decreasing Range course, or SBDR, which is a collision. Our first course adjustment was to put the engine in neutral/idle, the second adjustment was to come right 10 degrees after we saw the speed change made little difference, the wind was picking up and idling the engine didn’t decrease boat speed enough. After he passed our bow, we came left 10 degrees and resumed our previous course. He continued off South, to our left, and was gone.
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I celebrated with a diet coke. The island of Saba was now passing well astern and there were no lights ahead, we were sailing into the abyss. The crescent moon was long gone and the only lights on the horizon were flashes of lightning. Down below I took a snapshot of the nav station in the dark cabin, and the nav bulkhead’s numerous red and blue lights. I looked at our fuel tank gauge, which skipper had said was not reading correctly. Both tanks were reading 3/4 full, when we had been only drawing from the #1 tank. Also, we were told that the generator, which was running to provide air conditioning at the owner’s request, only draws from the #1 tank. So why was the #2 tank also reading 3/4 full when we hadn’t been drawing fuel from it? We could no longer trust what we were seeing.
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Our earlier ETA of mid morning at the eastern approach to Christiansted was now something like 2 or 3 in the afternoon, our speed over ground was down in the 5 knot range. I brought the rpms up to 1800 and then 2000. We were only making an average in the high 6 knot range. We must be bucking a current.
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This is the part of sailing that requires stamina and patience. Motor sailing with flopping sails in a sloppy sea is a pain. I had to endure it for a few hours in the wee hours of the morning when it was hard to keep my eyelids open. When the knotmeter was reading average of high sixes I was sure we would make port and carry out our tasks during business hours and not have to wait another day, an extra day we did not have.
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A large bright light appeared directly to the East, rising over teh horizon. I at first thought it was a steaming light of a ship and would see a side light below it, but it rose higher and higher. Was it Venus? Just as the moon looks huge when it is on the horizon, so does Venus. It rose and the dawn began. Skipper came on deck for his 6 AM watch and I was eager to get below and sleep. I had some cold coffee in the carafe he could warm up in the microwave and not have to brew a new pot. I went below and tried to sleep. Surprisingly it was difficult, I was beyond tired, exhausted, achy, but I did fall asleep eventually.
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I awoke refreshed and went on deck. I expected everyone to be up there, but it was just the skipper and it was only 7:30 AM, I had only slept about an hour. We were counting down the miles to a waypoint on the eastern end of St. Croix. It looked like we could alter the approach once we passed the reef off of Buck Island and head right for the entrance of the channel. I created the waypoints on this computer and then entered them into the chartplotter. Skipper looked at them on his Navionics app and we agreed to modify the Antigua to St. Croix route. We were organizing the take down of the mainsail and rolling up the genoa and then motoring into port.
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We rolled up the genoa right away, easy in the light wind, then put the autopilot into standby. This allowed the mainsail to weathercock the whole boat toward the wind. The owner was at the helm and skipper was releasing the main halyard. It came down, stopped, and the sail was pulled down using a boathook to grab each batten car on the mast and pull it down into the stack pack sail cover.
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The main was down, sails were furled, we motored into the inlet which was tricky. I made a mistake of telling the skipper to turn to port when it was starboard I wanted. I was looking at the chartplotter display with the boat heading from top to bottom. I wanted him to go to the left of the display, but that was a righ turn, instead I told him to turn left and he replied he was confused.
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Indeed it was confusing because there was a second channel that turned out to be deep enough for us, it cut off a meandering bend of the deeper main channel. We came into the harbor. No one responded to our calls on VHF, no matter what channel we used. The phone numbers of the marina and customs offices got no response. We wasted a lot of time poking into one blind channel after another, then we agreed to tie up to A dock, which wasn’t labeled, but C dock was, and this one was two docks over from C dock.
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Skipper went ashore following normal protocol. The skipper is the only one allowed ashore when clearing in, then the crew has to follow to pass through immigration and get their passports stamped.
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It turned out the island had been hit hard by the recent hurricanes and the harbor was only partly up and running. Customs and Immigration had temporarily moved to the airport, some distance away, and the marina was not in normal condition, wrecked boats were all over the place, one a Lagoon 440 that had a huge hole, keel to sheer, in its port hull.