Close But No Cigar!

When I took my night watch last night, we had 150 nm to go to reach Prickly Bay, Grenada. Greg and I were desperately trying to get there before sundown today. We just needed to average 6.5 knots for the remaining 23 hours and we would slip into the marina just before dark. We had been going about 6.5 knots for several hours and the weather reports were calling for stronger winds the rest of the way. Soon the winds piped up and we averaged over 7 knots during my 3 hour watch. I turned the helm over to Mary at 2100 and went to bed dreaming of ice cold margaritas, slurping down one after another. Aaaaah! Now that is a dream any red blooded cruiser could relate to!

When I turned the helm over to Mary, I had told her that something was going on with the winds but felt they would return to normal within an hour or so. While there were no squalls in the area to impact the local wind, I felt there was something going on because the seas were up quite a bit, the winds had eased a bit toward our stern and our speed had dropped just a tad.

Alas, through Mary's 3 hours watch, Greg's 3 hours watch and the first hour of Mary Margaret's watch, the winds kept dropping, dropping and dropping some more. At 0400, one hour into Mary Margaret's watch, she got me up to help her drop the main as we had absolutely no wind. Damn! My dream of sipping iced margaritas had come to an abrupt end. We were now passing Tobago and were 85 nm from Grenada and there was no way we could get there before dark today.

We made a decision to motor the rest of the way with one engine one at just 1200 RPMs. That way we would sip fuel and arrive at Grenada on Tuesday, December 1st, at 0800, averaging just 3 knots for the last 28 hours of our long, long, long passage. Ugh!

As I write this blog, we are 55 nm short of Grenada and are having a hard time keeping our speed down to 3 knots. While we still have no wind, the current is about 0.5 knot and Leu Cat is just plain anxious to get there. I have decided to add insult to injury during my last (I hope) night watch by reversing our course and heading back to Tobago for 3 hours before turning back to Grenada and turning the helm over to Mary for her last night watch. But doing this, we will approach Grenada after the sun rises which will ease my nerves. The southwest corner of Grenada, where we are heading for, is ripe with shoals and foul water and I only want to enter such waters after the sun is up a bit so we can see the reefs and rocks and not just have to rely on the charts. We have found that charts are notoriously inaccurate and one should never rely on them when entering unknown waters. In fact, just south of where we are heading the chart notes that a rock is somewhere in the vicinity at just 1.5 meters of depth, but its exact location is not known. That just does not give me a lot of confidence with the chart!

On the positive side, our dear cruising friends, Michael and Susan of S/V Infini, emailed us to let us know that they are anchored in Prickly Bay and saw that the marina had posted our upcoming arrival. We first met them in 2008 in Cartagena, Columbia and have bumped into them dozens of times during our respective circumnavigations. In fact, we had Thanksgiving dinner on their boat just last year while we both were in Simon's Town, South Africa. We are so excited that someone will be there when we arrive, completing our circumnavigation.

As of noon today, the end of Day 23 of our passage to Grenada, our position is 11 11.1'N: 60 55.1W, our speed is meaningless since we are just killing time, our course is 290 degrees True, the wind�...what wind?, the seas�...what seas?, our average speed for the day is�....meaningless. We have sailed almost 3200 nm since leaving Ascension Island, with a daily average of 5.7 knots. Come hell or high water, we arrive in Grenada tomorrow morning!!!!!