Through the dark early morning hours we continued our 100nm sail from Barbados to St. Lucia. We took turns with 3 hour watches. When I came on to start my 0500 hour watch, the dawn was breaking while the seas and the winds continued to behave themselves.

We sail our night watches with a reef in the main just in case a sneaky squall comes around in the middle of the night. It is a pain to properly throw in a reef in the dark so we just automatically put it in each evening. A reef in the main slows us down some but offers us peace of mind.

With first light, and the skies looking good, I shook out the reef in the main and raised it to the top of the mast. That upped our speed by about ¾ of knot and now we were making over 7 knots with 13 knots of apparent wind. Whoo Hoo!

By 0600 I noticed that the skies were thickening behind us. A quick check with the radar showed that a nasty squall was forming and running for us. Damn!

By now we were approaching the SE corner of St. Lucia. I was thinking that I could tuck in behind the island before we were hit by the squall. St. Lucia is a volcanic island and its mountains would offer us protection from the worst of the winds that typically come with a major squall. Thus, I was faced with a quandary: do I turn the boat into the winds to put a reef in the sails or do I keep the main up and race the squall to the backside of the island. I knew if I took the time and effort to put in the reef, we would surely be mauled by the squall. However, if I did not reef and the squall reached us, we would be over canvased and the higher winds would put a strain on the rigging. Ugh…what should I do?


A wise sailor would turn the boat and put in a reef. That was the safest (and smartest) thing to do. However, I was feeling a bit frisky this morning and decided to see if I could reach the shelter of the leeward side of St. Lucia before the storm hit.

That was a mistake!
Just as we were approaching the southern side of St. Lucia the storm struck with vengeance. It was like someone opened up a zipper in the clouds as buckets of water just poured out the skies all at once and the fierce winds stuck. This was one of the worst squalls I have seen. While we in been in many squalls with higher winds, none of them struck us like a fist in the face before.

With so much sail up and the strong force of the wind, which instantly went from 15 knots to 35 knots, I could not maintain our course. I had to just sail to where winds wanted to take us. Even when I turned on both engines and powered them up, I could not maintain our preferred westerly heading. Fortunately, we were still 4 nm to the south of the island, which gave us enough room to keep out of trouble. However, by the time I could turn the boat back to its westerly heading, we were only 1.25 miles from shore. I was about to turn the boat into the wind just to stop heading for the shoals that were just a mile ahead of us when I was able to get the boat back under control and sail in the direction I wanted to. Whew!

Now, in no time were we in any danger. There are a number of options I had to choose from to prevent anything dangerous from happening. These included heaving to, heading into the wind and putting some reefs in, waking up Mary Margaret and having her help control the boat, etc., etc., etc. However, I was nice and dry in our covered helm and wanted to stay that way. Plus, during the worst of the storm I wanted to sail to windward and, by doing so, keep the apparent wind speed to a minimum. Keeping the apparent wind speed down reduces the strain on the rigging. Thus, while we had 35 to 40 knots of true wind speed for about 15 minutes, we only had 25 to 30 knots of apparent wind since I was running with the wind and making 12 knots.

Therefore, I just let the storm take us to where she wanted to before blowing past us enough to allow me to steer back to the west. However, I must admit, it was one hell of a ride while it lasted!

As it turned out, there was a second squall behind the first one but we were able to tuck in behind St. Lucia before that one hit. Protected by the mountains, we mostly had just heavy rain.

By the time we were approaching Soufriere Town the skies were clearing and we were able to grab a mooring ball in the Marine Park next to the sheer walls of the plunging cliffs and where the bat cave is located. This should be a great place to explore for the next few days.

The scenery is spectacular with one of the Pitons rising straight out of the water. The water is crystal clear. The volcano and the mountains and cliffs are lush with a deep green jungle carpeting everything. I will post pictures so you can see for yourself.