We hemmed and hawed, hawed and hemmed. Our weather forecast said NorthWest swells, moving around to NorthEast. Hmmm. The guide book says that Montserrat is really not a good place to be if there are North swells. Okay, fine, we will go there another time. But Guadeloupe is not a trip we can do from Nevis in daylight hours. Do we leave at sunset, or do the partial night trip? Agreed that we will just get up really early (at OMG hundred hours, which is earlier than oh-dark-thirty) and head straight to Guadeloupe, a trip that should take us around 14 hours, give or take. And we will check out Montserrat as we pass by, since it is on the way.
The forecast looked promising enough, with wind from 70-80 degrees with 18 knots gusting to 24. Not perfect, but something we could comfortably live with. 6 foot seas to start with, and the wind and seas dropping as we got into the daylight hours. We couldn’t put it off, anyway, as we had post-dated our clearance with Customs and Immigration, but this was all within our travel parameters.
We prepped the boat in daylight hours, and I decided to slip on the second reef. It would balance our #3 jib better, and not overwhelm the autopilot with a poorly balanced sail plan. Besides, we don’t really enjoy sailing on our ear all that much. I prefer to scramble the groceries on my terms.
With the song “Christian Island” waking us up at 12:30 (I need to change that as the alarm, we may learn to dislike that song), we were off the mooring by 1:15… did I mention am? As I recorded the departure in the log book, I noticed that it was Friday. Sailors are a superstitious lot, and departing on a Friday is one of the worst superstitions of the bunch. Ah, this wasn’t a departure, it was a continuation. Yeah, that’s it, a continuation.
We departed with ¾’s of a moon casting its’ light on us, and illuminating the other mooring balls we had to avoid. It provided plenty of light for us to do what we had to do and enjoy the early hours of the day (or late hours of the night, whatever works for you). As we passed the bottom of Nevis, the stars were starting to be hidden by clouds, and the winds were now picking up. Sure, there were a few scattered squalls in the forecast, but…
The rain wasn’t so bad, but the winds never seemed to abate after the first squall kicked them up. 18 knots gusting to 24 ended up becoming 27 knots gusting to 34 (with one pushing 40 knots). And the direction of the wind was actually from closer to south than forecast, making it an upwind slog for us. Instead of the close to 6 knots we were running, we were struggling to get 3.5 to 4 knots of speed. Ugh.
As the wind came closer and closer to the nose, we furled the jib and let the main and diesel do the work. In the first light of the day, we saw Redonda off the port beam. Home to nothing but birds, this glorified rock has a couple of people vying for the crown “King of Redonda”. It’s is interesting enough to look at, but nothing I would consider ruling.
Montserrat was within sight, seemingly so enticing close. We had thought that we would be there by about 7:00 in the morning, take a look, then continue on to Guadeloupe. Now we were thinking we just wanted to get to Montserrat. Really, after Gustavia in St. Barth’s, how bad could the anchorage be? And with the speed we were making, or rather not making, Guadeloupe would not have been attainable in daylight. Look out, Montserrat, here we come!
We finally got into the lee of the island at about 9:00 (thankfully still in the morning!) and went back up the coast to the anchorage and main port, Little Bay. As I was taking down the mainsail (made much easier with the lazy jacks we have partially installed; a temporary set to see what works), I noticed that the cringle for one of the reef points (this is a reinforced area around a hole that you put a line in to make the sail area smaller) was chafed through almost all the way around. Damn. Now we need to get the sail to a sail loft in the near future. {{sigh}}
We saw a catamaran coming up from the south side of the island as we were turning north as well, and it ends up it was ‘Riff Raff’. Rob and Barb had planned on getting to Guadeloupe today was well, but decided against it when they got past Montserrat. They turned around and headed for the anchorage. Sometimes it’s nice knowing that it wasn’t just you.
On the plus side, the anchorage here is far calmer than we had expected, the lazy jacks are a success, and we will actually see Montserrat this year after all. Just a bummer about the sail needing work.
Since February 2010 (we were in Puerto Rico then, our first season in the Caribbean), the volcano here in Montserrat has been pretty quiet. The exclusion zones are smaller, and even the maritime exclusion zone can be transited in daylight hours. This really is a pretty island, and we are looking forward to exploring it a bit. Provided the volcano and the weather prove amenable to this.
To add to the Friday thing… I got some internet (I could get on Facebook and email) but then had trouble uploading this blog. Ha!