Would you believe that in three years of Caribbean Sailing, this is only the third time that Banyan has deployed her beautiful Spinnaker Colours.

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We'd been in Sint Maarten for a while now just waiting and watching and watching and waiting (and shopping !!) all the while trying to correlate and parallel WindGuru and PassageWeather in an effort to make it read what we wanted it to.

And what is it that our favourite saying says : "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails"

We were watching and squinting at the computer screen desperately wanting to see wind-vane arrows pointing us to a nice NorthEast wind so we could sail nicely and speedily from Sint Maarten to the Virgins, namely the BVI Island of Virgin Gorda.

We'd taken the outbound Simpson Bay bridge leaving the waters of Simpson Bay Lagoon and anchored outside, in anticipation of, in preparation for... the 80 nm crossing.

Now in clearer and cleaner waters we could run our water-maker, not to mention feel the motion of the ocean, yet the winds were still not cooperating. And as we rolled a little from side to side, we fondly remembered the calm waters of The Lagoon. I always find it preferable to feel the currents and waves at least a day or more before the making a passage, as it allows my body to acclimatize before hitting the bigger ocean swells.

We found ourselves dinghy-ing ashore to the likes of McDonald's, or Lagoonies, or The Yacht Club, to get twice-a-day weather updates on the arrows of the wind and waves, and we saw that nothing much of anything was materializing... in fact it was turning out to be a take the best of what you got before it gets worse for at least a week if not more.

We speeded up our errands, bought a few extra things, got our laundry done, and on Friday morning, we weighed anchor well after the sun was up, which for us, is rather uncommon,



but made for some great action shots, wouldn't you agree?

The day was calm. The motion of the ocean was non-existent. There was just enough wind to keep the pretty colours of our Spinnaker ballooned out,



and we moved along at a rather slowish pace, but one that would get us there...



eventually. Even the Coast Guard plane swooped down low hovering over us for a bit, probably admiring our pretty colours !!

After cleaning up from a late lunch, I came out from below, and this is what showed up for some afternoon excitement.



Thankfully, this is as big as this water spout got, but nevertheless, it was interesting, as always (or with nothing better to do) to watch the cloud formations build, intensify, and then dissipate.



In came the Spinnaker. And then it started to rain. And it rained, steadily and gently, for an hour or so. The rain stopped, the sun moved the clouds aside, and then the winds got really flukey.

We tried. We waited. Patiently but the winds just didn't come back. And we had to turn the Iron Jetty on for the last few hours to Virgin Gorda. Just as well, our sails got a washing and had a chance to dry before we brought them in. And dropped our main. And squared away our lines, all before sunset.

And that's when the stars came out to play, the bioluminescence sparkling in the waters of Banyan's speedy wake. Getting closer to Virgin Gorda, we carefully scanned the darkness for the well lit buoys that cleared our way into Drake's Anchorage, where after roughly peaceful and uneventful 14 hours, we dropped the hook, had a nice hot shower (and an arrival beer!), and then promptly felll asleep,



Waking up the next morning to see that this is the result of where we'd anchored. Everything always looks different in the colours of the day.