Our two weeks with Portia and Steve are quickly winding down. The time has passed so quickly but this is what happens when you are with good friends in a wonderful venue.

We weighed anchor around 1000 and motors around the reefs of Christiansted and into the open ocean. We then turned into the wind to put the sails up. As Mary Margaret hauled on the mainsail halyard, the sail went up the mast. However, around halfway up she encountered resistance and then heard a "pop". Inspection of the sail and its lines did not discover any problem so she continued to raise the sail. It went up the rest of the way fine but something was not right and we could not figure it out.

We ended up just setting the sail, opening the headsail and then continuing on our course to St Thomas. Since we could not determine the problem now, we decided that we would sail to St. Thomas and once there, work on trying to figure out the problem when we were anchored and the boat was not rocking.

Our sail was wonderful with 15 to 20 knot winds from the east. The seas were up a bit, with heights in the 6 to 8 foot range, periods in the 7 to 8 second range and from the NE. This made the ride a bit bouncy but it was not too bad.

The sun was out which topped off this great sail. We made the 38 nm passage in a little over 4 hours, averaging about 9 knots. This more than made up for the 6 hours of motoring we had to do to make our passage last week from St. Johns to St. Croix.

When we were approaching our anchorage just off Hassel Island in St. Thomas, we turned into the wind to drop the mainsail. This is when we discovered the cause of our problem in raising the main. As Mary Margaret lowered the mainsail, she discovered that one of the batten cars (this is what travels up and down the mast and to which the sail is attached to), was sticking to where one piece of the batten car track abuts against the start of another piece of track. Apparently, one of the track's bolts has fallen out and the two ends of the track are not smooth against each other.

By playing with the halyard and the downhaul lines, we were able to move the batten cars across this problem area and the sail finally came down. Whew! Tomorrow, I will go up the mast and do a close inspection and, hopefully, fix the problem by replacing the missing bolt.

Once again we are sharing this anchorage at Hassel Island with three other boats. But the anchorage is large enough to handle us all comfortably. We have nice winds to keep the wind generator happy and the swells are very mild, so with the sun shining, conditions are ideal.

Oh, by the way, I received an email from the administrator of Sailblogs telling me that the linkage between Sailblogs and Facebook is now back in place. Thus, I am hoping that you will see this blog just by me postinging directly to Sailblogs. My fingers are crossed!