Well, a few days of recovery and we're good as new.
We left Antigua Saturday afternoon and headed to St Barts. We had a nice sail for most of the afternoon. I only needed to do about 5 knots to make the anchorage by sunup. So as the wind picked up I put in a reef and de-powered the main so as to not go so fast. Chuck and I were doing 3 hour watches which worked out well. The closer we got to St Barts the wind picked and finally went north ( was out of the SW) so we motored for about 3 hours. The wind settled into the east and brought with it a terrible rain storm. Lots of rain, a soaking, blowing, driving rain storm with large swells from the north.
As the sun came up and I could see, as well as feel the swells (Chuck had been "feeling" the swells for about an hour at this point) I decided that the anchorage we were headed to was not going to be a very nice place for Chuck. After making a few tacks back and forth to decide, I headed for St Maartin in time to make the 9:30 bridge.
I forget that Sunday was the last day of the regatta and when we came through the bridge the bay was packed with boats. Never seen anything like it. Wall to wall boats.
We found ourselves a little patch to settle into and promptly fell asleep.
I've spent the last 2 days doing tourist things around St Martin with Charlie.
Tomorrow I will start to re provision the boat and get ready for my trip to Virgin Gorda. Another 90 mile run that I will do solo.
Looks like Saturday night be a good window to cross.
I'll keep you posted.
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