Wednesday 30 May: Leaving Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke
A few admin jobs to tick this morning before we are out of phone signal and internet: inquiry on vang hydraulic leak, banking and pay boat insurance, etc.
Ooph, boat insurance premium … that was painful! We are with Pantaenius and their premium has more than doubled from the Med to here. And will get a similar increase when we go into the Pacific. They say because of claims history and more difficult to settle claims the further away from Europe we are. So we shopped around in USA. Some would not insure liveaboards. The one quote we had was much lower than Pantaenius, but their coverage was not the same. So with a big “gulp” we paid. Generally Glen hates insurance. The combination of Cloudy Bay and our medical insurance is a large proportion of our annual expenses. But, you kind of need that peace of mind when retired!
After admin, a quick look on the deck to clear ropes, pole out in preparation for downwind, and by 9:30am we are ready to leave Great Harbour, which wasn’t actually so great!
As we pass Jost Van Dyke western tip, the wind accelerates but then once we are out to sea, it dies back to a measley 13 kts. We hoped for more than that, instead we will have to settle for a boat speed of 5-6kts for now.
It’s nice to have blue clear sky, but the sun feels extremely intense and it also heats up our cockpit tent when there are no clouds to protect us. So we reluctantly put the bimini back up, over the tent. This canvas shading canvas gives us an instant relief from the heat. We can breathe now.
Even if it was supposed to accelerate just north of Puerto Rico, the wind gets even less after midday, dropping to 9kts and our speed reduces to 4-5kts, which means we are rolling even more in the Atlantic swell, which by now has worked its way around the BVIs. And throughout the afternoon it remains on the same note.
Did we mention that we have put the cockpit tent up, mainly to keep us dry from the rain? Well, there was a real downpour late afternoon, but we didn’t have the sides or back zipped on and we got soaked! Hm, at least after a good wipe we now have a clean cockpit.
At 6pm Glen connects on the SSB to listen to Chris Parker’s forecast. We are contemplating whether to sign up for his services, but before we do, we would like to listen to him for a few days, to see how he presents the info to his clients. So far, we failed to connect to his main transmission at 6am, maybe tomorrow we are successful.
We see the silhouette of Puerto Rico in the distance, it is a large island, but we can’t distinguish much ashore. Feels like we have been looking at it for many hours now, and seeing our SOG at only 4.5kts doesn’t help the feeling that we are not exactly making progress passed this 95nm long island.
The sun sets at 6:55pm tonight. This certainly shows we are gradually moving north-west. Each day we should see it set 10 minutes later, meaning by the time we reach Charleston, the sun will set at 8pm. Wow, it will feel like Europe. So looking forward to have longer days. In the Caribbean days felt so short (with sun setting just after 6pm), especially after we’ve lived in Gibraltar where at 10pm it was still daylight.
And when the sun goes, so does the wind. Downwind sailing in 7kts of wind is far from being fast! We are only doing 3kts now. Oana is giving Glen the look that says “let’s put the engine on”, and Glen pretends not to see that look. He even pretends not to hear, when the suggestion is voiced out! But a few minutes later, we put the sails away and start the engine. Sailing at 2kts wasn’t getting us anywhere. It’s a shame we just charged the batteries on the generator…
Was there a saying “if you want wind to come, put the engine on”? If there isn’t, then it definitely should be! 15 mins after we started ours, the wind picked up to 14kts and we were back on sailing mode, with poled out genoa and main, doing 6+kts. This is more like it!
We cross our fingers it will stay like this. But even better, it increases to the perfect 15-18kts giving us a much more stable ride at 7-8kts speed. Lovely, and with a near full moon too.