LEAVING FOR ST. CROIX… (Part 1)

As beautiful as Barbados was, we were excited to be on our way once again to rendezvous with our children and grandchildren in St. Croix-USVI. The trip would be around 400 nautical miles and take an estimated 3 days if we sailed there non-stop. We had never made a passage that long before and, although the thought of it was challenging, we decided to give it a go. Before we left Tobago, our good friend Tom, s/v Tiger Lilly, briefed us on possible acceptable hurricane “holes” up the island chain in the event that a late season storm materialized, but thankfully none did.  With plenty of wind to fill our reefed sails, we were making EXCELLENT time from Barbados toward the cut between St. Lucia and Martinique. Around midnight just after I had begun my first watch of the night, the wind got really erratic…NO- downright scary for me! I woke the Captain and we quickly took down the headsail. The boat settled a bit, although it still rocked and rolled through the wind and rain. Shortly afterward the sailing conditions were again manageable as before the blow. However, upon inspecting the mainsail, Dan discovered that it had ripped just below the second reef.  We discussed our options and searched our island service directories for the best place to have a repair done. Fortunately we were near Le Marin- Martinique that is a sort of Mecca for yacht services. So under the cover of darkness, we slowly made our way into the outer area of the harbor and dropped anchor off of St. Anne- Martinique. In the morning after a few hours of sound sleep erased some of the stress, we made our way into Le Marin and sought repair estimates. We selected Voilerie de Incidence to do the job and were extremely pleased with the results and that my almost tearful plea (complete with hands clasped and held to my heart) ensured that the repair was finished 3 days earlier than promised!  You may recall that our genoa (headsail) needed multiple repairs in past months and that we ultimately bought a new sail through our friend Tom. He advised us then that our main sail was looking pretty tired, too. So it was no surprise when the sail shop men said that the rip could be fixed, but plans to have a new main made should be in our near future. The captain is on it!