Dominica to St Kitts - New but not necessarily Nice Stuff!!

Well, looking at the trip we had to make and figuring that we would average 5 kts (this is the figure we use to try to get to our next anchorage in good daylight - we always hope for a 6-7 kt average but 5 is the "safe" number to use) we decided to leave mid-morning to head for Nevis/St Kitts.

Since the only wifi site in Portsmouth was down for repairs (again!!), we couldn't look at PassageWeather, which is a very useful site to figure out the wind and seas. We instead had to rely on the NOAA which is the National Hurricane site out of Florida. They are okay but very general. They forecast for an area bounded by latitudes and longitudes but don't give very detailed specifics. Anyway, they were forecasting fairly light winds but from the N or NE which would be a good sailing wind. We make plans and God laughs.

We were good from Dominica to about halfway up Guadaloupe and then the wind started doing strange things. Without going into a lot of detail about the rest of the sail, suffice to say that we had south winds, southeast winds, southwest winds and west winds - all around 4-8 kts. Mystic Journey doesn't particularly like following winds but if they are strong enough, she will respond. 4-8 kts is NOT strong enough. Two funny things (funny strange, not funny ha ha) We had decided that rather than have the wind coming from directly behind us - thus causing both the main and the foresail to flail in the weak winds (we weren't going to sail wing on wing with the shifts the winds were doing) we would change our direction enough to catch wind and then later tack back to our course.

Not to be - at one point we actually changed course over 50 degrees and the wind changed with us and stayed in exactly the same place in relation to the boat.

Smoke over Montserrat

Second strange thing - the volcano on the island of Montserrat had erupted - which it does every not and then - about 3 weeks before our sail. Of course when this happens the normal trade winds from the east blow the ash to the west so unless you want your boat covered with volcanic ash, you sail up the east side - which we did. Well, remember I mentioned we encountered west winds - guess where??? Yup, in the middle of the night was we were sailing up the east side of Montserrat. Do you have any idea how "untasty" volcanic ash is when you are breathing it in. And do you have any idea how sticky it is when you mix it with water the next day when you are trying to get it off your boat??

Enough of the voyage - we made it to Nevis about 11:30 the following morning, picked up a mooring ball, set up a bridle (there was a bit of a swell and this brings the boat into line so that you rock but you don't roll) and went into Nevis to clear customs. Nevis folk are very friendly and helpful so we were looking forward to spending a couple of days there and a couple of days in St Kitts. We had acquired wifi and found out that the weather pattern was very unfavourable for sailing for the next while so we were ready to relax.

Stay tuned.