We got the Campbell’s back to their hotel on Sunday night in preparation for their Monday flight back to the States. Not sure it was the best vacation they ever had, but they were troopers through rashes, sore feet and a boat better suited for those with acrobatic skills. We hope they enjoyed the couple days circumnavigating St. Martin and the tour of the island they received. It was nice having them aboard.
We finished some chores in the morning and set sail around 2pm in anticipation of a fast sail on a tight reach overnight to Antigua, about 80nm away. To make the trip a little easier, I wanted to get to the east of St Bart’s, giving us a clear sea lane all the way southeast. And everything started beautifully; which is about the time something goes wrong on a sailboat.
About six miles southeast of St Bart’s, just as a beautiful sunset was taking place off the stern, the GPS failed. Not such a big problem by itself, if you have read any earlier posts. I had a couple redundant location devices including a nice tablet with charting software. Determining where we were and how soon before Antigua was not going to be the problem.
The problem was that in modern sailboats, the GPS feed “talks” to other necessary instruments and equipment, for instance the autopilot and the wind direction/speed instruments. So with a glaring beeping alarm, the autopilot shut down and became useless. We were hand steering from here on through. Not a terrible problem, I’ve raced for 3-4 days hand steering all the way. No, the problem is that with two people, one making her first night watch or crossing, this was going to be a long and tedious night maintaining course and speed. So, K took a nap in preparation for relieving me at the helm around 11pm, and I settled in steering SSE and watching the moon rise on the port bow. We were making great time on the tight reach, the magic machines all saying we’d be off our harbor entrance around 5am.
And then….just as K woke to take her watch, the wind headed more SE. Now, there is one HUGE disadvantage to a cruising catamaran compared to a good monohull: she doesn’t go to windward worth a damn. To minimize the banging and pitching and make any real VMG towards your target, the narrowest apparent wind angle is really about 50 degrees. Meaning for you non-sailors, imagine you want to walk from the front door of the grocery store directly to your car, but instead turn right about 45 degrees. Now walk straight, until the car is 90 degrees off your left side, now turn towards your car and proceed. See the added distance you walked. Ol’ Pythagorean had a simple formula for determining that distance, but he wasn’t a sailor, because the distance you sail is always longer than math tells you it is. In our catamaran, the closest you get to direct, without the engines, or beating yourself and the boat to death is about 50 degrees. This is a long way of saying that the new wind shifted, and on our present wind angle we’d more likely run aground on Nevis than make Antigua. So, the trusty Volvo Penta engines came on and K motor sailed with the sails sheet tight to help us head SE. This exponentially increased the banging and spray on board the boat, but at least I get to try to sleep for a couple hours. Two…to be exact.
Needless to say, 5am came and went and we were not at our destination. But by 2pm, we had grabbed a mooring ball in Jolly Harbor, and I was in immigration and customs checking us in. And to no one’s surprise, it was an early night, but we did find a big swimming pool at some adjacent vacation villas and thoroughly soaked our bodies before climbing into bed.
We spent the next couple days wandering Antigua for sim cards(because each $%&@+&$ country has its own network, despite all being run by one of two companies), finding a Raymarine technician that could find the time to look at our GPS problem, and running normal errands like ice/water/ laundry/cleaning. The pool and its associated bar with happy hour 2-1 drinks were put to good use each afternoon. And by Friday, with a handful of scuba tanks, we crossed to Barbuda for some “isolation” and pink sand beaches. I’ll tell you all about it in a couple days, but on first glance it looks deserted and amazing.