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Night sail to the BVIs

Night sail to the BVIs

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We restocked in Saint Martin before heading off, also doing laundry on land, collecting some full gas bottles and filling up jerry cans with water a couple of times. We were having so much “fun” doing these chores that we almost missed the bridge opening on the French side to let us leave the lagoon.

Just a few minutes before the bridge opened we made it into the queue, though it felt list a lot of rushing around on land, and we didn’t manage to tumble dry any of our laundry like we wanted to.

Not the most exciting of pictures, but with all of the rushing around we didn’t take many.

We headed out through the bridge at 5pm and anchored just outside so that we could start getting the boat ready including stowing the shopping, and eat some dinner before starting to sail.

The plan was to mostly run (straight downwind) all the way to the BVIs.

Ideally, we would do this with 2 headsails up, our genoa and larger ghoster, so before the sun set we also prepared the poles to keep these sails more stable and stop them from flapping around on the crossing.

There are no pictures of this amazing setup that night, however, there are some from the following morning but with the ghoster already lowered, and also some great shadow puppets on the sails from the middle of the night.

The sail itself was a breeze, setting off at around 7pm once away from the weird wind that was happening near the shore of Saint Martin we put both head sales up and wouldn’t need to adjust until after sunrise the following day.

Overnight we once again tried our 6 hour watch cycle which also worked a charm and we both managed to get plenty of sleep.

We headed straight to Spanish Town where would do all of the normal formalities checking into the country. and spent the night in the Spanish Town anchorage.

Just south of Spanish town there is a tourist attraction called “The Baths” which we were keen to explore.

The Baths are a popular tourist attraction and are known for their unique geological formations, including giant granite boulders that form natural tidal pools, tunnels, and grottoes. The area is also home to white sand beaches and crystal-clear waters, making it a popular destination for swimming, snorkeling, and exploring.

We moved Hannah slightly down the island, anchoring around what felts like hundreds (but actually just 10s) of catamarans and swam over to the beach from which you could enter the baths.

It was great fun exploring the boulders, walkways, sandy beaches and little pools.

Off we went again, to a gathering on a beach we had organized with some other boat freinds.

In total 5 boats and 10 people were in attendance on a beach on Peter Island (Hannah Penn, Danae, Blue Note, Extress, Escapade)

Once again, there was lots of catching up to do as some of us had not seen each other in some weeks, or even months.

We did a potluck, which is where each guest brings a dish of food to share with everyone. In a potluck, the dishes are usually not coordinated or pre-planned, so guests may bring anything from appetizers to desserts. The idea is to create a shared meal where everyone contributes something, and there is usually a lot of variety and abundance of food.

There was bread, dips, pate, cheese, a cheesy spinach bake, potatoes, tuna salad, pasta and more.

And of course, there was a fire!

Much more to come from the BVIs, and we are happy to report that the night of the fire was 20th April, and at the time of writing this it is the 2nd of May, so we are nearly caught up. We might even be setting off back across the Atlantic in as little as 3 days, but only the weather can determine that!

Barbados to the Grenadines

Barbados to the Grenadines

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We set off for our 100nm sail from Bridgetown, Barbados in the afternoon to give us a little daylight before sailing through the night and arriving with plenty of daylight the following day. This was Anna’s first night-sail experience so we were keen to have a fairly relaxed downwind sail. She took it all in her stride without even a hint of seasickness, Woop woop!

We set out with a fully reefed main and gull-winged genoa as we expected a brisk 20 or so knots, all went perfectly to plan and we were in view of the islands as dawn came around. We did end up a little farther north than first planned, due to wanting to maintain our sail plan, which meant the wind pushed us to where it wanted! Although this actually made the transition from deep water to shallower water around the islands easier, and then the sea was flatter on the west side of the various islands.

We stopped at the island of Canouan to check in, get some local currency (now Eastern Caribbean Dollars) and stop at a little beachfront cafe for some lunch. They even had a cute treetop table that we had to try, but aborted halfway through eating when a torrential downpour came through and everyone made a beeline for the cafe interior.

We knew sy_danae and sy.artemis were already a little way south of us on Union Island so naturally we set off again for a few miles more to reach Chatham bay. It was a busy anchorage but luckily there was room for us to squeeze in close to Danae.

We were very glad that the sea bed was sand (the best holding for an anchor) as the bay was incredibly gusty, one minute there would be no wind and Hannah Penn would bounce forward on the anchor chain and then there would be 30+knots. Interestingly when a gust comes and the boat was not already pulling back on the anchor, the bow will get pushed downwind, meaning you’ll turn sideways onto the wind, and then as the chain tightens, the boat gets slow motion whiplash as the bow is pulled back around.

This happened every half an hour or so all day and night, so we definitely set our trusty anchor alarm!

After being happy with how the anchor was holding, we headed to shore with everyone to have a great catch-up on how everyone’s Atlantic crossing went, and how many things got broken! We think Danae did the best in terms of not breaking anything but it catches up with them at a later date, stay tuned for our time in St Lucia for the story!

So during our chatting, we got onto talking about dinghies flipping over, which Artemis had experienced a couple of times now.. with their engine on…

The next morning a couple came by and knocked on our hull, about something, and you’ve guessed it, we forgot to take the engine off the dinghy before we went to bed, a gust had flipped it in the night and we looked out to find a sad looking little propellor sticking out of the water.

Time for the dinghy engine resuscitation procedure!…

I cleaned the seawater out with lots of fresh water and then got to work taking it apart and meticulously cleaning and re-greasing everything to prevent corrosion. For a while, the gear had been fairly stiff and we thought this service would be exactly what it needed. So all back together and working perfectly we set off to pick up Michel from Artemis for a snorkeling session, we got to their boat and changed from forward to neutral, loaded him and gear in, and went to change to forward only to find it was jammed in neutral :|not ideal!

Getting memories of our outboard engine oil change back in the Isles of Scilly.

We all went in his dinghy and afterwards I took the engine apart for the second time that day!… now we have a dinghy engine permanently stuck in forward, so slightly more useful than neutral but still not ideal. Beggers can’t be choosers I suppose!

After a mildly stressful day we were looking forward to a Full moon party on the other side of the island so we sailed (with motor too because we were running late and didn’t want to arrive after dark) to clifton harbor. The mooring field was packed and as the sun had just about set we got ourselves on a bouy instead of worrying about anchoring.

View from southeast side of Union island, heading towards Clifton Harbour

It turned out the party was canceled for some unknown reason so we all went to the Happy Island Reef bar instead and had the place to ourselves, it was a lovely time to talk to other boats we hadn’t seen since before the Atlantic ocean

More island exploring to come as we head to Tobago Cays and lots of others.

Arriving in Mindelo, as ARC+ set off

Arriving in Mindelo, as ARC+ set off

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Arriving in Mindelo was quite interesting, as we arrived 30 minutes before the ARC+ set off to cross the Atlantic.

As we approached Mindelo, our chart was going crazy with the 100-200 boats that were setting off all appearing.

Thankfully we took our sails down with plenty of time to avoid needing to do this around all of the other boats.

We tried to avoid crossing the start line which was between the NE breakwater and a bouy in the middle of the bay, so we snuck around the north side and then motored around all of the boats that were either putting their sails up or already had them up.

Extress who arrived 20 minutes before us had already navigated all of the boats radioed us on VHF to let us know where they were, as they had found a nice spot to watch the start from with Danae.

It was quite an interesting little route, and we nearly strayed into a dredging area once, but we made it before the start, and we were right next to the SW start bouy.

It’s quite crazy seeing hundreds of boats, many of which are sailed by amateurs, holding back from a start line waiting to cross.

The race started! And it was already clear who might have a chance of winning! (See if you can spot them in the video below)

And indeed, they did cross the ARC+ finish line first after just 9 and a bit days.

So many boats disappearing over the horizon

Once the start line was clear, we headed into the marina with Danae and Extress. It was amazingly empty after the race started, but throughout the day it would progressively fill with the next wave of boats looking to make the crossing.

This was our first time mooring Mediterranean style, but all went smoothly. We decided to come in bow first next to a lovely German boat called Beagle, got our lines attached on the bow, pulled back, and sorted out the rest.

We ended up with quite a few lines on the front, all with anti-chafe and anti-chafe for the anti-chafe in various places as we found this marina to move around quite a lot.

And when we wondered around the marina, we saw that Maiden was also in the marina!

Maiden is a 58 foot aluminium ocean racing yacht built in 1979, designed by Bruce Farr and raced by Pierre Fehlmann, Bertie Reed and Tracy Edwards and John Bankart. Edwards bought the yacht in 1987 to compete in the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race with an all-female crew.

Wikipedia
São Nicolau, Cape Verde

São Nicolau, Cape Verde

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Leaving Sal Rei, we set off just behind Danae on the way to São Nicolau. Our friends on Extress at this point were still on the last island but were also going to meet us in São Nicolau.

We stopped at 2 anchorages on the island.

South East

The first anchorage was at the foot of 2 hills that seemed to channel the wind down from 2 alternating directions in large gusts.

A review that we had seen on the Navily anchorage app spoke of a small community-run restaurant ashore, so we went to investigate!

Happily, we found it, and found Anna as the sign instructed. They opened the restaurant for us and we had some lively rice, veg, fish and beers.

The menu did include many other dishes, but perhaps they don’t stock for these very often.

Once again the snorkeling in the anchorage was fantastic!

Such clear water, and such great wildlife.

Here, I (Adam) had an opportunity to borrow the windsurfing kit aboard Extress, which I jumped at!

Second windsurf of the week, brilliant!!! And this time with some pictures and videos!!!

Extress also caught 2 large Mahi-mahi on the way to the anchorage which we of course had to help them eat! (but, no pics…)

Tarrafell (South West)

Our second anchorage on the island was Tarrafell, which was near a much larger town in comparison to anchorage 1.

Here we played some games of Kubb with our friends from Extress

Sal Rei, Boa Vista, Cape Verde

Sal Rei, Boa Vista, Cape Verde

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We left Baia Da Mordeir a day or so before Extress, but the day after Danae, so decided to just head to the same anchorage as Danae!

This brought us down south to the next of the Cape Verde islands.

The approach was quite interesting, as there was a heavy swell coming into Cape Verde at the time, and it was managing to curve around most of the headlands and island features. The approach also had some shallows to the south also causing breaking swell. As a result, there were breaking wave all over the place, but also a nice clear path into the anchorage.

In the picture to the right, you can see the general swell direction (red arrows), as well as swell lines curving around the land (red lines), which lead to swell from all directions (green arrows). Our approach was roughly the white dotted line.

This also led to lots of opportunities to catch little waves surfing later, from all kinds of directions 😉

In fact, in the middle of the protected area, there is a sand bank that gets hit by a swell from both directions. Here, if you are lucky, you can catch small waves both to the south and then ride a wave back north again!

The swell continued in this anchorage the whole time we were there. The swell would push us forward a few meters and then the wind would blow us back on the anchor. Again, not super uncomfortable, but annoying to be moving all of the time.

In Sal Rei, Kathryn went Kitesurfing and Adam went Windsurfing, but we are pictureless!

The plan was to try wing foiling again, but unfortunately, the wind didn’t really behave.

We stayed in Sal Rei for a number of days before heading off to the next anchorage with both Danae and Extress, coming in the next post.

Baia da Mordeira, Sal, Cape Verde

Baia da Mordeira, Sal, Cape Verde

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This was our final stop on the island of Sal after leaving Palmeria.

As you can see, we didn’t make our way directly to the anchorage, instead sailing around the bay a little.

What were we doing you might ask?

Playing around on the SUP behind the boat we would answer!

This anchorage ended up being a lot of fun. The exception was the seemingly hundreds of flies that would fly through the boat every single day…

The snorkeling was pretty good, the water was clear, and warm enough to comfortably stay in for hours if you wanted.

We kept seeing turtle heads pop up above the water, but no matter how often we tried to see them under the water, we always failed.

While at anchor we did a little fishing off the back of the boat after seeing the tasty-looking fish swimming around the boat, and we were actually quite successful.

We caught a couple of little tiny fish which we used for bait, as well as a set of small fly lures which landed us a tasty little sea bream

The live bait did get a bite, but unfortunately, the line broke and we never found out what it was.

This prompted a little BBQ aboard Extress with Danae too where we all got chatting more.

We discovered that Danae had a wing foil setup, and the next day we were invited to have a go! On the whole, we were pleased at how well it went! Maybe this is the next toy we should buy? 😉

As the swell picked up, it curved around the headland corner that was protecting us and started to bring swell directly into the beach.

This led once again to another little SUP surfing opportunity, this time within paddling distance of the boat (though it was straight onto rocks)

As the swell continued to build, it also started reaching the beach which made for some better surfing (but we didn’t get any pictures). The following day multiple surf schools showed up to surf this break.

This also lead to some quite interesting swell rolling straight through the anchorage.

By this point, Danae had left to head on to the next island, but alongside Extress we stayed for another night. Extress threw out a stern anchor and we moved further off shore into some deeper water to lessen the effecter of the swell.

Although this swell rolled right through the anchorage, it didn’t end up being an uncomfortable nights sleep for us.

Palmeria, Sal, Cape Verde

Palmeria, Sal, Cape Verde

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We made it to Cape Verde! You can read more about our journey here in the previous post where we had a little race with 2 other boats..

Our first and only anchorage in Sal was a little town called Palmeria, where we could clear customs and get our passport stamps.

Blue Note, our racing buddies, wouldn’t arrive until the following evening, and before they did we set off on a little island exploration walking for over an hour from Palmeria to “Buracona – Blue Eye Cave” that apparently had a bar and restaurant. Unfortunately, when we arrived they said they were closing in an hour and wouldn’t let us in? So we ended up wandering into the desert of the island for an hour also before looping back to Palmeria completing our 3-4 hour walk to nowhere. But it was nice to get some walking done after being on a crossing for the past 6 days.

We also finally found out what the little tourist submarines look like under the water as one was out on the dry in the town.

In the evening we met up again with our new Dutch friends on from Extress and Danae to eat at one of the local restaurants and wait for Blue Note to arrive.

The anchorage ended up being very useful, we managed to top of with water in our jerry cans. There were a reasonably priced laundry service where they would pick up laundry from your boat and deliver it back, and it was very well protected.

After a few days we were ready to set off to the next anchorage, following Extress and Danae (This will b a running theme through most of Cape Verde)