Crossing to St. Maarten

Tuesday, December 4^th & Wednesday, December 5^th

We started the crossing to St. Maarten at 10 pm on Tuesday evening, leaving from the anchorage at Cooper Island. Before heading out, we secured everything inside the boat that could potentially get knocked around and cause damage (scuba tanks, microwave, coffee maker, etc.). We lifted the dingy outboard engine and secured it to the block on the stern of the boat, then secured the dingy with several lines. We attached our jack lines to the starboard side of the boat in case we needed to go onto the deck in the middle of the night to fix something. We grabbed our life jackets and head lamps, and got underway. We raised the main sail while we were in the lee of the Cooper Island and decided that putting the first reef in the main would be sufficient for the amount of wind that was predicted. (Little did we know that we'd have 30 knots of wind during the crossing!)

For the first few hours, the seas were pretty rough, but not too bad – conditions we had definitely sailed in many times. From the weather predictions, it appeared that the worse seas would be from 1 – 4 am, so we were anxious to get past those few hours. We were sailing about 7.5 knots for the first few hours. At about 1 am, the lights of Virgin Gorda and the BVI islands were no longer visible, and the seas were definitely picking up. We agreed that it was good that it was dark, because it was harder to tell how much bigger the waves were getting! Gene and Kat took turns watching the helm, making sure we were out of collision course with cruise ships and cargo boats. We definitely had an entourage of cruise ships with us the entire night, some of which we had to call on VHF to make sure they actually saw us!

The Issues Begin...

Sometime around 1 am, Gene took a look at the bilges and realized that we were taking on water in the starboard hull as we had at least 40 gallons of water in the bilge. After some examination, it was clear that the automatic bilge pump was not working properly, so we took turns pumping water out via the manual bilge. The seas continued to get worse, waves bigger and winds picking up to ~ 30 knots. We were sailing about 9 knots at this point.

At around 2 or 3 am, Gene realized that there were some issues with the manual bilge and it didn't appear to be pumping water out. The next solution we thought of was to use the Shop Vac to suck out water and empty the water in the sink, and continue to do this until we got the water level a little lower. The water level was about 3 – 4 inches deep, and the storage lockers under the forward and aft berths both had a couple inches of water in them as well, one of which houses our freezer.

We quickly realized that a circuit had been tripped and none of the outlets on the starboard side were working (probably because they were under water), so we found out extension cord and plugged it into the port outlets and attempted the Shop Vac method until we had gotten the water level down, and continued this every 30 minutes.

At around 4 am, a huge wave crashed on the bow ripping the line securing the trampoline. We noticed the trampoline flapping up and down beneath the waves and saw the line securing it continuing to unravel.

At about 6 am, the first ray of sun came out which allowed us to take a better look at the halyards and rigging. We noticed that the main halyard, which was previously secured to the winch, had gotten knocked over the starboard hull and into the ocean and was dragging behind the boat. Since we weren't using our engines, we decided to wait until the seas calmed down before trying to recover it from the water. Unfortunately, the seas did not calm down for a few more hours!

By 7 am, we could see the outline of St. Maarten in the distance which was a very welcome sight! We were still about 20 nautical miles away, which meant that we'd have to endure the rough seas for a couple more hours until we were closer to land and in the lee of the island.

Finally, around 9:30 am, the sea conditions were much better, so Kat went up to the deck and attempted to recover the main halyard, pulling it back into the boat. Unfortunately, this was not possible since the halyard was wrapped around the propeller. Obviously, we had to get the halyard back on the deck in order to drop the main sail, but we couldn't turn the starboard engine on b/c it would risk getting the halyard further stuck in the prop, so the only solution was for one of us to get in the water and release the halyard from the prop. Gene grabbed his mask, tied a line around his waist, and jumped in the water, quickly released the halyard, and Kat immediately pulled it onto the boat. We were then able to drop the main sail, turn on both engines, and motor into Simpson Bay where we anchored until the bridge opened at 11:30 am. Anchoring without a trampoline was a pretty big challenge, being very careful not to step backwards into the huge hole where the trampoline was dangling in the water.

Needless to say, we were extremely happy to be safely in the slip at the Simpson Bay Marina by Noon. We spent the rest of the day bailing out the water, assessing the damage, diagnosing the problems, and planning our repairs. Luckily, Simpson Bay is considered the “marine center of the Caribbean” with a huge marine super store that caters towards sail boats and catamarans, so we were able to get what we needed.