I’d spent time the previous day removing salt and cleaning stainless and, true to form, it finally rained for several hours tonight and really did a good job washing away all the salt from the boat. By early morning the rain had stopped and I got underway under engine in perfectly calm conditions and flat seas. For the first hour I motored, running the washing machine and watermaker off the alternator while charging the batteries at the same time; I had 1400 RPM on the gauge and was doing 5.6 knots according to the GPS. Once the washing machine completed I put out the clothing on the cockpit table to air-dry and put up the sails since there was a bit of onshore wind. It was slow, but comfortable and then the wind changed from onshore to offshore and got stronger. I then saw the whitecaps of the water around the headland of Guadeloupe and recalled that the winds pick up here – I put 3 reefs in the main and 2 in the genoa headsail and then the wind and waves hit me! 25+ and gusts to 30 knots of wind and the waves were quite high and very steep, many breaking seas and there was actually foam flecks being driven by the wind, all this within several hundred yards of calm waters!
I’d not thought about big seas when I set off, so I just lay the outboard engine onto the floor of the dinghy. But in these big seas and with Zanshin sailing at speed between 7 and 9 knots, depending upon whether crashing through a wave had just decreased the speed or if the boat was sailing unhindered, and my dinghy was getting some very serious air-time, sometimes I could even see the outboard bouncing around inside the dinghy. I had almost 100 feet of line to the dinghy and I spent much of the crossing just watching and waiting for the engine to slip below the surface after a particularly spectacular launch off the front of a wave. There was little else to do, since it was too late take any action to ameliorate the danger.
Luckily the fish traps that I’d spent most of the earlier part of the sail avoiding weren’t present between Guadeloupe and the Îles des Saintes so I didn’t have to worry about those, at least until I got close to the shoreline of the Saintes. Luckily the Saintes seem to have more money or better rules as their fish trap floats are big, bright RAL Orange colored and not too difficult to spot.
Anchoring in the main harbour isn’t allowed unless all the moorings are taken, there was one available so I proceeded to try to get it. I’d set up my approach and momentum almost correctly, but had forgotten that the French moorings have no pennant and little play so I managed to grab the mooring, but couldn’t pull it up in order to get the mooring line through the metal fitting. For my second attempt I finessed the speed a bit better and managed to do a snatch-and-grab maneuver to get the mooring ball high enough to thread the mooring line. While I was doing this a gent from a neighboring boat, an Amel Super Maramu, had lowered his dinghy to the water and motored over to help me. He came aboard instead and we some water and talked boats until he had to return to wife and family aboard his vessel. A bit later a group of 4 gents in a dinghy came by and slowly motored around Zanshin and it turned out that one of them was interested in the boat so I asked them aboard to give them a grand tour (since I’d cleaned up the mess from my earlier work getting the LEDs installed the boat was presentable) and then I paid for an internet connection which worked aboard and caught this blog up to date and did my e-mails.
Since the rough passage had waves breaking all around Zanshin and sometimes the dodger got covered in spray; so my decks and topsides were once again quite salty but I used a bucket and towel to at least get the caustic mixture off the freshly polished SS fixtures, then happy hour came around and I did a bit of whipping work on the lines; in retrospect I shouldn’t have tried doing the work without my reading glasses at dusk with no lights on since the results don’t look presentable in the light of day.
I went ashore for dinner, but managed to dinghy to the wrong part of shoreline to the only bright light I could see that said “Restaurant”; the food there was only so-so but still preferable to my cooking. Tomorrow I’ll get recommendations for really good food!
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