Today was passage day – from Nevis to the anchorage in Deshaies on Guadeloupe. I left at 06:30 and arrived at 18:30 while Katzenellenbogen left just a bit earlier and arrived at the same time I did! The trip went better than I’d expected as the wind didn’t have much southerly component to it. I kept 2 reefs in the main and one in the genoa for a comfortable sailing speed that was about the same as ,em>Katz
was doing. The first leg was to Montserrat, where I expected calm conditions and motorsailing on the lee side past the exclusion zone and got 20-25 knots of wind and choppy confused seas instead! I motored with just the mainsail up on the lee side, at 1800RPM I made over 5 knots, but sometimes down to 3 knots when waves slammed against the bow; I’m sure that the catamaran fared worse than I did. After rounding the southern part of Montserrat and motorsailing for 5NM upwind to get a better angle on Deshaies, the winds had returned to their forecast 15 knots and the waves had settled as well, so I turned off the engine and sailed straight for our destination.
Katz was ahead of me but I was slowly catching up and as I approached them to take a photo or two at sea something odd happened, the boat slowed down and things didn’t quite feel right. I looked behind and saw that my dinghy, towed empty and on a short leash, had flipped and was being dragged upside down. This condition, while stable, is a high-drag configuration and the bow sometimes got pushed under, created even more drag. The line was bow-tight and I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I could drop sails or heave to or head into the wind to reduce speed and re-right the dinghy. I chose to pull in the upside-down dinghy closer so that the front was up out of the water and sail the rest of the way with just a bit of extra drag; this would finally let the seaweed and other growth on the bottom dry out. Since the force on the dinghy painter was immense, I ended up getting some spare line and used a rolling hitch on the painter and used the genoa winch to reel in the dinghy until it was close and the bow lifted out of the water. This got my boat speed back up but I didn’t catch up with Katz until we were at Deshaies. I am very impressed at the catamaran’s speed on windward courses – I’m afraid they’ll pull away from me on beam reaches and downhill runs!
The wind was strange in Deshaies, almost calm, and the anchorage was quite full and we didn’t have much time to anchor before sunset, so I chose a spot in 60 feet of water on the outside and Katz found a more sheltered location closer in. I know I am going to roll a bit tonight but hope to be able to relocate tomorrow. Dinner was simple, I thawed out some ground beef and made my version of a Burrito which no Mexican would have recognized but I enjoyed eating nonetheless.
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