I didn’t sleep well at all this past night, I had a very light sleep due to my subconscious worries about dragging should a strong wind arise. Despite the odd gust during dark the boat didn’t move and even when the wind picked up significantly at about 09:00 after I’d had my morning coffee and breakfast the boat remained solidly in place. It wasn’t until I had about half of my chain raised that I felt the anchor’s hold on the ground loosen and it started hopping across the rocky bottom. I put up only a triple-reefed Genoa for the downwind run to Great Harbour and still made a good 7 knot most of the way as the wind was once again above 20 knots. At Great Harbour I took a mooring ball then showered and shaved and put on a collared shirt so that I could greet the customs officials in both the BVI and USVI looking semi-presentable. At the customs office I took out my papers but didn’t have the big yellow clearance form – I’d inadvertently filed it away with the new papers that I’d received when clearing in. The officer was kind enough to let me fill in a new form rather than return to the boat and after my payment of $2 to clear out I was on my way. The sail to Cruz Bay was very fast, I had double reefed both sails but was still flying along at 8 knots minimum and with 10 knots measured on the GPS for extended periods. I took a mooring just around the corner and departed via dinghy to the customs office, then remembered that dinghy theft is not unknown at that dock, so returned to Zanshin to get a padlock. I was applying some WD-40 to loosen the padlock’s mechanism when I glimpsed my dinghy drifting off downwind – my quickly tied knot hadn’t been a bowline and hadn’t held. I quickly stripped to my swim trunks and jumped into the water to retrieve it. By the time I’d reached it I was out of breath as the wind was pushing it away just a bit slower than I could swim to reach it. Nevertheless I made it, got aboard, zipped back to Zanshin and took a quick shower to wash the salt off before once again heading to the U.S. customs and immigration office in St. John.
The formalities went very quickly, I have a U.S. Visa and need that while traveling on a private vessel rather than the usual ESTA that EEC passport holders usually use and after a quick couple of questions from the officer and my fingerprint/retina scan I was officially and legally on U.S. soil. I grabbed a tasty sandwich at Mongoose Junction and then returned to the boat in order to get out of that open and rolly anchorage. I replaced the yellow “Q” flag with a U.S. courtesy flag and motored to Maho Bay. Soon I had the paddle board out and did two circuits of the bay to get some exercise and soon it was happy hour time again. I had neglected to thaw anything out for dinner, but had some frozen hot dogs and buns which I prepared for an appropriate first dinner in the USA.
The last picture is from an Excel sheet that I have which shows Zanshin’s energy use curves. The upper part is the SOC (State-Of-Charge) of the main battery bank over time while the lower portion shows the corresponding voltage, with green portions marking when either the generator or the main engine is running. This was over a period of 13 days and it is easy to see the typical daily power profile. On average my consumption is around 3.5A which comes mostly from the fridge and freezer and from the anchor light at night. But with the solar panels during the day and my average engine/generator runtime of 45 minutes per day I rarely go below 80% capacity and this means that the batteries will last a long time. The engine runtimes aren’t that bad considering I sail almost every day and need 10-15 minutes at the beginning and end of each journey to leave and enter an anchorage.
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