2023-04-17 At Sea

Wee Hours

I woke up, unassisted by an alarm, shortly before 05:00 and made a coffee prior to leaving Anse Colombier. I’ll be at sea most of the day today. There was almost no wind and I’d swung about quite close to the catamaran I’d anchored next to the afternoon before.

I had thought to have sufficient separation, but we had only about 20-30 feet and I’m sure the sound of my chain woke them up. Sorry.

Morning

I got going before 06:00 and the sun was just coming over the horizon, but hidden behind St. Barths, as I passed Gustavia. The wind direction wasn’t good. I was still in the lee of the island and remained optimistic, at least until I reached clean air.

My course needed to be 127 degrees, but all I could make was 150-160 in light conditions. To make the passage even longer, the winds were so light that I was only moving at 3-4 knots. There’s a lot of sargassum out here.

So I decided to use the light winds to make my easting and spent 2 hours pretty much going away from Antigua to the east/east-northeast so that my wind angle could be closer to 140. With a bit of luck the winds would pick up as the day went on and the angle could be better.

Noon

I’m now motorsailing in winds of less than 10 knots, doing about a 150 degree course. There’s nothing in sight so I went below to turn on the PC and download my pictures and prepare this blog text.

Despite being literally miles from anywhere, I came close enough to a little fishing pirogue to wave, and twice have seen fish pots in my wake that I missed by mere
feet. The water on this stretch is, for the most part, only 150 feet deep. That’s good for fishing but I’m 20 miles from St. Barths and still 50 miles from Antigua.

I heated up a portion of some refrigerated pasta and Bolognese for lunch and as I was letting it cool sufficiently for consumption yet another pair of fish floats came past. I think I’ll have to keep a sharper lookout while out here at sea. Normally, I only look every 10-15 minutes when offshore and when there’s nothing on the radar or AIS. The wind angle hasn’t changed but it has gone very light. I’m still mainly sailing with only 1200RPM engine, but I think that ratio might change soon. Then it will be 1500RPM ( so that the turbocharger kicks in) and perhaps I’ll even take the genoa down and leave just the mainsail raised.

That won’t contribute much energy towards boat speed while I’m at sea, but will minimize the rolling motion from the long Atlantic swell. What putting down the genoa will allow me to do is take out the StarlinkRV and activate that. At present the holding tube for the antenna is close to the bow and an errant flap of the sail could damage either, or both.

I’m bored. It is slow going offshore in these conditions. So I just put up the StarlinkRV antenna and fired it up. It took 20 minutes before it got a connection, but I’m writing this blog entry from offshore! I’m about 35 miles from Antigua and St. Barths is 35 miles behind me. There’s nothing but sea to see out there. But with the StarlinkRV I’m suddenly connected to the world, even when I’m physically far removed.