Friday, May 07, 2010
We decided to use the relatively benign weather prognosis and cloudy day for the passage to St. Martin. Björn spent a while doing a detailed passage plan from the BVI via the Anegada Passage to Marigot in St. Martin while I tidied things up. We left it rather late and when we were ready to cast off from the mooring and I turned the key to the engine all we got was one or two turns and a click. The house bank and battery bank both read over 12V but when the starter was engaged the starting bank showed 6V. I guessed that the starter battery had given up, but this boat has no battery bank connector switch and we had to remove the upper battery layer to get at the starter battery and that took over an hour, but at least when the starter battery was connected to the house bank the diesel started right up. After putting everything back together we finally got underway but weren’t sure if we could still make it to the immigration office on Virgin Gorda before they shut. Road Town is hard to get to so we motored to Soper’s Hole and cleared out there; but that added appreciable distance to our trip. We started out a 5pm from the West End and headed to the north of Neckar Island. At first the winds were low and the swell nonexistent, but seas soon picked up until we were slamming into every other wave. I noticed that Björn was looking a bit green at the gills and I was already tired from the night before and the day’s activities, so we chose to enter the North Sound and anchor off Prickly Pear for the night, postponing our passage by 24 hours.
No camera, no pictures.