Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Instead of a very long 24 hour stretch, I opted to break it up and do a day trip with arrival at dusk at Nevis, then onwards to the BVI from there. I left late, going ashore to check email and buy some groceries before getting the dinghy aboard and departing Antigua. The wind was strong, but my course was almost directly downwind so I opted to tack downwind and detour past the island of Redonda. This put the significant swell partly abeam and occasionally Zanshin I would roll deeply in the 2-3 meter waves and I couldn’t use the full genoa and didn’t have any luck setting the genoa boom – but I’ll have to do that for the next 130 mile stretch.
Redonda was impressive, I circled it and couldn’t detect any access at all and don’t understand how a commercial mining operation could have gotten equipment and personnel up and phosphates down; plus there were no tailing visible. I’ll have to Google that some time to see how it was done.
The shallow waters between Redonda and Nevis were once again a veritable nest of lobster pots and fish floats; I kept a sharp lookout and twice had to run back to the helm in order to switch off the autopilot and narrowly avoid entangling Zanshin I in them.
The Nevis anchorage was nice until the wee hours of the next day, when a swell kicked around the island and the winds changed enough to let the boat roll; but it is still an unaccountably protected anchorage for one that looks like it is exposed to all seas.
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