The anchorage at Guana Island is very calm, but the little gusts of breeze that do come through do so from all directions and I think that Zanshin spun around a couple of times during the night; luckily I do have a spinner joint between chain and anchor to take care of that problem. The seas looked very calm but when I motored around Monkey Point and prepared to raise sails I saw that the winds were in actuality pretty strong and I had 3 reefs in both sails and was still making good upwind speed as I headed for the distant Virgin Gorda and the North Sound. It took a long time to beat upwind, taking waves over the bow (those waves weren’t predicted, either) but the boat was perfectly balanced and most of the time I merely set the wheel lock and let her take care of herself. I’ve been sailing without the autopilot most of the time, mainly to get a feel for the boat again but also to practice for that time when the autopilot might fail on me during passage and when I don’t have the time to install the spare.
In the North Sound I anchored in my favorite location off Prickly Pear. The strong current makes the boat point straight into the wind and there is hardly any “sailing” at anchor as there is elsewhere and, apart from the occasional wake from the Saba Rock Ferry or other fast-moving work boats, it is a very solid anchorage and sometimes one can imagine being on terra firma rather than on water.
I went to Saba Rock for happy hour and instead of ordering a meal there I returned to the boat and made the rest of my pasta for dinner.
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