I woke up a 05:30 and by 06:00 I was underway with the bow pointing straight at the 80 NM distant St. Barths. There was no wind at all when I left the anchorage and I motorsailed with the main up for about 2 hours before the wind had picked up enough for me to switch off the diesel. The forecast had been for 15 knots but the real wind was only around 10-12 knots true but I still made much of the trip at around 7 knots, although for a period of 3 hours my speed went to just below 5 knots and I debated using the engine to assist in my trip (but I opted against that, since Zanshin is a sailboat and I wasn’t in any hurry and could easily anchor in Anse Colombier in the dark). The last 2 hours were great winds as I approached St. Barths from the south, and I made consistently over 7 knots. Visibility was only about 20 miles today due to haze and I didn’t see any islands on the way nor any ships at all except for one catamaran coming from Barbuda. I couldn’t figure out why the catamaran was motoring rather than sailing, since the winds were perfect – apparent wind 90°-150° from the direction of sail at approximately 10 knots yet the catamaran was motoring at 7 knots (meaning he was working the engines rather hard). The last 30 minutes before I reached the lee of St. Barths saw him put up the genoa but I felt it was too little, and too late.
For the most part the waters are deep, over 1000 feet, but in certain places it shallows out to about 150 feet and of course in those spots I had to keep an eye out for fish traps and I missed several by a good margin but had to do an emergency turn-autopilot-off-and-wheel-hard-over once – I realized at the last second that the two floats that were a good 30 feet apart were not two traps, but that they were linked together and represented only one trap! Zanshin was headed between them yet the quick override had me miss the outside trap by just a couple of feet.
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