I woke up shortly after midnight, before the alarm went off, and got underway at about 01:00. The wind was very light as I left, but I was sure that it would freshen as I left the lee of the island and had undisturbed air at sea. I was wrong, unfortunately. The swell was still quite strong, a good 1.5m wave height and coming from a little to the north of east. The problem with light winds, apart from slow sailing, is that there isn’t enough pressure on the sails to keep them from flapping about when the waves roll the ship. I had a terrible corkscrewing motion and despite using a preventer on the main sail I still had a lot of noise and flapping. I changed course about 30° to the north of my intended one so that I would have the wind more on the beam and keep the boat stable (plus getting a knot more speed), but that meant that I would be sailing much further than initially planned.
So the 100 NM trip became a 130 NM one, and my intended passage time wasn’t going to work out, either. So I revised my plans and decided that I’d only sail to the North Sound of Virgin Gorda in the BVI that first night, hoist the Q-Flag and not go ashore, then depart from the North Sound in the morning hours of the next day and sail to the USVI. The main sail was making odd creaking noises and I looked up at the clew and was shocked to see that the outhaul line had chafed very badly. The outer braided line had parted completely and the whole assembly was held only by the inner core, which was chafing away merrily as well. I pulled the main so that the line could chafe in a fresh location. The forces on the line weren’t large due to the light winds, so with the combination of reefed mainsail and new chafe position I felt confident that there would be no issues until until I reached an anchorage where I could repair the problem in peace.
In the late afternoon I finally reached the easternmost headland of Virgin Gorda. About 10NM out from the island the very deep waters shoal out to around 100 feet of depth, and despite being far out to sea there are lobster pots / fish traps out there which Zanshin seems to have a magical attraction to. I dodged the odd trap, which were difficult to discern as I was heading towards the sun and the reflections from the water made identification difficult. But I didn’t grab any and made it to the lee of Prickly Pear Island by 17:00 and anchored for the night.
The outhaul had chafed because the Delrin spacer which I’d had fixed/manufactured the previous season in St. Martin had been placed on the wrong side of the roller and thus didn’t protect the line from a rounded bolt on the boom. So I knew the cause and the solution, but after cutting away the chafed sections of the outhaul the line was too short and I had to use some spare line – but this line was Dyneema core that was overkill, but better than risking a blown line at sea.
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