2016-03-12

I departed the Simpson Bay lagoon with the 08:30 bridge in gusty and blustery conditions. Mark came aboard to help me lift up the chain while I motored slowly ahead and used the bow thruster to keep Zanshin away from Mark’s Sea Life. The anchor was well and truly dug in deep and took a bit of work to lift, and the chain was slimy with two week’s worth of growth on it. Once the anchor was up Mark returned to his boat and I cruised around the bridge area for 20 minutes prior to the opening. A very big megayacht sloop squeezed in ahead of me and once the bridge opened they very, very slowly went through; this made things quite difficult for the rest of us as we had a strong wind from behind and weren’t making enough headway to let the rudder work well. But in the end I made it through and soon had double reefed main and genoa set. The course to the BVI is somewhat northerly and the wind was coming from the NE so it was a perfect wind direction, although the wind was doing between 15 and 20 knots most of the time with some gusts significantly stronger.

I made very good speed and arrived in the BVI during daylight. I anchored off Prickly Pear in the North Sound and after I’d dropped the anchor, put up my day shape and turned off the engine I glanced at my watch to see it was exactly 18:30 – a 10 hour run from St. Martin!