Although I was ready to leave at 06:00 there was not a hint of wind inside the anchorage and the waters outside were so flat and calm that I was certain that there was no wind to be had out there, either. At just past 07:00 there was a hint of wind, and I had over 80NM to traverse so I bit the bullet and opted to motorsail, lifting up my chain and departing along with 4 other boats who had most likely had the same thought. We headed off in 4 directions (I’m assuming one went to the Saintes, myself to Nevis via Montserrat, another heading towards the BVI and a final one going to Antigua) but all under engine power. I had my mainsail up but it wasn’t doing anything constructive for the first 2 hours, after which the wind picked up enough for me to make sufficient speed to arrive at Nevis before dark. For a bit I was cruising along at 8-9 knots and became very optimistic about my travel time, and I was looking forward to getting some close-up pictures of the ruins of Plymouth as I zipped through the exclusion zone (which, according to the website, was open for daytime transit). As I approached the southern corner of the island a police launch came from ahead and passed me to my port, then turning a circle and coming up to my starboard stern at about 100 feet. The VHF crackled and we were soon in conversation; first they asked me what my home port was and what nationality I was and I realized that I’d taken down my British Ensign (which one is supposed to do when offshore and no ships are in sight)… so I asked them to stand by and unfurled my ensign, explaining my error to them. They then asked for my boat’s particulars and my previous port, destination, destination after that, and finally my name (I surprised them by zipping through the phonetic alphabet spelling too quickly, and had to repeat) and then I waited – fearing that they want to board the boat in the strong winds and big 1.5m irregular swell but they got on the blower and wished me a nice trip. Unfortunately, they did give me a negative for crossing the exclusion zone and said I needed to stay 3 miles offshore which made for some pretty boring pictures; but since the island was overcast they probably wouldn’t have been too good in any case
I arrived at the mooring field in Nevis quite early, around 18:00. The winds had picked up after Redonda and for a while I was wing-on-wing doing 9-10 knots!
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