Today is departure day, although the wind, waves and clouds don’t look very promising at all. I fueled up my main tank in the morning, then went to customs and immigration to clear out. There was only one lady ahead of me, but she had 47 passports to take care of so it was a long wait to get a stamp on my papers, pay $5 exit fee and have the immigration card removed from my passport…
After returning the rental car I disconnected all the extraneous lines and power cable and waited for a lull in the winds to leave the dock. Helped by Ollie and others, that was a piece of cake and then I spent 20 minutes getting all the lines removed and fenders stowed before motoring out of the West End. As I entered the Sir Francis Drake Channel and put the autopilot on so that I could get the mainsail and genoa out I had a charter catamaran come up behind me on a collision course. Just a hundred yards behind me they hoisted their reefed genoa and the skipper shouted at me, gesticulated wildly and pointed at his sail, as if to say “I’m a sailboat and you are motoring, so get out of my way”. Considering we were doing about 5 knots almost directly into the wind and I could see his starboard exhaust going wildly and also could see the prop wash I was tempted to ignore him and continue. But my adage that “Charter boats are always the stand-on vessel” applies and I went and altered course by 90° to let him pass. They kept on motors ailing upwind towards Norman Island and it was with some satisfaction that I passed them under heavily reefed mainsail and genoa several minutes later. They still had only part of a genoa out and no mainsail and were motoring.
The winds were 15-20 all day with many gusts to 25. Squalls came through regularly and some of them were very, very dark. By the time I made it to the North Sound of Virgin Gorda I’d decided to change my plans and not sail through the night with all those potentially dangerous squalls zipping by, so I anchored off Prickly Pear Island for the night. While preparing dinner some very big squalls passed right over, making me happy that I’d chosen discretion over valor.
