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Saturday March 24, 2012

Work done for now, it is time for fun. The breakfast discussion is all about maybe sailing to Saint Marrten if Dutch and Saint Martin if French. Its the same island but roughly half is French and half is Dutch. Years ago to settle a boundry dispute a Dutchman and a Frenchman started walking each in a different direction on the coast around the island. Where they started and where they met determined the end points of the line dividing the island.

Our destination would be the lagoon on the Dutch side. It is a passage getting there which is up hill. This means the wind and the sea state are against you; the passage can take 14 hours with mild discomfort when you wait for the weather window. It is best to take it over night as lying in your bed is the best place to be with the motion of Bella Donna. Of course, you could take a flight from Virgin Gorda and just meet BD; the airport is next to the lagoon in Saint Marrten. Coming back to BVI is a downhill ride, with wind and sea, taking about 10 hours; this can be enjoyed by everyone. We decide to decide at our next destination, Scrub Island. This is without a doubt Donna's, truth is all of us's, favorite. The resort is now marketed by Marriott and consists of marina, vacation condos for rent, 2 pools with slide, hot tub, outside patio bar, restaurant, gym, dive shop, grocery shop, boutiques, shuttle boat 5 minutes to Tortola airport, dinner with Davaday (more later) and a beach house with pool on the other side of the island.

We leave just after lunch for Scrub Island. We plan to sail there by making 2 big tacks as going straight there is into the trade winds. The wind is pretty steady about 20 knots and we fly the main and the genoa. The main has one reef but the genoa is 100% deployed, a big sail. We are sailing close as we can to the wind as we can so as to clear the south end of Virgin Gorda. Our speed over ground is averaging 9.5 knots, a little less if we pinch it, sail even closer to the wind. Just after we tack to lay a line to Scrub we are hit by an invisible squall with gusts of wind exceeding 36 knots. The squall was invisible because there was no change in the sea surface to warn us. We got caught trimming a now way too big genoa; we had just completed our tack and I was sitting on the flybridge floor so I could see the top of the genoa so I could trim it perfectly. John made an urgent plea for help reducing the sail. Now I do not get off the ground very fast nowadays. I did the best I could. Meanwhile John increased the throttle and steered close to the gusting wind so the wind would spill from the big genoa. He started furling the now flogging genoa. I loosened and carefully started letting out on the genoa sheet. The loads on the sheet were radical due to the flogging and the new sheets behaved differently from the old. Finally we reduce the genoa to a manageable size leaving us sailing on mostly the reefed main. We still were experiencing gusts to 36 knots. John steered BD is a direction that was safe and did not fill the main with too much wind until the gusting wind returned to the steady 20 knot level. We motored to Scrub with the main up, but the desire to sail was satisfied until a future day.

One last challenge; someone is on the dock we like so we take a slip that large enough, but tight for BD.

Tied up finally at Marriott Scrub Island Resort, we retire to the flybridge and do sundowners. 

God Bless Bella Donna