Be careful what you wish for!
Corey & Dunbar in foul weather gear and life vests for venturing outside the cockpit
We finally have WiFi again, so I’m belatedly posting a few blogs I wrote during our passage…
After 3 days of glassy seas, our wish for wind came through – on steroids!
As we languished in the doldrums, worrying about our declining fuel supply and agonizing over which of the conflicting weather forecasts to believe, we kept hoping for wind. We awaked yesterday morning to an entire day of seemingly endless squalls – a weather system unmentioned in all the weather forecasts! In addition to drenching us in torrential rains, the wind would crank up hugely while continuously changing directions – resulting in big seas with 2-3 meter swells thrashing us from every which way. It was one rough ride!
Thank goodness for the Balance Versa-Helm, a cool feature that lets you position the boat’s helm (steering wheel) depending on the weather conditions. On the nice days, you can steer topside and enjoy the sunshine or moonlit nights, and, when it’s cold out our pouring rain, you can rotate the helm down into the covered cockpit to stay warm and dry. Needless to say, we rotated it down for this crazy storm.
It turns out we were in a slow-moving tropical wave –which, after it had finally passed us, was later anointed a potential hurricane by the national hurricane service. Adding to our woes, a steering cable jumped its track so one rudder wouldn’t work (even though we’d checked the cable tension a day earlier) and one engine wouldn’t start due to air in the fuel line. All that turned into recipe for a ripped sail. Yep. Another one bit the dust. Good thing there’s a sail repair place in Grenada!
The storm has now passed, and we’re enjoying much more friendly wind conditions as we sail the final 200 miles to Grenada. We’ll wave to Trinidad and Tobago as we pass them by.
