When we last left off, Paul and I sailed away from Sint Maarten on Monday June 20th, and we’ve been on the metaphorical road ever since. Our insurance requires us to be at 12.40 degrees North of the equator, or less, by July 1st, so we’ve been sailing down south for over a week. Every day we’ve been sailing between 30 and 50 miles, which tends to be a long day, although we have been anchored or moored every night and have time for cooking dinner and sleeping full nights.
Twice daily we check the weather, the waves, and the wind predictions to decide on an appropriate sail plan and destination to try to reach ace our eventual goal of getting to Granada. However, we started to notice increased swell forecasts, and increased wind forecast. Or, as Paul put it ” I really don’t like that swirling red eye going right through our path”.
Right now, this storm is known as Potential Tropical Cyclone 2, but if she powers through and becomes a named storm, we’ll just be calling her Bonnie. Needless to say, this upended some of our leisurely sail plans and days to hang out in St Vincent, with trying to locate a safe place to hang out and let the storm pass.
Updated!
The past few days have been windy. Very windy. and Rainy. Like, sideways rainy. When you combine 40 knots of wind with furious downpour, it makes seeing and steering a vessel difficult. Early this morning around 3:30am, I awoke to white out conditions and water pouring in through a (only partially) closed hatch (yikes). I could feel the boat shiver and pull at our anchor line as the wind pushed us, and I couldn’t see the other boats at anchor even though we are surrounded (spoiler here, yes… we were at anchor and all is well).
We are back at St Anne’s, in Martinique, our original anchorage and limbic space from many months ago. We have decided to wait here today and possibly again tomorrow to stay safe instead of sailing in conditions that might be dangerous.
This same anchorage that we previously spent 50 frustrated days and nights at trying to buy this boat back in March and April seems very different now as we wait a day or two for the weather to clear. We’ve sailed our first 500 miles, prepared and eaten over 100 meals, hauled out, encountered moderate weather, left the vessel while flying to NYC and CA, and even thrown one pretty successful party aboard. The more I look back on our successes and trials of these past months the more I’m looking forward to the future board the TINTAS. Maybe with a name change in the future…
More soon -Paul and Linz
TIBURON MARINO 