So I am not sure how frequently I will be able to post in the coming month as internet is going to become difficult to find.
In the last few days the fearful all girl crew of WildChild has been busy making miles south. We have found that 2 smashy days sailing in a row seems to be enough for us… then a thrid day of rest seems to be a good idea. We feel the pressure of time against us now as hurricane season is a comin… I really wish we had been able to leave a month earlier and had not gotten tied up with the Monkey fiasco. Then we would be enjoying a much easier schedule for sailing south right now… sigh…. but as it is… we are pushing the miles.
We left Georgetown (Green 1) about a week ago (Tuesday May 28th)… also coincidentally the last time we have stepped off the boat. That day of sailing was directly upwind in light and squirrely winds so our lovely 22 mile jump actually turned into 30 smashy miles tacking back and forth upwind.
We did fine together at the helm all day and kept our morale up but it was tiring. We landed at Galliott Cay spent a quick night then jumped south again (Green 2) right away the next day to Clarencetown on Long Island. I think it was only like a 54 mile day. There we decided to rest for a day and dive the hull and eat a decent meal. It actually was a nice sail in calm enough seas and we even had almost a beam reach for most of the day. Near the end of the day though we were dodging storms again.
The jump from Clarencetown to the top end of Aklins island (Green 3) was another one of those poundy poundy smashy smashy sails into the wind again. They say gentlemen do not sail to windward but hard core sailor chics do… and so the day of sailing was rather suffery… but we are way tougher than we look.
The waves were not actually that big that day… only 3-5 footers most of the day but again… you can see when the dominant wave period equals about 1 boat length… it gets rather smashy. The small waves just hit the bow of the boat just right and shoot 10-12 feet into the air. The sounds are incredible and it goes on and on all day like this. Smaller waves smashing for a minute or so then the bigger harmonic waves suddenly catch up with you and BAM… its loud and jarring. Sometimes in the videos you can hear me grunting to hold upright in the jarring slams of those bigger waves. Sometimes the boat almost comes to a stop.
After a quick overnight stop on some random bit of shoreline at the top end of Aklins Island we woke up the next morning and hit the ocean again. We had 1 bar of cell coverage at that anchorage and got some wind forecast info which indicated we should jump again the next day… so we did. It was not a long sail only maybe 42 miles or something. Of course though it was into the winds again but we had just a little bit of wind angle so we did the whole jump with only 2 tacks.
AND… guess what… it was smashy again. This is just sailing to windward even in good conditions. WildChild is very narrow on the nose and does well cutting into the waves… she does not ram them as much as most other heavier fatter sailboats do…. but it is still uncomfortable…. and loud. We cannot really setup the laptop and try and watch a movie in these conditions… it is too loud to hear the movie and with the spray from waves landing in the cockpit a big risk for the delicate electronics.
When we got to the bottom of Aklins island we were faced with a 85 mile jump south to the next island of Great Inagua, where we can check out of the Bahamas. hmmm… 85 miles is actually a bad distance… too long for a single day and a bit short for an over-nighter.
Checking the wind forecasts I saw the winds were coming from Great Inagua for 2 days but saw that on the third day (Tuesday June 4th) the winds would go lighter and be almost beam reach. So it was set… 2 days to chill out on a deserted tropical island. We made the best of it… don’t get me wrong it is freakin hot everyday here. Pretty much 35 degrees C with 60-70% humidity everyday. But naked swimming in crystal clear warm waters off the back of the boat felt kind of nice actually… good way to cool off in paradise.
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Yesterday we were going to leave really early in the morning (like 4am) to make our 17 hour jump to Great Inagua (Green 5) but just before bed I got a bar of cell reception and checked the winds again and did some math… it didn’t look great. I decided that we would leave the next day at noon… because the winds were not scheduled to shift a bit Northy until then.
The hard part about being the Captain.. the part that never goes away… is the pressure weight and responsibility of making important decisions everyday. I can be decisive… I am very smart… I can make good decisions… but try making a good decision with bad information. Every time! Wind forecasts are just guesses… and often 50% wrong.
So the winds yesterday were supposed to be… 7 knots from the east North easty… but what if 7 knots really means 7+/- 5 knots… (margin of error)…. ? Well if it goes down to 3-4 knots we are only going to move at around 2-3 knots SOG… with 85 miles to go… hmm… we need 28 hours…
BUT… if the winds are maybe 7-10 knots but instead more South Easty and we have to pound into them… we will also only go like 4-5 knots….
BUT… what if the winds are actually 12-15 knots from the Beam..? WildChild will fly like a rocket ship and do like 7-8 knots…
Remember that you never want to arrive at any port, harbor or anchorage in the dark (Always a bad idea).
So the time estimate to make our jump to Great Inagua is anywhere from 12 to 28 hours…. based upon… IF… Maybe.. IF… Sometimes… could be…. Maybe… and a big IF again for good measure
When SHOULD we leave….?
If your head is spinning and doesn’t even want to think about all this stuff… then never buy a sailboat…. to the other captains reading this… you totally understand exactly what I am telling you here….
A decision I have to make… I err’d on the side of caution and assumed we were more likely to get becalmed than over powered by wind… We left yesterday at noon… to go an estimated 3-5 knots SOG… and arrive sometime today in good daylight… after probably 18-22 hours
Well…. guess freakin what….? I got it wrong again… The winds did not shift a bit Northy until 3 hours after they were supposed to and they were usually more than double what was forecast… (we had 13-17 knots)… WildChild went waaaayyy… Tooo…. FAST… we were going to arrive at around midnight.
Grrrr… says the Captain under her breath…
Yikes that is bad…. so we spent most of the sail trying to slow WildChild down (again). The good news was the ocean was weirdly calm (less than 1 meter waves all day and all night) so that was fantastic. We are in pretty remote waters so there was very little other traffic out here last night (only 1 ship). It was a good night of sailing… calm… gentle… calm enough I was able to go below and cook a quick pasta dinner for us after sunset.
We had to keep reducing sail area though. WildChild is like a race horse that just wants to go…. Eventually had to put the Genny away completely and reef the main… running with only reefed main and tiny storm sail for balance… we got her down to 3 knots. We just arrived here into this rolly anchorage outside of Mathewtown Great Inagua a few hours ago (around 9am). We are tired but okay.
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Here is something interesting and random.. about an hour after we set the hook here today (outside a small boat harbor) I looked out and found these 3 interesting and home made looking sailboats coming out of the harbor and heading back towards either Cuba or Haiti…?
It was a very interesting sight… I kind of worried maybe it was refugees that just got turned around and sent back…? because there were a lot of people on each of the little boats (40-50 feet each). It didn’t seem like a tourist thing or a fishing boat or a working boat… and there were 3 of them and each vessel had like 10-15 people on board. I am just dying of curiosity… what was that all about…?
What do you think…?
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The next step from here… we will go into shore tomorrow and step foot on land and check out of the Bahamas…. maybe provision if we can.
Then Friday we will jump up and around the corner to Little Inagua island to anchor for the night and get a better wind angle for the next scary jump down to Lupperon in the Dominican Republic this weekend. Here is to hoping no pirates come out to board us when we are off the coast of Haiti….
…sounds like a joke but it is seriously a concern for 2 girls alone out here…
I say tentatively we are going to make the DR crossing starting Saturday until sometime Sunday. So we will probably disappear from the internet for a while. To my close friends and family we will have the Garmin Inreach Satellite phone turned on and it has unlimited texting… so I will switch to sat phone texts shortly. Remember you can click on the link to see where we are.
After we bounce thru the DR as quickly as we can (hopefully within a week) we will have to make the crossing over to Puerto Rico and safety… The thing is though… this whole next 10-15 days of sailing will be almost exclusively upwind. We have to get a lot of east in the next few hundred miles and it will all be against the prevailing winds…. sigh… remember those smashy wave pictures I showed you earlier…?
It seems there will be lots more suffering in the weeks ahead for the girls on WildChild… please pray for our safety.
Cheers Sailors…
…… captain Lexi the very nervous now…