Crossing the Caribbean Sea

We wake up before the sun at Village Cay Marina, Tortola.  After a quick breakfast and last minute preparations, we cast off our lines and head out of the marina just as the sun begins to peek over the horizon.  As we enter Sir Frances Drake Channel there is only a light 15 knot breeze and the sea is completely flat.  In another hour, we cross behind Norman Island and head out to sea towards Panama and the ocean swell sets in.

As the BVI disappears into the distance, we take a few quick pictures.

In the afternoon we can see Puerto Rico far in the distance to starboard, and the US Virgin Island of St Croix off to port.  As night falls, we can still just make out St Croix and this is the last land we will see for another 5 days. 

One day melts into the next with 4hour watches during the day, followed by 3hour watches at night.  We don't have to change the sails much over the first three days, with pretty consistent   winds up to about 20knots.  We set a more southerly route for this section, to take advantage of the stronger easterly winds in the lower Caribbean.  

As we approach the Colombian coast on Day 3, the winds are picking up and the sea is building.  We have a fun afternoon surfing down steep 4 metre waves, regularly hitting 12 knots, the occasional burst to 14 knots and reaching a top speed of 15.3 knots.  This was not so much fun in the dark, and although Toodles was handling it well, we decided to be cautious and reduced sail to slow the boat down to "only" 8 knots.  As the night wore on, and morning arrived, the sea continued to worsen. There were three different sets of swells by Day 4, and the odd quartering 6 metre wave.  We reduced sail further to maintain proper control.  By late afternoon we were through the worst of it. 

One of the strangest things I found with ocean sailing was the sound of the ocean surf.  While stressed out during exam times at uni, I would play an Ocean Surf CD during the night to help me relax.  I always thought this sound was of waves breaking on a surf beach, but I think I was wrong.  We slept on deck every night, and when I would wake up I would have that strange sensation of trying to work out where the heck I was.  The sound of the waves breaking all around us was so loud, that I could imagine that I had fallen asleep on a very active surf beach.  I don't think that the Ocean Surf CD will be any use in helping me relax any more - it will just take me back to the Colombian coast.

Another thing I wasn't expecting was how cold it would get at night.  We both slept with two blankets and still felt the cold when the winds blew, cutting straight through them.  Although this was contrasted with the mornings when the sun would stream into the cockpit with no where to hide.  I would quickly go from being too cold to being way too hot, throwing off as much clothing as possible.  

Wearing a harness 24/7 is also up there on the uncomfortable-ness scale.  When you are exhausted, covered in salt, and thinking you might be suffering from mild exposure, the harness feels heavy and cumbersome.  It chafes your neck during the day, and makes it impossible to get comfortable when putting your head down on a pillow at night.  And ours are the top of the range awesome ones, so this is as comfortable as they get.

By the morning of Day 5, we knew that we would make it to the San Blas by nightfall.  The pressure was on, but the wind didn't get the memo.  After having blasting winds of 25-35knots for the last 24 hours, it fell away to next to nothing.  To make matters worse, a counter current  set in.  So on went the engine to make sure that we could make it in time.  We needed to make it as close midday as possible so that the sun was overhead and the reefs most visible.  Like the pacific, charts of the San Blas Islands are notoriously inaccurate.  Your chart plotter may say that you are in the middle of the channel, when you are actually aground on a reef.  Throughout the San Blas islands are wrecks of yachts and ships that can attest to this.  

The last 4 hours of the crossing were some of the hardest.  The minutes dragged like hours and we still couldn't see land.  Only about an hour out could we make out the low lying San Blas Islands, and in particular the Holandes group of islands we were heading for.  At this stage we realised that what we thought was dark clouds in the distance, was actually the central american coast line in mist and haze.  

We made it through the fringing reef at about 3pm, just in time for the reefs to still be visible.  We pulled in to the most amazing group of small islands with complete shelter due to the fringing reef.  For the first time in 5 1/2 days the boat was stopped, the crashing waves sounded distant, and the absence of engine noise was deafening.  The very first thing on my priority list (other than call my Dad of course) was to wash off the salt and attempt to turn the mat of tangled mess on my head back into hair.  With that completed, and a rum and coke in hand, we took in the view...