Log of Sea Wings

June 15, 2008

At anchor

St Thomas Harbour

Charlotte Amalie

St Thomas , US Virgin Islands

18 – 20.15N

64 – 55.51W

Thornless Interludes Along the Thorny Path

Several nights ago we were crashing and banging our way from Ponce, Puerto Rico to Esperanza, Isle Vieques in the Spanish Virgin Islands, an offshore jaunt of about 75 nm. As the entrance to our destination looked a little tricky, we left at night so we would arrive in daylight in order to better see the coral.

I was on watch at about 10:30 pm watching as the miles slowly ticked off until we hit 3,500 nm on our trip log. Why this number seems important to me, I don’t really know, but I had a little party anyway, grooving to “The Gypsy Kings” on the Nano, ‘helm dancing’ to the music as the boat jumped all around and Lyn tried to get some sleep below. My son introduced me to this group, all in Spanish, and I always listen to it as we are approaching a new, Spanish speaking destination. It never fails to get me excited for the new locale. As we are headed for some French islands, perhaps I should find some French music to get me excited. Naaaa, the “Gypsy Kings” are French guys singing Spanish music and that is good enough for me.

You have probably noticed that “crashing and banging” is a recurring theme in our logs and we thought it might be a good idea to explain to our non cruising friends exactly what we mean by that and, more importantly, why we do it. We use the term to describe what it is like to be offshore in big waves for hours at a time. Sea Wings is a fairly light, fin keeled boat that is pretty fast and handles rough seas very well, indeed we are confident that she will handle weather that we sure as heck don’t want to be out in a lot better than we would. But boat design is a series of compromises and there are some down sides to a shape that does those other things so well. Her bottom is more ‘U’ shaped than ‘V’ shaped and when she falls off a wave she slaps more than cuts into the water.

So let me describe what happens. On the trip to Vieques, the seas were a steady 5-7 feet with a wind chop of several feet and we would get a series of swells of 8-12 ft every few minutes or so. As we are going between 6 and 7 knots and the wave is traveling maybe 10 or so in the opposite direction, we hit waves every six seconds or so at a closing speed of 15 kts or better and big rollers at the same speed every few minutes. Sea Wings takes the smaller waves pretty well and maintains her speed with not too much drama, but it is quite different on the big ones. First , it is night time and pitch black, but you can still see the big ones coming. The wave looms 8-10 feet above the deck until the bow hits the trough and begins to climb to the top of it. The boat continues to climb the 10 feet or so to the top of the wave until the crest passes under mid ship and she begins to teeter and fall down the other side. But as the wave passes so fast the bow is hanging out in mid air and freefalls maybe four to six feet down until it hits the backside of the wave. If the wave square to the boat all the motion is from the front to back of the boat. If it came from an angle, the boat will snap quickly from one side to the other as well as the wave passes.

When she hits, there is a loud ‘boom’ inside the boat, she shudders from the impact and everything remotely loose inside rattles and shakes…….or flies across the cabin……we have lost several wine glasses this way. As she hits, a plume of spray is thrown up by the bow which rises maybe 10 or more feet in the air and the navigation lights on the bow illuminate it as it passes in front of them, giving a glowing white shower with each big wave. If it was big enough to be a breaking wave, the bow punches through it on the way over the top and you get green water smashing into the dodger (the dodger is over 30 feet back from the bow) and washing down the decks.

Unfortunately, these big waves always come in a series of three so the first wave is as described above, the second is similar but less dramatic as the first slowed the boat down a bit .The third is even less so as it slows the boat down by 2-3 knots. Then she will build up speed again through the smaller waves until several minutes go by and she hits a wall of three big ones again. The trip to Viequez took about 12 hours with these conditions for the entire trip. One of the big problems with these overnight trips in rough conditions is that with the movement of the boat and the noise inside, it is almost impossible to get any rest when you are off watch.

Crashing and banging, that is the only way I know to describe it.

So the bigger question is “Why do we do it???”

The simple answer is that it is the only way to get where we are going. To get to the Caribbean from the east coast of the US, one has the choice of two options. The first is to sail due east into the Atlantic for hundreds of miles until you hit the low 60’s longitude and then turn south and ride the trade winds to the Virgins. This is a trip of 9 days to two weeks offshore. So a couple sailing alone would usually add additional crew and hope for a weather window large enough to keep from getting hammered during the span of the trip.

The second option is to take a leisurely trip through the Bahamas, to the Turks and Caicos, then the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and finally the Virgins. On this route the longest single passage is 80 miles and most are more like 10 -30 miles. There is only one problem with this route. The wind and seas are against you all the way. This route is therefore affectionately known as the “Thorny Path South”. It is such a difficult trip that everyone doing it uses as their bible a book called “The Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South, The Thornless Path to Windward”. What makes this book so popular is that the author, Bruce Van Sant, details every little step of the way and how to make each one in the best conditions (least adverse?) He has figured out ways to sail at night in reliably lower winds, sail in the lee of islands and avoid the worst of the trade winds to escape crashing and banging around.. Typical advice: “ Leave at daybreak and motor until the trades kick up at 9 or 10am and then duck into a harbor until the next day and do it again.” Only problem is that you make only 10 to 20 miles a day.

So the few of us who want to make better time simply wait for the best of bad conditions and travel a longer distance. So for our leg from Ponce to Vieques all reports were for 3-4 ft seas with winds of 10 knots, both directly from the direction we would be traveling. This looked like a nice little window so off we went. So, as is often the case the 3-4 was really 5-7 and there are always the bigger ones mixed in, so we got the 10-12 footers as well. And of course the wind blew more like 15-20. The thorny path got a little thornier that night.

However, there are always two sides to every story, and the Thorny Path has its good side as well. It allows you to casually cruise the Bahamas, (a place we had never cruised and wanted to do so), and as the travel distances are short, it allows you to discover some interesting and rewarding locations that you might have otherwise passed up. Enter the Cruising Guide and advice from other cruisers.

There are cruising guides written for about every locale you might wish to put your boat in and they typically describe any hazards to navigation, anchoring conditions, local services, and serve as a travel guide (like Fromers) to each location on land. The two problems with the guides are that they tend to be very conservative on water based issues (liability) and their descriptions of local conditions are often biased to who pays to be in the book. And there is always the issue of their (the guide authors) cup of tea might not be your cup of tea. So often you find locations they found to be good not to your taste and those they thought not so good to be absolutely wonderful.

And God protect us from cruiser advice. Out here most everyone cruising has “advice” on everything. From routes to take; to locations to avoid or be sure to hit; to which gizmo is the one to have; to which marina has the best showers’ etc., etc. You could assume that as they have more experience, or have been somewhere you have not that this would be good advice indeed. But you pretty soon learn to listen to the advice, but do your own research as well and make a decision on what you think is best, not necessarily what they think is best.

One of our stops along the thorny path was Ponce, Puerto Rico and with guide book and cruiser “advice” in hand, we arrived there several weeks ago. Ponce is described by the cruising guide as a big city; a great place to provision as it even has a Sam’s Club; but not a great place to linger as the anchorage is not scenic and has continuous LOUD music into the early morning so getting any rest is hard to do. The cruiser “advice” is much the same but adds “do not, under any circumstances, use the public dinghy dock, use the yacht club instead. Dangerous. Your dingy/outboard will be stolen or vandalized.”

On arrival we did find it not the most scenic being directly adjacent to a large coal loading facility. But then there was the yacht club (which put a bunch of kids in Optis out in the harbor every day) and a lively malecon (boardwalk) so it was not that unpleasant a place to be. Our anchor was hardly set before a dinghy approached and Oscar ( a German living in PA) asked us if we would like to share a cab and go to Sam’s where he had a membership. We quickly agreed (cruisers love low prices) and joined him for the afternoon. He, like many others, advised us not to use the public dinghy dock, and we headed for the yacht club instead. From there we called a taxi and took the long trip to Sam’s and came back to the club later in the afternoon. At the gate we had to convince the guard that we were docked at the club and finally got home with all our goodies.

The next day we had to go to town for all the things you can’t get at Sam’s and, as the club had been kind of a pain to get into and out of, decided to check out the public dinghy dock and see how bad it looked. It was located at the end of the malecon adjacent to a public marina and as we approached the dock we were immediately greeted and extended a dinner invitation with some of the local community at the marina by Maribell, a fellow cruiser on Paper Moon. When we told her we were going to get a taxi to town she shook her head “no” and escorted us to a small gazebo in the marina where she introduced us to her local marina friends. She explained that these guys enjoyed entertaining cruisers passing through and would not hear of anyone taking a cab, they would be glad to take us, no charge. And she assured us that our dinghy was safer than even at the yacht club as it was under constant surveillance from the gazebo.

And so began a delightful several days at Ponce. We were driven anywhere we wanted to go and we enjoyed both the company and food that this group of men provided to us. Most of them were retired and spent most or all of their time hanging around the gazebo, food seemingly always cooking. We were never clear on whether they had boats there, lived at the marina, or lived in town but in any case they were seemingly always at the marina.

One night we were invited to a party at the gazebo where we ate and drank and enjoyed conversations about life in Ponce, past and present. We were taken to the laundry and picked up again. Pacho drove us to several stores, waited in the car while we shopped and brought us back to the marina. It should be noted that the anchorage is well outside of downtown Ponce so each trip involved many miles of travel on freeways, down small streets, and through Ponce traffic. We always offered money for gas, or a bottle of his favorite rum for Pacho, but in every instance I doubt it covered the cost of gas for the distances we covered.

All of this was simply something that these men enjoyed doing, a way to pass the time, of meeting new people, enjoying hearing what was happening to all of us in our travels. All of which we would have missed had we followed the advice of the cruising guides and the advice of some other cruisers. We were thankful that we ran into Maribell and Pete on Paper Moon who had ignored the popular advice and found another side of the Ponce anchorage and shared it with us.

But we needed to move on east toward St Maarten so we left Ponce for our rough ride to Vieques, Spanish Virgins. We had been alerted by a friend we had met several years ago in the BVI that a friend of his had opened a restaurant and bar on the malecon in Esperanza on the south side of Vieques. The Spanish Virgins are supposedly a location just being ‘discovered’ by the cruising community and several recent articles in sailing magazines have described them as quiet, off the beaten path locations, Spanish speaking, and not yet geared for tourism. Vieques in particular was passed by voyagers as it was a US military facility used for years as a bombing range. It was recently turned over to Fish and Wildlife (the Spanish Virgins are part of Puerto Rico and therefore an US possession) and is trying to build a niche in the eco-tourism community.

What we expected to find was a quiet, poor, Spanish speaking fishing village with a small beach bar and restaurant owned by our friend’s friends. What we expected and what we found were quite different and was another thornless stop on the Thorny Path.