Martinique to St. Lucia

Thursday, May 28, 7:30am
We weighed anchor for what we thought would be an easy 40 mile run to Marigot Bay, St. Lucia. The day started out sunny and with short seas. By the time we were 5 miles offshore, in the passage between the two islands, we knew we were in for a very uncomfortable ride.

You will notice there are no accompanying photos with this blog entry; we were too busy hanging on...

Our rhumb-line course was Southeast to St. Lucia. Unfortunately the current and 25-knot wind was creating a solid 10-12 foot set of waves directly abeam our course. In addition, the waves were coming at very close intervals. I tried every point of steering near our course, and only succeeded in severely bouncing the contents of the boat around the salon, breaking lamp bulbs, and toppling side tables. Even our sofa came adrift, and was marching across the salon. The salon floor was covered in glass shards from the broken light bulbs.

I finally yielded to conditions, and ran a sort of tacking course Southwest, which at least put the oncoming waves to port and astern the boat. This course gave us relief from the pounding, but took us about 1o miles out of the way. Once we were in the lee of St. Lucia, the wind and waves abated somewhat, and we could steer almost directly East toward Marigot Bay.

This is literally the first time we have had to run a significant tacking course to get where we wanted to go. It added two hours to our passage, but it taught us another lesson in seamanship. Better to run than be run over! Comfort over speed!

Just to make things really interesting, our starboard engine quit just as we were about to enter the harbour at Marigot Bay. The starboard fuel filter was clogged, so I had Susan idle the boat in circles near the harbour entrance, using the port engine only, while I changed the filter and re-primed the stalled engine.

We finally tied up at the marina around 3:30pm. I was able to clear St. Lucia customs and immigration just before they closed.