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Published: September 27th 2009
St. John
Waiting in the Virgin Islands for the next weather window. Not a bad place to be stuck though.It certainly was time to book it on south. We couldn’t believe that it is already June- where did the time go?!?! We ended up spending close to another month in the Virgin Islands, traveling back and forth. We went to St. John for a couple of days, then back to St. Thomas, then back to St. John, then over to Norman, and finally back to Virgin Gorda. We spent most of our time just riding out the nasty weather that moved into the area. Unfortunately we had weeks of squalls and wind and pouring down rain. We spent most of our time just watching movies, hanging out with our friends, and getting provisions for the boat. Our plan was to take the first weather window available and set sail for St. Martin. This upwind leg can be brutal and you definitely need calm wind and seas for the passage. So we waited and waited for weeks and weeks, and started getting worried about the delay. And as our luck would have it, we seemed to have one delay after another.
At this point, hurricane season was rapidly approaching and we find ourselves still very, very far north. Unfortunately the
Dolphins
We had so many dolphins with us as we sailed down island- awesome!!! weather was already deteriorating as tropical waves were reaching the Caribbean. So we were anxious to get out of harm’s way. The insurance we have for our boat dictates that we must get below the latitude of 12 degrees 4 minutes north (which is down in the Grenadines) by the first week of July. This imaginary line is the official southern border for the hurricane belt and historically doesn’t have as many tropical storms. Therefore it is considered a safe place to ride out hurricane season. However we are still hundreds of miles away- yikes! So it was time to light the fires and kick the tires, time to set sail, and get a move on. So we took every weather window we could get in order to book it on south.
The good news is that the Rum Runner is a super fast boat, and once we got moving we were able to make up for lost time. And we were able to get to the Grenadines by the end of June- yohoo! We sailed for 24 hours a day, skipped a multitude of islands on our way down, and often just stopped for the night at the
But Where's the Pot of Gold???
We stopped for the night at this anchorage in Dominica- doesn't get more amazing than this! others. Even though I got rather loopy at one point and was pretty sick of sailing- it really wasn’t all that bad. We have always found that you see amazing things on the water. At one point we had a pod of dolphins swimming along with us- awesome! And we saw the most incredible rainbow as we pulled into the anchorage at Dominica to rest for the night- but couldn’t find the pot of gold. Bummer! And the sunset as we pulled into St. Lucia was beautiful- a great way to end the day.
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Spencer Barrett
non-member comment
Said like a true Captain Ron
Time to kick the tires and light the fires - congrads on making it south.