Crossing the Caribbean Sea to Curacao

We said goodbye to Amy and Larry in St Croix; their parting words to us were "look out for the area around Udall Point (East St. Croix). It has potholes."

Boy they weren't kidding! But we picked our way through them, put up the sails and pointed Minerva Southwest across the open Caribbean Sea.

Amy and Larry, friends we made in St. Croix, built their trimaran from scratch.
It's made of cold-molded cedar and fiberglass and it looks like it deserves a speeding ticket even when tied to the dock.

The wind was coming from just a little East of due South. I suspect this is highly unusual. It is certainly annoying, since the whole point of doing the thorny path was to get all the way out here and have a nice beam reach run across the Caribbean Sea, which means we were looking for an East Wind - a trade wind, which is everyday here, right! Nope! Denied!

It's easy to become paralyzed by the options and waiting for a perfect weather window that may never arrive. There's also the fear that you pick the perfect window but it turns out to be a weatherman's lie. At some point you must simply go anyways and accept the consequences, and hope that you prepared well enough for the inevitable surprises.

I probably haven't mentioned this before, but I don't like leaning. We spent a lot of time choosing this specific boat because she's heavy and resists the lean. Close-haul = lean. But it was only supposed to be for a little while before the East Wind filled in and we would be at a nice comfortable beam reach for the majority of our ride.

One weather report suggested the wind would turn after only a couple hours. That came and went. A different weather report said we could look for the wind to turn at noon. That came and went. A third one said by 4:00, surely, the East Wind would show up then. By 6:00, still nothing. More leaning. And, you know what? It wasn't that bad! Minerva really seems to thrive in it. So we were cooking right along, leaning a little bit, and when a big gust of wind would come she would just sort of dump the excess wind and keep going. At first it freaked me out, and then I learned to trust her. She was really in her element. We've never experienced this before, and she's an old hand at it. It did feel a little bit like she was showing off, this was a side of my boat I've never really relaxed long enough to let her show me before.

Tethers are kept handy in the cockpit and our policy is to clip our lifevests to the safety lines on the boat whenever leaving the cockpit for any reason

There were a couple of incidents where our feet went out from under us on a lean, and some things went flying and broke, we earned some minor bruises here and there. All in all we did pretty well considering the sideways and bumpy state of living for a few days. Really great safety gear and a policy of always wearing it kept us on the deck when we fell topside, and lots of handholds in the cabin kept the below decks falls to a minimum (Merci Monsieur Amel).

We all got soaked by waves that slipped over the side now and then, unfairly attacking us as we were leaned over. Chloe always glared at us so indignantly, as if we were doing it purposefully to annoy her. She was the first to figure out the particular sound they make when they hit the hull and dive for cover before the splash could rain down on her, yes it seems the dog is Minerva's smartest crew member.

Sunrise on the third morning bathed the setting moon in cotton candy skies

The night watches were magical. As the sun went down and the full moon came out to play, the swell would lay down and Minerva would fly. We saw a handful of other boats on the radar, but only a couple of container ships were visible with our eyes, all of them distant. During the day we were kept company by schools of flying fish, who seemed determined to race with us, and the clouds made interesting moonshadows on the water at night. One night a small dolphin jumped all the way out of the water alongside Lance then quickly disappeared. Later that same night, on my watch there was a rather large cloud above Minerva and clear skies on the horizon, the moon caused a million little sparkles right on the horizon - it looked like we were sailing on a dark lake across from a bustling lakeside city. On the third night the wind did finally shift a little more to the East, we paid out some sails, the boat flattened out and we sailed comfortably the rest of the way, catching a free ride on a ripping current over the top of Bonaire and to Curacao.

The sacrificial suncover on the headsail went from gently frayed to completely shredded during our passage, and we pulled into the anchorage with the ravaged cover hanging like a row of sad flags. We arrived just before 5 pm and circled around a bit before settling on the perfect spot to drop the hook. We were on our final approach when we ran aground on a soft sandy shoal that wasn't on the chart, a rather inauspicious ending to an otherwise flawlessly executed passage. Of course it was getting close to sundowner time so everyone was on their boat decks to witness it, surely adding to our new neighbors' impression of us. Oh well. We set the hook and were treated to a front-row seat of the naked ancient French couple diving from their boat to swim upwind of us.

The Jersey Jump

Now where was that stupid charger? I had already torn the boat apart from bow to stern, seemed silly to do it again. It had to be hiding in plain sight.

So I went back through the electronic closet again and sure enough, there it was - pretending to be the charger for something else, when it actually belonged to the big flashlight. Aha! It was going to be a very long sail today, definitely an overnighter, gotta get some juice in that flashlight!

The Coney Island Light

Probably wise to look around at the other emergency equipment too. The little lights attached to our life vest are all charged and ready to go, they will come on automatically if wet. Snacks are prepared and standing by. Radio was working well, backup radio on standby and charged, inreach tracking and broadcasting our location, chartplotter and iPad playing well together, backup iPad charged and ready to deploy. Hopefully we never need any of this preparation, but we do it anyway.

We settled into easy shifts, taking turns at the helm while the off-duty crew napped.

Somewhere around 2am we lost all the wind, exactly as predicted. So we rolled in the headsail, tightened up the main and mizzen, and fired up our trusty new Beta. As Lance drifted off to dreamland I found myself obsessing over a weird collection of white and yellow lights offshore. It sort of reminded me of the big container ships we frequently encountered off the coast of Long Beach, CA, difficult to tell which direction they were going without visible red or green lights, just a mass of indecipherable white and yellow.

For a while they kept pace with us, sometimes veering away from us, sometimes getting closer. As we approached Atlantic City the vessel made a definite course change and the chart plotter started blaring alarms - we were on a collision course. I turned off the audible alarms and kept an eye on it, we were on a steady course and they were not changing course either. The GPS predicted that we would crash into one another within the hour.

Barnegat Light, on the Jersey Shore

As we drew closer, the vessel name popped up on the AIS - the Jersey Devil. A little more online research revealed it to be a fishing vessel, which gives it the right of way since we are motoring. I could have slowed down and passed behind it but if it was long line fishing... we do have a line cutter on our prop. I hope to never test it.

My thoughts drifted back to the story our friend told us last summer about the Jersey Devil as we passed by the family home built in the 1700s. He was the 13th child born on a stormy night and was greeted with disdain, until one day he reportedly turned into an actual devil, flew out the window and into the swamp where he was, and still is, blamed for all kinds of mischief.

Well, this devil with the strange lights and indecipherable intentions wasn't going to worry me. I picked up the radio and we worked out a deal, I would speed up and he would slow down and we would miss one another with no course changes. As he passed behind Minerva I noticed the lights that looked so strange from head-on were attached to huge outriggers, so it's good that I didn't try to pass behind him, he probably WAS dragging nets or lines. At least all of the weird motion offshore made sense now. Fishing activity. Now I know what that looks like in the dark: random. It looks totally random.

Atlantic City, NJ

Lance came up for his turn at the wheel as we left Atlantic City and the Jersey Devil in our wake. All the stars were out, and the breeze was starting to pick up a little bit. We debated sailing across the mouth of the Delaware Bay to our intended anchorage at Lewes, but ultimately decided since we were likely to encounter container and fuel ships en route to Philadelphia in the channel, and since the current would be against us and the wind was still slow, we would just motor the rest of the way, it wasn't far and keeping the motor on would reduce our exposure to the large fast-moving vessels.

Now, we both know the rules, it's best not to approach shore at night, but we felt confident here. We had been here before, the chart plotter was behaving and seemed to line up well with the markers, so onward we pushed, although Lance did reduce speed as we passed the breakwater wall. There should have been plenty of room between the end of the breakwater wall and the shore, imagine our surprise when we ground to a soft but sudden halt. According to the chart plotter and the markers, there should have been thirty feet or more between us and the shore. Surprise!

Remember that flashlight? Yeah... It revealed shoaling quite far out into the channel. Certainly beyond all indicators. Sometimes you do everything right and you screw up anyway. Freshly charged flashlight to the rescue - escape route revealed.

A friend once told us of a "good captain box" theory. All the little things you do to check, recheck, make backup plans, rest, buy and maintain top of the line equipment - it all goes into this imaginary box. And now and then when shit goes sideways, you hope that you put enough good things in the box to make a difference.

Jersey Devil vs AIS and a good radio, win.

Delaware shore vs flashlight, we'll call that one a draw.

Lighthouse at Lewes Anchorage