Puerto Rico or Bust: Part Deux

Mike and I had been planning our trip back up to Puerto Rico for some time. We need our western fix. It's been really hard to find the grocery items we really love, tortilla chips, MnMs and good beer. We are also having some friends come out to US Virgin Islands in April. Then we will head to St Maarten where we will join the ARC Rally and head to Portugal in May.

We were actually pretty excited about the journey to Puerto Rico because we wouldn't be beating into the wind. It would be very different for episode one in the series.

And it was....and also it wasn't.

We use a weather service called Predict Wind to plan much of our sailing. They show all of the different weather models, taking into account wind, sea state, rain, current and our boat polars to create the route for the time period we input. Then we decide when the best time to make the journey will be. Based on this information we decided to leave Martinique on Tuesday at 1:00 pm. We would get into Puerto Rico on Thursday morning between 6 and 10 am. It would be perfect. No motoring, good wind for sailing, mainly on beam to broad reach (wind at 90-120 degrees off the nose). It would make for very pleasant sailing. Well now I know why the weather man is only right half the time.

We left Martinique as planned at 1:00 pm. As we were pulling up the anchor we could see rain coming right at us so we wanted to get out before it hit. Unfortunately while pulling up the anchor I got the bridle shackle stuck in the chain rail. It took 20 minutes and a the use of a screw driver and hammer to free it. So by the time I got the rest of the chain and anchor up the rain came and I was soaked. I thought to myself, I hope this isn't indicative of how the rest of the trip will be. I certainly didn't want to jinx us and say it out loud. It didn't matter.

At that point we had no wind as the rain passed. We thought it would get better but it didn't. So we motored, trying to get out away from the island, hoping we would find more wind. It wasn't until around nightfall that the wind finally started to pick up and we were finally sailing. But instead of the wind coming out of the east, as predicted, it was coming out of the SSE. So instead of being of a beam to broad reach, we were on a run with the wind at 160-180 degrees. It's a nice sail, and there's a saying "fair winds and following seas", but it requires a bit more wind. Everything we do with the sail is determined by apparent wind. If true wind speed is 10knots and it's coming from behind us, pushing us along at 2-3 knots, the apparent wind is only maybe 7 knots, which isn't even enough to fill the sails. So we would try to position ourselves to give us the best wind angle. The first night was quite enjoyable. We were able to get on a good angle, we had good wind. Until about 4 am. Then we had no wind. It went from 20 knots to 4 knots. This continued all day Wednesday. We decided to get the gennaker out and hoist it. A Gennaker is a very large headsail that is mulch like a parachute. It's used in very light downwind sailing. So we got it out and ready to hoist when we noticed that those incompetent ass hats from Turbulence in Grenada jacked our halyard up. The gennaker halyard enters the mast above the genoa. Well when they put the genoa back on the mast they put the gennaker halyard in between the shackle arms before attaching it to the mast. So the halyard now was coming from the mast above the Genoa, through the Genoa shackle and down on the inside of the Genoa. The only thing we could do now was go up the mast and pull it out. Not really the best thing to do while under way. But that's just we did. Mike got out the bousons chair, we hooked the mainsail halyard to it, put a stabilization line on it and I hoisted Mike up the mast. The boat was moving all over the place in the waves so we moved slowly and deliberately. Luckily we were able to get it done without anyone getting hurt. It was a bit nerve racking. Finally we had the gennaker up and we're at least able to sail in the 8-10 knot winds. Just before dark, we took the gennaker down, as winds were beginning to pick up again.

Winds during the night got up into the low 20s and the seas became confused as storms starting rolling in bring rain and sloppy seas with it. Soinstead of a nice downwind swell we had waves coming at us from multiple directions. We had to let the main sail out and reef the Genoa to decrease our speed, but we were still slamming into the waves all night. All I could think is, I've been here before, this really sucks. Honestly, I don't know how these boats stay together. It really sounds like it's just going to snap in half. But it didn't. I was expecting the winds to die down again when the sun came up, but today they didn't.

We were supposed to be rolling into Puerto Rico this morning, but we were still 120 nm away. We would be in PR until Friday. I knew bad weather was going to be rolling in, that was the reason we wanted to be in Puerto Rico this morning. The skies were filled with dark clouds and several squalls visible in the distance. It was going to be a rough day for sure. We adjusted the sails to keep us at around 6 knots so we would get into Puerto Rico around sunrise.

Before nightfall, we decided to put 2 reefs in the mainsail. As it turns out it was a very good decision as winds gusted into the mid 20's during the night. Reefing decreases the size of the sail, decreases speed and decreased the pressure on the mast. There's another sailing adage "reef early and reef often".

Puerto Rico was finally in our sights. We made it to the island just before 5 am, so we found a spot just outside Salinas harbor and dropped anchor. We finally made it. I wouldn't say it was smooth sailing but it also wasn't completely terrifying. Mike and I are exhausted and I'm sure we will sleep well tonight.