The iPhone alarm began its awful wail at 4:30am. Snooze. 5 more minutes in bed, then we were up on deck getting rigging ready. Main halyard attached, main sheet tackles snapped to traveler, lines laid out at the ready. At 4:45am the diesel came on, thrumming in the pitch black. No moon, or none that could be seen anyway. Not a star anywhere, clouds blotting out everything. The horizon to the west a continuous blue-black blob. Light drizzle with momentary bursts of downpour, offering confirmation that we need to don our foul weather gear. The wind was calm then gusting, calm then gusting. Hard to tell what the actual weather conditions are because the mountains towering around Prince Rupert Bay, Dominica, create a localized effect.
Not promising to be a fun morning, but you never know unless you go.
“Slip the lines,” I called out to Cat, and she uncleated the two bow lines that held us to the mooring that we had picked up the night before.
The bow fell away to port with the first gust. I eased the throttle into forward and pushed us along at barely 2 knots. We had a quarter mile of sailboats and ships to navigate through before we were in open water, some lit, some not. If I was going to hit anything, the goal was to do it slowly.
Cat remained on the bow after freeing the mooring with a spotlight, sweeping back and forth, close and far, lighting up any obstructions. Every time she would make another pass with the light, a fresh school of needlefish would come flipping out of the water in surprise at being spotted in their nighttime work.
Slowly, slowly, we chugged away from Portsmouth. The wind built, the gusts increased in frequency and intensity, and the drizzle turned to rain and started coming down in sheets. Ocean swell was making itself known while we were still well inside the bay. Not huge, but short period. The bow was rising out of the sea over the crests of the waves and plunging into the trough only to be met with another immediately after. Uncomfortable. Dark. Really dark.
By 5:15am we were around the bluff on the northwestern point of the bay. Still 4 miles from open ocean, but starting to get a taste of what we’d be facing. Wind, sea, rain, all getting bigger. And right on the nose, straight out of the north east.
I took a momentary pause to run the numbers. 40 miles to Pointe a Pitre, NNE. I had passage planned at 5 knots, making for an 8 hour trip, but our 3 knot progress under full throttle in semi-protected water scratched that. Motor sailing on a single tack was out of the question already, we were going to have to make multiple tacks to get anywhere. Even if we made 5 or 6 knots under sail, the tacking angles would keep our velocity made good (progress towards actual destination) down to 3 knots. So the 8 hour trips is now looking more like 13, putting us in at sunset in Pointe a Pitre, somewhere I’ve only sailed into once, four years ago. The little cluster of islands that make up The Saintes are at the half way point of the journey, so that could be our bail out option, but the anchorage at Terre de Haut is totally exposed to the north. Given this wind and swell, it might be miserable there. Worst of all, the conditions right then were forecasted to be the lightest of the coming four days. It was supposed to really pick up by noon and stay that way. That’s why we left so early. If we don’t push through it now, while it’s relatively light, we can’t get to Guadeloupe to meet our friends for days.
But the agreement, nay mantra, between Cat and I since we started this journey has always been NO SCHEDULES. We’re here to have fun and enjoy life, not beat up ourselves and our boat to meet deadlines. Another wave came over the bow and washed along the side decks as we heaved and rolled around our keel twenty degrees in every direction. Decision made.
“Fuck this!” I yelled out over the cacophony of driving wind and rain and hard-run diesel. “We’re turning around.”
Helm hard over and our speed instantly doubled from 3 knots to 6 as we ran before wind and swell back into Prince Rupert Bay. By twilight at 6:15am, we were back on the same mooring that we started on.
Now we’re sitting here in the cabin, sipping instant coffee and listening to the wind howl through the rigging. Rain pours down through our ever-leaky mast boot. Drip drip drip. A boat full of young Finnish guys moored next to us just had their genoa partially unfurled by the wind and it appears to be fouled on the forestay. THWAP-THWAP-THWAP-THWAP. Can’t furl it in, can’t furl it out, and the wind is picking up even more. They’ve just dropped their mooring and are heading out to sea, doing what looks to be about 7 knots under their rat’s nest of a sail. If they run before the wind they might be able to reduce pressure on the massive sail and man-handle it in. They’re barely a quarter mile out and I’m already losing sight of them in the rain.
I’m glad we turned around.
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