Night Passage and a Sailor’s worst Nightmare

With all the projects to be done in St. Martin this year complete, it was time to set sail once again. We had done a lot of work on the boat and now was the time to try everything and work out the wrinkles. The 12 volt refrigeration is working fine but needs periotic defrosting, and the Xantex battery monitor is saying our solar cells are fully charging the batteries by 1 PM! Oh, is that nice! The sail from St. Martin to BVI would mean leaving the land of $1-$2 beers, $3 wines, and lots of free anchorage and going to $4 -$5 beers, $6 wines and $25-$30 per night moorings. We prepared the boat for sea! After spending about a month in the Lagoon it was time to put away all the tools, store all the food, put the utensils in the cabinets, and check the engines. We motored out to Marigot Bay thru the French Bridge and anchored in the white sand. Carl dove into the crystal clear water and started cleaning the bottom. It wasn’t too bad, but the constant up and down and the little chop had him seasick by the time he’d finished. We relaxed a bit and just before sunset weighted anchor (picked it up) and headed west. We had the new radar working, the new AIS, Automatic Identification System, on, the backup Garmin GPS locked in, and Nimble Navigator working on the laptop as backup navigation.

Chart Plotter with Radar split screen

Instruments at night

We had laid out our route on both the chart plotter and Nimble Navigator with all our courses laid out. Leslie also did the route on our paper charts.  The winds were light 5 – 10 kts. coming from our stern as was a 3 -5’ sea so we rolled out the jib and motor sailed at 5 – 6 kts. It was the new moon with scattered clouds so as the sun set it became black. Once out of sight of land you couldn’t tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

Veiw forward for most of the trip

 The only light was the occasional star which peaked through a hole in the clouds. The autopilot kept us on course, the chart plotter kept track of our progress and the radar and AIS kept track of the few other vessels on the sea. It was a quiet, peaceful, dark night and with no horizon, Carl’s stomach couldn’t cope. He got sick a few times and a couple times went below to lay down leaving Leslie to keep watch during the majority of our passage. As the sky greyed with the coming of dawn Carl was able to let Leslie catch a few hours of sleep before we made land fall.

Leslie at the Helm

Carl can still handle the helm

We approached Virgin Gorda North Sound right on the money and sailed Frolic into a mooring at Leverick Bay. With the boat secured it was time to clear in customs. There was a new office open at Gunn Creek right around the corner from Leverick Bay. We decided to not take the dinghy as it would be a wet long ride, but walk for the exercise. We had forgotten what the walk to Gunn Creek entailed! It was 10 AM and the sun was hot. We walked the road up the mountain, well it seemed like a mountain, over the saddle and then back down to Gunn Creek. It was an hour walk. We checked in, one of  the easiest and nicest official offices we have dealt with and would have been even easier if we had remembered ESEAclear.com, then had to walk back in the mid-day sun. We should have taken the dinghy! However, the pool and cold beer at Leverick Bay was a welcomed reward! Back on the boat we crashed until happy hour when we were back at the bar and meeting old friends.

Moored quietly at Laverick Bay

Leverick Bay Resort Great Place!

We stayed another day at Leverick Bay and filled our fuel tanks and  since water is complementary with the mooring, the water tanks also.  We also did a walk to the top of Virgin Gorda, a 2 hour hike up, and had a picnic while enjoying the view of the BVIs.

At the bar before the collision, Leslie at right

After a refreshing swim we were talking with other sailors at Leverick Bay bar as we awaited the beginning of happy hour when a 46’ Catamaran came in to the dead end channel between the dock and the bar. They realized there was nowhere to go and started to back out. Leslie cried, “They are going to hit our boat”. I replied, “No they have plenty of room.”, but they kept backing up. All of a sudden they swung hard to port.

Frolic takes the hit!

Frolic has the 46' broadside

 They had caught our mooring line with their prop! Leslie and I got in the dinghy and roared out to the boat! Their boat was lying across our bow with our port bow hitting their side and the wind blowing them harder on our boat. We tried to push them off with our dinghy and gave them engine instructions to back off to no avail. They kept saying the engine wouldn’t work. Well of course not! Our mooring line was wrapped in their prop! Finally we got aboard our boat and started her up, slipped the mooring lines, threw the lines to the other cat and motored away. The catamaran was now free and drifting down on the mono hull moored behind us. They also slipped their mooring and shot away! The people on the big catamaran pulled up on the line in their prop and it came free. With the line off the prop the engine gears engaged and they maneuvered to a mooring at the back of the field while we and the mono hull came back to claim our moorings.  They had severed one of our lines and sawed thru half of the other.  We were now short two lines.  Putting on two new lines we were reset.  Carl dove on the ground tackle to make sure it was secure and I went in to call the charter company and let them know we had been hit by one of their charter boats.  As I am watching from shore one of the sailors from the big catamaran came over in a dingy to take pictures of our bow and runs over and catches one of the mooring lines in the dingy prop.  Now we have a frayed third line!  I finally get in touch with the charter co. and the the person told me the charter boat had just called them and said they had engine trouble, they never mentioned they had hit someone nor did they mention the damage done to either boat!  We were told to go to Saba Rock as they had a rep there to look at the boat. 

Leslie with new lines

We were sent 3 new lines via Ferry by noon the next day and we were to report to their repair dock when we got to Road Town.  Funny, when we arrived we were docked across from the boat that had hit us and we asked how her damage was and they had not even seen it….. a broken window and a hole in the fiberglass hull next to the window.   The charter guests had already flown home.  We had minimal damage comparable. 

Frolic at dock awaiting repairs

The person doing fiberglass came on board and did a fabulous job with the scrapes and gouges.  We were very impressed with the care and concern we received from the charter company and were glad it was SunSail.  With repairs completed and the anticipation of friends flying in, time to continue the adventure.