I bet I have your attention now!

The passage from St. Vincent to St. Lucia is not the longest, at some 30nm comparable to the legs of the last few days. But my sailing guide warns of this being much harder. The northern tip of St. Vincent is (apparently) known for boisterous conditions, really gusty winds, and steep and confused sea. And the course to St. Lucia is all upwind. But I know JACE can handle it. But can I?

I get up early and after breakfast and getting the boat seaworthy, I start the engine. When anchoring yesterday I felt the anchor winch was being slow again. So before I drop the stern lines, I test it. And again it feels so weak. So I check on the charging line to the forward battery (you might remember the problems with those I described). And sure enough, it is not working and the battery is nearly dead at below 12V. For a moment I am somewhere between worried and annoyed. But then I focus on the problem and quickly identify that the fuse in the line that runs forward was blown. The other day I used both windlass and bow thruster simultaneously – that must have done it. Thankfully I find a spare fuse (much too high Amperage but good enough for now) and have it installed and everything ready to go, losing a mere 20 minutes.

I follow the advice from the cruising guide and motor sail under reefed main and just the small staysail and stay as close to St. Vincet as the wind lets me. The weather is cloudy and grim looking. The first two hours are just as the guide promised: 25kn of wind and more in gusts and a really bumpy sea state. With engine and sails I force JACE upwind and she labors heavily and occasionally throws her 15 tons off a wave and into the next with a loud bang and a wall of spray ejected to both sides.

But thankfully it gets easier: the wind eases a bit and veers in my favor and the seas calm down just a little. Soon I shut off the engine and for a few hours we sail along happily. Still not comfortable and I once again hand steer most of the way. For some reason the autopilot is not doing a good job upwind.

Along the way I have a lot of company. Big seabirds, Condors, I think, fly with me, one, two, up to four at times. They glide alongside and scan the water in front of the boat for flying fish that JACE surprises and prompts to escape by flight. That’s the moment the Condors are waiting for and like a dive bomber the come down and, if need be, follow the fish a good meter under water. “You are welcome”, I say, because there are a lot of fish falling victim to my airborne entourage.

After some six hours of this rather bumpy ride we finally get close to St. Lucia. The famous “Pitons”, two cone-shaped hills, are visible, albeit in the midst of a squall that is coming through.

Despite sailing as upwind as possible in this choppy sea, we got pushed off enough to need one long tack east. On that course the waves are almost exactly frontal and we get very slow. So once again I fire up the engine for some extra propulsion as JACE bounces over the crests. This works well for some time but after about half an hour all of a sudden the engine shut off. Darn!

I go back on the northerly course and try to start her up again. Nothing! I evaluate my situation: This is kind of problematic. Two more hours of daylight, no engine to maneuver into a bay to anchor or grab a mooring. I could try that under sail but that is hard. Brad and I did it once but sailing solo is a different beast. Plus all the bays I can reach before darkness are narrow and/or deep which makes this a very sketchy proposition.

I start calling for help on the VHF channel 16 (the emergency channel) but nobody is answering my call. I start wondering if I need to stay out at sea all night, maybe heave to in order to catch some sleep – I am already exhausted as it is.

Well, at least the weather is getting better, the squall has moved off and just some rain over the hills of St. Lucia. As I now get quite close to the Pitons where I had intended to anchor, I review the sailing guide one last time. There I find the mobile phone number of the head ranger (there is a marine park here guarded by rangers). And he picks up! Peter is a nice guy and as I explain my situation he says, “oh yeah, I see you out there. Hold there, I’ll come and tow you in”.

And not even 10 minutes later he shows up in a powerboat, waits for me to get my sails furled away and then takes JACE in tow. Slowly he pulls me through this stunning scenery and finally onto a mooring where I can stay for the night. And he also mobilizes his buddy Nicholas, a local fisherman who is also “the best guy on the island for engines”. Nicholas is aboard 30 minutes later and quickly identifies and solves the problem: my diesel tank has been getting closer to empty, maybe down to just a quarter. And in this wild sea and heeled over hard, the fuel pickup line in the tank gets exposed and starts sucking in air sometimes. And nothing stalls a diesel engine faster than air in the fuel system. I guess it’s like the engine got seasick from all this bucking around.

Nicholas shows me how to fix this by bleeding the fuel system. Hopefully, next time I can solve that by myself. Although honestly, I will try hard to avoid such a “next time”.

But all is well that ends well. After cleaning up and a quick swim, I have leftovers for dinner and am very happy I am not out there somewhere waiting for daylight and help!