Peace All,
I did say stunningly beautiful, but that does not do the anchorage proper justice. Do you know when you sail into a bay a night not knowing what its really like and wake the next day to pure serendipity, well that was Sandy Point, the daybreak saw the sun squeezing its way through two hills straight onto RUTH.
Jake was up early for it as well, sensing something special he took pictures, an exception for him and I believe he was eager to get cracking fixing our stuff after we had a chat about solutions. He made breakfast and shook the guys up saying, ‘come and get it now or it goes over the side’.
I am not prone to blowing a trumpet, but we work pretty effortlessly on RUTH, by midday the topping lift block at the masthead was replaced and back up, warp corals replaced the hoops on the mainsail luff and it was all done.
None of this compares to the work Marta Anna was doing in the galley … full-on Polish lunch (plackiziemniaczane z klopsikamiisosemcytrynowym), it was moreish to the max. FYI; only I call her Marta Anna, no affinity for her middle name (but I have her passport).
The typical after lunch/work laziness was setting in with Nazz slowing to a crawl. I thought, if I let this play out, it will be sunset before we ‘shake a leg’.
So, as you do, I challenged everyone that I could pull RUTH up to anchor on the warp on my own due to the power of Polish lunch. That shook off lunch blues and kicked Jake into a new gear, he suggested we should sail off anchor as well.
Perfect. I love it when a plan comes together. There we were tagging in and out heaving the anchor warp. Of course, I only suggested it because we had a complete wind lull and therefore it was doable.
Now, sitting vertically to the anchor at the bow, we hauled it up with the strut and jib halliard, I ordered up the staysail jib and we duly sailed off (kinda drifted in fact) to port with the anchor just above the waterline, the wind was like 5 knots.
That’s when things got a bit crazy, or super enthusiastic, I ordered up the foresail and declared we were sailing at 0.9 KNOTS, all the while we were still trying to get the anchor on-board, plus I had Nazz to pump up Edith Piaf ‘Non Je ne Regrette Rein’ on the Bluetooth speaker.
Then, after we gybed and sailed back to our anchor point, in the midday heat I leapt overboard for a dip shouting MOB and in 1-minute man back onboard climbing the rope foot ladder that Luke conveniently made.
Finally, the anchor was back on deck, we bore away to starboard, the wind picked up, steered away from a local fisherman and headed south on course for Marie Galant.
Now moving at 2 KNOTS, I ordered up the mainsail, which went up without issue due to the layer of vaseline (petroleum jelly) on the mast with the new warp corals.
The wind continued to pick up to an F5 and RUTH heeled a bit and in no time were doing 6 knots well above the rhumb line.
END OF PART TWO
Skipper and Crew of Ruth
This is a great story, it appears that you haven’t let the barnacles grow on Ruth as it seems that you have done a lot of sailing after winning the Race to Antiqua. The weather has been “extreme” according to most of the marine reports. The RORC 600 had almost 50% of full out racing machines retire. Yours is indeed the Best Saga of the Caribbean in 2018. I think you should publish it the Caribbean Compass. http://www.caribbeancompass.com/
If possible, I’d like to join you for your last leg to Barbados. I could fly to the island, join up and sail home with you.
Give my best congratulations and regards to your crew.