St. John to St. Martin

The senior cruising sailors say “that’s one for the books” if a particular passage falls outside of the norms. In our case the trip to St. Martin was one for the books. The good: We sailed directly on one tack in half the time (13 hours) due to a freakish southerly wind. Under normal easterly winds, boats must motor sail to a layline to the far north or south before taking back. The bad: The wind velocity was forecasted in the mid teens and we received high teens to low 20s knots . This had the effect of moving the apparent wind further forward to the mid to high 20s. The ugly: The seas were forecast at 1.2 meters and we saw confused seas (waves from three directions). The largest waves were on the bow from the SE and some of these were breaking waves close to 2.5 meters. This produced the most violent motion we had ever encountered on Renegade to date, so much so that Amy became sea sick and took medications that made her sleepy. We shortened sail to reduce speed and impact from the seas. Jim discovered the step of the cockpit floor was the most comfortable spot to to brace and keep watch during the roughest miles. Interestingly this area was also full of ship traffic, mostly cruise ships. The Norwegian Encore was the only one Jim hailed because of a collision course shown on AIS. The ship responded to hold course and that they would turn starboard and we would go port to port but we did not see much of a turn. We passed within less than a mile of one another around 3 AM which was a little scary in the sea conditions.

With all the aggressive motion we are happy to have no breakages to report. We initially pulled into Simpson Bay but the swells made anchoring a little dangerous so we went to the French side in Marigot Bay which was very calm. On the 27th we checked in with customs and walked around Marigot. There are lots of good stores and services here so we plan to check off some projects before we head to Antigua.