Approaching Tortola island, BVI (February 29, 2020)
While hanging the fenders and attaching the mooring lines at the bow in preparation to enter Road Town, I noticed that my genoa had gotten some damage at its tack.
As a temporary fix, I used a few feet of 3mm dyneema rope line to better secure the tack to the foil. The proper repair had to be postponed until we reached Annapolis, MD later in the spring.
I reached out to Q-Sails, a Turkish sail loft which makes sails, and they rose to the challenge by putting me in contact with a local Annapolis sail maker. They were able to fix the genoa under my Q-Sails warranty. Kudos to them! Thanks!
Once I hailed Village Cay Marina on VHF, the dock master instructed me that we could dock before we cleared customs and immigration. That’s something I’ve never encountered anywhere else so far. Since the customs & immigration offices in BVI are located at the commercial harbor and cannot be reached by sailboat, the only solution was to find a temporary anchorage, launch my dinghy, and motor out to Road Harbour to clear-in. I did all of that with a huge dose of reluctance and frustration as I was dog-tired after an overnight sail from St. Barts, and the day was hot and steamy.
After about an hour and a half, I was back on the boat with my tender securely back on deck. We raised the ‘hook’ and were able to finally dock at Village Cay Marina.
We – or rather our boat – were “back home” as she’s flagged in BVI and hails from Road Harbour. I was finally able to meet Bob Carson in person. He’s the owner of Southern Trades Yacht Sales and Management who was instrumental in helping me with getting both Jemm of the Sea and her replacement Jemm of the Sea II to be flagged at BVI. Thanks, Bob!
In September 2017, the British Virgin Islands were directly hit by Category 5 Hurricane Irma which caused severe damages across the whole of BVI with Tortola suffering the most of the devastation. Even now, after over three years, the aftermath of Irma is still visible.
Across the Cay from our dock, there were wrecks of some pleasure crafts damaged by Hurricane Irma.
Food around Road Town is mainly traditional Continental, British or American fare. However, we were able to find a grilled food truck which, while only open on Fridays and Saturdays, whipped up great Caribbean food which we greatly enjoyed. Yum!
Chicken & fried shrimps with a side of coleslaw!
On our last day in BVI, my daughter Eva arrived to join us on our sail to the Dominican Republic and then on to Turks & Caicos. After a week at Road Town, we said our goodbyes and left with beautiful weather for a two day passage to the Dominican Republic.
For the afternoon of Sunday, March 8, 2020, we had a forecast of winds stiffening to 22-25 knots. Not the smoothest of sailing but still pretty livable conditions.
Just before noon of that day, we noticed that our main sail electric furler was starting to fail, and it was impossible to furl in the sheet at once.
We had to ‘wiggle’ the furling switch in and out to get the whole sheet in. It was evident that at least one or more gear teeth was broken. We were faced with the task of swapping the whole unit right away as this was our essential tool to reef in case the wind really picked up.
I removed the faulty unit and then we hit a wall! There’s an aluminum clutch that connects the gear to the main sheet foil, but it sits in a gear stainless steel hub and those two metals create a hell of electrolytic corrosion. It took us about 2 or 3 hours of using our hydraulic puller to get those parts separated.
Right at the moment we installed the new furling unit, the wind started to pick up. And as is usually the case with PredictWind forecasting, it was, in fact, underestimated.
Throughout the evening and early night, the wind were in a near gale force, blowing with a sustained speed of 28-30 knots and reaching 35 knots in gusts!
A line got un-coiled so I had to get out of the cockpit and fit it. I caught a bunch of those salty sprays. Not the greatest of experiences!
Between these two clips, you can see how quickly the weather was deteriorating in less than 30 minutes!
By the morning of March 9th, we were supposed to reach Ocean World Marina at Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. But due to the strong winds and the fact that we were deeply reefed the whole night (no main and 3rd reefs on both genoa and mizzen), we were only at the entrance to Bahia de Samana, still more than 100NM away from Ocean World. The distance and our current speed put as about a day of sailing away from our intended destination. We made the decision to enter Bahia de Samana, find a suitable anchorage, and wait until the weather improved.
Once we entered the bay, we caught some cell signal as the Northern coast has several towns and villages. Using the cell service, we made searches across several sites like sQuidd.io, marinas.com and dockwa.com for an anchorage, and we quickly realized that there were a few marinas we could try to dock at. We called Bahia Marina and were told they are open and could take us. We doused our sail completely, fired up the engine, and motored towards Bahia Marina which is located a short distance from the town of Samana. Around noon, we were finally comfortably docked!