We've been making miles since we left Saba, but it hasn't been easy. The first day wasn't so bad as we had light winds (under 15 knots), and since we wanted to troll our lines across the edges of the Saba Bank, our first leg was almost due south, and we could sail. But we didn't get any fish, and when we turned toward St. Kitts we headed right into the wind. At least the waves were small and the wind wasn't too awful.
We didn't bother going to an official port of entry and checking in, since we were only spending the night before moving on. We anchored off Ballast Bay, which we had to ourselves. The winds howled during the night, but the weatherfaxes, the offshore report, and David Jones's forecast all said 15 knots for the day, so off we went, sails up.
We were doing fine until we cleared St. Kitts. The wind came hurtling through the gap between St. Kitts and Nevis, and nearly knocked us down. We figured it was just the "slot effect" between the islands, and patiently sailed through the wind hole in the lee of Nevis, at which point we needed to tighten up to the wind in order to make Montserrat. Well, as soon as we got out of the lee of Nevis, boom, back came the wind at 20 knots and more. We got as close to the wind as we could, but we were still nowhere near the course we needed.
Winds of 20-25 knots make big waves. We tried to motorsail directly to Montserrat but it was slow and miserable. Every time we crashed through a big wave we'd come nearly to a halt. So we motorsail-tacked to the southwest corner of the island, planning to sail up the coast in its lee to the anchorage in the northwest.
It was just plain yucky. Neither of us got seasick, but neither of us felt particularly chipper either. The drone of the engine, the crash boom bash of the waves, the whining of the wind were all wearing us down. I sacked out on the "downhill" settee below, and Britt read while tucked into a corner of the cockpit, keeping an eye on the sails and the horizon.
It was a hazy day, but eventually Montserrat showed itself. The big volcano in the south, Mt. Chance, was spewing ash into the clouds, which we deduced when we noticed the clouds had a sort of tan color to them. The devastation from the 1995 eruption was remarkable to look at through binoculars, particularly the few roofs sticking up past the lava flow that covered the town of Plymouth. Much of the rest of the south part of the island is an eerie ghost town, the houses all intact but abandoned in the evacuation. The north of Montserrat, untouched by the eruption, has turned dry and brown from the drought which has affected the entire Caribbean this year. It is hard to believe that this place is nicknamed "The Emerald Isle"! But it must have been a beautiful place once, and probably will be again, although tourism has essentially vanished. The locals are still fiercely proud of their island, and while we sat at anchor in Little Bay (well out of the volcano zone) the local radio station played several nationalistic pop songs, mostly complaining about how everyone is frightened off by scary volcano tales. The chorus of one will give you an idea:
Check your facts, oh foreign media
Or just relax, leave us alone
Creating sensation to the detriment of my island
Montserrat remains my home
We were scared off not by volcano tales (although talking to a friend on SSB the next morning, we learned that the volcano's been acting up lately) but by the rolly anchorage. There were three other boats there, and two of them left that morning. We dithered over the weather forecast (15-20 kts), the weather we were experiencing (20-25 kts, but the way the winds funnel into these mountainous harbors it's hard to draw conclusions), and whether there was enough to do on Montserrat to occupy us for the next 4 days of expected lousy weather, and finally decided to go for the devil we didn't know and head for Guadeloupe.
It was tough motorsailing north along the rest of the coast, especially when we broke out into the monster waves that like to build right along the north tip of islands. Then it was tough motorsailing into them to the northeast, and when we finally got a good angle and could head southeast, it was more tough motorsailing. We could probably have sailed without the motor, but it would have been slow, and since we'd wasted the morning dithering, we needed to make good time to get in before dark. We had just a teeny bit of jib out, and about half the main, and we were making over seven knots, but it was crash boom bash all day. The 8-foot seas would lift us up and tip us into the troughs behind them, where we'd smash into the water, which would spray across the deck and into the cockpit. We got some water below from a few ports left open; these were in places that were usually ok but couldn't handle with this kind of wet trip. A little water snuck in along the edges of the forward head hatch as well. (This really annoys me, as a little salt spray on my barrettes causes them to rust instantly. I just bought a bunch of new barrettes and ponytail holders in Puerto Rico, to replace the rusty ones I had. Now the new ones are all masses of rust. One day I'll have to wise up and keep them somewhere else.) This time it was Britt's day to hang out below, and I wedged in behind the dodger and kept an eye on things.
We got in to Deshaies, Guadeloupe around 6:00 pm, and we were beat. Maybe "real sailors" like these conditions, but we don't. Big waves and high winds (we saw 30 knots once, and 25-27 frequently) are just plain uncomfortable. We don't fish, because with the boat jumping around like this it would be difficult to reel in a fish, tricky to gaff it, and impossible to clean it. We can't think, we can't cook, we can't do much of anything other than sit around, sail the boat, and maybe read. Britt's starting to grumble that if this is what cruising is all about, somebody else can do it for him. I'd just like to go downwind again, before I forget what it's like.
Crash boom bash isn't too good for the equipment, either. It's risky running the watermaker, or even letting the fridge run, because chances are that an air bubble will get into the lines and stop the pumps. Everything is under stress when we're bashing to windward (boat parts and us too!) and we don't want to break anything. So forget this daily dash southward. We're going to either sit in Deshaies or sail in the lee of the land down to other ports in Guadeloupe until the weather improves. When it does, we might do an overnight and take advantage of the weather window to get a lot further south all at once.