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April 14, 2008
Cooper Island
Leatherback Turtle in the Rain, Cooper Island, British Virgin Islands
Neither of us brought a watch on this journey, so I'm not entirely sure what time I woke this morning, but it was well after sunrise. I had a wonderful sleep, finally off the dock and out at anchor. Chis slept for what I think was another couple of hours. The skies were filling in and looking more and more like rain. The forecast was for a weak trough to pass through during the day.
After a morning swim, we prepared for a heavy day of sailing. Today, we would leave Norman Island and sail into the wind up the Francis Drake Channel, targetting Virgin Gorda, an island to the east of Tortola.
Not long after we left, it was looking more and more like rain, and it was moving in thick and fast. And it looked in the distance like it was going to be a lot of rain. With the rain, we expected more wind.
Sure enough, the winds started gusting the 25 knots, and the rain started to blow horizontally. We donned our foul weather gear and kept on going. The wind was oscilating between southeast and northeast, making it difficult to make progress on our eastward trek. We tacked to take advantage of a wind shift, only for the wind to shift again. Tack, wind shift. Tack, wind shift.
With less progress than expected, we decided to cut the journey short and head to Cooper Island, a rolly anchorage in the southeast islands. We were both soaked to the bone, Chis especially as he had stood upwind of me so that I could continue to steer the boat with the rain pelting my face. I had been shivering for almost an hour, but didn't dare tell Chis. The visibility had become increasingly poor, now having lost sight of Virgin Gorda, Cooper Island, Tortola or any other island for that matter. Cutting our trip short turned out to be a good idea, as the trough stalled and continue to dump heavy rain.
Despite the shivers and dampness, we had a glorious time, tacking upwind like a couple of seasoned pros. It was a highly invigorating sail.
It is pouring rain now, the hatch leaks on my leg as I sit with my feet up, writing this. The humidity is 100% out there, 110% down here, and our foulies hang in the head drying out... or trying too. There is a lump of wet t-shirts in the sink. It's barely bright enough to write/read/sudoko by, but turning on a light consumes valuable volts from the single battery running the house electrical system. Charging the battery requires running the engine, which is both noisy and polluting. So we make do, a reminder of the luxuries of living in New York.
A nice sensory experience is the sound of the rain on the deck above us. Living in a 3rd floor apartment in a 7-story building in Manhattan does not give us a sense of the rain. Having said that, living in New York really gives you no sense of the weather at all. Without a weather forecast, you can't see enough of the sky to know what weather approaches. I love the sound of the rain.
I admit that having lost track of time in bad weather was unnerving. Exactly how close were we to sunset when we were out there sailing in a shroud of heavy rain, unable to see the islands, and unable to see the sun to judge fow closely the end of day approached? When we decided to head to Cooper Island instead of proceeding another three hours to Virgin Gorda, would we have made it by nightfall? If we arrived at Cooper Island and there was no room in the anchorage, would we have made it to Plan B in daylight?
Next time, I will not forget a watch.
BANANA REPORT - Chis gave two bunches of bananas to the boat across the dock before we left the marina. We have 11 more to go (bananas, that is, not pounds of bananas). We may be swinging from trees when we finish!
Posted by dave at April 14, 2008 01:28 PM