Starship Friendship - ARC+ St. Lucia Blog - Starship Friendship

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Sunday, December 2nd, Sao Vicente to St. Lucia, Day 12

Another day of following winds and swell, no vessels on the horizon or AIS, sailing under our single Asymmetric - our “Set and Forget”. We have now been under this single sail for 6 days and 914 nautical miles with only minor trimming. I would like to say we are bored, but I don’t want to piss off the Sea Gods, whomever they may be. Since about 2:00 AM (UT) this morning we have been less than 500 miles from St. Lucia. I’m pretty certain we will start to see other vessels soon as we approach our destination en masse.

We have been seeing random clumps of Sargassum for several hundred miles now. Most of the clumps have been small, the size of a dinner plate or smaller, but lately we have seen larger clumps several feet across. The interesting thing is that they seem to be distributed over large areas, never completely disappearing.

At about 13:30 (UT) the boat started veering off course radically, with the auto-pilot unable to correct. We went to manual steering and finally diagnosed the issue as a bunch of Sargassum caught in the port rudder, limiting the rudder travel under the auto-pilot. We were able to snuff the Asymmetric with the sock, which dropped our boat speed to about 2.5 knots. The Sargassum dropped off the rudder on it’s own soon after and we were able to redeploy the sail and continue on, speeding back up to 6 to 8 knots.

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Monday, December 3rd, Sao Vicente to St. Lucia, Day 13

We are probably about two days out of St. Lucia this morning, less than 350 miles out. The seas are fairly calm and we are just scooting along under the Asymmetric. We have a neighbor, “Lifeaholic3”, for the first time in several days. As we approach St. Lucia, we expect to see quite a few more of the fleet appear on the AIS. This ocean is big, but the approaches to the island narrow down significantly. We are really looking forward to arriving, seeing friends and family once again, and celebrating!

As the morning progressed Starship must have sensed St. Lucia ahead. Just like a horse speeds up when it smells the barn, Starship speeded up to get to port. Actually the line of squalls moving through gave us more wind, but it seemed like Starship herself wanted to go faster. From averaging 6 to 7 knots, we accelerated to 8 to 9 knots, hitting 16.1 knots when surfing the following swells, still under the single cruising spinnaker. Now that the squalls have moved through, the wind has backed off and we are poking along at a mere 7 to 8 knots again, with St. Lucia just 260 nm ahead of us.

The latest position reports just arrived via the Iridium E-Mail. We have moved up to 6th position among the Division 4, Class A Multi-Hulls (7th if you include “Lucy Z” the Sunreef 74 that is actually in the Division V, Class A Open category). We passed “Lifeaholic III” a 15.24 meter Privilege Series 5 during the night and have, wonder of wonders, caught up and passed our Arch-Nemesis “Tri II Fly” 15.96 meter Neel 51 Trimaran. Life is good - but we still have a couple of hundred miles to go and who knows what the winds will do? But it’s not a Race, it’s a Rally!

It’s time to switch time zones. We have been keeping Cape Verde time (UTC -1) on board, but now just a couple hundred miles short of St. Lucia, it is time to switch to Castries, St. Lucia time (UTC -4 hours), which means turning the clocks back 3 hours. I still keep my watch on UTC for navigation, but I will switch my iPhone, iPads, and backup watch over to Castries time

A little after 4 PM Castrie’s time (20:00 UT) the winds increased noticeably as a line of squalls moved through. From 15 to 20, they increased to 30 with gusts to 35. At the same time the following seas were slewing the stern around and the autopilot was struggling to compensate and keep us on course. We went to manual steering which proved that once again, Sargassum had fouled the rudders and left them hard to steer.When the worst of the gusts had subsided, we started the engines, snuffed our Asymmetric with the sock, and brought the bows into the wind and seas. Backing hard on the engines cleared the bulk of the Sargassum from our rudders, thankfully, and we were able to resume sailing. With the increasing winds and approaching nightfall, we opted to change sails to a double reefed main and small self-tending jib flown wing and wing, both with preventers, before resuming our course. This is the first time since Monday the 26th, more than 7 days and 1,159 miles ago, that we have not flown the Asymmetric Spinnaker. But the decision to change sails proved a good one as more squalls descended upon us through the evening. With the double reefed main and small jib, we still maintained around 7 knots, but sailed much easier and did not put as much strain on the rig. By midnight (UT) we had less than 170 nm to go.

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Tuesday, December 4th, Sao Vicente to St. Lucia, Day 14
I just finished what will probably be my last early morning watch (1:30 AM to 3:30 AM local Castries’ time) of the crossing. Unless the winds die, by late today we should be sitting secured in the Marina in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia. I have mixed feelings about that. I am looking forward to rejoining Sea in St. Lucia, having a nice bath, doing my laundry - but at the same time while standing my watch alone, feeling the boat move under me, the wind around me, I realize I love this and will miss it. At 70, I’m not likely to undertake many more — honestly, any more — crossings like this... and I will miss that.

The “kids”, David and my daughter Kellie, have done a great job managing this trip; balancing crew with tasks, provisioning, maintenance, all the thousand and one things it takes to make a successful crossing. In my mind, I came along as an experienced hand, to help keep them safe and pass on what knowledge I could. I think I have learned at least as much as I have taught.