123: SCARED TO DEATH - Our FIRST NIGHT PASSAGE EVER on our own - St. Maarten to USVI

Tom Cruise and Goose. Ready? Ho! Yeah! This is Jan's pineapple deck. We used pineapple rum, lime juice, and some simple syrup, but we didn't have simple syrup. And we don't do that dance for just anybody. You guys are special. Our final days in St. Martin were extra special because of the new friends that we had made. But it was definitely time to say goodbye and set sail for the U.S. Virgin Islands. Bye! We love you guys! Woo! Wow, goodbye St. Martin. Three and a half months of being in this amazing place. Alright, big moment. Huge moment. This is our second, third passage. Third overnight passage. But what's unique about this one? We are on our own. Whoa! And we virtually have a new boat with all of the things that we've done with it. Yep. And we've learned a lot along the way. We've not only learned how to break stuff, well that wasn't too hard, but we've learned how to sail. We've gotten more confident. Yeah, we're just hoping for a really uneventful passage tonight. And our estimated time of arrival is about noon tomorrow. So right now the apparent wind is 16 knots, but it's really 11 knots true, so it's not a whole lot of wind, but we are sailing conservatively just using the jib. And the beautiful thing about this is we're sailing right into the sunset. So tonight we're gonna do shifts. It's just the two of us, so it's gonna be pretty simple. Yeah. And I'm really excited. I can probably stay up all night long, especially with some Java! Yeah, we'll definitely do flexible shifts. We will just kinda go until we're tired and then wake the other person up. We'll probably both be sleeping down there in the rear cockpit so that we are nearby. We've set jack lines. Look at the jack lines. They are the fluorescent yellow lines all the way up to the front of the boat and then across the top of the boat. We shouldn't have to get out at all tonight, but if we do, we're gonna be clipped into those along with our personal flotation device, which goes off automatically if we hit the water. And these are just layers of safety that we're putting in place just in case something happens. You know, and the great thing is we're not in any hurry. You can stay safer if you're not on a schedule. Heading is 295 degrees and we're just putting along here at almost 5 knots. Each one of us has a personal flotation device like this. It's really streamlined, which is great because then if we have to go forward on the boat at any point in time, we are not, it's not cumbersome and we can still get some work done. We each have what is a carabiner with a jack line and the purpose of this is to clip into our jack lines to ensure that if we're moving to the front of the boat like this, we'll clip into the jack line like this, which means that my life preserver is now locked by this carabiner and I am connected to the jack line, which means that I have freedom to walk forward on the boat. I can still hold on to the rails, but I am connected all the way to the front of the boat. If I need to go on top of the boat, I'll clip in here and then come back and use the handles. So this is the way I would go up to be able to do something in the front of the boat or on the main. So these are really important for especially night passages because we want to ensure that the other person hasn't fallen overboard and we're unaware of it. So when we're on night duty, we will make sure that we've got these on and we're clipped in just so that we're extra safe. Although I think the seas are going to be very cooperative tonight. That's what this is for. Isn't this beautiful, sweetie? Isn't this what we've always dreamed of? It is beautiful. A little nerve-wracking. Certainly doing a night passage is not for the faint of heart, but there is almost a full moon tonight, and so we should get a lot of moonshine, which will really help. And another thing is, you always want to leave, depart with daylight, and you want to arrive during daylight. This is the way to make a night passage because it's too long to do during the daytime. Yeah, so we're almost sailing completely in a run. We're not going to put the mainsail up tonight at all. We will take longer to get there, but we'll take a safer way, which is what we want. Kind of a bittersweet moment leaving St. Martin. Did you hear all those horns? All of our friends stopped by in their dinghies today. So cute! And then, as we were leaving, they were all blowing horns, and Deb and Fraser came alongside in their dinghy to just say goodbye and get some video for us, so they're really sweet. We miss them so much already. It's hard to believe that three and a half months ago, we sailed in here with zero, very little experience with Tracy, and with Sailing Sita, Lauren. We dropped our anchor in Simpson Bay, and since then, boy, the boat has been completely converted, and so have we in a lot of ways. It's been a lot of learning and growth here in St. Martin. We're just, we couldn't be more thankful for the people of St. Martin, for everyone we worked with, the locals that we interacted with, have been absolutely amazing on both the Dutch and the French side. Truly amazing people. And we'll be back one of these days. We definitely will be back. It would be lovely to be able to just stay here, but there's a big world to see out there. Guys, thanks a lot for coming along with us. If you like entertaining and informative videos like this, hit that subscribe button. If you hadn't already, hit the like button. That would mean a lot to us. We want to hear from you. Comment. We'll always get back with you, and best of all is when you share and tell other people about us. Thank you again for watching. So preparing for a passage like this takes a lot of effort and time. We took about a day to prepare for this. Well, actually, three or four days between provisioning and just running errands in town. That takes a lot of time, but the actual boat preparation takes about a day to get ready. So some of the things that we did to prepare for the passage. First of all, our dinghy. We have tied her up really, really well, so just in case we get some big waves, she's not moving. Some other things that we do to prepare. We've got our cheapo life ring here that we will throw out if someone goes overboard. We have a bigger one, but it doesn't have a line connected to it, so we've got to get that when we get to a place where we can buy it. We have filled up water. This is a big water jug. Thank you, Guy and Francesco, for our beautiful water jug. Inside, we have our front door closed and locked on all of the handles because if water hits that, it could actually open it. It's done that before. All of our hatches all over the boat are closed and locked. This is our ditch bag. This bag holds our emergency supplies, anything that we need to survive. Our EPIRB, which was on the wall there, is now here in the ditch bag. We have foul weather gear and some warmer jackets just in case overnight it gets to a temperature we're uncomfortable with. Snacks prepared so that we can just grab and go. Some fruit that we can also grab. All of our navigation charts and our captain's log, which we'll record as well. Also, we have secured all of our glasses and our appliances to make sure that nothing flies off and breaks down below. Again, we've got beautiful seas tonight. I think we only have three foot three to five foot swell, so that won't be anything bad at all. And we're riding the swell in the direction of it, so that should be really comfortable for tonight. So we're about an hour out of our anchorage, which is St. John's over there. And it's been a good uneventful sail. We just got to see dolphins. A rough sail. A lot of banging. Neither of us got sick, but I did feel queasy. We are looking forward to getting into a protected bay and getting some sleep. We are on the move again. And it was sooner than we thought we would be on the move for a number of reasons, which we'll explain to you. And we're getting ready to meet who? My friend Linda and her husband Paul. I grew up with Linda, so very excited to see them. Can't wait to see you. Let's talk about the crossing first, and then we'll go back to what happened yesterday. So what did you think about the night crossing? I thought it was super exciting. It was a little rough. Rougher than we thought. We had the wind behind us. We're on a reach. People have talked about how easy this crossing is, but we had two meter seas at about five seconds interval. So to translate that, what happens is the seas are pretty big, the wind's behind you, and the waves which are behind you, the falling seas, are close together. So what happens is your boat does not have a chance to correct from the last wave before it hits another one. So you're pounding. And it was just like night time, everything was working well, and we weren't straining the sails. We weren't going over any limits. I think we did a great job, but getting used to the sounds of the boat and the waves, especially when you're downstairs trying to sleep in your bed, the hydraulic sounds and then the slamming of the waves that are at five second intervals was a little bit unnerving. I think the quote of the evening was, Sweetie, do you think we're going to be alright? And my answer was, hey, the boat is, we're doing everything right. The boat is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, and it's meant to take a beating. Thankfully, it's not a hurricane damaged boat, so there are not hidden issues that we're unaware of. I was very confident in our equipment, and I thought that it was very, I thought it was exciting. How about you, Sweetie? I would skip it. For me, the night crossing was a little bit much. I was not feeling well. I took the first shift from 7 o'clock until 10, and I was thinking I could stay up until midnight and give Branson a really good five hours of sleep. No chance. I was really struggling to stay awake at 10 o'clock, and we had to switch, and then I just couldn't sleep because of all the banging, so I was less comfortable with it. I'm glad he was really comfortable with it because it made me, it definitely concerned me. Eileen's also a little bit more prone to getting seasick, which doesn't help the situation because you have this kind of uneasy feeling about you inside. Me, listen, I couldn't sit down and eat something or whatever, but me less so, so I had a little advantage there. We arrived in Round Bay without any issue, and it is recommended by the cruiser's guide, so we tried to anchor, and just the winds were really squirrely and giving us a hard time, so we thought, let's grab a mooring ball and get some rest. But it was a great place. It was beautiful. It was in the National Park. We were looking forward to staying there a couple of nights, but then we read the book. These were only day mooring balls, which really stunk because then we knew we had to pick up, so we slept for a couple of hours, picked up, went back to those other two bays, Hanson and the one next to it, and tried again, and both times we tried to anchor, it was a disaster. We had no idea the bottom was all coral. The first time we anchored, the anchor didn't even hit the sand. It was in a bed of coral, and we just knew we had to pick it up, so Brown went under with scuba gear, and it was a nightmare. The anchor was upside down. I don't know how that happened. No, we're getting to like 334 o'clock. We pick up. We go into Hanson Bay. The book says it's a grassy bottom, so we thought, oh, no problem. We've got this. Drop anchor. Do everything right, and when Brown dove it, the same thing. I'm going to tell you what. This is some advice. If you own a sailboat and you don't have scuba gear, you need to get your license. You need to get scuba gear. I've dove probably four or five times already, not on anything like just to dive, but to clean the bottom of the boat, to get the chain unraveled. It's been extremely helpful, and it's definitely a safety device, and you'll end up paying for all that gear by cleaning the bottom of your boat yourself. So, we are sorry that we didn't end up doing any video yesterday, but we were just shot. By the end of the day, and in that final anchorage where the anchor wasn't stuck, it was only about 20% stuck, but the chain, we had let out enough chain that we felt comfortable enough to leave it there for the night. We thought we would be fine, and we were. We didn't get a... We went to bed about 7, didn't get a whole lot of sleep until about 9.30 when we started, I think, trusting that we really weren't moving, and then slept through. So, that's where we are now. It was an hour-long motor or hour-and-a-half long motor combination sail to Lampshire, Greater Lampshire Bay. Hopefully, we're going to grab a mooring ball. Here's our approach to Greater Great Lampshire. That's the smaller Lampshire, Little Lampshire, and there are a whole bunch of mooring balls. Thank goodness. That's going to be awesome. Oh, to be on a mooring ball tonight. We're going to sleep really well. Captain Brown at the helm. Good job, Captain Brown.