We had talked about and planned this moment for months…our FIRST PASSAGE. Yet, somehow, it is a strange feeling when a plan comes together and actually happens. As the sage philosopher, George Peppard always said on the TV Show, the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
After 7 days of sailing lessons, we were ready for the passage to Antigua so we provisioned, got Covid tested, charted our course, cleared out, and untied to lines! And, to witness this historic passage, we were thrilled for the brave extra crew member on board, our dear friend, Tracie!
Here’s the dilemma: Do you wish for an easy first passage or a rough, things go wrong, passage because you have an official captain on board to learn how to trouble shoot and fix a problem? Well, much to everyone’s relief, Mother Nature kindly handed us the first-one. No trouble-shooting or discussion took place other than when to turn on the generator to make another Nespresso! It was an EASY passage with flat seas and little wind. Thankfully, the wind did pick up in the channels, and we were able to spend a few hours sailing, with just the sound of the wind; but, most of the time we had to motor sail to ensure our day time arrival in English Harbor.
While we anticipated seeing a variety of sea life, we were only inundated with flying fish! A few misjudged their capabilities and sadly, their lives ended on our deck. But, we did enjoy an outstanding sunset and equally beautiful sunrise.
We pulled into Freeman’s Bay/English Harbor just before sunset. We made it in the nick of time, with enough daylight to drop anchor and observe the boat before dark. The bay was full of boats and we were a little concerned that with no wind, we might drift into our neighbor’s yacht.
We raised the quarantine flag, celebrated our arrival and historic accomplishment, and settled in for the evening.
NEW TO OUR CHANNEL? We are Eileen and Brown Councill. Welcome to our channel and a glimpse into our life adventure! 2020 was a year of uncertainty and change (for all of us, right?), but we overcame the challenges and decided it was time to chase our dream, to sail around the world! Did I mention that we had very NO sailing experience? Before leaving Qingdao, China, our home of 4 years, we sold almost all of our earthly possessions and started our international search to find the right sailboat that we would call "home." After 5 months of unanticipated twists and turns, we found what we were looking for, a used Leopard 44' Catamaran located in St. Lucia.
So, here begins our journey, filled with unmatched excitement and honestly, a bit of trepidation as well. We have much to learn as we travel the world on our floating home and we intend to document that journey and share it with you. We are so glad you have decided to join us, and we hope that you will find our story so compelling that it will inspire you to chase your dreams too!
As a viewer, we consider you to be part of our family and look forward to getting to know you. Don't hesitate to comment on our videos and ask questions. We will do our best to answer every correspondence! All we ask is that you have patience with us as we work really hard to improve our camera/video techniques and ability to tell a story. Hopefully, you will be as BLOWN AWAY from watching, as we are in experiencing and producing our adventures!
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Official first boy, real boy.
Bye Saint Lucia, she's here.
Have I signed a waiver for this?
I am blown away by blown away.
Long last, can you believe it?
Hello.
Good to see you.
Captain Ben is loading up the makeshift jack lines.
So what we think we're going to do, we'll go straight out into the channel,
cross to Martinique.
This will probably take somewhere in the region of four hours,
then down the Martinique channel.
Then from there we cross another channel,
each channel is roughly about 20 odd miles, 20 to 30 miles depending.
And then we'll do another channel to Dominica.
We're just going to push on through the night past Dominica.
And then what I'm going to do is head for Guadeloupe
and then we're going to hang up here and make for English Harbour.
It's going to take somewhere, could take anywhere between 30 to 36 to 37 hours.
It's about 180, 190 miles.
Weather's looking pretty nice and favourable.
It's not a little too light, especially for this time of year, it's very strange.
The aim is we have to be there Thursday before four o'clock.
We are going to christen the boat
and we are doing this at the bottle of wine provided by the Shibles.
Thank you so much.
Oh, excuse me.
Right away, may God bless you.
Oh, who's sailing you?
God is sailing you.
Steady seas.
Wisdom.
All right, y'all, we got it done.
Well done.
Official first voyage, real voyage.
Right away.
First voyage.
Captains Brown and Ben getting ready to take off.
And we're off.
We have Captain Eileen up here.
We locked the slip and motored 200 feet to the fuel dock for our first fueling experience.
Cheers.
The historic departure.
Eileen, Captain Eileen.
Bye, St. Lucia.
It's a beautiful day.
Only 15 knots of apparent wind, which is not great.
We are headed past Martinique and then from Martinique up to Dominica,
then past Guadalupe and then up through a channel there to get to Antigua.
So that's the plan to arrive Thursday.
There's Martinique.
Super clear day today.
Absolutely beautiful.
As you can see in here, not a whole lot of wind.
Really struggling with the wind today.
This is, this is all part of the course of learning how to sail.
She's training. She's not ready to read books if anyone asks.
You're a serious sailor.
It's like how pets start to resemble their owners.
Looking down the courtesy flag for St. Lucia.
All right, our position here at 1142.
Our position here at 1210.
And then our GPS position at 110.
And that's my charted position.
So very close to our actual GPS.
It's awesome.
We're headed up.
Tropical chicken.
Yes.
Maybe fresh pineapple.
Oh, yes.
Fresh pineapple and ginger.
Good for the stomach.
Easy to make.
We're on the dole for dinner.
That's the paprika, onion and garlic sauteed off.
And then that is the...
That's just potatoes and carrots.
So they'll go into that.
First stopper.
The beautiful thing to see.
Sunset.
The Helm.
Martinique.
What a gift.
The first sunset.
My second night watch.
And I'm really excited to get to see the sunrise.
I think I'd be lying if I didn't say this was a little daunting.
We are now in the middle of the channel between Guadalupe and Martinique.
Things are really light.
It's 12 and a half, 13 knots.
Almost on a run.
It's a beautiful morning.
Thankful that night watch is over and the sun is shining.
There's light.
It's much nicer during the day.
Big storm over Guadalupe.
So it's just dead calm.
Today.
After a pretty rough sail from Martinique to Dominica.
And look at it right now.
So we're motoring.
It's good because the seas aren't rough.
You know, I had to steady the boat.
Just a lovely day.
There is Guadalupe.
Up here way off in the distance where the mast is.
We have Montserrat.
Mar.
Ringo.
Rock Trot.
Julia's partner.
Lumio.
S.
Sat Nav.
Beer.
Mountains.
IPA.
Sierra.
T.
Tango.
Finally.
I like tango.
There is Antigua.
And we are slated for a 5 p.m arrival.
To our west is Montserrat.
And to our south is Guadalupe.
Time to get in before night falls.
This has been a very, very easy.
Probably the easiest sail that you can have across all of these channels.
So as you can see the seas are flat.
The wind is 12.4 apparent.
True wind is probably about 5 knots.
So we're not getting a whole lot of wind.
We are finishing our passage right there.
Just like 30 minutes.
Right after a day and a half of solid sailing.
Yeah like 30.
All throughout the night.
How many hours?
Like 32 hours almost?
Yeah something like that.
But we're really proud of the fact that we accomplished it.
Only one of our crew has been green.
That's the whole trick.
Yeah we won't say who that is.
We're really, really excited.
Our first passage ever is almost conclusion.
The Coast Guard is not responding to our VHF calls.
So we're not really sure what to expect when we get in there.
Maybe we'll just be able to drop anchor and tomorrow morning we'll try and check in.
But we're just not really sure.
Captain Eileen bringing us into Antibas.
Dropping anchor in Freeman's Bay was such a great feeling.
We were flooded with relief.
Our first passage was finally over and a total success.
After 29 hours and 192 nautical miles, we were ready to shed the stress of passage.
But not all the stress.
As Freeman's Bay was packed with boats and heading into the night,
there was concern about anchor swing.
Until nightfall, we were determined to enjoy the magnificent sunset
and revel in the logging of our very first passage.
