Caribbean Bound – Again

US East coast to the British Virgin Islands

After a great summer at home on the lake, visiting family and friends and collecting enough wine to restock the boat, we decided to head back to the Caribbean for the winter. We joined the Caribbean 1500 (the cruising rally we sailed with last year) for the passage South. While we were comfortable with Berkeley East and our ability to sail the 1500 miles, last year we met many new friends through the rally, and the free rum parties where not bad either.

With the boat work somewhat complete, we rushed to move everything back aboard Berkeley East and get prepared for our winter in the Caribbean. It was a mad scramble as we had taken everything off the boat over the summer and had just a few days to bring it all up from Charlotte, get it stored, provision for six months and sail down to Hampton, VA for the start of the Caribbean 1500 rally.

We arrived in Hampton exhausted, with just 24 hours before the scheduled start, only to find that due to storms off the coast of the US the rally would be delayed for five days.

Our crew for the passage (Linda and Al) was a Canadian couple that we met in last year’s rally and spent time sailing with throughout the Caribbean. They had returned home this summer to go back to work, but decided to take a couple of weeks off to sail with us to the Tortola.

As the storms proceeded up the coast and we made final preparations for our departure, a new challenge was brewing in the Caribbean. A low pressure system was forming and was forecast to become a Hurricane. Half of the weather models had it crossing our route off Bermuda, while the other half had it dissipating over the Bahamas. The night before we were scheduled to leave, it achieved Hurricane status and Hurricane Paloma became a serious concern. Every forecaster had a different view of what would happen and the forecasted path for Paloma was changing hourly. As one forecaster put it “Call me old fashioned, but I don’t like to sail into the path of a hurricane”. We spent the night and morning analyzing the latest forecasts and it looked like the hurricane would dissipate before it hit us. So with much trepidation, it was a go.

Rather than sail directly to Tortola, we opted to head east toward Bermuda. The plan was to go east enough that if hurricane Paloma did come through the Atlantic we could run for cover and get to Bermuda ahead of the storm.

The rally started out in light winds and we were escorted out of the Chesapeake Bay by an aircraft carrier. One rally participant found himself a little too close for comfort.

The first night was very quiet and we motored, until the winds filled in. The second day the winds gradually picked up from nearly nothing to over 35kts. As the wind increased, we reefed the boat deeper and deeper to keep as level as possible, while still maintaining enough speed. At one point we switched to the storm sail and a scrap of main as the winds peaked around 40kts and we were still sailing at 7 kts.

During the first few days we were back to our old fishing ways, landing five Mahi Mahi and a small marlin. We opted to release the marlin once we got it to the boat to avoid anyone getting skewered when bringing it on board.

We watched the weather reports carefully and as hoped, Hurricane Paloma broke up over Cuba and would have only a minor impact on our passage. While that was very good news, we were not going to get off completely as a tropical wave building in the Atlantic was headed our way.

We enjoyed the good weather that we had as it would be the last for some time and took the opportunity to eat some of the Mahi Mahi that we had caught.

After a couple of days of nice sailing, we hit the tropical wave and the winds picked back up to 25 – 35kts with waves up to 15′ just off the port bow. When Paloma dissipated, we started to head more south in order to shorten the passage but unfortunately, the wind shifted to the ESE and we had to close reach (60 degrees off the wind) for the next four days. So much for the fishing, it was far too rough and no one wanted to leave the dry, fully enclosed cockpit to get wet and bounced around the deck to set the poles. We are definitely fair weather fishermen.

Berkeley East crossed the finish line in 7 days, 19 hours, beating last year’s passage by over 12 hours. It was nice to enter Village Cay Marina in daylight and we were all ready to get off Berkeley East to celebrate our passage.

We celebrated with Al, Linda and a few of the boats that had arrived, and spent the day welcoming other boats in. Because of the delayed rally start, Al and Linda needed to get back to Canada for work and had to leave the very next day. Since they would miss the official Caribbean 1500 finish events, we made the most of Saturday night to celebrate our successful passage and excellent crew.

We were very happy that Berkeley East came through the passage in great shape. Many of the boats had sustained damage in the high winds and seas, blowing out sails, losing engines, breaking autopilots, etc, but we had no real damage from this year’s passage. Unfortunately though, we did run out of large paper plates.

The days following were spent socializing with other sailors, cleaning up the boat and enjoying the parties. We sailed from Tortola over to Virgin Gorda for the Phat Virgin party, our final event, and are now on our own again.