Trucial Coast, Day 22 – signing off

It will not have escaped the notice of our more eagle-eyed readers that it’s been a few days now since we arrived in St Lucia and as yet there has been no final log! After taking a couple of days to recover from what was quite an eventful final day, I wasn’t convinced of the need for one, but I am assured by family that there are people across the globe waiting to hear how it all ended, so here we go! Most of our last day was very pleasant: we had good winds and plenty of sunshine, with just one light rain shower all afternoon. We made our arrival preparations in a calm and unhurried manner: our ARC number was repaired (having nearly been ripped off when we broached under the parasailor) and reattached to the side of the boat, we ran the St Lucian courtesy flag up, and Rob made a note of the various navigation lights and waypoints we would need to get us round the top of St Lucia, past Pigeon Island and across the finish line in Rodney Bay.

We were expecting to be off the north of the island at about midnight or so, ships time. So after a bit of supper, I went to try and get some sleep before being needed to take the pole down for the last time as we rounded the island. Ominously it wasn’t long before I heard the patter of rain and the rattle of the boards being slotted into the companion way to keep below decks dry. The rain passed and I came up on deck to lower the pole. At this stage we were about 10 miles or so from the finish. Ann disappeared below to check the chart plotter and that’s when the first squall hit. It was a brute! Ann saw the wind speed indicator hit Force 10, which made it the heaviest squall of the trip. Up on deck Rob was really having to battle the wheel but we managed to ride it out.

Then another one hit hard on the heels of the first, and of about equal strength. After we’d ridden that one out Rob and I both thought “What on earth did we do to deserve that…?!”. And then another one hit us! We have a preventer rigged on the boom: this is a line leading forward from the boom to a pulley block and from there back to the cockpit – if we inadvertently gybe, it stops the boom slamming across to the opposite side of the boat – this tends to result in broken booms, parted main sheets or at worst, all the shrouds on the (now) leeward side of the boat being taken out and bringing the mast down. Well, it had served us well but in that third squall the block simply exploded – we still have the various warped bits of it we found spread across the deck – and so we had the dreaded inadvertent gybe. Fortunately the block, then the guard rail and stanchion took a lot of the energy out through the boom preventer and we didn’t sustain any serious damage (although the stanchion is now near enough parallel to the deck).

At this point the autohelm also decided to go on the blink, which meant Rob was trying to get the boat sailing in the right direction again, but we’d continually end up gybing – and of course we had no preventer to stop this. Ann was down below wondering what on earth had happened and I had to suggest she stayed down below until we were reasonably sure the boom wasn’t going to come crashing across and hit her out of the boat as she tried to climb up the companion way.

Eventually we got things stabilised and were able to continue towards Pigeon Island, with Ann relaying navigation information to Rob via me. But there were more squalls to come, and just before the fourth one I noticed a cruise liner, every sailing vessel’s nightmare, steaming up behind us. Thankfully it stopped, obviously sitting offshore overnight to avoid paying nighttime berthing fees wherever it was headed.

The fourth and fifth squalls were mainly rain, and a hell of a lot of it. Rob & I got absolutely drenched, the wettest we’d been all trip, and visibility was next to nothing: perfect conditions for navigating into an unknown harbour looking for a flashing light that signifies the committee boat on the finish line. Somehow we made it across! We were warned that a RIB would be approaching and taking flash photography of us as we finished: I have to say I think Rob & I looked miserable. If the photographer can lip read, I apologise. The comments were not directed at you personally, but were just a reflection of our state of mind at the time! Ann didn’t even manage to get into the photos as she was below on the radio with the organisers trying to work out what on earth we did next…

When we got into the marina there was a very merry (the sort of merry that only 7 hours of hard drinking can bring about) welcoming committee. I just wish we’d been in the mood to appreciate it. Certainly from my point of view, and I think it is the common view on board, there was no sense of elation as we docked, or even relief. We were just very tired, very wet and pretty teed off at the last couple of hours! So we tied up and went to bed, only to be woken very shortly afterwards as we were boarded by my parents (Mum is Rob’s sister as well) who had flown out to surprise us: mission accomplished! It was great to see them and we ended up staying up till 1130 the following morning catching up….

It has taken the best part of three days but we’re all more or less back to as normal as we get. Without getting too introspective, we’re feeling a bit better about the whole crossing. Particularly as everyone has been saying that this was a pretty tough, high wind ARC compared to the normal ones: so we know it’s not just us being a bit wimpy. Final corrected times aren’t in yet, but we think we’ve done ok – there are lots of boats ahead of us with plenty of engine hours, we’ve only got 1 hour. It was going to be less, but as the final squall hit us 1.8 miles from the finish line, it was a question of “stuff this” and we motored in – we didn’t fancy beating into 25 knots of wind at this point in our lives….

So that’s it from Trucial Coast in ARC 2007. I’m enjoying a few days in the St Lucian sunshine before heading home (except most of the time it’s been cloudy with squalls – sound familiar?), Rob & Ann are going to cruise the Caribbean for a while and probably head back to Europe on the ARC Europe in 2009. Although I did hear him discussing the cost of sticking the boat in a container for the return leg…..I’m sure time will polish off the rougher edges of this crossing and the good days will become increasingly rose-tinted and all thoughts of a container will be banished when the time comes!