Bermuda to St. Maarten

I was not able to write in my blog each day on the boat as we had no power (you'll soon find out why). I will try to recreate the trip the best I can from memory.

Day 1 - November 9, 2012

We left Bermuda around 10:30am on the Friday and had fairly nice sailing weather the whole day.

We found some "yo-yo" style fishing reels and decided to let those out in hopes of catching something. Tuffy (Eugene) is a pro-fisherman out of Bermuda, so it wasn't long before he pulled in a 10 pound Mahi Mahi.

Hank immediately heated up some oil and within an hour we were eating the most fresh Mahi Mahi I've ever had.

Apparently we created a monster, because shortly after finishing our meal, Tuffy reels in another Mahi Mahi, this time a good 25 pounder.

We got a lot of meat off this guy, bagged it and put it in the freezer. We decided that was enough fishing for one day and took the reels away from Tuffy before the ocean ran out of fish.

There was a nice sunset that night.

Day 2 - November 10, 2012

I had a dream last night where we lost power to our freezer and had to dump all our fish overboard because it had gone bad. Strangely enough, we ended up losing our engine today. No motor means no way to charge batteries, which means no power to the freezer (among many other things). We decided we weren't letting my nightmare come true and fried up all the fish we had from yesterday. We enjoyed an all-you-can-eat Mahi Mahi feast for lunch.

We had to make a few sacrifices to have enough power to keep the GPS and navigation lights running. The wind generator did not work, but the solar panel generated enough to help keep these essential instruments going. We had to sacrifice auto-pilot though, which meant a lot of work at times.

We found some flying fish on the deck.

They actually have bird-like wings and can fly for a relatively long period of time. I always thought they were just good jumpers or gliders.

We saw a double-rainbow behind us after a rainfall. It was almost a triple rainbow at one point.

Another nice sunset at sea.

Day 3 - November 11, 2012

There was absolutely NO wind today. Normally you would just boot up your engine and motor during times of no winds, but we didn't have that option. We just floated there, slowly drifting off-course with the current. It was very peaceful though, I crushed some Dan Brown book on this day.

The wind picked up at night though and made up for the lack of progress during the day. I was woken up in the middle of the night to climb up the mast a bit and help get the main down when the wind was especially heavy. The jib is so much easier to reef than the damn main.


Day 4 - November 12, 2012

Again, NO WIND. Everyone was getting a little frustrated with it at this point. The day was pretty much a repeat of yesterday.


Day 5 - November 13, 2012

We finally had some wind. Everyone was very ready to see land by now. We saw a ship today, that was the most exciting part of the day. We hadn't seen other life forms for days now.


Day 6 - November 14, 2012

The weather was perfect today for sailing. The seas were relatively calm and winds were pretty steady at 16-19 knots.

Tuffy decided to try his hand at fishing again. Unfortunately, we were still too far out and there were no surface fish at such a huge depth. We made fun of him and tried to get a picture of him holding a can of Bumblebee Tuna on the end of his line. We could not convince him though.

Just as the sun was finally setting for the (hopefully) last time on our journey, a small sparrow-sized sea bird landed on my shoulder for a rest and chilled there for about 20 minutes. I was at helm and felt like a real pirate. The picture didn't turn out at all since it was dark and I was at helm. I named him Bumblebee after the can of tuna that we opened that night. Bumblebee is the white blur on my shoulder.

We also enjoyed the best sunset of the trip that night.

We arrived at St. Maarten at around 11:00pm that night. The bridge to get into Simpson Bay only opens 3 times a day and the last one was at 5:00pm. Normally you would just anchor and wait for the bridge to open the next morning, but you can't anchor without a motor. So we had to pace back and forth in front of the bridge, tacking and jibing, all night.

We thought we were home-free, but we had one last night of watches...


Day 7 - November 15, 2012

The sunrise was beautiful this morning. The sun rose to a whole bunch of regular yachts and super-mega-ultra yachts all anchored, waiting to get in.

We kept pacing back and forth until the bridge opened at 9:00am. Hank radioed in ahead of time and told them we needed a tow. The guy who speeds around in his little dinghy, organizing all the boats to enter didn't get this message. So with the bridge about to close again (and we'd have to pace back and forth again all afternoon until the next opening at 1:00pm), we had to act fast. The dinghy guy threw us a rope and ripped it in high gear to get us through that bridge in time (cue epic music). We were able to squeeze in front of the mega-yachts and under the bridge before it closed.

This is Jimbo's Bar. It's just off the dock and features a swim-up bar (on the other side of the bar there in the picture) with a fountain and everything. They play classic rock and some island tunes.