We have had a couple of deliveries lined up over the past month or so that have kept us busy, and some what off line. If you think that job might be all fun…

The romance of the open ocean! Sailing boats to exotic places! The glamor! The fun! All while getting paid! What’s not to love? Ha!

Reality

Nobody (well, almost nobody!) hires a delivery captain to move a boat downwind, in good weather, from one desirable port to another. That’s the kind of sailing the owner wants to do! We just got back from a delivery, and while we had a fun time, all is not rainbows and unicorns.

This boat needed to move from St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands to Martinique. This is about 330 nautical miles as the seagull flies, and it is almost always an upwind passage into the tradewinds. There was an extra complication, the boat’s engine was not reliable. While it was working, it had a history of recent problems that had not really been definitively diagnosed and repaired.

Off to a Good Start

We left the marina in good weather, and motored out. Everything was running fine, and spirits were high for a passage easier than we expected. But it was not to be. A few hours into the trip, the engine stopped running, and would not restart.

Oh, well, it is a sailboat, and we have wind!

Strategy

The wind was forecast to continue blowing from the east at about 15 knots, with no real changes expected. On most cruising boats this passage would be taken down close to the island chain, but I decided not to do this.

Some of these islands are quite high, and have dramatic wind shadows where wind speeds are dramatically reduced. Off Dominica the wind shadow can extend 50 or 70 miles to the west. Not usually a problem, just fire up the engine, and push through the calm… Oh… Wait… We don’t have an engine…

We trimmed the boat for a close hauled course on port tack, and just kept it like that, sailing as close to the wind as we could until we reached the latitude of our destination, and only then began to work our way east. Instead of the 330 miles of the direct rhumb line course, this took almost 490 miles, and just about 4 days.

On arrival at the outer harbor in Martinique, we used the dinghy as a tug boat to push us into the marina, and get docking lined up. The marina crew at Marina du Marin was, as usual, helpful and professional. They used their boats to push and poke at us until we were secured at the dock, just 5 slips down from our Harmonie.

From Here…

Within a couple days, we will be preping Harmonie to start our migration northward, almost the exact reverse of the delivery sail we just completed, except this time (Cheers!) it will be a downwind route. Our first planned stop will be in the Bahamas, which will be about a week’s sailing from here.