Bequia to Hell, and back to Bequia

Wednesday 14th July

Location: Bequia to Bequia ???

Jumped out of bed at 6am and immediately weighed anchor. “We’ll have breakfast when we get to the Cays in a couple of hours” Bob said. The weather was absolutely perfect as we pulled out of Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth. We had a wonderful 16 knots of wind as we raised the sails, and enjoyed a perfect sail. A couple of hours later as we were just off the island of Canouan, we noticed there was a squall ahead of us, and rather than get drenched Bob decided to bring the sails in. We had planned to stop at Canouan for breakfast anyway.

This is where our nightmare began!

We brought the jib in first, but when we tried to bring in the mainsail it only furled in a few inches then stuck. After making several unsuccessful attempts to furl in we headed back out to sea to try and avoid the worst of the squall, and give ourselves time to sort out the problem. This wasn’t the first time this trip that the mainsail had been problematic.
Edi took the helm while Bob went on the foredeck to look at the mast, I was at the controls. We both followed Bob’s instructions, but still the mainsail wouldn’t budge, it came out a few inches, and went in a few inches, but that was it. By now the squall had caught up with us and the wind was howling around us gusting to 32 knots, the boat was rocking violently as the waves built, and I was concerned for Bob’s safety on the deck, he was yelling instructions at me over the wind, but I couldn’t hear, and I was fast becoming more and more unglued… After struggling for about 30 minutes, when it was obvious that nothing was working and the main was not moving, tempers started to fray, and I had a melt down and ran below deck (productive as always during stressful situations on board)!
With me below having a major anxiety attack, Bob and Edi motored into Charlestown Bay, Canouan, to try and drop anchor. With the mainsail up and the wind still blowing strong, Edi was unable to get the anchor to set, and then another problem (forgive my lack of knowledge for correct terminology here) the stainless steel swivel thing that connects the anchor chain to the anchor broke! This is where you want to start singing “A life on the ocean waves”!
Having just about pulled myself together, I ventured back up on deck to find that Edi was not at all happy with me, having run out when they needed help, and poor Bob was nursing his thumb, which he had almost torn the nail off. The situation was not a happy one, and we still had the mainsail fully up. It turns out that there was a tear in the top of the sail that was snagging, preventing it from furling. The only solution was to take the sail down, but the wind was still blowing around 15 – 20 knots. I took the helm and motored around the bay while Bob and Edi waited for a lull in the wind enough to drop the sail. Each time they attempted it the wind picked up, again and again and again, it was now almost 2pm. I said a quiet prayer, to please drop the wind just for a couple of minutes, and God must have been listening, because for a brief 2 minutes he did. With the sail down, the next task was to fold it and get it into the bag. That sound’s easy doesn’t it? WRONG!
Daisy’s mainsail is huge, last year in Aruba Bob and I folded it on the hotels lawn, and it wasn’t easy, and now we had to do it in the limited space of the foredeck between all the lines, with the wind blowing. It took over an hour to get the sail into the sail bag, and just as Bob and Edi were struggling to get the last of it in another squall hit us, torrential rain and 30-knot winds. They tied the bag to the granny bars and hurried back into the cockpit, both of them drenched, exhausted and badly sun burnt, OH, and starving too, having still not eaten either breakfast or lunch “OH the joys of boat life”! Trips like this only serve to reinforce the balance between contentment and catastrophe when living this close with nature.
We had previously noticed a sail maker on Bequia, so we turned around and headed back. We arrived back in Admiralty Bay, Bequia at 6pm, a full 12 hours after we left.
I fell in love with this island, but had no idea that I would be returning so soon. I really hope that the sail maker will be able to do a fast repair for us, as we have now lost another day, and our chances of getting to Curacao without it becoming a route march are getting slim…