At Least we Didn't Die: A Non-Exhaustive List of Things that can go Wrong on a Boat Trip, Part 3

Location: Simpson Bay Lagoon, Sint Maarten

This part consists of the semi-wavy part of the crossing during a few more things broke, and the arrival.

Tuesday, the winds had picked up again. We had spent the night motoring, so in the morning we put up the sails. However, as usual, there was a problem: the mainsail leash had come undone during the night. The leash is a small line that runs from the base of the mast up to the top of the doused sail (where the halyard, the hoisting line, is attached) and back down again to a cleat. It prevents the sail from sliding up the mast, which in turn keep the halyard taught and tangle-free. Due to the fact that the leash was no longer attached, the halyard had jumped up and gotten tangled with a top spreader (a horizontal metal bar which is part of the rigging that secures the mast). It took 45 minutes in 20-kt winds and splashing seas to get it out. Our speed after that was 7-8 kts (15 km/h). It's amazing to see the difference of effort that it takes to make a 10 km/h speed increase in a car compared to that on a boat. Then again, on a boat, it represents a 300% speed increase.

More tips and tricks for if you ever find yourself on a moving boat: if you want to pour water from a kettle to a cup, don't put the cup on a counter. Hold the kettle in one hand and the cup in the other. That way, when you sway with a wave, both receptacles will move at the same time, and you won't spill anything. Also, when washing dishes, put a plate or a bowl over the drain. This will prevent saltwater from shooting up into your face every time a wave hits. (The drain plug doesn't work; the force of the water is too strong.)

Wednesday morning, the port bilge pump stopped working. At this point, no one was surprised, and before actually doing anything, we ate some croissants. (Interesting side-note: in North American English, "croissant" is pronounced with the proper stress-unstress pattern but with an anglicized pronounciation of the second syllable (crwa-SAUNT), whereas British English inverts the stress-unstress pattern, but pronounces the "ant" correctly (CRWA-sohn). Similarly, "restaurant" has the French "ant" but the English stress-unstress (REH-sto-rohn).)

After the croissants, we stopped the boat and while Jem tried to find out what the problem was, Anna and I started pumping. There is an inbuilt pump whose handle is under a seat in the cockpit and that pumps water directly out. We started pumping, and after a while asked Jem if there was a difference in water height, to which he comfortingly replied, "we'll see a difference in an hour." However, there seemed to be not much water pressure in the pump, so we jury-rigged a more efficent one using the dinghy pump, two hoses, some duct tape, and an open side-hatch. We must have made for a strange sight, all of us covered in muck, lined up in the port hallway (it's only one person wide), with one person pumping, one person holding the hoses together (the duct-taped joints still leaked), and Jem elbows-deep in bilge water, surrounded by tools, and cursing (piss fucking bollocks), while disco music played in the background.  Luckily, bilge water doesn't smell bad. Eventually, the water went down enough that we could stop pumping for a bit and focus solely on the repairs. Anna handed various things down as I held up wires and held down pipes, while Jem performed a combination of wire stripping, connecting, and crimping as well as some impromptu plastic soldering using a small electrical lighter, all of which leading to the whole thing working again. We all went for a swim after that.

Jem likes to say that long-distance sailing is all about systems management, whether it be water, fuel, or electricity. I find that this applies to smaller things as well. For example, on the boat, I have four pairs of shorts. On Wednesday, their various states were as following: one that I wanted to leave clean for our arrival, one that worked well for night watch but that was too long for the heat of the day, one that had gotten soaked in salt water and that, thanks to nearly five days of drying out, was now damp instead of dripping, and one that was now splattered with bilge water. After my swim, I had to decide which of these I was going to wear. I had narrowed it down to either the damp one or the dirty one. After consulting Anna, I decided to choose damp. This was mildly uncomfortable, but as time went on, the shorts were slowly dried by my body heat. Sometimes, all you can do is lower your standards and move on. Systems management: it works.

Thursday we spotted land. At 10am, Saba rose out of the water in the north. Statia (St. Eustacious) followed suit closely afterwards in the east. We spotted St. Maarten at 2:30. When we were 5 nm off, we dropped the sails and went for our last languid ocean swim. At 7:30pm we were anchored. And then, surprise! We spotted over the AIS ship tracker the boat belonging to Karl, whom I had met in Grenada! And then, surprise. In a last hurrah, the VHF radio broke just as we made contact.

But we were here. We were anchored in Simpson Bay, the boat no longer pitched us about, and the lights of the houses on the island hills looked, because they were stacked on top of each other, almost like skyscrapers. It was a good day, and an even better night; for the first time in nearly two weeks, I slept a consecutive eight hours.

The next day was busy. Mold was removed. Books were dried. Clothes were washed and aired. More mold was removed. More clothes were washed and aired. (Most notably, my sneakers needed to have polka-dots removed.) The VHF started working again, and we managed to say hello to Karl. He told us that while we were at sea, Colombia had been put on the list of banned countries for St. Maarten. Interestingly enough, this turned out to be the most easily-fixed problem encountered so far. Jem dinghied into the immigration building, told them that the boat was broken and that he couldn't really go anywhere, and an agent called Carlita told us that, for an exorbitant sum, she would fix everything. And she did! We were cleared in the next day.

Saturday, I woke up to a rainbow and dry clothes. As we had only managed to secure a marina berth for Monday, we were anchored outside in Simpson Bay. St. Maarten is a big superyacht destination, and, in addition to the dozen in a marina in the nearby lagoon, there were six in the bay. I find that I judge the shape of superyachts far more than normal-sized boats simply because they cost more: you had billions of dollars at your disposal and you chose this? For example, there is one that looks like, for lack of better description, a giant slug.

Saturday afternoon, we dinghied under a bridge into Simpson Bay Lagoon and went to the local yacht club resto-bar for wifi. We got wifi, the most delicious grouper fingers known to man, and found a few of Jem's friends from when he was stuck in St. Helena for four months during the beginning of covid. We met Dick, a dignified Dutch gentleman, and then Karl arrived, accompanied by his wife, named Kara.

Kara had arrived in Grenada shortly after we had left. To get from Australia to Grenada, she took a flight to the UK, but her connecting flight was cancelled so she was stuck there for awhile and had to return to Australia, then she went from Australia to Turkey, then Barbados, then Grenada, and that worked. Karl and Kara then sailed to Antigua, where they had to quarantine even though Grenada had very few covid cases, then to St. Maarten, where they didn't need to quarantine, even though Antigua did. It seems that the biggest thing that we had in common was therefore the fact that we had taken the extra long way around to get to St. Maarten. (St. Vincent-Panama-Colombia-St. Maarten was approximately a month's worth of sailing, whereas St. Vincent-St. Maarten is approximately 4 days.)

Karl and Kara are Irish, but they moved to Australia to escape the weather and therefore speak in a lovely Irish accent with just a hint of Australian. When they are part of the same conversation, they switch their way of talking and riff off each other, making for a singular personality that is just as, if not more, engaging as the two separate individuals. Here is an excerpt of a gastronomical conversation that we had. Karl started.

"So, the most important part of a fish n chips is the chips [fries]. They need to be hand-cut and served in a brown paper bag—"
"Or a newspaper," said Kara.
"Or a newspaper, and then you put loads of vinegar and salt on them, and then you close the bag and wait a bit, so the chips steam in the vinegar. Then you get this soggy, vinegary, salty chip."
"So the sogginess is desired?" I asked.
"Yes, the sogginess is desired. If it's not soggy, it's not a proper fish n chips."
"And the fish?"
"Eh... The fish..."
"You see, we live in Australia, where the fish is like mahi-mahi, nice and meaty, almost steak-like. Northern fish is, I guess, slimy?"
"And bony. And soggy, since it's been steamed in the bag with the chips."
"So soggy chips are desired, soggy fish is not?"
"Exactly."
"You could take a vegetarian fish n chips, maybe."
"Or a burger."
"And onion rings! They have good onion rings."

The conversation later turned to Karl reminiscing about a deep-fried salmon that he had eaten in Galway, and Kara telling me about the wonders of mushy peas, which are dried garden peas which have been soaked until they turn into a mush. There is nothing added to them. It is just mushy peas. My English companions apparently also love mushy peas. In Jem's words: "Green slime. Lovely stuff." I'm sure that most English food actually tastes good, but whenever I hear about it, it feels morally wrong.

Sunday morning, Dick visited the boat for coffee. Apparently, he and his wife have been trying to sell their catamaran for almost a year now. They had nearly succeeded and had everything signed and ready to go with someone in Boston, but the man promptly died, and so it was a no-go. If anyone is interested in buying a Catana 42, please let me know.

Sunday afternoon we headed to the yacht club again, this time to see with Flora! It seems that everyone is in St. Maarten. We met up with Flora, her partner David, and the rest of the crew from the boat on which they work. We had a blast, but after two weeks of being three people on a boat in the middle of nowhere, seeing this many people in two days was quite a shock. After we left, we went for a dinghy tour around the lagoon, which is surrounded by quaint restaurants and beautiful tree-covered hills. We passed from the Dutch side of the lagoon to the French side, going underneath a bridge whose midsection pivots to let ships pass. There, there are still remnants of the destruction cause. by hurricane Irma six years ago. There are shipwrecks poking out of the water, and wrecks of boats and houses along the shore. Under the golden sun, it had almost a graveyard-like beauty.
 

 Monday we motored into Simpson Bay Lagoon, into Blue Pearl Marina (because the one that we wanted to go to was full). Blue Pearl Marina is a small dock next to a medium-sized metal building. One of the glass doors of the building has a paper sign that says "Blue Pearl Marina"; this is the office. The marina's manager, Raj, asked Jem to pay in cash, and the password to the world's weakest wifi is "covid2019" (these last few entries were posted using bar wifi). There is also very little breeze, and so it is very hot. However, we bought rotis from a man on the dock selling them out of a shopping bag and they tasted quite good, so life wasn't so bad.

And that's all for now. I've posted three consecutive entries, by the time you read this my Route page will have been updated, and my number of French curses emitted in an hour will be at an all-time high. Until next time, cheers.