Night Swimming

So with reluctant hearts and minds we left Saba and turned northwest to the British Virgin Islands. The route takes you across the Anegada passage, a notoriously rough stretch of water. We did not classically plan this passage as to weather, deciding that we would go when we felt we had to leave Saba and not before. Well ultimately waiting about 3 more days for better weather would have been ideal, but as I mentioned in the previous post, the anchorages in Saba were just to rough.

As we set out the winds were rather light, less than 10 knots, so we were flying our full canvas an putting right along. The north swell was running and I saw at least 15 feet in the highest, but were not breaking so just pushed us up and down.

The the sun went down. About 8:30 pm the wind really picked up, so we started to shorten sail, but it was already 25 knots and rising in a squall. We lost one jib sheet overboard so had to furl the jib all the way in to retrieve it. With deeply reefed sails we set in for a long windy and rainy night. The seas continued to grow out of the east to compliment the north swell making things very rough.

About 3:00 am Rae Ann was trying to sleep in the aft bunks with the kids and had opened a window on the lee side. Well we got slammed hard by a breaking north swell, I heard it coming and saw some of the white water but with is so dark because of the squalls it was more a sense than anything. We took on a lot of water and were knocked way over. Then the girls were screaming, as gallons upon gallons of water poured in through the open window.

We are safely in the BVI's, drying out, and vowing never to open hatches again.

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