The winds continued to blow around 25 knots well into the night on Monday and we continued to make great time. While sailing at 8+ knots is all well and good, it was going to deliver us to the BVIs around midnight. Aside from the hazards of a night time arrival to a strange location, we wanted to enjoy a morning landfall. To slow the boat down we dropped the main and furled the jib until we only had a tiny hank of it out. In that configuration we were sailing at about 3-4 knots through out the night.
At dawn we were approaching Anegada, one of the out islands of the BVI, and their only coral atoll. The wind had diminished to the around 18 knots and we shook out the full main and jib and headed in.
As we approached the main body of the BVI, the mountainous islands rose up out of the mist of a warm tropical morning. It was exciting to see and smell land again after ten long and strenuous days at sea.
Check out the pictures as we post them on the web site. The landfall was marvelous.
We've spent the past three days in Village Cay Marina in Road Town, Tortola. Road Town isn't much of a destination as far as cruising destinations go, but it is a great place to recover from a long passage, fix the stuff we broke on the way and plan our exploration of the BVI's.
Today I went up the mast to inspect the rigging. Happily I found no damage other than a busted up block for our port lazy jacks. (Lazy Jacks are lines run up the mast from the boom to keep the main sail from flopping all over the deck when we drop the main. Not critical hardware, but makes life easier.) It must have broken as we reefed the main in high winds with out letting enough slack on the lazy jacks.
Quinn and I went on a walk to find a replacement. We found one that should work OK at the local rigging shop. One more trip up the mast tomorrow to install it. I was happy to be able to find what we needed here. We'll have to wait until we reach St. Maarten to replace the reefing lines we wrecked.
Tonight Jen and I will figure out where we'll head off to tomorrow. John leaves either tomorrow AM or Sunday AM. Now that we're in port, he's getting anxious and feeling the effect of living with a family and a 4 year old. I figure we'll head to a local anchorage and do some swimming or hit a beach. We'll let you know in the next post.
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