Bermuda to Antigua 2023

Thankfully this passage of 1,000nm was nowhere near the death-defying challenge of our previous trip to Bermuda.

However, it did have its moments. Most of them before we even left St. Georges harbor, and later some extended issues.

I was joined for this passage by Doug Jorgensen. Doug lives in Southern California and is as solid a sailor as you will see. He actually flew to New Zealand in 2002 to help us commission Morpheus after her initial launch and has several thousand miles of sailing onboard including our East-West Atlantic Crossing. Doug flew in a couple of days prior to departure and helped prep the boat for the trip.

Also, returning was my brother Bob! After our trip to Bermuda, I wasn’t sure that he’d return. He flew in at noon on November 1st for a planned Nov 2nd departure.

We met at our favorite St. Georges restaurant Wahoo’s, grabbed a quick lunch, looked at the weather, consulted with Gibb Kane, and decided that the best time to leave was NOW!

There was a breezy rainy system blowing over Bermuda as we ate lunch. The forecast told us that once that system passed, we would have about 12 hours of reasonable weather that would be followed by two days of possible gale-force winds in Bermuda.

The trick was to leave right behind the first system, and then sail as fast as we could to make sure that the second system couldn’t catch up to us.

We took our dinghy out to Morpheus in strong winds and pouring rain and as quick as we could put the outboard engine away, lifted and stowed the dinghy, and raised anchor in a strong 25-30 knot squall, all this as the sun prepared to disappear below the horizon. This really did not seem like the right time to leave on a passage. But, the weather improved almost immediately.

Ultimately, our departure timing worked perfectly. The first night was a tough one as we had leftover waves from the now departing weather system. We struggled a bit to find the right balance between speed (to stay ahead of the next system) and comfort (to keep the boat/crew from breaking)

By mid-day on day 2 things really began to calm down and we were reaching in 15 knots. We pushed the boat pretty hard during this phase, and by day 3 we were far enough South that we could declare victory and safely assume that we had stayed in front of the last bad weather that we might run into.

It was time to enjoy some really nice beam reaching in 12-16 knots of wind. Pretty perfect.

Sadly, the winds dropped and we ended up motoring for more or less the last 350nm of the trip. This is the section of the trip where a few gremlins started popping up in our systems.

Our historically reliable and much-loved autopilot decided to stop communicating with the primary ship’s compass. In fact, our primary ship’s compass decided to stop communicating with just about everything.

You never really appreciate just how great the autopilot is until you lose it. When we were on watch normally we could read a book, make a coffee, send an email, etc. When the autopilot goes out, you need to hand steer and it’s nearly impossible to do anything else.

I spent the next two days trying to get things up and running again. I plugged in a backup compass (no luck), and I thought about swapping the autopilot computer out for our spare, I checked and rechecked all the connections No joy.

One benefit of getting us out from under our normal watch-keeping station was the ability to see more of the amazing star-filled night skies. We didn’t have much of a moon, but the sky was something to see!

It was while hand steering that one of us noticed that the mast wand that holds the wind instruments was loose. Those instruments (and that carbon fiber wand) are expensive! But, none of us were ready to get hoisted to the top of the mast to save them. No sense taking one possible issue and turning it into more trouble. We just had to hope that they held on until we reached harbor.

Not much later we decided to make an unscheduled stop in Barbuda. Barbuda was the site of our two month covid lockdown and it enabled us to stop 40 miles short of our destination Falmouth Harbor, Antigua.

We dropped anchor a couple of hours before sunset, right where we spent our Covid time. Sadly, the local resort has received the permission of the Barbuda powers that be to develop what was a small resort hotel that fit nicely into the surroundings. This new development resulted in 5-6 resort buildings, and eight new luxury vacation homes all within feet of what had been one of the world’s nicest undeveloped beaches. I’m not sure that I will ever return.

After a quick swim and our mandatory, “arrival drinks”, we quickly went up the mast and all that was needed was to tighten 3 bolts that held the wand in place. Problem solved, so we returned to dinner and additional arrival drinks.

The next morning, our plan was to start early and then motor sail over to Falmouth Harbor in Antigua. Unfortunately, the gods had other plans. For reasons still not understood, the bearings in our starter motor had seized and we were unable to start the engine!!

After a few hours of pounding on the starter with progressively larger hammers and other tools, we gave up.

Our journey to Antigua ended with a slow sail, and a pretty awesome entrance under sail, prior to anchor down in Falmouth’s outer harbor.

The interesting thing is that while the starter didn’t work, the autopilot did!!

I hate Gremlins!