Three or Four Thousand Miles Later...a Beam Reach

Friday, March 9
Anse du Colombier, St. Barts
N 17 degrees, 55.440 minutes
W 061 degrees. 52.226 minutes

Today we had a perfect sail. Once we stuck our nose around Nevis the wind hit Delilah on the starboard beam and she flew! For the first hour I clocked us at over seven knots consistently. We had reefed the sails just enough. The helm felt good. The waves were fairly big but not too steep, and they passed beneath Delilah like so much salt water under a bridge. When the wind died a little, we unrolled a bit more of our honking big genoa, and we took off again.

We caught no fish, but Dean saw the sail of a beautiful billfish checking out our lure (thank God he didn't hit it; imagine bringing in a marlin hand over hand on a yo yo). The sun shone, the water was clear, and all was right with the world.

To recap, we pulled up our anchor at dawn and were reanchored and swimming with turtles by 2:30. The passage itself, more than fifty miles, took us almost exactly eight hours. Our GPS reports that our average speed was 6.3 knots. Most times we count ourselves lucky if we average 5 knots. The miles just slipped by.

Let's hope we can do this again someday. Preferably on this trip.