Crossing to St. Kitts

We were supposed to leave at 4:00am, but decided after the alarm went off to sleep a little longer and leave at 6:00am.  Next thing I knew we were leaving the Virgin Islands and received a farewell party from a family of humpback whales.  The sun was just coming up over the horizon and I saw one breech in the distance.  This gave us just enough time to grab the cameras and wait until they surfaced again.  You will never believe how close they came to our boat!  It was hard to get good pictures because we were so excited just to see them.  We would yell, “Over there, right in front of us!” We had to slow down just so we wouldn’t run into them.  From what we can guess there was at least 2 adults and 1 baby.  This made our trip and we talked about it the next two days, still not believing how close we got to them.  If we would have left 5 minutes earlier or later, or put the sails up slower, or untied the mooring faster we would have missed our chance to see the whales.  I wish I could say that that was just the beginning of an awesome crossing, but the truth is we didn’t see anything else for the next 2 days, not even another boat.  The only other significant thing that happened was that we almost lost our main anchor.  Preston noticed the screw that holds the anchor to the chain was loose so we tied a rope to the anchor and tied it to the cleat around noon.  It was too hard to tighten the screw with the ceasing waves over the bow.  It wasn’t until my night shift at 1:00am that I noticed the chain had completely come off the anchor and it was only being held on deck by the backup rope.  Luckily the swivel mechanism that holds the anchor to the chain was sill on the deck.  We hauled the anchor up and back to the cockpit.  I’m sure if we had lost that connector it would be $70 bucks at West Marine.  The previous owners had told me to check that screw periodically, but it had slipped our minds.  We are very happy we didn’t loose our anchor in 1000 feet of water in the middle of a crossing.  Maybe our karma has turned around!  We sailed the whole first day until 3:00am when the wind picked up to 20 knots and we decided to motor till morning to make up some ground east and not have to worry about gusting squalls in the dark.  We took shifts every 3 hours through the night and decided around 7:00am that we were both fine inside.  We set an alarm and checked outside every ½ hour.  This allowed us to get some more sleep and stay in away from the salty spray.  We could see land when we were still 30 miles away, which makes for a very long 7 more hours especially when we were both sick of moving and just wanted to anchor and sleep.  We pulled into St. Kitts at 4:30pm on Thursday.  We got up Friday and headed straight to customs.  This whole procedure seems so pointless to me.  We fill out the same paperwork everywhere we go, pay their fees, and then we are fine to walk around their country.  They look at our boat certification, which is expired, I write down the name of our boat and how many people aboard, they look at our passports, and then they ask for money.  After we finish with customs we do the same thing with immigration, and then the same thing at the marine authority office.  The office in the Virgin Islands was the best so far. 

Customs Officer, “You came from Puerto Rico?”

Tara, “Yes”

Customs Officer, “You are a U.S. registered vessel?”

Tara, “Yes”

Customs Officer, “Okay, have a good afternoon.”

Tara, “We have a dog onboard”

Customs Officer, “Puerto Rico said your dog was okay?”

Tara, “Yes”

Customs Officer, “Okay, have a good afternoon.”

No useless paperwork, no pointless fees, just have a good afternoon.  If only all the customs and immigration offices could be that easy.  Here in St. Kitts in order to bring Lucy to shore she needs 3 sets of blood work done to ensure she doesn’t have rabies, and I need to pay a couple hundred dollars for a pet import certificate.  Ohh I told them she will stay on the boat. 

St. Kitts