Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine August 2015

1,200 Nautical Miles to Windward:PANAMA TO ANTIGUA ON A 37-FOOT SLOOPby Michael SandersonThere were three of us on tap to deliver Saltydog, a Tartan 3700 sloop, from Panama to Antigua. The owners, Steveand Joan, didn’t want to sail to weather that much (Steve joked that his kidneys wouldn’t be able to handle a1,200-nautical-mile beat), so they’d asked David DeLong and my wife, Holly, and me to do the trip for them. David andhis wife, Melissa, on their Hunter 450, Apsaras, had been buddy-boating with Saltydog in Mexico, and David had justreceived his captain’s license (USGC Uninspected Passenger Vessel, a.k.a. six-pack) so Steve and Joan knew that theirfloating home would be well cared for.Planning the RouteHolly and I left Wanuskewin, our Catalina 42 MKII, on the hard in Cartagena,Colombia and coordinated our flights with David’s so we all arrived at Shelter BayMarina in Panama on April 20th. We met with Steve and Joan in the restaurant andheaded back to Shelter Bay. Shelter Bay has on-site Immigration, so on the 23rd wegot our passports stamped, did the final packing, and by 3:30PM we were wavinggoodbye to Steve and Joan.Along the Colombian CoastThe wind was great for the first day out — 15 to 18 knots with gusts into the low20s — and the waves had a long enough period that we didn’t launch off the crestand crash into the trough of every one of them (as would be the case a little later).We had the full main up and the genoa out and were close-hauled making five tofive-and-half knots. We had had a big farewell fish-and-chips lunch at Shelter Bay,which, combined with the swell and the butterflies in our stomachs about taking anew-to-us boat on a long trip, had us skipping dinner.The second day saw the winds rise and fall, causing us to put in a reef to keep theAUGUST 2015 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 16David, Holly and Michael, all set to deliver Saltydog to Antiguadiscussed our strategy for sailing. I’d been using a software package called qtVlm todo the planning. It’s a neat package that allows you to configure it with the boat’ssailing performance figures; load in GRIB files with current, waves, and surface windforecasts; and tell it what conditions you will be willing to sail into. Once it’s allpopulated, you let it run and it tries to determine the best course to the destination.(It’s a free package that runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux PCs, so it doesn’t costanything other than time to check out if you are interested.)I told it we didn’t want to beat into anything more than 25 knots true wind andwaves three metres or less. With those parameters, it determined that our bestcourse would be to sail out toward Panama’s San Blas archipelago; tack to starboardand head to Jamaica; hug the southern coasts of Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Ricoand St. Croix; and then sail down to Nevis and Antigua. It involved a lot of tackingand sailing very close to land a lot of the time. It predicted that if we followed thatroute, we’d make it in 17 or 18 days. We called this “the Northern Route”.I could see from the tool that it was trying to avoid the notoriously windy area offthe north coast of Colombia near 75°W. If I “relaxed” the constraints to indicate thatwe’d accept beating into 30 knots true and dealing with four-metre waves, the routingalgorithm indicated that the optimal course would be to sail on port tack out ofPanama and along the coast of Colombia, tack over to starboard at around Cabo dela Vela, and then sail up to Puerto Rico, St. Croix, Nevis and Antigua. It estimatedthat we could do that in 13 or 14 days. We called this “the Southern Route”.After a fair amount of discussion, we decided to go with the Southern Route, withthe provision that as soon as we felt we were beating up ourselves and/or the boattoo much, we’d tack and head north.On the 22nd, we went into Colón on the shuttle with all of our paperwork, met withthe port captain to get our zarpe, stocked up on food at the Super 99 and thenThree hundred miles offshore, the chartplotter asked if we wanted to do an update.We wisely said ‘No’boat upright and then, not too long after, shake the reef out to keep the speed up.By 4:00PM we’d made 132 nautical miles in the previous 24 hours, which, consideringwe were heading to weather, we thought was great. We started talking about howfast we’d get to Antigua, and how “easy” this trip was after all. (What were we thinkingto tempt fate like that?)Before we’d left, we hadn’t talked a lot about watch schedules. On Wanuskewin,Holly and I do an informal schedule: basically, when one of us is tired, they sleepuntil they wake up or the other person wakes them up because they are sleepy. Whatwe settled on aboard Saltydog were three-hour shifts in the night — I took the 8:00PMto 11:00PM shift, Holly took 11:00PM to 2:00AM, and David took the 2:00AM to5:00AM, at which point I was getting up to make coffee. In general, if one person wasfeeling very awake, they’d stretch their shift by half an hour or an hour to give theoff-watch folks a little more shuteye, though if they felt tired early, which sometimeshappened, they were free to wake up the next watch ahead of schedule. During theday, it was very informal, though we always had one person who was designated “onwatch”. This worked very well for us, and we settled into it by the third day.—Continued on next pageSince 1984Barefoot Yacht Charters & Marine CentreBAREBOAT CHARTERS - FULLY CREWED CHARTERS - ASA SAILING SCHOOL• Doyle Sail Loft & Canvas Shop • Raymarine Electronics • Refrigeration Work• Mechanical & Electrical Repairs • Fibreglass Repairs • Laundry• Vehicle Rentals • Showers • Air Travel• Ice & Water • Diesel & Propane • Moorings• Island Tours • Surftech Surf Shop • Hotel Reservations• Quiksilver Surf Wear • Restaurant & Bar • Boutique• On-site Accommodation • Wi-Fi / Internet Café • Book ExchangePO Box 39, Blue Lagoon, St Vincent, West IndiesTel. 1-784-456-9526 / 9334 / 9144 Fax. 1-784-456-9238barebum@vincysurf.comwww.barefootyachts.com