Marion to Tortola

After a winter hiatus from offshore sailing, another OPB sailing opportunity came up when I visited Hew in Marion during my summer bikepacking trip. Chip Johns was taking his boat from Marion to Tortola for the winter and Hew mentioned I was available for the trip. I’m pretty picky about who I will go offshore with, but this group of four – Chip, his brother Peter and Hew Russell – who I have known for probably 50 years from the Beverly Yacht Club all with a lifetime of sailing/offshore experience, was a perfect match. I immediately said YES!

On the lead up to the trip, I drove up to Massachusetts to see family and brought a trailer so I could take Lexi’s Snipe back to Annapolis for the winter. As luck would have it, we were also able to sail the Mystic Lake Halloween Regatta on the Saturday before (thanks to Jim Bowers for the boat loan). It was a blustery, warm fall day of crazy lake sailing in a fun costumes: Dr. Doofenshmirtz and daughter Vanessa from Finneas and Ferb (a fave in our house). The best costumes rhyme with real life 🤣

That was fun, but back to the offshore sailing… As is typical – for insurance reasons, cruisers always leave to go south around November 1 – we left Marion on a grey but warmish October 31. We beat out of Buzzards Bay through Quicks Hole, skirting around Gay Head and Nomans Land and through the windmill farms before dark. The long range weather forecast would take us east of Bermuda to get to the easterly trades, then due south to Tortola. There was the possibility of a stop in Bermuda depending on how the weather in the Caribbean was shaping up as there was a lot of unsettled weather south of 26 degrees North.

Motoring out or Marion wondering how cold the first night or two would be. It was actually pretty temperate and I didn’t need all the clothes I brought. A few weeks later would have been much different…
Steering out of Buzzards Bay. Margalo, a Morris 48, is a beautiful feeling boat and as a result I often hand steered during my watches.
The two offshore windfarms were pretty wild. Looking back at night at the synchronized flashing red lights on top of the units was a little surreal.
The big picture. Bermuda is a little east of the rhumb line to Tortola and it makes for a convenient and interesting stopping point if needed.

We settled into the offshore routine with 15-20 kts from the SW, a really nice but a little bumpy starboard tack beam reach, making 8-9 kts. After a couple days of steady sailing, beautiful sunsets, dark nights, and spectacular sunrises the bottom fell out of the breeze (as predicted) and we motored for about 12 hours until the next system rolled in from the northeast. The updated weather forecast south called for a “pause” in Bermuda so after three and a half days, we made landfall in the evening in St. George’s. We anchored for the night, got squared away at customs and tied up at the St. George’s Dinghy Club the next morning for the next few days. Oh darn, we just had to spend a few days in Bermuda bombing around on scooters and enjoying the local scene. It was very much a nostalgia trip for me having been to Bermuda on the Tabor Boy in 1980 and a number of times racing Snipes in the late 80s and 90s at International Race Week and of course meeting the love of my life there. It strained the “I’m retired, you’re not” thing a bit when I tried to get Lisa to fly to Bermuda for a few days to join us while we were there, but she was up to her ears in alligators at work so just couldn’t swing it. It was fun to be there, but had a big hole in the experience without her.

The rocking starboard tack on the way to Bermuda, cruising along at 8-9 knots with a double reef and staysail.
One of the many spectacular sunrises, perhaps my favorite part of the day, especially after a very dark night.
As I am not much of a cook and have no problem spending time below bouncing around so I settled into my standard spot washing dishes, an Alex Pline core competency.
Even in the middle of the Atlantic, it can be a mill pond. The NE breeze was just starting to fill in the distance.
Margalo tied up “Med Style” at the St. George’s Dinghy Club. The club hosted a number of boats from the “Salty Dog Rally” who also stopped in Bermuda on their way to Antigua. It was interesting to chat with a bunch of them and while we did not see them in Bermuda, I chatted on the radio with Josh/Danielle Romey, former SSA Snipe sailors on S/V Scheherazade who left Bermuda a few hours earlier than we did on their way to Antigua.
Some location induced nostalgia: A wheelie pose during my first trip to Bermuda on the Tabor Boy in 1980. This experience was the inspiration for my going back to Bermuda on a whim in 1989 to sail Snipes. I have been back 8 times (between 1990-2007) to sail Snipes at International Race Week and in 1992 I met Lisa during the regatta, were engaged there in 1993 and won the regatta together in 1997 when she was 5 months pregnant with Lexi. In retrospect, the Tabor Boy trip is one of those experiences that no doubt greatly altered the trajectory of my life as had I not gone, I might not have made the effort to go sail Snipes in 1989 and never met Lisa and moved to Annapolis.
We were able to connect with my old Snipe friend Kevin Blee and have lunch at the Royal Hamilton Amatueur Dinghy Club the co-sponsor of the Marion to Bermuda Race. Surprisingly I had never been there.
So much of what makes these trips special is the camaraderie, here sitting around the table before having dinner telling stories and recounting days gone by.
The 360 view from Gibbs Hill Lighthouse is a must see.

After three days we were all getting itchy to get underway again and since the weather was clearing up south it was time to get rolling. We left St. George’s in the late morning and from there it was the typical “wash, rinse and repeat” of offshore sailing continuing with incredible sunsets, sunrises and the beginnings of a new Moon to brighten the night sky a bit. The leg to Bermuda was extremely dark at night due to no Moon, but when it was clear throughout this trip Mercury and Jupiter were insanely bright. The typical view at night was the procession of the constellation Orion across the sky, like an old friend. For the most part we had an easterly breeze on the port beam ranging from 10-25 kt and easily were averaging about 8.5 knots plus or minus. The Morris 48 is a powerful boat with a deeper keel and tall carbon rig so we could easily maintain that speed with even a double reef (we only had reefs 2 and 3 rigged) and a staysail. But, we often switched between the no reef/2nd reef and the jib/staysail depending on the breeze. Both jibs were on roller fullers and both sets of winches were electric, so it made it easy for us 60+ dudes. We did have a 24 hour period of very little wind in the middle of the leg as we transitioned to the next system but fortunately Margalo motors comfortably at about 8 kts, so other than the steady drone of the engine it was no biggie.

In the absence of a Moon, the bright planets – this was Mercury – really do shed a lot of light.

With four competent sailors we kept an interesting and relaxed watch schedule of “3 on, 9 off” between 0600 and 1800 and “2 on, 6” off between 1800 and 0600 which allowed for longer periods of sleep, shorter night watches and a rotation of the night watches. The tradeoff was most of your watches were solo (thus requiring competent sailors) and of course if you needed help, you called for it, and I often came up early and stayed late for the company. As we trucked south, the weather warmed with water temps eventually in the high 80s and it started to get pretty uncomfortable sleeping below since we could not have any hatches open. But watches were pleasant in a t-shirt and shorts or perhaps a light jacket.

Pretty much 900 miles of this port tack!
Rocking along!
Perhaps my favorite sunset of the trip during a 24 hour motoring spell.
The same sunset just after the sun went below the horizon which reflects spectacularly from the cloud cover.
We had some really good home made frozen meals from a local place in Marion. We always had a communal dinner about 1800.

It was only the last 6 hours that the remnants of the unsettled weather close to Tortola made it a little spicy. I got off watch at 0000 with the usual 15-20 kts and some minor squalls around and went to sleep. I woke up several hours later to some chatter on deck about the weather, a third reef and course change running more downwind as the breeze built into the 30s. The motion of the boat was very awkward due to the sea state and a couple of times in my bunk I was thinking “please come back down, please come back down” when a wave would round us up a bit. I got up, dressed and lent a hand. We rolled up the staysail and came back up to course with just the triple reef still making almost 9 knots comfortably for the rest of the night as we endured squalls, lightning and a steady 30 kts. Fortunately the lightning was very diffuse and never close. By day break, the squalls receded, the breeze abated and we added more sail. Ultimately with about 10 miles to go the breeze headed us 90+ degrees and went down to under 10 knots so we just fired up the engine and motored into the sloppy conditions the last two hours into Soper’s Hole at the west end of Tortola. A bit anticlimactic, but that’s how cruising goes.

The squally weather started in last 24 hours into Tortola, but we skirted most of them early on until the last 6 hours.
The view of just how small the main is with a triple reef as we motored into Tortola.

We tied up, got settled with customs then headed over to our final spot in a marina and got the boat cleaned up during the day. The next day was a fun day so we went for a sail over to Jost Van Dyke, relaxing with drinks and lunch in two spots followed by a trip to the Bubbly Pool (a must see spot) and some excitement when the engine wouldn’t start on the way back to Tortola. We just sailed off the mooring (much to the excitement of a neighboring cruising cat) and back to Soper’s Hole, sailing up to a mooring, launching the dinghy and pushing the boat back into the slip. A few hours of troubleshooting and voila, just a bad starter switch. The next day was a long travel day of ferries, planes and cars and the day after that, a short visit in New Bedford and the drive back to Annapolis with the Snipe.

The entrance to Soper’s Hole on the west end of Tortola. I was in the USVI in the 90s but forgot how rugged and hilly it is compared to the low lying sandy Bahamian landscape.
Flying code flag Q before picking up a mooring and heading into customs.
The view from up the rig of Soper’s Hole as I was rigging the courtesy flag halyard from the spreader. This was one of our clean up tasks.
On our day trip to Jost Van Dyke, we stopped at a little sand island with a few palm trees between Tortola and Jost Van Dyke. We anchored and took the dinghy in. Hew took a fun multi-exposure panorama, but unfortunately a dousing of his phone on the way in did it in and I’m not sure if he was ever able to recover it.
The quintessential touron photo.

All in all, it was an awesome trip, about two weeks total, 1500 miles, 8 days of really nice sailing (plus a half day of really snotty) and really fun camaraderie. It was especially fun to reconnect with Chip and Peter since we share a lot of long ago history.

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