Friday the Thirteenth. My lucky day.

We do get off at first light, 6 am and start working our way south towards Guadeloupe. It’s 48 nm according to the boating app and at least 8 hours. We’re motor sailing to the bottom of Antigua where the wind starts to pick up.

We’re doing alright but the boat is fighting us and the helm is hard to leeward – makes absolutely no sense. Hard to get it to stay on course as it always wants to go to windward. We settle in but average only about 5 kts in the morning.

Two boats go by us quite quickly which frustrates the hell out of me as we are trying everything we can to eke out speed. One guy flies past us with only his foresail up! What is going on?!?

Our wind instruments are telling us this is a close haul, VERY close in fact. Remarkable we can get any speed as the wind instruments say it is almost head on. Why are these other boats able to go so much faster than us. Christy is unperturbed but it bothers me. Plus our foresail is always flapping. We trim and trim for the close haul but it never improves.

Around 1 pm or so I have a bit of an epiphany. The waves are definitely broad reach and the vane a the top of the mast is definitely broader reach than the instruments say. Perhaps our wind instruments are not right? I assume they are lying and trim for a broad reach. Sails stop flapping, boat stops fighting and we’re going faster. Well waddya know? Gonna have to look at the calibration on those things but for now we assume the wind is at least 15-20 degrees more aft than the instruments say.

We’re still not that fast, but now I assume it’s because we don’t put as much sail out as other people, we’re quite prudent. We talk of ways to learn more sailing, pretty much need to join some racing boats. We have the usual arguments about going to Toronto to race at ABYC and stay at the condo. I’ll do the former but not the latter. Maybe Parry Sound on race nights? (As I write this several days later I see the Parry Sound Yacht Club is only 75 minutes from our house and have sent an email enquiring about race nights and boats looking for crew. I can see Christy seething as she reads this.)

We eventually pull into Deshaies and find a good spot just off the channel. We’re not checking in, we’re not dropping the dinghy, we’re just resting, sleeping and taking off again first light.

We can see people a couple of boats over swimming with the dolphin who clearly seems to be enjoying it. He is frolicking right beside the two guys. If we had more ambition we’d go over ourselves.

But we don’t, instead it’s an early night after Christy’s burgers.