Squalls, Breakages, and Blue Mountains - Jamaica Bound!

The Blue Mountains!

The distance from Cartagena to Kingston is 465 nautical miles, which is 861 kilometres, or a roadtrip from our home port of Toronto to my hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake and on to Glen Cove, Long Island, New York where this adventure began. It was to be our longest passage, well in excess of the 375nm from Martinique to Los Roques we covered a year ago. While the road trip would take you about nine hours, plus time spent at the border explaining that the purpose of your visit to the United States was simply to see what driving 465 nautical miles felt like, we expected to arrive in Jamaica in about four days.

The Route

We knew this would be a challenging passage at the end of December - the trade winds would be ripping so the seas would be “lively”, the current would be trying its best to push us off course and into shallow waters, there would be lots of freighter traffic, and unlike our nice downwind sail from Martinique this would be upwind most of the way. But we knew at the other end would be huge plate of ackee and saltfish and a Red Stripe so away we went.

Lively was certainly the right word for this passage. For the first three days and nights we had 20-25 knot winds with gusts to 30 in the squalls, which we had every night. The swells were unpleasant, and neither of us really felt like eating much let alone cooking anything. Good thing we had done a Dominoes pizza run before leaving Cartagena! There was indeed lots of traffic and we had to radio several large vessels to make sure they saw us and coordinate who was going to change course to avoid collision.  There was rain every night and combined with the wind and the waves that we would hit and splash over the bow we were very glad we had our new cockpit enclosure to keep us dry and warm.

We also had breakages to contend with. On the first night two of our solar panels were dangerously close to a one-way trip to the bottom of the Caribbean; James managed to get some lines around them to keep them safely on deck. On the second night our jib car (the pulley that attaches the end of your jib to the boat) packed it in and snapped with a horrible cracking noise that freaked both of us out. We also had a line break, some tears in the sail, and as we found out later lost a piece of the rubrail along the side of the boat!

We religiously checked the weather each day. Besides getting text updates on our handheld satellite device we’d listen to a weather show on the high frequency radio. We were assured that as we headed into day four, the nasty weather would ease up and become more in our favour. We celebrated New Year’s Eve almost around the halfway point by grunting to each other “Happy New Year”. By the end of the fourth day the lack of sleep and improper eating was starting to get to us as we both thought we heard voices whispering on the radio and I kept imagining someone was handing me a drink and would go to take it only to grasp at thin air! I don’t know how people cross oceans on their own…

Also about halfway through it became clear that this four-day trip was actually going to be a five-day trip. The good news was that we would approach the island in daylight, which is always nice when you arrive somewhere for the first time. At dawn on the fifth day we were greeted with one of the most beautiful sights we could imagine - Jamaica’s massive Blue Mountains fully visible and beautifully lit by the rising sun.

After what seemed like ages we entered Kingston Harbour, which is quite large, and with about 20 minutes left in this epic journey we promptly ran out of fuel. We put the anchor down, put a jug of diesel into the tank, and were back underway before any Jamaican eyebrows were raised. It was almost like this had happened before (it did - the exact same thing happened as we were coming in to anchor at Isle-a-Vache, Haiti!).

We put the anchor down outside the Royal Jamaican Yacht Club, made a proper meal, and had our first showers in five days. What an incredible feeling!