Day Three

What a busy day! I’m just finding the time to wright this on my iPhone as i go to sleep in the forward cabin of the boat. Today we made way from St. Barts to Statia.

For the rest of the photos and video, and daily summaries, be sure to read the Sailing the Leeward Islands Trip Summary
Photos set on Flickr (Slideshow)
Video on YouTube

– Early morning start getting out of the harbor.
– Heavy winds again, around 18kt throughout the day. Now that we’re more familiar with how the boat sails under heavy winds, we unfurled the entire jib, and raised the main to the 1st reef.

– Sailed on a nice beam reach all day, sometimes making close to 9kt. Awesome!
– As we got within range of Statia, we started to see a huge grouping of very large oil tankers offshore to Statia.
– When we got near, we counted about 12 city sized tankers. They were waiting for a spot at the pumping pier to load or unload crude oil onshore. Sailing between the tankers was very dramatic.

– Finding a secure place to stop at the minimally protected harbor at Statia was a bit difficult – our first two moorings were faulty, so we finally anchored. Apparently all of the other boats had the same issues with the Statia Moorings as we did, because they were all anchored too – in an unnecesarily tight formation.

– After a tasty lunch on the boat, everyone except Zac went ashore to explore.
– Walking around Statia felt a little like walking around an extremely well done international theme area at disneyworld.

– The dutch colonial style wa perfectly preserved, and a pleasure to explore – we even found a synagogue with a mickvah!

– For dinner on the boat tonight, Zac and Dyana made us tasty soft tacos.
– Tomorrow we’re staying anchored in Statia, and going Diving and hiking all day.
– So far the trip is great, although I’m not sure Evelyn is getting along with everyone as well as we would have hoped.