We departed Grand Cayman on a beautiful sunny morning, anxiously clearing past

the eastern end of the island and waiting to see if an unexpected northeast swell would devastate us, but all seemed tranquil with gentle 1-2 foot seas and clear skies.  With the calm water, our fuel (having already been filtered through 10 of our filter cartridges) wasn’t sloshing badly, and our port engine was running smoothly. When it did require a filter change it was comfortable to drift forward for ten minutes while we changed filters.

The next day, as we bore further south, we started to take the wind just forward of

the beam. We shook out the sails, gaining another 2.5 knots to the port engine, but as we came within sight of the western tip of Jamaica, waves wrapping around the north AND south of Jamaica were building and converging on our position at 45-90 degrees to each other, and building fast.  As night fell, we were well east along Jamaica but still 50 miles offshore, having worn south to use the wind longer.  We turned east and pulled the sails down, securing the ship in anticipation of yet another nasty sea coming…and we were not disappointed.

The seas came round close to the starboard beam, and the period shortened as we drove dead into the wind.  Fuel started sloshing, and we soon found ourselves dead in the water as the port engine sucked up the sludge that was our fuel.  Frantic filter changes continued, with increased urgency each time as we bore closer to the lee shore.  We downloaded a weather report through our satphone (tough to hold the antennae southwest in that sea state) and realized that, once again, unexpected bad weather (11-12 foot seas and 35 mph winds) were coming to the windward passage, and we knew that we would be very, very lucky to make it around Jamaica’a eastern tip and pull into Port Antonio on the north side.

As day broke, Sky and I made the decision to divert to Kingston, which we might be able to reach before dark.

As we approached, we were not able to raise any of the Jamaican officials. It was a public holiday. We raised a local boater on VHF who connected us with a retired Evinrude dealer, who lived up the mountains and monitored all marine radio traffic.  We rendezvoused with the first boater at a small cay off Kingston. He lent me a chart and pointed out the unmarked location of the

customs area, a small unmarked anchorage, and the Royal Jamaican Yacht Club anchorage, also unmarked and uncharted.  Then, our new friend Tony Tame up on the mountain contacted the customs, immigration, health, and port officials, and we made our final, hair raising approach past Wreck Reef’s dangerous lee shore into Kingston’s main channel and the protection of its harbor…what a relief.

Within 2 hours we were cleared in and allowed to proceed to the yacht club, where we dropped anchor and collapsed asleep.  We then spent 24 hours on reconnaissance; getting a Jamaican sim card and number for the blackberry, finding and calling stores that might carry the parts we needed, finding and arranging transport into town to search for what we need at stores we had already

contacted. The kind master mechanic and master engineer from the neighboring Carribbean Maritime Training Institute drove us all over town and helped us figure out where to find what we needed.  Within 72 hours, we had obtained and installed all the parts that we needed to repair our engine systems (and incidentally, our alternator) and had polished the 400 gallons of diesel in our tanks…opening each of the three tanks’ access hatches, pumping out and filtering all the fuel, scrubbing and vacuuming the sludge from the bottom and then re-sealing the tanks.  We finished at midnight, took on fuel the next day and then were invited by the yacht club to wait for weather at their dock.

What a relief!  Tied to the dock, everything is easier, and anchor watches don’t need to be set.  It will be hard enough in Haiti; it is great that everyone might get a chance to rest now.  The weather is driving us crazy…there is a huge high pressure system over the east, sending howling winds down the Windward Passage, and a SE swell meeting it…it is nasty there, and we are heavily loaded with IV fluids.

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