ATLANTIC 6 - A Hero's Welcome!

Landfall Rodney Bay St. Lucia N14 04.43 W60 57.02
I won’t bore you with all the nitty gritty details of the final few days. Suffice it to say I was a complete basket case managing only about 4 hours sleep in total in that period. I think I actually got to the point where I was ‘trying too hard’ to sleep and simply couldn’t. Each night there were squalls to F7 and the seas were so steep and horrendous that I was ‘chained’ to the helm, in and out of consciousness.

I clipped into the cockpit to sleep on the floor close to the wheel and at one point after drifting off, woke suddenly to a crash of water as a huge wave broke right in the cockpit. One second all was quiet and the next, water shot straight up my waterproof trousers and I was sitting in about 10 inches of water!

It seemed that the closer to land I got, the worse the squalls were and the more frequent. The last actual day of sailing the squalls were pretty much back to back but by this time I was using them to travel as fast as I could by manually helming and going over 8 knots pretty consistently. They are so much less scary in daylight! I surfed waves all the final 5nm to round the island and enter the safety of the bay.

Kat had seen Doris come round the headland and called me to confirm it was in fact me, being about 4 hours ahead of schedule.

I dropped anchor in Rodneys Bay and for the first time in almost a month the boat wasn’t rocking from rail to rail!

Then I started to melt! – The heat was unbelievable! I had a wash and changed my clothes as I was in a pretty bad state! Kat’s friends bought her out to meet me in a RIB. It was so good to see her again and I gave her the biggest cuddle. She came bearing a ‘Goody Bag’ full of chilled chocolate, Champagne, Rum, fruit juice and all my favorite things.

She had arranged a marina berth for me in advance pointing out that it needed to be as easy and stress free as possible. I must have been pretty ‘out of it’ by this time because after getting the anchor up, I simply told her to take us in and let her berth Doris! All you guys in Brighton – I let Kat berth Doris! I didn’t even care that the depth read 0.0m about 50 yards from the berth… I was quite tired!

Matthias was also there to meet us and took our lines.

From that point on, I shook hands with person after person as the guy who just ‘solo’ed the Atlantic’. It seems Kat knows a lot of people here and had arranged a little ‘Welcome Party’ in the local bar for both Matti & myself. I satisfied my craving for Beef Burger & Chips and was then treated to a huge ‘slab’ of chocolate cake.

She is the best and it would have been all so different without having her there to meet me. I would have probably simply gone to bed in the anchorage. When I first set out, the whole goal was to simply sail across the Atlantic, but somewhere on the way across everything changed. I couldn’t care about the Atlantic and was simply looking forward to seeing her again – she really did make my arrival special. I know other ‘Single Handers’ (some of whom tune in here) who have made land fall and then felt so ‘alone’ on arrival because there is nobody to share the experience with. Not so in my case, I now have about 20 new friends!

I have a few jobs to get done now I am here including getting the mainsail repaired, her bottom cleaned (Doris not Kat) and anti fouled, and maybe some alterations to the cockpit design.

Kat has rejoined Doris, at least for a while and we intend to explore and dive the waters around various islands in the Caribbean. I’ll post more about the actual island etc very soon.

I would also like to say a huge ‘ThankYou’ to everyone who sent me SMS messages, jokes and words of encouragement which made the trip a lot less lonely and really did encourage me to keep pressing on as things got a little bleak toward the end of the journey. It’s really the best feeling in the world knowing that there’s friends ‘rooting’ for you and for that I am extremely grateful.