Well you can guess what's coming can't you?! That's right in the dark in the early hours of this morning, the breeze deserted us and we started drifting slowly back the way we had come a couple of miles of Barbados's major commercial port - Bridgetown. Now fair enough, Bridgetown ain't Dover but it is pretty busy, and two ships had already crossed our bows on their way in as we drew abeam of the port. To the west, a couple of miles away, there was a 'que' of about 4 other ships lining up to make their approach. I wasn't too concerned to begin with because they were all more or less stationary and I assumed, waiting for daylight and in any case we had got past Bridgetown - hadn't we! But what I hadn't realised at the time was that we had drifted back on our track and were, (which I only discovered later) slap bang on a transit between them and the port's pilot pick up area.
I kept an eye on all the AIS signals from the ships and after an hour of drifting aimlessly, I noticed that the cruise ship Britannia one was now on the move at a slow 3.5 knots. Hmm! I thought I'd better let her know we were here so called her up on the VHF to explain we couldn't use our engine, were drifting and unable to 'make way'. A phrase which came to me out of nowhere but which I thought might make it appear that I was in control of the situation. A very British and reassuring voice told me he knew we were here and could see us drifting slowly south and that they were preparing to close the port to pick up a pilot. Oh, that's news (the drifting south bit) to me I thought, I'd better check, but kept that to myself and thanked the nice British man.
Half an hour later, we had the faintest of breezes and I managed to turn Bonny round and head north, very very slowly indeed. "Sailing vessel Bonny, sailing vessel Bonny, sailing vessel Bonny, Britannia, Britannia." Oh heck I thought now what? I dashed down to the chart table and took in that Britannia had upped her game and was now travelling at 6.5 knots directly for us. I answered the call and was asked to go to Channel 6 which I did. The same very pleasant voice said he had noticed we were moving north and had we managed to get our engine going? "No, I'm afraid we have a rope around our propeller and won't be able to tackle that until daylight. We are now sailing very slowly north but could start drifting again at any minute." Understood came the reply. We are now heading into to pick up our pilot and you are directly in our path so I would be most grateful if you could do your best to continue on your present course as quickly as possible. "I certainly will do my very best" I assured him.
There's nothing like a few thousand tons of cruise ship bearing down on one to sharpen the senses! In the event I think we probably made 500 metres over the next 20 minutes, at which point he passed our stern about 500 metres off!
After that the wind died once again and we came to another halt. Over the next few hours a feint breeze blew in fits and starts and we made a few more hundred metres until around 0700 the NE Breeze filled in properly and we started sailing at a decent speed close hauled up the coast on a beautiful morning...
- not too hot - towards Port Saint Charles, which as of 0800 local time is 7 miles off. We'll have to put in a tack to lay it and so may end up doubling that distance but it does now look pretty certain we'll be in later today without the need for me to go over the side out on the ocean!
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