…we visited the Virgin Islands was an experience like no other. My sister and her husband whose family enjoyed all kinds of boats convinced Jane and me to charter (rent) a sailboat in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with them, planning on sailing together for the entire week.
They had chartered a boat there once before, so we felt a little less uncomfortable than we would have had we done this alone. But, I, as captain, still felt very uncomfortable. I was inspired to learn how to sail because of my sister’s husband, so I read a book and took a test at a nearby reservoir where they rented small sailboats called a sunfish. Amazingly, I passed the 10-question test, getting 8 out of 10 answers correct. They gave me a life jacket and walked me to the boat. “Here you go,” said the 18-year-old attendant.
“Well, this is interesting,” I said to myself as I attempted to get into the boat, which tended to move away from the dock as I stepped on it
It was easy enough to hoist the sail and move away from the dock because the wind was pushing me that way. And once I got away from the dock, it was easy to turn away from the wind and let it push the sail and the boat across the water.
The tricky part about sailing is getting back to where you started from. To go against the wind, you have to know a little about physics and something called Bernoulli‘s principle. You can click the link if you want. But, knowing how planes can fly is the same principle.
I studied studiously about this part of sailing and made a couple of attempts to turn around until I figured out what the words I had read meant. Unfortunately, I found my way back to the dock only to crash into it because sailboats don’t have any brakes.
I then took a 3-day course on Lake Superior about how to sail an auxiliary, meaning a sailboat with an auxiliary source of power, i.e. an engine.
That was interesting especially when we first sailed on the instructor’s 30-foot boat with 40+ mph winds that had blown up. For some reason I volunteered to be the first person to hoist the sail up the mast. Although I got the sail up while riding what seemed to me to be huge waves, I quickly came back to the cockpit and leaned over the side of the boat to toss my cookies.
Nevertheless, it was a good learning experience that made me feel confident I could charter a sailboat in the Virgin Islands. It was misplaced confidence.
The boat we chartered was a 42-foot Whitby, which appeared to me to be at least 10 times the size of the 30-footer I learned on. It had two masts instead of one, a cavernous interior that looked like it could hold many more than the six crew members aboard (including me), and a diesel engine, which I had never operated.
I remember being in a state of continual panic as I tried to prepare the boat and the crew to leave the dock. There was food to store, electrical systems to understand, in addition to just learning all the ropes. Getting out of the slip was harrowing. The boat was 42 feet long, but the distance to the dock across the way was maybe 50 feet from my bow. If you have never tried to maneuver a 25,ooo pound boat in still water with a breeze strong enough to push you where you don’t want to go, then you haven’t truly had a recreational sailing experience.
It took a while to leave the dock, with a lot of transmission stress as I shifted from forward to reverse a hundred times. That was after I asked the dockhand if I should leave the lines tying the boat to the dock or take them with me. He looked at me as if I was crazy.
As I said, I was in a state of panic.
We finally got into the channel which I was told had not been dredged lately, so we had to actually plow the keel through the mud.
We eventually get out into the bay. I can see my sister and her husband have raised their sails and are headed for the British Virgin Islands. I, on the other hand, am trying to explain how, to a crew that has never raised a sail in their life, let alone a mainsail, which is kind of important on a sailboat. Out in the bay, the water is not still. It is heaving the boat up and down about 3 or 4 feet. Enough to make most landlubbers a little queasy.
After many attempts, we finally get the mainsail and the jib (forward sail) and the mizzen (aft sail) up, and we are sailing. I look up and can barely see my sister’s boat, but I can tell where they are headed, so I just follow them all the way to Jost Van Dyke where a customs office awaits us. Our tardiness delays our arrival after the customs office has closed, so we are confined to our boat until morning when we can show our passports to the British Government.
Not a problem as all I need to do is open a bottle of rum and pretend I am a pirate in waiting.