Our Early Cruising Life

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the best things about sailing is the freedom. That whole, wide ocean is yours to meander…no phones, no faxes, no crowds. No doctors, either. 

Being a small boat racer, I thought that sailing a cruising boat sounded just about as dull as dirt. But good, racing buddies, Sally and Bud Hurd, kept raving about the great times they had cruising the Virgin Islands.

Thus, in 1979, Betty and I decided to give it a try. We enticed good friends, Barbara and Carson Bell, to join us and chartered a Morgan Out Island 41 from Dick Jackney of Caribbean Yacht Charters based in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. We had a fabulous time and Dick convinced us that these boats were going to make good rental income and appreciate with time. We bit, and with the Bells, bought one. The deal was that we could use it free one month a year for five years and I threw in the provision that we could take it out of the Virgins as I was worried we might get bored sailing only the Virgins for five years. This was the first yacht that we named Expectation.

The Morgan was not a great sailboat. It was more of a floating condominium, comfortable but slow and not good on the wind. In those days charter boats came with minimum equipment: a VHF radio and a depth finder, no navigational equipment and no windlass! Still, we had some wonderful adventures with Expectation.

And about the “no doctor:” one year, Betty and I were sailing Expectation with Jeff and his girlfriend, Kerry, off the west coast of Martinique when we ran out of diesel on a flat calm day. Jeff hadn’t been feeling great, but we had to get some fuel and I didn’t feel I could leave the boat. So, we loaded Jeff and Kerry into the dinghy and sent them ashore in the blazing sun. They came back with the fuel and fortunately, the engine started up without bleeding. This was a minor miracle since, in those days, I didn’t know diesel engines had to be bled to restart after running out of fuel.

Jeff felt terrible when he got back to the boat and by the time we reached Fort-de-France, he had a high fever. We anchored in the bay and went ashore in the dinghy looking for a hospital. We finally found the hospital except there wasn’t a soul on duty that spoke English. All they could do was agree he was sick and give him some pills.

The next day Jeff was so sick he couldn’t keep anything down and became delirious. We were deeply concerned because there was no way we could get him ashore in the dinghy. I went ashore and was finally able to locate the American Consulate, which fortunately was open, and they gave me the name of an English-speaking doctor. Not only was the doctor a nice lady but she was willing to make “boat calls.”

She agreed Jeff was a very sick boy and gave him a shot. Since he needed three a day for the next three days, she left us with the shots and showed Kerry how to administer them. In fact, she had Kerry practice on an orange. Kerry got it right away and soon Jeff was his old self again.

Sometime later, we were on the beach in Martinique when we met an American doctor. Jeff described his symptoms and the shots he was given, and the doctor just shook his head.

He said, “We don’t use that medicine in the States anymore. It tends to cause blindness.”

On another trip, we were anchored near a tiny island close to Martinique when Betty developed a terrible toothache in the tooth where she had had a root canal procedure in Aspen just a few weeks earlier. We found the local dentist in a dirt-floored office. He said that some dental work was a success and some a failure. She had a failure. He pulled the tooth!

Our most memorable trip on the original Expectation was from St. Thomas to St. Martin’s with Carson and Barbara Bell. We hung out for four days in the Virgins waiting for a serious storm to pass. I spent some time examining my chart (a type of map that shows all the places where you might be lost). There were high wind warnings and reports of two ships lost in the Anegada Passage. The Anegada Passage between the Virgin Island and St. Martin’s can be one of the roughest pieces of water anywhere. The wind comes unimpeded all the way from Africa and then funnels between the two islands, developing huge seas.

We were at the Bitter End and getting impatient. It seemed that the wind had calmed some so I suggested we just stick our nose out to see how bad it was. Once we left the island and it started to get dark, there was no way we could come back without navigational equipment. We were committed to the crossing. What a night!

The Morgan didn’t have a dodger so every wave came over the bow and hit the person trying to steer. One wave brought a good size fish that hit Carson in the shoulder and flopped around the cockpit before we got rid of it.

Below deck it was a nightmare. It was raining salt water everywhere. The boat had never seen rough water and leaked like a sieve. At one point, Barbara was lying in bed with two garbage sacks around her, trying to keep dry. Because you had to turn away from the compass every time a wave hit, and the big waves were constantly throwing us off course, steering was impossible. I steered as long as I could but finally was exhausted and turned it over to Carson who, at his prime, wasn’t a great helmsman. We floundered on, motor sailing through the night. 

When dawn broke, we should have been within sight of St. Martin or Anguilla, but there was nothing except ocean. The wind had calmed down and we sailed on until I finally spotted an island ahead of us, which, although I’d never seen it before, I recognized by its unusual conical shape to be Saba. We were miles south of our course.

Having missed St. Martin entirely, the closest protection was St. Barts, and we motor sailed into the harbor by mid-afternoon. By then the wind had died down and the sun was out. We anchored, looking like drowned rats.

The first order of business was to get things dry. Everything in the boat was soaked: the bedding, clothes, my camera—everything. We brought as much as we could up on deck and hung it on the lifelines to dry. We were just settling down when a harbor boat came out and a man on board starting yelling that we had to leave, “The ferry’s coming!” he shouted repeatedly.

I turned the key to start the engine. Silence. We tried everything we could think of to get the engine turned over but had no luck at all. By this time the man on the patrol boat was going crazy yelling at us, “You have to move, you have to move!” We soon saw why. A huge barge was coming at us and the wind was blowing it right down on our position. Since the barge had unloaded its cargo, its side was higher than our mast. I could see barnacles the size of baseballs on its towering walls.

All we could do was let out every inch of rode (anchor line) we had and hope for the best. The ferry passed so close that everything on Expectation shook. I couldn’t believe that barge didn’t catch our line, but it passed safely. We celebrated with the stiffest drink anyone could make. The drowned rats lived to toast another day! 

The next morning the charter company sent a mechanic over who found a short in the ignition system, obviously from all the saltwater we had taken during our crossing.

Another trip across the Anegada was memorable for its beauty. Lee Lyon had joined us as crew, the night sky was full of stars as it can only be when you are out of sight of land, the wind was perfect to sail on a smooth broad reach and for two hours we had a whale following us only 20 yards astern. It’s nights like those that make you forget all the rough passages.

 Five years of cruising on Expectation and we were hooked for good. We eventually had 12 more wonderful years of cruising on our new Expectation.