A Christmas gift we don’t appreciate!
For cruisers making their way south along the Thorny Path, the opportunities for good sailing hardly begin until turning the corner at St. Martin. Sure, there will be times that the winds are favorable, especially while a weather front is effecting the normally consistent easterly trades. For the most part though, cruisers will be heading dead east into the wind. So much so that they might start to think that the little needle on their electronic wind gauge is malfunctioning, it always pointing straight ahead. I know we did!
Once turning the corner at St. Martin, the chances for sailing greatly improve as you will typically be reaching with the wind at your side. Or at least in theory anyway. The truth is that, even then, the wind is still not all that cooperative. During the springtime, when most cruisers are typically working their way south, the winds predominantly blow out of the SOUTHeast, meaning that most boats will still be making way hard on the wind. After hurricane season, when the cruisers who will not be heading west start looking to retrace their steps northward, Mother Nature plays a nasty trick and shifts the winds so that they blow out of the NORTHeast. Although they have a nice name for this phenomena, the Christmas Winds, it is not a gift that we appreciate at all.
ZTC rests at anchor.
The pretty village of Charlestown, Canouan.
Does last evening’s red sky foretell of a nice sail today?
As a followup to my Spot: Yea or Nay post, I’d say that the overall consensus was to let the subscription slide. As you will see on our Where page though, Spot is still active.
After checking the account, it appears to me that the service was paid by a pre-authorized debit one week ago! So, I guess we’ve got another 12 months of service whether we want it or not. Thanks very much for all of the feedback. I found the results of my survey surprising yet very valuable.
Merry Christmas Mike and Rebecca…
Thanks, and the same to you!
Merry Christmas
And the same to you, Cameron.
We begin our down island trip mid January, hopefully our paths will cross somewhere along the line
That would be cool. I tried to check out your website to see where you will be starting from but the link doesn’t work. Is it spelled correctly?
Not sure whether I spelt it correctly – have repeated again….website working fine 🙂 Currently in St Thomas – expect to be heading to St Martin around mid January.
You put .com previously instead of .co.uk. That will make a difference. 🙂
Our boat will be in SXM from Jan. 14th until the 24th without us. We will be back after that though and ready to begin heading south again, or perhaps SW to Saba. Hope to see you.