Good morning. We tore the sail.
At least that's what we discovered when we motored out of Anegada and started our way to the next destination. The morning started at the normal wake up around 7:30am, then going topsides found that there was no wind. None whatsoever. So, that's when we decided to go to Jost Van Dyke since we wouldn't have much time to spare given the time it would take to sail at speed. Out of the channel, and we put up all sails (no reefing). That's when we saw it. The main sail had a batten that had come out of its pocket, and there were two tears at the top of the sail around the leach seam. "Hum, that's not good". We attempted to put a call into the charter company to get some direction on how to proceed. But we were miles away from any cell service. We decided to keep the sails up and make a reach down wind. That way, there was little pressure on the sails from further damage, and we could still get a relaxing day in what was turning out to be a nice easy relaxing day.
How the sails tore is up for speculation. But I believe during the day we were sailing from Virgin Gorda to Anegada, I caught a batten end in the lazy jack lines, and cranked to hard. It is the only thing I can think would have ripped the sail and dislodged the batten. Probably my bad.
We sailed for 3 hours at about 4 knots, and I must say was quite peaceful sitting back letting the auto-pilot hold course to Cane Garden Bay. We figured as we got closer, the cell service would kick in, and we would be able to talk to Conch Charters. After three and a half hours we started getting pings from cell service. Then we were on the phone to arrange a meet-up point where they could take the mail-sail and repair it. Fortunately, this meeting place coincided with our destination, so we were already on a direct, albeit slow, course. It was about 1:30pm at the time, and it would take us another 4 hours to arrive at our current speed. That was just a bit outside of their working hours, so we took down the sails and motored for 2 hours to the bay.
When we arrived, the service crew of 2 arrived just as we were ready to dingy to the dock to pick them up. We got them back to the boat, and they were able to take the main sail off in about 45 minutes. They indicated we may hear from them in the morning as to the state of our repair. We may be here in Cay Garden Bay for 2 days, hopefully one.
Afterward, Sandra and I dinghy'd to the beach while she jumped in the water, and I grabbed a Coconut shrimp snack and waited until Sandra got done splashing.
There's no strong wind projected for the next several days, so we may be bandying about the bay, or motoring to short locations until we hear news about our sail. We still have 6 days to go!