We left Dominica and had a nice passage to Martinique, arriving in St. Pierre. However, with a forecast of higher than comfortable winds and waves, we decided not to stay in St. Pierre and instead headed to St. Anne’s at the south of the island, a trip of about 35 miles. We knew that the last 12 miles would be bumpy – directly into wind and waves and sure enough it was, with waves crashing and the bow pounding into and on top of them.

We finally arrived at the anchorage in St. Anne and as I went forward to release the anchor I realized that I had inadvertently left the forward sail locker open. Open to the oncoming sea! It was full – yes full – of water. Sails were floating, empty diesel cans were floating…

Once anchored, I went below – and noted that somewhat unusually, it was downhill to the bow and I opened the valve to the forward sail locker – allowing the water in the waterproof bulkhead to escape into the bilge. Boy did it come!

I have an electric bilge pump purportedly capable of pumping 2,000 gallons/hour… It ran for 15 minutes and was losing ground. So I finally switched on an AC bilge pump that throws out about 15,000 gals per hour… In the end, I estimate we had about 750 gallons of water aboard – all up in the nose of the boat! No wonder she was acting rather sluggishly!

We emptied the sail locker of a couple of very wet light air sails and thought we were good.

Not…

The water had penetrated the master berth and there was water all throughout the starboard side cabinets (Laurie’s side 🙁  ) so all her winter clothes were soaked.

Then we realized the bed was also soaked.

Finally, while lying awake last night, I realized that the storage area under the boat was also compromised… it indeed was, though fortunately there was not much ingress there and the delicate items were mostly in sealed bags or plastic bins…

And we were just congratulating ourselves on having stopped screwing up too badly on a regular basis.

Memo to self: Stop congratulating ourselves when we’re clearly still novices!!!

We moved today to a slip in Le Marin, hoping to dry out for a while – and to allow Kate to get on an off the boat at will…