Annapolis – Sint Maarten – Worst maiden voyage ever

From a maiden voyage perspective this trip from Annapolis to Sint Maarten was probably one of the worst imaginable. Maybe it was a stupid call from my side to depart when we did, but I didn’t wanna take the risk of getting stuck in an cold and expensive Northern America.

Play date on the high seas

Daniel checking the sails

Jonas and Daniel on watch

Our own master chef

Thomas is teaching Olivia how to cook

Olivia and Daddy

Thomas and Olivia on look out

Repairing the leak

A seasick Anna and Olivia

Everything went well even if he journey was hard for both the boat and the crew. We ended up beating into both wind and waves basically all the way. I have been trough much worse but not for this bloody long time. We had days were we had 40 knots plus almost constantly in the nose and the big Atlantic waves flushing over us like a car wash from hell that would never give up. Lagoon can say ht they want about these boats but they are not designed for serious upwind sailing.

We worked hard to get a good position before hitting the trade winds but just when it was time to steer on a direct course towards our destination we got a serious weather warning on our email. It stated:

There is a 90% chance of a tropical depression forming around our destination within 5 days and it will move in a north-west direction.

With this information we did a 180 turn and headed for safety in the northern Bahamas, this was actually the only pleasant part of the trip, wind from behind- cruising in 8 knots under a sunny sky. Even Anna came alive after a weeks seasickness and we even caught ourself a couple of fishes. This u-turn also gave us a window to do necessary repairs on the boat.

Around 100 miles from northern Bahamas shores we received the information that the weather warning now was downgraded and this was the start signal for leg 2 on the trip- another 7 days of wave-banging.

We had many problems on the way with the boat but we managed to fix most of them on the sea. The biggest problem was definitely when the generator room took in a lot of water! It was pretty close that we drowned the damn machine for good. The problem is now solved and it was a mix of a leaking hatch and a air-intake that was taking in water. The bilge pumps was constantly running and we had to rip out the alarm to not loose our minds completely.

Olivia has been awesome on this trip and it felt like she went from being a baby to s child somewhere outside the northern Bahamas. She doesn’t care that is is blowing 40 knots of wind outside nor that the damn waves is constantly smashing into the boat- as long as she has someone to play with she is more than fine to spend time on the oceans.

Poor Anna has probably been in hell and back, she has been constantly sea sick all the way and the fact that she is 7 months pregnant and can’t take her medicine didn’t really help. Thank you Anna for putting up with all this madness!!

I really wanna thank my awesome crew for working with me on this trip. I couldn’t have done it without you guys- and I mean it!! Thank you Jack, Thomas and Jonas for all the help with the boat, sailing and also for taking care of Olivia when she was getting on my nerves.

Back to work…Time to set sail soon!

//Daniel

Ps_ This post is published way to late and we have been in harbour for many days now.