The time we had all been waiting for had finally come. “Thanksgiving” weekend, as well as my birthday weekend (of which neither meant anything to 99.9% of the island’s inhabitants) was the auspicious time to put to the test all the hard work we had accomplished — to see if our efforts over the past twenty-three months were actually going to work. On Tuesday evening, November 20, 2007, we took Kai Ohana out through the narrow French drawbridge for the first time and into Marigot Bay where we anchored for the weekend. Since we’re usually in the lagoon where it’s as calm as a lake, we spent the night getting used to the new movement of “rolling” in the growing north swell.
Wednesday morning, we bent our new sails on (the first set were re-made as they were originally cut wrong) while Chad was testing the water-maker and completing various other projects where we had to be in clean water to perform. When we’d finished all the chores, everyone went for a swim in the clear Caribbean sea — the kids testing the ratlines by jumping from them, the following plunge one rope higher than the previous, until Lauren and I cringed and asked them to “take it slow, you don’t have to jump from the platform (about 50 feet) on the first day!” (or ever for that matter…)
On Thursday we woke at 7:00 a.m. (after rolling all night in the now two-meter swell) and cleaned, stowed and prepared the decks for the day’s event. By 9:30 a.m., with butterflies in our stomachs (or at least mine), the moment of truth was upon us. We’d weighed the anchor, raised the sails and slowly sailed in the lee of the island, tacking back and forth a couple of times to get the feel of the boat (and making sure the new rig wasn’t going to come crashing down around our heads). Only after we were marginally convinced nothing was going to break, we headed north on a beam reach for the southern shore of Anguilla (about 6 miles away). The wind, blowing 8 to 10 knots as we headed out of Marigot Bay, built to 10 to 15 knots in the channel, and increased further to 15 to 20 knots in now seven to eight-foot seas on the way back — not the kind of environment I would have chosen for her first day out, but I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised with her performance and apparent strength.
We ran her engine all the way to Anguilla (motor-sailing just in case), but when we dropped the mizzen sail just shy of the southern shore of Anguilla, the engine stalled (motoring straight into the 8 foot seas sloshed the minimal amount of diesel we had in the tank which created air in the fuel line). So we sailed back to Marigot and anchored her under sail at 1:30 p.m. in the bay among dozens of boats whose white-knuckled owners appeared to be every bit concerned of us as we were of them. We then motored (yes, Chad bled the lines and got the engine back on line within minutes of anchoring) back through the drawbridge at 2:30 p.m. that same afternoon (threading breaking waves on each side of the channel’s entrance in the now three-meter swell — a very rare sight). After snuggling ourselves back up to our home in the calm lagoon, stern to, at the boatyard’s seawall, we celebrated with bottles of inexpensive (yet of high quality) French champagne (one of the many benefits of living in Marigot) and dined on Lauren’s traditional Thanksgiving diner.
As if the last few days weren’t fantastically successful enough, the fun had only just begun for Preston and me. The swell that had been building for the last few days had been projected to top out the day following our maiden voyage, and as couldn’t have been better planned for a birthday weekend, the combination of the swell and wind forecasted for the next morning was for a promising session. When Preston and I awoke at sunrise and motored our 14-foot rigid-inflatable dinghy out of the lagoon under the Marigot drawbridge, preceding the 25-minute trip to the north shore of the island, we were blessed with the light offshore winds as predicted. We thought we had butterflies in our stomachs the day before, we could only imagine, with a degree of timidity, how the day might unfold.
As we motored around the last craggy point dividing the Anguilla Channel and the open Atlantic, we could see in the distance a wave that we had only seen work like that once in the last two years — big wrapping, relentless swells marching their way into the bay and breaking ferociously on the reef. We were beat to the spot by a handful of French surfers on short boards who were tearing up the scraps on the inside and one guy way outside on a long board. After we dropped Sara off with the camera equipment (in a cove a half mile away from the break), we anchored the dinghy in 60 feet of water, much deeper and way further outside than we normally did on smaller days.
Preston paddled into the French crowd on his new custom-made Tony Bear short board, while I made my way out to the lone surfer on my 20-year-old eight-footer. The welcoming surfer ended up being a colorful Australian (as if there is such a thing as a stoic Australian surfer) mega-yacht captain for a famous American celebrity/businessman. We shared the choicest sets among the two of us, picking the fourth or fifth wave of the set as to not get caught inside if we didn’t make it. We were both admittedly surfing a bit more reserved than we normally would, mostly because of our respective advanced ages (but me more so because I was out of shape from working on the boat for 2 years and not working on myself. My friend, on the other hand, had a complete gym at his disposal on his client’s mega-yacht), but also because of the reputation of the spot. The memories of being ground into that same reef and its numerous coral heads on a similar-sized day over a year earlier during a hurricane swell (the scrapes down my left side, fire coral in my left arm and back, and the cylindrical pattern of embedded sea urchin spines in my right calf) were still fresh in my mind. I wasn’t going to duplicate that experience for anything, but it wasn’t going to stop me from getting my fill of waves either.
After riding four or five waves successfully (conservatively) each, I got a little careless and foolishly attempted a take-off that was a little later than I’d predicted, and as what usually happens in these circumstances, I got pulled over the falls. The resulting “rinse cycle” broke my leash (as per a premonition I had on the dinghy ride that morning), but luckily the board popped out the back of the wave and I was able to sprint to it, grab it and actually hold onto it while being buried by the next successive waves.
Once back outside, I felt fatigued, yet lucky that my wipe-out wasn’t any worse than it had been, and satisfied with my prior waves and without a leash, I said goodbye to my new Aussie friend and paddled back to the dinghy. As we weighed the anchor, the set of the day filed through the bay. As it cleaned up Preston’s wide-eyed friends on the inside, my buddy caught the largest wave of the day, riding it in big sweeping carves 300 yards to the rocky beach. After he kicked out, we noticed he was paddling back to his tender, so we motored the dinghy to him and threw him a drag line so he wouldn’t have to paddle 500 yards after such a stellar ride. I knew that expression of total elation on his face as it was reflected in the feeling I had in my heart of being blessed with such a great birthday weekend. Happy 47th!