My First Time
Before making this passage, I read up quite a lot on it. There are plenty of blog posts that exist if you Google the name of the passage. Some people call it the Oh-My-God-A Passage. The real question is, “Why?”
Well, I still can’t answer that one. As a delivery skipper, I went across the passage from Saint Martin to the USVI in early January 2022. I read a couple of things though. Some people mentioned a lot of cargo ships or tanker traffic towards the Panama Canal at night. Sadly, I only saw a couple of cruise ships doing the opposite passage to mine. If it helps, I left Saint Martin around 1500 and arrived in the USVI around 0330. Maybe my timing was good, maybe I got lucky.
A couple of sources mentioned big waves from the Atlantic as the current met the deep water. This is a usual phenomenon when you have currents always in the same direction, and funnelled through a certain area. I was especially worried as the forecast predicted the very common northeasterly winds at around 20 knots combined with northerly swell at about two metres high. Normally not an issue but this was my first solo passage, and I wasn’t too sure.
The Passage
So, what did the infamous Oh-My-God-A or Anegada Passage give me? Well, surprisingly, a very calm night of motoring. I had about seven knots of wind constant on my starboard aft. This meant that I was running my Yanmars at around 2200 RPM (which is the secret to Yanmar engines) and doing between 8 and 10 knots as I surfed the waves that came from a NE direction.
Overall, a great 110 miles that I would do again especially that I should be doing another just a couple of days after this one.
Part 2
The day of my arrival, after a quick nap, I moved onto a Bali 4.5. Basically, the same boat but with nine feet less and thus, a less airy interior. The next steps were, meet my new crew mate, Jake, in the morning, clear customs around midday after going for COVID tests and then make it back to Anse-Marcel in Saint Martin. Spoiler alert, that’s exactly what happened.
Getting Across
We set off from customs in Cruz Bay around 1500. Evidently, with the ENE winds, it was all on our nose so even after an attempt at motor sailing, the flapping of the sail convinced me to bring it down and use the two Yanmars at their favourite RPMs of 2200 the entire way. Those 114 buff horses pushed us steadily at around six and a half to seven knots. You might ask, “Were the engines on the Bali 5.4 that much stronger than the ones on the 4.5?”
The short answer is no. Having the waves and wind on our nose slowed us down quite a lot. For 80% of the journey, we were slamming into 2-meter waves every 4 to 5 seconds. For my poor crew, this first night passage wasn’t the easiest on his stomach. We got through it and were happy to drop the anchor right outside of Anse-Marcel as the sun rose at 0600 since the channel is quite narrow.
Crossing Other Boats
As usual, every day on a boat is a learning day. I finally met some pleasure boaters that only rely on their instruments to navigate at night. Evidently, you need to look ahead of you. I had a pleasant VHF conversation with a sailing vessel that was under engine power. He thought that because he couldn’t see me on AIS, I did not exist. He also thought that by mentioning he was a sailing vessel, he was always a stand-on vessel. I gently asked if he could turn away as I was stuck between two boats and the reply he gave me was hilarious. It was something along the lines of our TCPA is 30 minutes so let’s talk again in 10 minutes. This is where I was reminded that you don’t need to know much about boats to be out on the water unlike driving a car. After explaining the potential damage and the fact that we were offshore so there was no point in passing that close to each other, he finally made a change of course, which allowed me to pass between him and another vessel that was abeam and on the same course as him with a mile away from each.
My Takeaway
I learnt two things on this trip. Always carry sea sickness tablets for other people and the Anegada Passage is only slightly scary because too many pleasure boaters aren’t used to safe distances in open water and don’t know the courtesy to have towards other boats.