We departed Key West, FL from the Garrison Bight Mooring Field area at 8:00 AM and made our way south via the main shipping channel. By 9:30 AM we had the sails up and made our way for the western tip of Cuba. We checked the status of the Gulf Stream and following the advice of Captain Freya’s Cruising Guide to Belize we hugged the Keys west to the Dry Tortugas before heading south to avoid the current being set against us. We still saw 3 knot currents in the Florida Straights but thankfully we had 20 knots of wind to work with! The new sails gave the Pelican enough speed (8 knots when powered up) that we still made 120 miles a day against the current.
Once we were roughly west of Mantua, Cuba we turned south staying 12 nm off the western tip of Cuba. We never spotted land but we could smell it in the prevailing east winds! At 1:09 PM on Tuesday June 8th, we passed Cuba and entered the Caribbean Sea; the first time Pelican has been in these waters! The Yucatan Current is strongest closest to the Mexican coast so we made our course more south at first.
The wind was consistently in the 15 – 20 knot range and the Pelican was loving it. We were making such good time that we figured out pretty quickly that we’d arrive early – in the middle of the night on Thursday/Friday. The entrance to San Pedro is a bit tricky due to a the gap in the barrier reef only being 100 yards wind and having to make a sharp turn North once you enter so we weren’t going to do that without the sun!
We’ve never had to slow down before so we experimented with a few different setups. We settled on fore-reaching. Our setup consisted of a reefed main and a very deeply reefed jib. We then commanded the autopilot to put us hard into the wind. She rode with the bow about 60 degrees off the wind and waves, moving downwind at 1.5 knots. Every now and then an out of sync wave would roll us over pretty good so it wasn’t the best night of sleep but it worked well to keep us to windward of our destination for the night. Around 6 AM we shook out the reefs and pointed her bow back at San Pedro. We need to spend some more time practicing this maneuver to the point where we could actually heave-to which would not require the autopilot at all. I can see where each wind speed and wave height might need its own setup.
At 9:00 AM, exactly at high tide, the Pelican entered San Pedro pass. The sea conditions were marginal for the transit. The waves were breaking all around us and we hit 10+ knots coming down the face of a big swell as we approached. However, the waves quickly dissipated at the mouth of the pass so the actual transit was pretty straightforward. 30 mins later we were anchored off the public beach in San Pedro. We cleared customs and immigration that afternoon — at a beach bar — and officially concluded our first international voyage.
The highlights of the passage included getting to put up our new asymmetrical spinnaker, another bird landing on Anne in the middle of the ocean, a companion way hammock setup, and generally just not having to beat upwind for once. We took a few noon sites with the sextant and were about 40 nm off, need some more practice!
Things that broke: the Monitor Wind Vane lost a bushing, a solar controller developed a loose connection and there a few creaking bulkheads that need to be secured for better sleeping down below. Overall the trip went really well!
Plotted Course: 601 NM
Duration: 0800 Sunday June 07 to 0930 Friday June 11th 2021 (5 days)
Average of 120 nm a day including the night spent fore-reaching to slow down.