Serendipity II

Liahona in the middle of the bay off Foxy's, Jost Van Dyke

Ten months ago, I wrote a blog post on the power of this word. Serendipity means a happy accident or a pleasant surprise. It is when something good happens to you when you are not expecting it. The first time I wrote about quitting my job to live on a boat and write full time and how my fears almost kept me from living that dream – but a kind comment by a student gas me the courage to move forward. These past couple of weeks, again, I have found myself nearly ready to give up (on getting to Tortola), when events conspired to put me back out to sea. I think serendipitous things happen to those who are open to the possibility.

Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda

So, my unexpected arrival in Bermuda aboard the catamaran that was towing a fully inflated and brilliantly-lit liferaft nearly cut short my voyage to the BVI's. But the serendipity was that I would get to visit the one location in my soon-to-be-published novel that I had never seen: the Royal Naval Dockyard at Bermuda which was the last place that my submarine Surcouf was seen before she vanished off into the Atlantic never to be seen again. On Saturday, I spent two hours on buses each way crossing the island to visit the grounds and museum and to discover that two or three details of my description of the place were completely wrong. Luckily, I can revise it now before I send it out into the world.

While I was off at the dockyard, my friend and the professional skipper Jan talked to the folks on the Cherubini 44 Wavelength. They were also in the Caribbean 1500 and had stopped in Bermuda due to the lack of wind and a couple of crew members who feared it was going to take them weeks more to get to the islands. We'd lost our boat, they'd lost their crew, and PRESTO! we were back in business. The next morning we tossed our packed bags into the dinghy by 8:00 a.m. and my friend Jan and I were on board our new ride. We put to sea just before 4:00 p.m ready to cover the 850 or so miles to Tortola. Because so many boats had pulled into Bermuda for one reason or another, Mark and Eileen, the owners of Wavelength, announced we should nickname the second leg the Bermuda 850.

Wavelength - a Cherubini 44

Wavelength was a fun boat to sail with her sleek lines patterned after L. Francis Herreshoff's Ticonderoga and her ketch/cutter rig. On our third day at sea, we passed another sailboat, a Little Harbor 44, and we charged past doing eight and a half knots with all canvas flying. Later in light air, we broke out the mizzen staysail and the drifter and the light colorful nylon sails had us going more than half the apparent wind speed. We had great time, caught lots of fish, sailed well and arrived in Tortola at 10:00 p.m. on the sixth day.

Of course, our first trip was to the bar for a round or two of Painkillers, but when I made it to the shoreside showers around 3:00 a.m., I was toting my laptop to log on to Internet to see what had happened to Write on the Water when I missed posting (thanks Mike for posting something for me) and I checked my email. There was a note from a friend telling me that some other good friends were docked just across the Sir Francis Drake Channel in Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor.

So that is how I got the serendipitous opportunity to hop on Speedy's ferry from Tortola to Virgin Gorda and join these wonderful folks, Mark and Willie Haskins, aboard their Nautical 60 Liahona – my third boat this trip.

Willie sailing Liahona through the narrows

First, I didn't think I was going to make it to the V.I. at all, then I thought I would arrive and immediately have to fly back to Lauderdale, and now thanks to serendipity and the generous hospitality of these fine friends, I am getting to take this sail through my good memories of chartering our boat Sunrise in these waters almost 30 years ago.

So, on Saturday I will fly back to Fort Lauderdale, and I am determined that I am not going to fly north to New Bern to rejoin my boat until I have published CIRCLE OF BONES. Each day it will be getting colder as I go through these last copy edits, and I'd better go fast before I really do need an ice breaker to get my boat south. I have saved a photo to remind me of the islands when the pressure and all the errors found by my copy editor get me down.