There are various ways of entering the Caribbean Sea from the North as most of the islands are separated by passages that are deep enough for the transit of any sort of traffic. Some have a bump in the way here and there but you normally can sail around those. Of course when planning the voyage, you try to use that passage that is the closest to the straight line that forms the shortest route between two points. (Remember that only on East or West Ocean Crossings, with long distances a curved line or Great Circle is shorter as it follows the curvature of the Earth) In our case the passage that we needed was the Virgin Passage located between the East side of Puerto Rico and the West side of St. Thomas.
Sail Rock in the middle of the Virgin Passage.
That passage has one of those “bumps” in the middle called Sail Rock. It was given this name because from a distance is looks like an old fashioned sailing ship at least from some angles. As it sticks right up out of the water with a nearly straight rock face, it is clearly visible on the Radar from a far distance. This sometimes results in ships unfamiliar with the area and not having scrutinized the chart properly, mistake sail rock for a real ship. If the radar system is set on “relative mode” then the Sail Rock echo will come towards you on the screen with the same speed vector as your own ship. I have seen it happen that ships ahead of me suddenly starting to change course as that “ship” kept heading for them. Noise on the VHF; no answer (I wonder why….) and suddenly a ship swerving out of the way. Sometimes quite drastically.
However I had discussed the phenomena of Sail Rock and its echo on the radar during our voyage planning and thus the watch was well prepared. One of the jokers among my bridge officers had even encircled the rock and annotated it with an arrow and the remark “not a ship”. So we were as prepared as we could be. So around 7 am in the morning we sailed by Sail Rock at the safe distance of a mile. We still had it on the plot on the radar as you never know if a (small) ship is hiding behind it and decides to start crossing our bow just at the moment that we are sailing by. That has happened before as well and thus we are vigilant.
The half Crescent of Eastern Caribbean Islands.
When you enter the Caribbean Sea here, St. Thomas Island will block the North Atlantic swell and at once the ship is as steady as a rock. Then suddenly the movement starts again, for an hour or so and then it is quiet again. This is normal when sailing in the lee of the East Caribbean islands as the swell is coming in through each gap between the islands. That happened all day and will continue during the night as we will pass a whole string of islands before we come to St. Lucia, which is more or less in the middle of this whole series of islands that forms this Eastern crescent and border of the Caribbean Sea. We will even have it just before arrival St. Lucia as there is a fairly big gap between Guadeloupe and the North point of St. Lucia.
Although the East Caribbean islands are not very big, they are quite high and thus can be seen from a fair distance. Especially Saba is very prominent. This is basically a Volcano cone sticking straight out of the water to a considerable height. It is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, together with several other islands nearby such as St. Maarten. There are people living on the Island but they do their own thing and are not that much bothered by the trials and tribulations that are going on in the motherland, far far away in cold Europe.
Still the island is clearly visible and is a good landmark for everybody heading towards the NE corner of the Caribbean Sea. We kept a South Easterly course of one straight line and that will bring us tomorrow morning at 0600 at the pilot station of Castries St. Lucia. If the rain clouds are not coming over the mountain tomorrow then it will be a sunny day with temperatures around 80o F / 26oC and a gentle breeze. Perfect Caribbean weather,
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