The Bouma Family Bare Boat Charter to St. Martin

We arrived in St Martin on Sat, spent that night in the Sunsail harbor, the spent the next night at anchor at St Barts.  The next day we sailed past Saba, past St Kits and Nevis, and were 3/4 of the way to Antigua, then returned that night to St Barts. It was a butt kicking day of beam reaching at speed.  We were consistently over 9 knots and hit a max (that we saw) of 10.2 kts.
 
The next day we sailed around St Martin and spent the next two nights anchored off Anguila, then spent the following 2 nights anchored off Pinell island. Thanksgiving day was spent eating Turducken (mix of turkey, duck, and chicken) - off Pinell Island. It was a fantastic time, with perfect company, perfect boat, and perfect weather.
 
Brian and Paige were engaged while we were down there, and we're now looking forward to a May wedding .
 
The boat was a Gibsea 51 - 27 tons - and incredibly stable.  We were out in some pretty stiff breezes and only rarely were we able to get any water actually flowing over the rail. It seems quite a bit more stable than the beneteau 50 we had last time we had the rail in the water on a regular basis.  The boat had a decent speed - making mile after mile at over 9 kts, with a top speed (that we saw) of 10.2 on a reach.
 
All lines were lead back to the cockpit, and all winches were self tailing.  One thing we missed on this trip was the electric winch we had on the beneteau. It wasn't a big deal - but it really did make a difference when hoisting the main.
 
We had no "real" problems with the boat except that the engine kill switch failed on the second day out, and we ran out of water unexpectedly when the water pump was unable to draw a suction on one of the four water tanks.
 
We pulled into the Sunsail docks one day as we were passing by - to top off the water tanks, and sunsail offered to fix the water issue and the engine kill switch, but it wasn't a big deal since the water tanks were now topped off - and we were able to kill the engine manually.  We simply removed an engine access cover in the aft-stbd  cabin and manually tripped the fuel racks. 
 
For the trapeze stuff we were expecting we'd be able to use an extra halyard - but not so.  We improvised by removing the boom topping lift once we were underway - then using the topping lift for our makeshift halyard. It was perfect.
 
The initial plans had us turning the boat in on Saturday, then everyone flying back on Monday, but 3 days prior to our departure, Delta cancelled all Monday flights.  As a result, half of us flew back on Sunday, and the other half spent another 5 days there, returning the following Friday.  We had GREAT rooms on a bluff, overlooking the ocean - a perfect setting.