Explore Sailing Voyages in Cuba 🇨🇺

7-13 knots true wind close reach sail or upwind motor. We spent a day and night tacking upwind off Cuba and not making a lot of progress. Finally, decided to head to the Gulf Stream and we motored across obliquely to Key West. Waves were 1-4 ft and mostly from the front or corner front. Starboard engine would not start and this was troubleshot just anchored before key west in which the starter bushings were stuck. The parts were cleaned and lubricated and engine started up. Watermaker blew a fuse and is alo out of service until new membranes can be obtained. The current membrane appears partially occluded with the underperforming 25 gallons per hour metrics. This trip to US continues to be difficult and hard on the boat.

Up to 20 knots of wind with up to 6 foot waves. We had to tack 200 + nautical miles since our paths was directly upwind. We sailed to a wind angle of 37 degrees. We lost internet connection since we were off the grid. The wave slapping from the front was uncomfortable and we hit a couple squalls with 30 knot winds. We had to reef during those for about 1.5 hours. The radio started blinking and eventually died. The wind gauge also was intermittently working and then not. During the last 2 hours and as we were motoring with sails put away, the master switch pro malfunctioned as I went to turn on the interior lights and killed one engine, all the navigation controls, and all navigation lights. We did a complete 360 as the auto pilot disengaged. We had to hand steer by the iPad navionics in slamming waves with no light. Mark went to troubleshoot the switch pro and ended up cutting wires to disable the devices controls for navigation, lights and engine. We were only going 2-3 knots with one engine in strong current. Once navigation was back online, we discovered that the navigation light was not working. Radio, switch pro, and navigation light all broken. Wind gauge on deck for brokenness. We anchored with flashlight in a very slim waterway. No one else there but we had to reset as too close to shore.

Sailed off the coast with Bokensha and Novastar coming into the marina. Tied to the dock to go through customs again. Bokensha hit the concrete wall trying to tie up. Novastar was asked to turn off Starlink which they objected. Then we were also ordered to unplug. We all eventually got slips at the marina.