I previously wrote about the pet import process while cruising from the Bahamas to the British Virgin Islands. Click here to see how we got ready to cruise with the pups before we set sail. This season we continued cruising south down through the Leeward Islands. Just like last season, we had three documents for each pooch:
Tag: St Martin
Four Engineers on a Boat and Our First Taste of France
At 10:00am on Nov 19th, the Simpson Bay bridge opened and we entered the Lagoon in St Martin. We had just sailed the Anegada Passage without any issues. We were exhausted, but excited to welcome aboard our first overnight guests, Michelle and Steve. Checking in was a breeze and customs didn’t even ask about the pups. We had finally made it! Now it was time to meet up with our friends and start exploring this new island.
The Anegada Passage
Only about 2 hours into our 16 hour passage to St. Martin, our cooling water high temperature alarm started shining bright red. We were heading directly into the wind, so we only had our main sail up and we were running our engine at full cruising speed. Our autopilot was on and we were admiring the super moon when it happened. I jumped behind the wheel and quickly throttled down, while Rob rushed downstairs to inspect the engine. I glanced at our transom and saw that we had plenty of water flow coming out of our exhaust. Perhaps the sensor had just failed and there wasn’t really an issue. However, when Rob opened the engine compartment door our galley transformed into a steam room. It was clear that we had a severe leak in our cooling system, so I immediately fell off from the wind and shut the engine down.