Thanks for all the messages that you have sent. If has been great to get your engagement in Lilli Mae’s journey. Although we have made it to Mo’Bay there is still so much more to do. Anyway we will get to that later.

The journey from Ponce PR to Montego Bay was a big one! Our tracker says we sailed over 720 nm and we were at sea for over 5 days; granted it is not an Atlantic crossing; however for both Joan and Clare this was a new experience.

Actually this experience was new to us all. Two days into the passage the engine stopped working and we have still not go it to work. This was the reason for our decision to not stop in Port Antonio and to head directly to Mo’Bay. We spent a lot of time on passage trying to figure out how to get the engine going. In the end we had to fall back on the contingency plan which was to head direct and sail onto the anchor in the outer harbour.

We had called the yacht club ahead of arrival to inform them of the issues we had and that we were planning an early arrival. The last part of the journey heading north west for 25 nm was to manage arrival timing and to allow the wind to fill in so that we could sail into the harbour. Our plan for getting to the outer harbour and preparing to drop the anchor worked really well. We had a reefed main and we use the headsail to manage approach speed. Just as we were about to drop the anchor, the yacht club dockmaster called us to ask if we could sail into the inner harbour. And so we did. Once we were in the harbour things did get a bit stressful; the wind picked up and we ended up “picking a fight” (being blown onto) with one of the harbour channel markers. And then because we were not able to set the anchor properly the wind ended up blowing back onto the channel marker that we had just fended off. 

It was pretty challenging. Fortunately we got away with a small amount of damage to the davits when we got blown onto the marker because the anchor was not set. It was not the arrival that we had in our dreams; however it is great to be here!

Now we are a lot more settled; today (7th March) we got towed onto our berth by Dawson (Dockmaster) and Anthony. They did great job helping lift the two anchors we had put out and towing Lilli Mae into the berth. Thanks Dawson and Anthony!

We have been really busy with admin and engine stuff as well as preparing for the family to meet us in Mo’Bay later today. The paperwork for entering Jamaica took a long time; there is a lot of it! As you can well imagine we have got used to checking in and out of Caribbean islands over the past few weeks. However the Jamaican has proven to be the most complicated so far. As reported earlier we still have no engine at the moment. We have been focussed on the fuel system but have still not been able to resolve it. We have been working on it for days! Anyway we just have to keep focussed on it.

   

In between sorting out our immigration and engine stuff we have had some time ashore. James Linton arrived by plane today. The rest of the family are on their way. We are having our family BBQ tonight. 

Some fun family pictures to follow!

Hope you are all well wherever you are.

All the best

Crew aboard Lilli Mae