In this video, Tierra! Massive Waves Sailing to CUBA, we complete our long 6 day passage from St. Martin to the country of Cuba not without incident crushing our wisker pole attachment and negotiating some very large waves in 30 knots of wind! Nawal gets sea sick and our Jib comes loose and flogs wildly... #sailingcuba #hugewaves #sailingchannel If you like our videos and want to see more/better videos, more often you can become a patreon supporter: https://www.patreon.com/sailingbalachandra If you haven't yet SUBSCRIBED and want to see more please click the SUBSCRIBE button above, and be sure to give this video a like! In August of 2017 we sold everything and moved aboard Balachandra, a 1986 C&C44 sailboat, then sailed it over 300 nautical miles to Halifax Nova Scotia to spend a cold Canadian winter in the frozen waters of the North Atlantic. Sailing Balachandra is our YouTube sailing vlog inspired by other great channels such as Delos and La Vagabonde, which documents the sailing adventures of myself and my partner Nawal as we navigate the globe. We also dive into lots of DIY boat projects both above and below decks, and share with you all of the pros and cons of living aboard full time. Sailing Balachandra is published weekly so please subscribe so you don't miss out on future videos! This video was shot with equipment from Optrix by Body Glove, Nikon, Apple, GoPro, and Polaroid Opening Theme Music: License Info: Beautiful Story / Taketones.com Used with a Paid Licence / Permission PURCHASED MUSIC: LINK: https://taketones.com/track/beautiful-story LICENSE N: TTEXTENDED157339559892860327 EXTENDED Special Thanks to our Cuban friends Group Nucay for giving us permision to use to use their album "Tropicalissimo" throughout our YouTube series. Other Music: the YouTube Music Library Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sailingbalachandra Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sailingbalachandra Instagram: http://instagram.com/sailing_balachandra

Closed Captions (CC):
in this episode we deal with some

extreme conditions as we complete

our long six-day passage from saint

martin to the country of cuba

last time on sailing bellachandra we

left french saint martin for cuba

we tore our jib and had to stop and

replace it we got hit with some massive

waves

and our traveler broke at the base from

an accidental job

hey everyone if you're new to the

channel i'm dan and my partner is noelle

and we are sailing bella chandra we

sailed from nova scotia canada to the

caribbean we've been sailing around the

caribbean for well over

a year now and if you haven't subscribed

to our channel just go below this video

look for the big red subscribe button

and press that button

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do

it's day four yes we're still trying to

get to cuba

but weather window has been closing

yeah the last day when we come around

haiti and travel between haiti and cuba

it's called the windward passage on our

charts

it constantly goes through cycles of

heavy wind to extremely light wind

and already since we left it's gone

through two like today it was blowing

like 35 knots

uh tomorrow it's manageable but we won't

get there by tomorrow

and the day that we're scheduled to

actually arrive there it's going to be

blowing like 35 knots

going down wind we should be able to do

that

as long as the swell doesn't kick up too

high but i don't know much about this

passage so i got to kind of do the

research and make sure that it's safe

and then we're not

in a cross current or something the

swell has finally

calmed down finally it's been non-stop

for the past

15 hours or so and i actually

got seasick last night not

normally when i get seasick it's just a

little bit of like nauseousness

but last night i actually puked

yeah it wasn't fun and then shortly

after it

started downpouring so dan didn't get

much sleep during

his turn to relax it's kind of ironic

because

about three videos ago we made a video

called combating seasickness

and just click on this link it'll take

you to that video and uh you know you'd

think

the people who made that video would

have seasickness wrapped up

no i normally don't get seasick i know

what happened

it was cold which is strange for the

caribbean but it's been cold we've been

getting a lot of wind out of the north

atlantic

here lately and it was a cold night it

was a jacket and sweater night

and noel was only up here with a sweater

it was crazy

rolly we had like 15 foot waves and the

autopilot was

needing to be tended to constantly and

it just wasn't fun to be on watch that

night and

i totally get it i'm so glad it's calmed

down this is

much smoother sailing today that's for

sure

i managed to go down below and cook us

some meals which was good because we're

starting to get low

and on uh healthier options

we're just above dominican republic

right now getting close to luperon we've

been in luperon

luperon was our first landfall in the

dominican republic and we did our

check-in there

and it was samana i think the next town

after that when

kobe became like a real thing so our

main sail traveler remains broken we're

not flying the main at all

but we do have our big 135 jib up which

is

giving us seven knots speed downwind i

can't complain

um honestly it's uh it's pretty good i

mean yeah if we flew the main and the

jib we would probably be doing more like

nine knots and it would be amazing

but uh we just don't have that option

right now but i'm comfortable with seven

knots and we'll get there sure enough so

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one

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[Applause]

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hmm

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so it's day five and we are on our last

leg of the trip

last night we left the dominican

republic across the border to haiti

and we're just passing kt right now and

we talked about the weather

turning for the worst and we were

talking about ducking into

an anchorage in dominican republic and

riding out you know some bad weather

i have a friend doing weather routing

for us using predict wind

we've been using windy on our phone

using the european model and the gfs

model

the european model was saying that we

were supposed to get some pretty nasty

wind and it didn't look very good and we

decided we'd duck in but

i checked with my friend doing weather

routing and

he confirmed that we're not getting hit

with that bad weather and it's going to

be a lot lighter than we thought so

we changed our minds and decided to

continue on and here we are now

and the results are obvious we're not

getting extreme weather

as was predicted by the european model

so that's good

so we just have to finish following

the coast of haiti we'll pass the island

ilda torture or

tortuga and then we'll be into

the windward passage which is a piece of

water between haiti and cuba

and we'll probably be out of cell phone

range and everything

when we're there because it's it's

pretty remote

and then uh by morning we should be

making landfall in cuba

we want to do our check-in in santiago

to cuba so that'll take probably another

half a day to get there and we have to

pass guantanamo bay which is an american

military

area there's a three-mile limit we have

to sail around so that we

don't alert the military yeah we're

doing pretty good so far i mean

five days in and we're not killing each

other completely so that's good

the weather's been much better the

boat's been racing along at almost seven

knots

it's pretty nice five days in not

feeling seasick or

being tossed around being able to go

down and actually cook a meal for a

change

this trip has been not without its

issues with our torn jib

that we had to replace in the usb eyes

and

our whisker pole it's working great but

the connection point on the mask where

the whisker pole attaches

took too much pressure with the new jib

and i think it was just under built

it used to rotate not so well and i

think it just jammed and the force just

caused it to pancake so

we'll have to pick up another one of

those and yeah we were tacking with the

whisker pole and the whisker pole is new

to us we

don't sail with the whisker pole very

often and we completely omitted

the fact that the baby stay would be in

the way and um

the whisker pole came across and snapped

the baby stay so i have to repair the

baby stay

it's not that big a deal because we

never did use the baby stay it's always

been connected but it's always been

loose it's never actually

been like you know taken on any forces

so

i'm not too worried about that but now

we have to repair that and of course the

the car on our traveler which holds the

main sheet

which holds the boom broke some pretty

serious hardware connections on our boat

broken all in one passage

it's a new record i think for us but

it's all stuff that we can fix and it's

not expensive it's just

kind of a pain in the butt and

especially where we're going to cuba and

finding

any boat parts will be near impossible

every night of this passage now

for four days and now the fifth day the

moon has been slowly getting bigger

the first night we had this little

sliver and then the next night it was a

little bigger and a little bigger

and last night it was like a

three-quarter moon so tonight it's going

to be almost a full moon which is

amazing because

when you're sailing with the moon out

and there's no clouds you can really see

everything around you and you can see

squalls approaching you can see other

boats

and lots of other things that are

important for navigation so i'm really

happy that we're gonna have a full moon

especially where we're crossing

the piece of water between haiti and

cuba and it's going to be out in the

middle of nowhere we're really lucky to

have a full moon tonight

it's not christmas zoo bear it's not

christmas what are you doing

is he cold

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so

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just after sunset the wind started to

pick up

and so did the swell it got pretty

uncomfortable

he went down below to take a rest

between 6 30

and 10. i made the extra effort myself

to get sleep during the day so i could

cover his shift

like happily came up all grumpy because

he didn't get asleep in

hit the fan and it wasn't holding

anymore the swell started building up so

much so that

dan ended up having the hand steer for

like three hours straight

we were in about 25 foot swell dance

hand steering

and we clocked about 10 knots at one

point so the autopilot started to work

again

dan went back down below i was back on

shift even though at this point i'm

starting to get cranky

we need to tack we go to tack and the

jib gets caught on the furler like

halfway so it's like

half of it's on the opposite side and

half is on this side and

so i was like dan go back to port so

we could go back on the other tack try

to straighten it out but

no we couldn't go back the wind picked

up to like 25 knots

maybe more that was apparent and

both the diff sheet lines just go

straight forward even though we had

figure eight knots at the end of them

they just

went right through the cars lines are in

the water

jib's just vlogging i told dan point us

down when just turn on the motor

turn on the motor puts on his life

jacket

goes forward tries to straighten out the

lines

at the same time he's like screaming at

me he's like slow us down

we don't want the lines to get caught in

the prop

so i'm trying to slow us down but yeah

try to keep us steady in these ways and

i was just like

yeah and all this was in like what 20

foot waves

yeah the waves were like 20 feet and

they were breaking on us

but the cockpit was so dry everything

was still dry at this point we were

doing pretty good it wasn't like cape

hatteras

so finally dan feeds it all through

we decided to furl it in and just motor

for a bit because both of us are just

like cranky as anything at this point we

just figured we'd motor for an hour and

a half get some rest

so we're motoring and dan goes back

downstairs trying to get some sleep

again and i'm sitting all comfortably

zeus is all cuddled in with me we had

him tethered in that whole time

mind you as soon as the lace picked up

we tethered it up him

in right away because sometimes he tries

to go on these little strolls

not even 10 minutes into uh

this arrangement a

friggin wave crashes right on our stern

goes

right up above the seat cushions

everything

spills right inside and like does this

like

and then splashed up onto my seat i was

soaked from the waist down poor

zeus was just drenched it completely

filled the cockpit like a swimming pool

right

it was a swimming pool it went up to

like not quite my knees

huge breaking wave it was insane

i'm glad it was warm though it almost

went down the gangway i think we may

have lost our ipod

everything's salty and it was just rocky

like that for some time

we had to get past the most eastern

point of cuba in order to get into

better

weather conditions once we passed the

lighthouse it was much better

and that point took forever to get past

like i felt like it just was never

ending i woke up and i thought

finally you know we're gonna have a

chill day

no no coffee no nothing until like 10

11. but that was the best

coffee and best breakfast i've had and

it's finally calmed down

and i'm enjoying sailing again

so right now we're just sailing on a

wreath in jib because we're still

getting those strong gusts

but now that we've passed that easterner

point of cuba the swell has gone down

significantly

we're pretty happy we're doing our

check-in in santiago to cuba

we should arrive at our anchorage by

midnight i think we'll just drop the

hook

and just sleep it out and once you know

first daylight when the marina is open

we'll scoot in and tie up and i think

it's

fairly inexpensive to spend a day at the

marina so

we may do that and just take advantage

of the hose and spray off all the salt

because

every single cushion and pillow and

every surface i'm so salty

everything's salty it's all right though

it's okay hopefully they have showers

and i'll hose myself down as well

it wasn't quite a full moon but it was

full enough

it lasted all night long at least we had

that on our side we were able to watch

the clouds closely

really really grateful for that because

if a squall was to hit

us during that passage i think

it just could have been like way worse

than what it actually was

you know it is day six of our passage

this is probably the longest passage

so far that we've ever done on this boat

it's pretty amazing if we could do six

days to cuba we could probably

cross the ocean i don't know but

any of any ocean probably the atlantic

ocean

i don't know it's very similar to what

we would have done had we gone from nova

scotia to bermuda originally

but this trip has not been without its

issues seriously

um a figure eight knot

is this at the end of your jib sheet and

i

always have a figure eight knot on both

jib sheets

like we're not used to this big 135 jib

and when we tacked over the jib hadn't

fully gone over

so we decided to tack back and then

reload the other winch we weren't fast

enough

the wind pulled the gypsy right through

all those cars and everything

and uh because our figure eight knot was

loose yeah it was too close to the end

this just slipped right off and then

out goes the sheet flying in the air and

that was very interesting so and i've

always

no like i know that can happen and i've

always kept a figure eight so

what i've done now is i've brought the

figure eight up about six inches

off the end so that's less likely to

untie you need this because if it starts

to go through all those blocks and

pulleys

boom it'll stop and then i mean trust me

it's a nightmare when the thing goes

wild because you got to furl in the jib

and if you're not fast you could get

tears in your jib from it flogging like

crazy especially in high winds we had

winds uh

25 now it's apparent probably 30 knots

of true wind last night

behind us yeah it just seems like the

longer passage you go

the more things break and the more

problems you have but thank god

knock on wood everything that's happened

is something we can take care of and

deal with

even in cuba so we got through like

relatively unscathed compared to some of

the problems people have had

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