Where did you have this experience?
A passage from St. Barts to Guadeloupe. Summer of 2019. We had been stuck in St. Barts for two weeks waiting for weather. We thought we had a window to get to Gwada. It's only about 120 nm so a 24 hour passage. We had friends on a Brewer 44 that were doing the same passage and left at the same time.
We left with it forecast to be 25 kts and were for the wind to drop slightly. Once we cleared the lee of St. Barts winds were 25 knots and gusting to 35. The sea state was higher too. After about 6 hours we were getting pushed too west and the conditions seemed to be worsening. So we decided to head between Don't Eustatius and St. Kitts and then ride the lee of St. Kitts, Nevis and Monsterrat. Our friends in the Brewer kept going and planned to tack back and forth between Monsterrat and Gwada
We had a decent night in the lees with good sailing. At dawn we were passing the volcano exclusion zone. Once out of the lee we go hit with 30 knots steady with gusts over 40 knots. We only had around 30 nm to go and couldn't just back track to St. Kitts and Nevis because we travel with a dog and didn't have the right papers to enter, so we continued.
Winds built a little more to 35 knots with gusts to 45. Seas were 8-12 foot with occasional breaks on about 6 second periods on the port bow. We were sailing close reached with two reefs in the main and a small amount of headsail. We were making 6.5 knots. We reached Gwada about 2 hours behind our friends on the Brewer and never had to tack for the entire passage. We covered about 135 nm by going to it route we did.
Fun passage looking back but not one I'm eager to repeat.
Currently tied up in Maho Bay on STJ awaiting the passing of PTC#9.