Monthly Archives: November 2015

Where the Hell, in the world, is Pandora going now?

If you have been following the Salty Dawg Rally group page I expect that you are scratching your head about my change of course.  Unfortunately, yesterday our refrigeration died and with a freezer full of food and week left until we would have arrived in the BVI, I decided to divert to Beaufort NC where I can (hopefully) get this resolved.  Having said that, it won’t be that easy as the unit isn’t manufactured any longer and repair parts have to come from CA, if they have them at all.  With that in mind, I have arranged for a refrigeration tech to look at the unit tomorrow and he will speak with the tech support person in CA to see if it’s a simple fix or worse.  Fingers crossed…

Oh yeah.  If you were wondering what I will be doing with all that frozen food that I have gone on and on about in past posts, wonder no longer.  I have arranged to have the food stored in the freezer at the marina.  It seems that they have a commercial freezer and are nice folks to boot.   Kay says, “of course we can help y’all.  We wouldn’t want all that good food to go to waste now, would we?”

We will be getting a slip at Port Side Marina in Morehead City for a few days, likely much longer if the fridge unit has to be sent to CA for repair.  With that in mind, I have to believe that the Caribbean isn’t going to be in the picture for this season.  It’s getting late and I don’t expect that there is enough time left to make the run without getting new crew for the run and all the complexities that go along with that.  Of course, there’s always the Bahamas and that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

A number of other little gear issues crept up as it was just so rough and windy in the Gulf Stream. I broke a batten car on the mainsail and also managed to break the handle off of one of the line clutches on the mast when it caught on the luff of the sail as I was shaking out a reef.   I also discovered that the small viewing window in the jib is broken and while it isn’t a major structural part of the jib, it would be best to have that fixed too.

But wait, there’s more.  The main has an integrated sail cover and I didn’t realize that I could tie it to the boom so that it would be out of the way when I put in the reef.  Alas, when I reefed, the luff of the sail tore a number of fastenings on the cover which I’ll need to repair.   Good news, I have a sewing machine on board, and that’s something even I can fix.  Yahoo!!!

A particularly amusing problem (not) was that while we were sailing hard on a port tack for about 36 hours, a good amount of water backed up through the transom vent into the “watertight” locker where the propane cans are housed.  Unfortunately, some of this water leaked into the area under the cockpit where some sensitive electronics are located when we tacked.  Earlier in the season, I had noticed that there was a hole in the locker bulkhead where some wires went from the locker into the interior of the boat, that wasn’t properly caulked.  I should have fixed it but I never thought that it would fill with that much water.  As a result, I will need to clean up the small amount of salt that got on some of the equipment to be sure that no long term problems crop up.  Such are the tribulations of owning a new boat.

Frankly, most of these are all little issues but given the fact that the refrigeration is not working I decided to divert and get everything fixed at once.

Of course, the question that naturally comes to mind would be “what’s next”?  That’s a good question and beyond immediate repairs, and I’ll have to take that up with Brenda first and and my crew second, I doubt that there is enough time to get from Beaufort to the BVI in the two week window that I have allowed so it will certainly involve new crew.

That’s a bummer and to add insult to injury, I have already booked my flight home from the BVI and flights back there for me and Brenda after Christmas.

So, “where in the world will Pandora go now?”  That’s an excellent question but the only thing I know for sure is that we are headed back for landfall and I won’t need my passport to step on the dock, just a credit card.

As is so often the case, it all comes down to food and all I know for sure is that it will stay frozen, compliments of Kay and her good southern hospitality.

What’s next for Pandora?  Beats the Hell outa me, but for sure it’s going to involve Brenda, palm trees and perhaps a Kalik beer. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThings could be worse, much worse.

Are we there yet?   Only 1,500 miles to go.   

It’s Tuesday mid-day and we are on our way.  We left the dock at 08:00 this morning and are now off of Cape Henry and about 100 miles from the Gulf Stream.  We were given our entrance and exit points for the Stream from Chris Parker but when we put them into the plotter they don’t really make a lot of sense.  Oh well.   I checked his messages to us and they are indeed the numbers he provided.  Perhaps I’ll check with another SDR boat and see what they have as waypoints.

I didn’t sleep much last night as I was constantly mulling over last minute details of what I might have missed.  After a week in Hampton, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had missed something, or many somethings, that I needed to do.

Speaking of “somethings”, I went up the mast yesterday, in the rain, to check and see if I could find out where the cotter pin might have come from that we found on top of the dink that’s lashed on the cabin top.  I still don’t know where it came from for sure but there isn’t a pin missing anywhere on the boat, of that I am certain.   My best guess is that it was tangled up in a bundle of straps that I used to tie down the dink and that it was left on the dink after we were finished tying it down.

We are moving along fairly well on a beam reach in fairly lumpy seas at between 6-7 kts.  Once we are further offshore and in deeper water I expect that the wave period will spread out and we will likely have a bit more wind to steady the boat.  Jerking around is a bit unpleasant when the wind fluctuates less.

There are plenty of boats heading out today and I’d say that at least a dozen are within sight as I write this.  It will be interesting to see how our speed compares to others as the fleet spreads out.  Those boats that don’t leave today will probably have to wait another week as there is a strong cold front exiting the coast later this week and going through the GS would be quite nasty with near gale force winds out of the NE.  Not a good time to be in the Gulf Stream for sure.

Speaking of “weather”, we will be watching a system that may be developing about half way between Africa and the Caribbean.  It may become a late season tropical storm or, more likely, will just dissipate.  It’s hard to say at this juncture, but if needed we will bail out to Bermuda or perhaps the Bahamas. I really hope that doesn’t happen but it will be a few days till we know more.   With all the changes in the weather this time of year, I can’t imagine doing a trip like this without regular communication with a weather router.

Speaking of communication, we have two check in times each day on the SSB radio, once at 08:30 and the other at 17:00 where we are to provide our coordinates as well as the wind speed and wave height.  There will be 60 or more boats checking so the boats have been divided into two groups, one at 08:00 and the other at 08:30.  I expect that check-ins will take quite a long time.

I guess that’s about all I have to say for now.  I’ll likely post tomorrow after we exit the eastern point of the Gulf Stream.  We’ll probably be running the engine after that as I believe that the wind might be a bit light.  Not sure though.

I’ll learn more in the morning when we listen to Chris Parker again.

Nope, we aren’t even close to “there” but it’s good to be underway.

Stay tuned and wish us luck.   Pandora out…

Leaving Tuesday, it seems.

It’s Monday mid day and all crew is present and accounted for.  We had a last minute provisioning trip and with a cart flowing over you’d never know that I had done any provisioning along the way.  For sure, we won’t run out of food.

“Do you have enough yogurt?  What brand?  No, I don’t eat that.  I like this kind?  Granola bars?  Not those, what about protein bars…”  Hell, I don’t even know how to spell protein…

I am pretty confident that, if we should decide to divert to Spain, we will arrive with plenty of food left over.  Brenda and I are going to have a LOT of dinner parties, or should I say “snack parties”, this winter if we plan to come back to the States with less than a season of food.  “Would you care for a protein bar with that glass of wine?”

Unfortunately, it’s raining now and it is expected to continue for the rest of the day.   That’s problematic only because I have to go up the mast to see if I can find out where that cotter pin I found on top of the dink when we arrived here.  I doubt that it fell from the top of the mast and just landed there, but I HAVE TO BE CERTAIN.   I expect that it just landed there in a bunch of tie-down straps that I used on the dink.

We will have another weather briefing later this afternoon and will then make a final decision on a go-no-go.  I expect that it will call for an early to mid day departure Tuesday.   According to Chris Parker’s net this morning, that’s the way it looks, for now.

Chris just sent out this information a few hours ago so I thought that I’d repeat it here.  He said…

DEPARTURE RECOMMENDATION for vessels yet-to-depart Chesapeake/BeaufortNC:
I think Tue3 is the day I’d recommend most folks depart. What’s changed some since yesterday is a better-defined HI shifting SE from Maine toward Bermuda Wed4-Fri6…and this supports more clocking E<SE<S wind…so the opportunity to make South-ing to get clear of GulfStream is for 36hrs from Tue3 morning thru Wed4 afternoon.

During Wed4 night-Thu5, wind clocks E<SE, and allows vessels to TACK and sail ENE-E near 33N Thu5…and continue sailing E along 33N in SSE wind Fri6…and sail ESE-SE in SSW wind Sat7. This may get vessels to within 100mi-or-so W or SW of Bermuda before S wind dies late Sat7, and you can motor S for 2 days to (hopefully) reach the Trades.

Delaying departure till Wed4 or Thu5 may make it difficult to get far enough S to avoid heavy weather ahead of (and behind) the strong ColdFRONT exiting Coast Sat7 night.

There is a small front/trof exiting right over us this afternoon and a shift north or south, even a little, will have a large impact on the wind direction.  If we are south of the trof, the wind will be from the SW and if we are north of the trof, from the north.  Of course, heading out into the Gulf Stream, with 15-20kts of wind opposing the current will make for a very rough crossing with waves in the 10-15′ range, with a short period.  Sort of like a washing machine.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to check “where in the world is Pandora” for several options on tracking our progress.

So, that’s my report for now.  More to come.

Now were ready, now were not.

It’s Sunday morning and it doesn’t look like the Salty Dawg Rally is going to get off on time, after all.   We had a weather briefing last evening and Chris Parker’s assessment of the forecast is that there is a “low” or at least something that looks a lot like one, that will migrate off of the coast near Hampton and head to the NE in the next day or so.  This will bring very strong NE winds about the time that we would be traversing the Gulf Stream.  And if there is one thing that’s clear is that NE winds and the Gulf Stream are a really nasty mix and when the wind opposes the current it kicks up big and steep seas.

Actually, the best time to have left was a few days ago as the conditions were very good but alas, we weren’t ready anyway.  Such is life.

So, what’s a Dawg to do?  The current forecast points toward a departure in a “few” days, perhaps as far off as later this week if we want to sail for the first 500 miles or perhaps sooner if we are willing to just head out with no wind behind the low and motor for the first few days.  I am not too keen on this option as it would burn up a lot of my fuel and leave little reserve for the end of the trip when we might need it.

However, I know from many of Chris’s forecast that things can change quickly so perhaps we will find that the favorable winds will fill in sooner than not.  Hopefully, we will only be delayed by a few days.  More to come on that.

On Friday morning we had visitors from US Coast Guard Norfolk who talked to us about safety and what to expect from them if we get into trouble.  They showed us some videos and also provided some insight from their experiences with those that they had to assist in the SDR rally that got into trouble a few years ago when participants left Hampton and got caught in a low that came through faster than expected.  These guys make it clear that they would do everything that they could to help us in the event of an emergency but that it costs the US taxpayer plenty.  In the case of the 2013 rally “experience”, the price tag was something like $1.6 million, a tidy sum that would buy at least couple of toilet seats or perhaps a nice package of nuts and bolts for the guys at NASA.   Editor note:  He did have his eyes open for most of the presentation.  11-1-15a 001Want give them a call yourself to request a lift?  What no Twitter?
11-1-15a 002Meanwhile back at the “Dawg House” yesterday, we had a live life raft demonstration, a sobering discussion, to say the least, of what can happen when things go badly.   It’s the whole jumping into a raft and having someone in a wet suit say “I’ll be your rescue swimmer today”, that makes deciding when to leave so important.  As much as I want to get going, I REALLY, REALLY don’t want to try out my raft any time soon.    But, it’s nice to know that it’s there is a raft if and when I need it.  On that point, I am going with the “if” part as I am hoping that there won’t be a “when”. 11-1-15a 005It gets even better.  How about a video of the deployment?  It’s amazing how quickly the raft blows up. I’d hate to have one go off in my salon.  So, with another briefing tonight we wait and see what the weather will do and while we are ready, we’re not, at least not yet.

For now, you will have to settle for a shot of a good portion of “the fleet” in Hampton Harbor as shown on the tracking program.  There are 80 boats participating in the rally and this is only a part of the group, as some, including Pandora, are not in the host marina.  Don’t forget that you can track our progress in the “where in the world is Pandora” section of this site.  There will be several options, one for Pandora alone, updated every four hours, and the other for the fleet overall, updated twice a day.  For now, we wait.  I guess I’ll have to wash the boat again today.  Have to keep busy.