November 2017

It’s Wednesday morning here in Falmouth Antigua and more boats from the Salty Dawg Rally are arriving each day.  We have lots of special events planned including some happy hour gatherings and our “famous” arrival dinner scheduled for Monday.   It will be held at Boom, part of the Admiral’s Inn right in the historic Nelson’s Dockyard.    It’s a remarkable venue and co-owners Astrid and her brother Paul have gone out of their way to make us feel right at home. You can’t beat this spot, with a front row seat to the history of the British Navy in Lord Nelson’s time.  And, a view of historic ruins of the dockyard’s sail loft.  I challenge you to find a more iconic vista anywhere else in the Caribbean.  English harbor and the Dockyard from nearby Shirley Heights. Yes, it’s been a lot of work pulling all of this together on such short notice but things have come together very nicely.  We won’t have the entire fleet with us on Monday when we have our arrival dinner but I feel pretty good that the bulk of the boats will be able to make it.

A number of the Dawgs have opted to tie up at the Antigua Yacht Club Marina in Falmouth, along with Pandora. Here’s the view that greeted me today while I sat in the cockpit with my morning coffee. Speaking of coffee, I’m out of decaf so watch out.  Caffeine and me?  Not a great combination.    However with all that’s going on, perhaps I’ll need a bit of a boost to keep up.

All I can say is it’s great to be here  with all the other Dawgs.  Let the fun begin!

It’s been a busy few days since arriving here in Antigua first thing Sunday morning, after a 1,500+ mile run that took 9 days and 23 hours, not to put too fine a point on it.    It’s actually pretty amazing that we made it in ten days, my original prediction, considering that there was very , very light winds and plenty of weather “obstacles” conspiring to keep us from following the rum line.

My able crew, Chris and Jim. hard at work along the way.  I won’t bore you with the  “we motored this many hours, burned # gallons of fuel and sailed X % of they way except to say that navigating the fickle winds, currents and squalls, perhaps 20 or more of them actually.   However, I think it’s  sufficient to say that we had just about every weather option you can think of from flat calm with no wind to sporty sailing on a really close reach and had to go way east to get around a persistent ridge that plagued the fleet for days on end.

“No Bob, we really want to know.  Just how many hours did you motor?”  Ok, if you insist and because you asked so nicely…   We motored 129 hours and were underway for a total of 239 hours.  I guess that  means that we sailed just over half of the way.

In miles of sailing, it was more than that as we spent plenty of hours moving along at 8-9 kts, and sometime with top speeds in the low double digits.  Perhaps that explains how we were only the second boat to arrive here in Falmouth.  And, on that subject, that the boat that got here a few hours earlier may have left the day before we did.  Pandora’s a pretty fast boat.

As we left Hampton, along with many others in the 76 boat fleet, there was a full moon.  It was beautiful.As the entire fleet was headed to a specific way point south of the Gulf Stream,  to try and get on the right side of a large eddy, we were in sight of a number of boats for several days.  It was pretty impressive to see magnificent clouds over the boats in the distance.   As there were A LOT of squalls and plenty of rainbows.  And some terrific sunrises.  I always took the 04:00 to 08:00 watch, my favorite.  Well, my favorite after I get over the shock of being awakened with “Bob, it’s 04:00.  You’re on…”At the halfway point we found ourselves 500 miles from anything in every direction and days went by without us seeing any other boat.  However, this 60’+ Swan came up out of the distance and passed us doing 10+kts, but not all that fast as Pandora herself was moving along in the 9kt range.
Pretty good turn of speed for Pandora as she is a lot smaller than that Swan.  And with a crew of 6 and a bunch of hotshot sailors, they passed by less than a boat length, just to say HI and, I expect to say “mine is bigger than yours”.  And on they went..As the sun rose on Sunday morning, spirits were high as we watched the lush green mountains of Antigua  rise before us. So, here we are, on the dock for the first night all by ourselves.  Did I mention that we had just about the fastest time to Falmouth?  Thought so…  Not a lot of boats were here in the marina when we arrived, but this 220′ sailboat was nearby.  Huge.  I heard that they had a party catered at one of the local spots and spent plenty including a cool $1,000 on a special cheese platter.  The owner of the dining establishment told me that they also drank lots of expensive wine and the bill?  Well, let’s just say “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”  Nope, not Pandora’s crew.  Less than half of the rally fleet has arrived and many more should arrive over the next few days as for many it’s been a very slow passage.   Nearly 20 of the 55 boats that are headed to Antigua had to divert to Bermuda to get more fuel so that they could make it all the way in the light winds and not run out of fuel. 

The passage offered a wide variety of wind and sailing/motoring options and I have covered a lot of this in prior posts.   We did a bit of fishing along the way and landed one Mahi Mahi and I won’t talk about other various “ones that got away” including one that somehow broke the heavy line clean off of winch we had it tied to and took the entire rig “hook, line and sinker”, as the say.  That put an end to our fishing    Well, here we are in Antigua and since arriving I have been swamped with details for all the events as we have something planned just about every other day between now an Thanksgiving, including our first “official Happy Hour” tonight.

I’ll be reporting breathlessly, of course, on all the goings on over the next week or so before Brenda and I fly out to visit our kids and the christening of our granddaughter Tori the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

For now, all I can say is thank goodness that the local folks here in Antigua have been so supportive to help pull all of this together.   In particular, the Antigua Yacht Club has “lent” us Nesie, the office manager, to help with all the details including assembling some lovely pink “skipper bags” with all sorts of nifty stuff, even a sample of Antigua rum, to help the Dawgs enjoy their visit to Antigua just a little bit better. Oh yeah, Brenda arrives tomorrow. I CAN NOT WAIT!!!!

Well, there you have it.  We made it.  Back to Antigua for the second season this year.  I love Antigua.

Well that’s it, with nearly 1,500 miles under Pandora’s keel, we are nearly to Antigua with less than 150 miles to go until we enter Falmouth Harbor, probably around dawn on Sunday.

It’s surely been a challenging trip a good deal of “variety” including just about everything from flat calms to days with a squall every few hours to make me wonder if it will ever end.

Over the last ten days I have to admit that I found myself wondering if it’s worth it, being away from Brenda for so long and the day after day of playing “cat and mouse” with ridges and winds that seem to be doing everything possible to keep us from making our way south.

Back when I was first thinking of a direct run to Antigua, I estimated that it would take perhaps ten days to make the 1,500 mile trip.  Of course, it’s never a straight line but one way or the other, I made the assumption that we’d be able to cover about 150 miles in the “right direction”, on average, each day.  That we now expect to complete the trip in almost exactly ten days, is fairly remarkable.

I know that there were days when we made way less than 150 miles toward our goal and some when we did better than that, but overall, my ten day assumption turned out to be about right.   Of course, we “aren’t there until we are there”, however I now  expect that we will arrive in Falmouth tomorrow, Sunday, shortly before dawn which will make out total run a few hours less than ten days from Hampton.

So, will I do this trip again?  Probably, but I am  not sure if I’ll take Pandora home to CT this summer and may instead opt to leave her in Grenada or Trinidad, below the hurricane belt.  I have been hesitant to leave her for an extended period because there was always so much to do to bring her into proper trim for extended ocean sailing but most of those projects are now done so perhaps it’s time to just do the short run south from Antigua to her “summer home” after the northbound rally leaves in May.

Brenda and I had planned to do an extended trip to Europe every other year or so after I retired but with so much work on Pandora as well as the time it takes to get her from here to there, our travel plans have been delayed.  Yes, there were other reasons beyond “the boat” but all of this “schlepping” has clearly gotten in the way.  We really want to do a trip this fall so perhaps this year it does make sense to not do the long run north.

One thing for sure though, if we do decide to bring Pandora north this spring and back down next fall, I won’t be stopping in Hampton as it just adds too much time to the trip.  And to add insult to injury, it just takes forever and a day to get enough easting from Hampton to reach the trade winds.  It just seems to me that it would be easier to leave from CT and head south, passing near Bermuda on our way south and just skip all the “in and out” of going to Hampton which in itself makes the total run to Antigua about 200 miles longer than a direct run.

Besides, not stopping in Hampton would cut my time away from Brenda by about half as I wouldn’t be hanging out in Hampton for a week or two prior to heading south.

However, as Chris Parker would say, “that’s a long way out and things could change” but that’s what I am thinking now.  Well, for at least today.
All that aside, what I’m really thinking of is that I can’t wait to see Brenda and go out for a nice dinner so we can catch up as I haven’t seen her since I slipped the lines in CT, some three weeks ago.

Did I mention that she’s flying in on Wednesday afternoon?

Thought so.  And I’m really, really excited.

For sure, Pandora will be all cleaned up, in cruising trim and ready for Brenda.

Yes, that’s still a long way but now that we have finally reached the consistent trade winds, the sailing is so much easier and what a treat to sail for hour after hour, and day after day, and know that the wind will stay just about the same, somewhere between 13 and 19 or so knots, on a close reach with wind comfortably forward of the beam.   And, with 1,000 miles under our keel, it’s really the first time on this trip when we could count on the wind being consistent and from a decent angle for more than a half day or so.

It’s remarkable how moods change when we are pointing toward our destination and moving along smartly in consistent winds.   Having said that, it seems that the guys have been in pretty good spirits in spite of the relentless need to head east, wind on the nose or not.

Up until now I had trouble remembering why I do these trips but if life could always be a beam reach, it would be hard for me to get enough of this kind of sailing.  I expect that most of the sailors that I know up in New England don’t get as much sailing with the wind on their beam in an entire season than we will enjoy over the next few days.  Somehow I am now way more relaxed knowing that I will probably not need to adjust the sails or our course more than a “smidge” at any point for the next 500 miles.

It’s pretty clear that Pandora likes it too as she “hums her tune” galloping over the waves.

And, speaking of “galloping”, I made the mistake of leaving the coffee pot, full of dry grounds, unsecured for a moment, or at least a moment too long, this morning and it gleefully leapt onto the floor, spraying dried grounds everywhere in an instant.    It took me forever to clean up the mess.  As it was about 05:00 and the guys were both asleep, I didn’t have the heart to break out the vacuum cleaner, so a damp sponge had to do the job.  Yuck.  Don’t worry Brenda, I didn’t use the kitchen sponge.  After 46 years of hanging around you, I am nearly housebroken.    Well, sort of housebroken, at least when it comes to cleaning up coffee grounds aboard Pandora.   Ok, at least this morning and I admit that I still have a long way to go to be properly “restrained”.    :

So, here we are FINALLY moving in the direction that we want to go and it feels terrific.   On the one hand, we are still 500 miles from Antigua and that’s likely to take us somewhere around three days to cover the distance, suggesting that we will arrive in Falmouth sometime on Sunday.

I plan on going into a marina for a few days to get Pandora cleaned up and back into cruising mode.  With Brenda arriving on Wednesday I’ll have to decide if I am going to move out to the anchorage before she arrives.  I guess I’ll have to ask her what she’d prefer.

Yes indeed, it’s sure a lot more pleasant to be actually pointing where I want to go with consistent and, more importantly, “predicable” trade winds that we can count on make the remaining 500 miles seem more like a “day sail” than major ocean passage.  What, no changing waypoints Chris?

Oh yeah, one more thing.  It’s nearly 500 miles in every direction to land.   Nope, nobody around, just us and the flying fish.

Yes, it’s nice to be sailing, the easy way.   I can practically see Antigua in the distance.  Not… But it feels like I just might.

Heck, we’re nearly there with only 480 miles to go…

It’s the beginning of our 7th day at sea.  Perhaps it’s just me but it seems that going south is a lot more complex than heading north.  In the spring you sort of point the boat north and can generally hold a fairly direct course most of the way.  I guess that makes sense as the prevailing winds are from the east offshore and from the SW onshore which is about right for the run north.

So, what about fall?  With the cold fronts coming off of the coast in the fall and winter months, you’d expect that the northerlies would help us along heading south.  However, that’s not the case because those northerlies are driven by a succession of lows that roll off of the east coast, one after another.

Of course, between those lows the winds go all over the place so heading south becomes a cat and mouse game with shifting winds.   I am beginning to see why many folks opt to keep their boats in Trinidad or Grenada and avoid the 1500 mile slog each spring and fall.   Think I have had enough?  Actually, I really enjoy the trip when we are sailing but day after day of motoring and hoping that we can pick up a little bit more wind to sail, can get somewhat wearing.   (As I finish up this post, we are sailing again, for the moment at least)

Twice each day I listen to Chris Parker, in the morning and evening, to see what the latest “new”, “flavor of the day”, waypoint will be.   What is today’s best guess as to where we will finally reach the trade winds and be able to turn south toward Antigua?  As I write this we are, as the crow flies, and Pandora isn’t flying right now,  about 600 miles from Antigua.  However, we still have to continue to head to the SE, not directly to Antigua, to get enough easting to catch favorable winds for the rest of the run.  Well, that’s at least what Chris said this morning…

Unfortunately, we are currently to the north of a ridge that is suppressing the wind to 10kts or less in our area.   As Pandora needs about 12kts to sail comfortably on a close reach, the winds just aren’t strong or consistent enough to sail.  While I might be able to sail easily in light winds in say, the protected waters of Long Island Sound, in the more choppy conditions of the ocean, it takes a few knots more wind to keep our speed up.
Generally, it’s pretty comfortable moving along right now but I’d feel a lot better if the engine weren’t on most of the time.  We have plenty of fuel, I think, to make the run assuming that my consumption per hour assumptions are right and that the remaining two tanks have at least 40 gallons, each, of usable fuel.  The builder’s specs call for three tanks of 50 gallons each for a total of 150 gallons.  However, we have used up the first tank and based on historical usage per hour, I estimate that the useable fuel in that tank was about 40 gallons, not 50.   If that is correct and the other tanks are similar, then I have ten gallons less per tank than I thought and that translates to something like 40 to 45 hours less fuel under power, nearly two days.

However, in spite of all that, I calculated this morning that I should have somewhere around 5.5 days more motoring with the fuel that I have left.   So, with perhaps 650 miles to go and an assumed average speed of 6.5kts,  I would need a maximum of four days of motoring if I were to use the engine 100% of the time, which isn’t likely to happen.

Well, I say “not likely” with the belief that the rest of the trip will be better than the first half and I remain hopeful, that once we hit the trades we will be able to turn off the engine and once again enjoy the sounds of the wind and water rushing past Pandora as we close in on Antigua.  Ever hopeful you say?  Yes, that’s me and the dog, ever hopeful?  Can I have a cookie?

Actually, I’d like some of the banana, squash, raisin bread that just came out of the oven and that’s way better than a cookie.   As good as it smells, and it does smell great, I’d trade it for favorable winds in a minute.

Yes, I’m plenty hopeful but the wind, such as it is, is what it is, so I’ll just eat that banana, yellow squash, raisin bread and take what the sea tosses our way.
And later I’ll call Chris Parker and see if he can tell me, for sure and exactly where some favorable winds are anyway.

Oh yeah, about that banana, yellow squash, raisin bread, it was awesome and I didn’t even use a recipe or mix.  Besides, who would combine that weird mix if they weren’t on a boat and didn’t have to anyway?