November 2021

It’s Sunday morning and we are finally less than 500 miles from Antigua.  The trade winds, still perhaps 200 miles south of us, are at least looking like something that we will encounter in this lifetime and we are looking forward to finishing up our run with a few days of easy trade wind sailing.

We could probably be sailing now but it would be SLOW SAILING and would prolong our trip by several days, something that would surely cause a mutiny with Pandora’s crew.    And even motoring as much as we are, the trip is going to be my longest, nearly two weeks.   Fortunately we sailed a lot in the early days so I am fairly confident that we will arrive in Antigua with fuel in at least one of our tanks.

While the wind is from the south, the conditions are light with about 5-8 knots that is allowing us to move along motor-sailing, close hauled.  That’s not ideal but fortunately, we think that we have plenty of fuel to continue pushing along to make it to the favorable trades.

There’s not much to report except that there is really nothing out here at all with the exception of an occasional ship that passes us.  Yesterday a freighter and a yacht transport ship passed us on their way to Ft Lauderdale.  In spite of the big ocean, I had to call the on the radio to confirm that they saw us.  The AIS tracker showed that both of them would pass us within about a mile.   One had to alter course a bit to avoid freaking me out by passing too close.

I can tell you that AIS is perhaps the most important piece of safety gear to get on a boat for passage making.  To be able to see a ship 15 miles away and calculate how close they will come to you, is very big deal.  It gives the name of the ship so you can hail them by name.  It wasn’t very many years ago when we had to look at running lights and try our best to understand where they were going and if they might be a threat.  And, without a ship name to call directly, they almost never responded.

On the home front, Brenda continues to get a lot of “atta girls’ for her new book and it is just so exciting that she has a hard copy of the “real thing” after all these years.  Yesterday she also taught a class on Zoom to the Rhode Island Handweavers’ Guild. The class was about a Japanese braiding technique that she has enjoyed doing over the years.  The technique is not very well known so whenever she teaches it, the response is great.

And, speaking of the book, all 5 pounds of it, you should check out her recent post to see first hand what a great book it is.  More than a decade of hard work and it finally arrived just a day before the second anniversary of the death of Archie, the co-author and subject of the book.  Heavy or not, I hope that Brenda brings a copy to Antigua so I can see if first hand.

Life at my Kitchen Table

If all goes well, Pandora will be in English Harbor and all tied up by sometime on November 11th so I can be there to greet Brenda when she arrives the next day.  We have booked a room at the Admiral’s Inn for four nights and it will be nice to spend some time on land after three weeks since setting sail from Essex.

It’s nice to be far enough along to be able to begin seeing clearly when our voyage will be over.  I am totally, totally ready.

Remember my post about leaving Pandora south for next summer?  The more I think about that, the more appealing the idea.   So much to look forward to over the winter aboard Pandora with Brenda and lots of fun on the horizon next summer in CT along with a trip to Europe next fall.  Besides, I haven’t been to Grenada or Trinidad, two likely spots to keep Pandora, where I can have some work done on her.

Busy, busy.  No rest for the weary retired..

It’s Saturday morning and as of this afternoon we will have been at sea for seven days.  It’s been somewhat frustrating as the winds have been relentlessly against us with no end in sight until we are perhaps 300 miles north of Antigua.

When will we get there? A question that has been on my lips since I was a young passenger in my parent’s car and is always top of mind when we are on passage.

The first week was full of uncertainty and now that we are about 575 miles from our destination, I am beginning to relax about running out of fuel.

In past years, I have found that we tended to put about 100 hours on the engine but this year it looks like the total will be 125 or more.  That’s more than 5 days with the engine running, around the clock, a lot of motoring.

Yesterday we ran one of our tanks dry after 59 hours of motoring, and with two more full tanks and an additional 30 gallons in jugs, it looks we will have plenty of fuel to complete the run.

We are hopeful that the forecast of enough wind to sail for the last 300 miles will pan out.  If not, I am cautiously optimistic that we will still have enough fuel but it might mean that we just squeak into port with fuel in the tanks.  Fingers crossed.

A big part of all this will hinge on having at least a light wind for the next few days, and that assumes it isn’t directly on the nose, as our speed motor sailing in light wind is about 5-6.5kts and yet in dead calm, only about 4.5 to 5kts.  Over several days even a single knot can cut a trip by a day or more.

When we left Hampton, it was quite chilly and I have heard that those who weren’t able to leave with the bulk of the fleet are still in port and have seen temperatures in the 30s.  Sadly, those that didn’t catch the window we made will be stuck in port until perhaps this coming Tuesday.

You have to wonder if some might just end up bagging the run for this season as getting crew to be with you long enough to make the run will begin feeling crowded by a need for them to be home for what is shaping up to be the first “post pandemic’ Thanksgiving.

I mention chilly in Hampton as that is in great contrast to what we are experiencing now.  As a rule, once you cross the Gulf Stream, it gets warmer pretty fast with water temperatures in the stream in the high 80s.    And while the water cools a bit south of the stream, it never really gets much colder than about 80.  This means that the air is warmer too.

Pandora’s engine is mid-ship, under the galley, so when it’s running and for hours after it stops, the cabin get’s quite hot.  Last night it was really too hot to sleep so I turned on the forward AC unit, which I had set up to run on the house DC/AC converter.  I can only run it when the engine is on but with the boat only heeling a bit, and the seas fairly calm, having the unit on helps a lot.  In anticipation of using the AC this way, I Installed a small vent that directs the cool air from the forward cabin to the main salon.  It makes a tremendous difference.

Anyway, things are going well and we are heading, more or less, toward our destination, Antigua.

So, as we begin our second week at sea, at least we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, when will we get there?  I’m guessing sometime on the 11th.  However, with nearly 600 miles to go, well, who knows.

“See” you again tomorrow.  With us luck.

As of today we have reached, sort of, the part of the trip where we are just about the farthest from land that we will be for the entire run.  Not to put too fine a point on it but here goes…

Bermuda:  300nm
Bahamas: 500nm
Puerto Rico: 620nm
Hampton: 660nm
Antigua: 780nm

I’ll admit that writing nearly 800 miles as the distance to Antigua is a bit disconcerting but any least it’s not 1,500, a step in the right direction.

As of now we have motored 51 hours and I expect that soon the first of our three fuel tanks will run dry.  As a rule, I run each tank until the engine begins to stumble when the tank is fully depleted.  I can’t say that I am fully confident in how many gallons of fuel each tank holds as I rarely run them dry.  In most cases, as I get low, I switch to another tank to avoid running out at a critical time, like going up to a dock or perhaps in an area where I have little time to avoid an obstacle.   Not a lot to run into out here, hundreds of miles from anything and an ideal time to run a tank until the motor quits.

When will I run out of fuel, on this tank?  Hard to say but it could be most any time.  As there are only 3 Aerodyn 47s out there, I really don’t have anyone to asm for advice. Besides, my boat was built in Finland and the other two, hulls 1&2, in South Africa.  Who knows if the tanks were even made to the same specs.  The literature, such as there is, suggests that each of the three tanks is 50 gallons, which I doubt.  For the purposes of planning, I assume about 35 gallons of usable fuel in each tank.  I also carry 30 gallons in 5 gallon cans.

So, when will this tank run out?  I’ll let you know as soon as I know.

So, for now, as predicted, the wind is very light so we continue to motor south toward a waypoint that Chris Parker provided.  We are still about 36 hours from that goal but by getting there by Saturday should keep us south of the worse adverse winds associated with the nasty gale that is lashing the US East Coast.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like we will be seeing the easterly trades winds until we are about 3 days from Antigua.  In the meantime, we are anticipating stronger winds on the nose that will force us to head more to the east, perpendicular to our desired course, perhaps for a few days.

However, if all goes according to plan, and that’s a big if, being farther east should position us to take advantage of the trades when they finally fill in.

We are waiting to hear from Chris today with his recommendation on how to position ourselves best for the adverse winds, to head east or perhaps even to the southwest.

One more thing.  Yesterday we trolled a line and caught a small pompano but tossed it back.  We heard that another boat caught a 33lb tuna, a huge fish.  I plan on fishing again today but hope that whatever we catch is q LOT smaller than that tuna.

I guess I had better ring off for now and get fishing.  As my grandfather used to say “you can’t catch fish if your lure is not in the water”.

Will we catch something today?   Are there fish nearby?

Hard to say but one thing for sure is that we are a long way from just about anything.

It’s Wednesday morning, our fourth day at sea.   Yesterday wasn’t a great day as there wasn’t much wind at all.  No make that NO wind, so we had to motor all day.

And, the forecast wasn’t looking good either with  Chris suggesting that we won’t see many days of favorable winds for much of the trip.

As a result, I was becoming a bit preoccupied with the possibility of running out of fuel.   No, we haven’t put much of a dent in our fuel with less than 24 hours on the meter since leaving Hampton, but it’s impossible not to project out when the forecast suggests that we won’t reach consistent trade winds until a few hundred miles from Antigua.  Amazingly, Pandora carries enough fuel to motor over 1,000 miles but that’s still not enough to get us there if we have to motor a week or more.

One of the great things about my new Iridium Go unit is that I am able to download weather GRIBS every 12 hours that gives me a forecast out a week so between those and the written forecasts from Chris Parker, the weather router, we have a fairly good feel for what is in store.

However, with such a huge gale coming up the US east coast this week, the effect on the wind to the south is a bit hard to predict.  As I mentioned previously, when there is a big low in the North Atlantic, those lovely easterly trade winds are suppressed.  In this case, the easterlies become southerlies, keeping us from pointing in the direction that we need to go.

Another thing that happens is that the winds tend to go away, so we have to spend a lot more time motoring.

Over the last 24 hours the forecast, now that we are south of Bermuda, is becoming somewhat more clear and suggests we will not encounter quite so much light air or wind on the nose.  And, the trades might also kick in a bit sooner.

All and all, things are looking brighter for a good run, well mostly good, from here on out.   Yes, we expect to be doing some sailing to the east, not good, but that might not be for as long as expected and then we should be able to turn south, perhaps over the weekend, and continue on our way to Antigua.

The biggest issue we face is a delay in our arrival and I’d really like to think that we can get to Antigua by the 10th or so and beat Brenda and Jane, Peter’s wife, who arrive on the 12th.

One way or the other, wind or not, favorable wind direction or not, we can sail and motor a good distance and we will eventually get there.

I am already looking forward to a “tot” of rum with my crew and tying up in the Dockyard in English Harbor.

So as we inch our way south and closer to Antigua, I think it’s safe to say that “it’s getting a little better every day”.  Let’s hope that the forecast continues to improve.

So that’s about it from Pandora as we sometimes motor sail, sometime sail on our way south.  It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, the sky is blue and the seas are calm.  Not bad for a day on the water.

One more thing.  Peter has proposed a wager on our arrival time and the one that best guesses the time when we drop anchor in English Harbor gets, well nothing.  However, the one of us that is most off buys the first round of drinks.

I’m on it.

It’s Tuesday morning and we are motoring along in conditions that are more like Long Island Sound on an August day than ocean sailing hundreds of miles from land.   The wind has become very light and is likely to stay that way for at least another day.

In the next day or so, we will reach a point during the trip when we are the farthest from land and in every direction land will be some 500 miles.  There’s not much out here except the occasional ship that passes on the horizon or dolphins that come up to check us out for a few moments before moving on.

Currently, we are nearly 300 miles from Bermuda and even farther from the US.  Perhaps more importantly, we are about 1/3 of the way to Antigua.  But not so fast, as some pretty impressive headwinds will be arriving in a few days so we will have to tack to the east and even northeast for perhaps several days while we wait for more favorable conditions.  Sadly, when we tack we will actually be heading away from our destination, and that will be very frustrating.

The big driver of the adverse winds that will blow from the SE and keep us from making headway toward Antigua, is a major storm off of the US east coast that is expected to form in the next few days.  That storm, or low, will suck wind in from thousands of miles in every direction and disrupt the easterly trade winds that we would normally encounter as we get closer to the Caribbean .

While a big storm off of the east coast brings nasty weather to the US and Bahamas, those same winds disrupt the trade winds and generally weaken the winds down south.

For now, we are motoring in very light winds, heading in the general direction of the Caribbean.  However, in a few days we will have to head on a course that will likely be perpendicular to our destination and while we will be moving along nicely, we will be in more of a holding pattern, waiting for the winds to shift and allow us to turn south again.

I really do hope we can avoid that multi day delay but we won’t know for sure by Thursday.

Another fear is that we will not have enough fuel to make the rest of the trip but I think that we will do well as we did a good amount of “easting”, under sail, over the first few days of the trip and resisted the temptation to head south.   I was pretty sure that a direct run south might not be in our best interest and I am glad that I took that approach as being a bit farther east than some in the fleet will allow us a better angle for sailing south.

As a general rule, you want to do as much easting as possible early in the trip so that when the easterly trades fill in, you have a comfortable point of sail.

Well, so far so good.

So, when will we get to Antigua?  I actually have no idea as it is likely that we will spend a few days sailing perpendicular to Antigua, and that will feel like “you can’t get there from here”, well, at least until the trades fill in again and we can make our way south for the remaining distance to Antigua.

All and all, I can see us arriving in Antigua, but when that is will remain a mystery for now.  Being at sea is a lot different than being in a car with a GPS that calculates the arrival time within minutes.  While roads can become congested, they generally don’t go away.  At sea, when the wind blows from where you want to go, there is just no way to get there until conditions improve.

So, for now when I wonder when we will arrive all I can say is that we will but who knows when.

One thing for certain is that for the part of the trip when the wind is on our nose, the phrase that will come to mind is more like “you can’t get there from here”.

Let’s hope that part of the trip is short.