May 2022

Pandora arrived in Deltaville VA this week after an 8 day run from St Thomas.  My crew, Craig, Alex and me were part of the Salty Dawg Homeward Bound Rally to the US, along with about 20 boats, most heading to Hampton VA.

The run was fairly uneventful, setting aside minor mechanical issues and a leaking heat exchanger on the engine.  All and all a, sort of, uneventful voyage.  We did have a very sporty last day before crossing the Gulf Stream when winds picked up to near 30kts for about 12 hours but other than that, we sailed much of the 1,350 miles.

Oddly, after those strong winds and as we approached the Gulf Stream, we had a 180 degree wind shift that took less than a half hour to unfold.  At first I thought that it was actually a result of a squall but then realized that the shift was not temporary.

By the time we got to the Gulf Stream, some hours later, the wind had diminished to less than 10kts and we crossed the Stream in near flat calm conditions.  It felt more like Long Island Sound in August than the mighty Gulf Stream.  It’s all about timing and with Chris Parker’s support, we hit it just right.

As we approached Deltaville, we decided to use the last of our supply of covid tests and learned that all three of us still tested positive.   As you can imagine, this was quite upsetting as it had been quite  along time since we had tested Alex and learned, a few days out from St Thomas, that he was positive.  We assumed that me and Craig were too although we didn’t check ourselves as we didn’t have enough tests on board.

When Craig and Alex first noticed symptoms, we were very upfront with the rally fleet, sending out an an announcement to all that we had been in contact with prior to departure.  We didn’t hear anything back so I am assuming that everyone else was ok.

Fortunately, our symptoms were limited to sore throats and a cough and as all of us had been vaccinated and had been twice boosted, the problem was fairly minor.

By the time we got to our destination we were faced with the question about what to say and do about our condition.  In my case, we were pretty certain that I was the first to get sick so I was probably no longer a threat to anyone.

I won’t go into any details about what happened next except to say that our arrival was akin to a group of lepers showing up at a garden party for hypochondriacs and it wasn’t pretty.  Given the response when word got to them.

I was unsure about how candid to be about our status and ultimately decided not to say anything because I had likely been positive weeks prior and, according to CDC guidelines, was no longer contagious.   However, news travels fast and the marina management found out anyway, along with everyone else in the marina.

To say that it was awkward doesn’t begin to describe what happened and it was clear that we were not welcome.

So, the question wasn’t really about if we were still contagious but that we had tested positive, something that I have learned isn’t necessarily a marker for being contagious after enough time has passed .    The current science, and CDC guidance, is that you are safe ten days following initial onset of symptoms but public opinion isn’t clear on that at all.

Testing negative isn’t necessarily the marker of safety as omicron, the now dominant variant, can continue to test positive up to 90 days past the initial infection.  Based on the reception that we received, good luck trying to explain that when everyone thinks that you can’t reenter society until you have had two days of negative test results.

In the interest of fair balance, I will acknowledge that there are two sides of the story and I should have been more upfront with everyone.  Having said that, there is so much emotion and misinformation out there, I doubt that things would have been much different if I’d said something upfront.   I guess I’ll never know.

Yup, really awkward.

So, we cleaned up Pandora and left as soon as we could.  No reason to hang around when we were clearly not wanted.

Pandora remains in Deltaville awaiting the installation of the lithium bank and some other work to be determined.

Enough of that for now.

Meanwhile… when I’m on passage, I always worry about a catastrophic failure of some sort.  Things always break but they are usually little things.   When it’s really “sporty” or “salty” as Chris Parker likes to say,  I listen to the sounds of the boat and always have in the back of my mind, a fear that the rig is going to fail in some way.

I say this knowing that my standing rigging was replaced two years ago by a very competent rigger but I still worry.   Given all the stresses on any boat in a seaway, I am always amazed that Pandora holds together in spite of everything we run into.

However, sometimes things do break but fortunately, Pandora’s failures have been pretty minor.

Last fall one of our rally boats had a major failure when they lost their forestay in pretty rough conditions.  I won’t go into detail about this except to say that things turned out fine but several Salty Dawg boats came to the rescue and at one point the USCG came out in a chopper from Puerto Rico as someone on board set off their EPIRB emergency transponder, only to cancel the call by the time the chopper arrived.

Fast forward and that same boat was heading back to New York a few weeks ago and found themselves in pretty rough conditions off of Long Island, this time with terrible results.

I don’t know the specifics except to say that the captain reported to the USCG that they had been hit by a “rouge wave” and lost their entire rig.

The USCG send out a Jayhawk chopper and lifted all four crew to safety.   The Coast Guard records video of all operations and to see this footage is very sobering.Check out this link to a news report of the incident from a TV station in Boston.

So, there you have it.  Sure we had a good passage but the arrival, not so much.

All I can say is that it didn’t feel good to be greeted like lepers but at least we didn’t have to be rescued by the USCG.   Having said that, it’s nice to know that they will be there if we need them.

Let’s hope that’s never the case and I hope to never hear the words, “Good evening, I’ll be your USCG rescue swimmer today”.

Nope, I’d much prefer being a pariah as it could have been much worse.

 

 

 

 

It’s been 8 days since we left St Thomas to make our way back to the US and, all and all, it’s been a fairly easy trip.

Last night, running into a line of nasty squalls, was the most difficult day of the trip.  We had a few minor gear issues that required two of us on deck at midnight to fix an errant reefing line that had to be rerun a few times until we finally got it right.  And there were myriad issues that needed attention but are too numerous to list here.

We were also treated to a full moon that lent a bit of additional drama as we surfed along at 10 kts in big seas and nearly 30 kts of wind. I understand that there was also a lunar eclipse but somehow we missed that, perhaps due to all the excitement and efforts at managing the boat under difficult conditions.

It was certainly our most challenging night of the trip but it’s actually been a pretty uneventful run.  It seemed like I had to go up on deck a dozen times last night to check lines or make minor tweaks and repairs to keep things running smoothly.  It’s been a long time since I had to reef and un-reef so many times in a single night.

It was tough on all of us and I don’t think that I had more than perhaps a cat nap for 10 minutes before things calmed down around dawn when I was finally able to lie down for a few hours.

We also had 180 degree wind shift that happened in about 15 minutes, and was totally unexpected in spite of our downloading current weather information.  It took me a while to understand that it was a shift and not some sort of squall that was changing wind direction temporarily.

As I write this we are about 2/3 of the way across the Gulf Stream, that conveyor belt of warm water that moves up from the Gulf of Mexico nearly to the Arctic and back down past Northern Europe, tempering the climate for millions.    The amount of water that is moved by the current, often at up to 5 kts, is the largest moving body of water on the planet and a huge amount of heat is circulated from the tropics to the Arctic year round.   Imagine a body of water a mile deep and 50 or more miles wide moving at 5 kts 24/7, day after day for millions of years.  That’s a lot of water.

The Gulf Stream also marks the end of the trip for us as the entrance to the Chesapeake is only about 100 miles beyond the western wall of the Stream.

We still have another night at sea and come morning we will enter the Chesapeake and then in another 30 or so miles we will arrive at our destination.

One night more or not, crossing the Gulf Stream is a big deal and signifies  that we have come a long way.

Here’s to being mostly there!

It’s Sunday afternoon and we are sailing along on a broad reach, about 440 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay

I still think that we will arrive in Deltaville, our destination, on Wednesday, probably in the afternoon.

There’s not a lot to report about the weather with pretty good conditions for much of the rest of the trip.

Yesterday evening the wind began it’s shift from the East to the Southwest as the prevailing winds off the US East Coast began to kick in.  This meant that we had wind directly behind us for many hours and light until things finally filled in and allowed us to turn off the engine and begin sailing again.

We ran the engine most of the night and while I generally look into the engine compartment, under the galley sink, about once an hour, I didn’t notice that the engine coolant overflow, a white translucent reservoir that captures excess coolant from the engine when it expands with the heat of the engine, was overflowing.

Normally there is a subtle ebb and flow of coolant in and out of the reservoir as the engine heats up and cools after being shut down.   However, late last night I noticed that the reservoir had filled to overflowing and was spilling into the bilge.

This is not a good thing as it suggests that there is some sort of leak between the heat exchanger that circulates fresh water mixed with antifreeze within the engine and the seawater that circulates around the heat exchanger.
There should not ever be any mixing between the internal cooling system and the sea water (raw water) flow.   Clearly, something has happened to allow seawater to get into the internal cooling area and is forcing the coolant into the overflow.

And it appears to be happening at a fairly consistent rate of about a cup or so every 4 hours.   That doesn’t sound like a lot but it means that when the salt water gets into the engine it is diluting the antifreeze which might allow the hottest parts of the engine to make the water boil.  If that happens, it could cause problems with some portions of the engine not getting enough coolant or the engine cooling system might boil over.

I have estimated that for us to finish the trip we will have to run the engine at least another 24 hours so that suggests that the antifreeze will become dangerously diluted.  The good news is that I have about 1.5 gallons of new antifreeze but in order to make sure that what’s in the now diluted system, I will have to find a way to drain out some of the antifreeze and replace it with new fluid.

This isn’t a terribly complicated process except that it will have to be done on a hot engine, which isn’t great.

All and all, this is manageable but will take constant monitoring to be sure that things don’t get out of hand.

The good news is that we have mostly favorable winds and if needed, we can just go slower and avoid running the engine if the wind falls light.  However, some adverse winds will come up in the Gulf Stream early on Wednesday morning, say around 04:00, and we really have to be past that point by then, so going slow if the wind drops isn’t very practical.

I believe that we can manage things but it could become interesting.  Let’s hope not.

It’s funny, in a not so funny way, how making passage seems to be just a series of “issues” that have to be resolved.  I suppose that’s just like life except you can’t call a repair guy when you are 500 miles from land.

Such is life on the high seas.  Wish us luck

It’s Friday morning and we are moving along at decent pace, about 6 kts.  I’d like to be going faster but the wind is behind us and not as strong as it was for the first few days.

Our run over the last 24 hours was a bit under 150 miles giving us an average speed of about 6 kts, substantially less than the earlier part of the trip but still acceptable and what the weather forecast suggested would happen.  I expect that this will be the case for the next few days.

We are about half of the way and I still think that we are likely to arrive sometime next Wednesday, giving us a dock-to-dock time of 9 days, considerably less than the near 12 days for my run south last November.

This is not surprising as the run north takes better advantage of prevailing winds and is generally an easier run.   I expect that we may have some days of motoring and perhaps a few days of wind forward of the beam, but it should not be particularly challenging.

Everyone has settled in pretty well, now that the first few days are behind us, which is typical.  It won’t be long until we will have made it more than half way there which is always nice.  And, with the wind continuing to be behind us, it will begin to feel like it’s downhill from here.

Yes, with following seas and the wind at our backs, it’s a pretty good run.

Pandora has a way of telling you that she’s moving along nicely.  At just about 7 kts, she begins to hum, a sort of harmonic vibration that you can hear and feel throughout the boat.
I have no idea what the source of this noise is but it is very consistent and depends on the speed of the boat moving through the water, not the speed of the wind.

As 7+ kts is a very nice turn of speed for Pandora, the sound is very much “music to my ears.”

The perennial question that everyone has, including me, when we are on passage, is “when will we get there?”  Of course, as our speed is dependent on the strength and direction of the wind, asking that question is sort of like asking “how much does a car cost.”

Another key question, beyond how fast we are going, is “are we going toward our destination,” which is often not the case at all.

From when we left St Thomas, three days ago, we were basically sailing due north, with the goal of staying east of some nasty thunderstorms that were moving across our path for several days.  A course that wasn’t really toward our destination.

Going the wrong way isn’t great but it’s way better than being stuck in nasty thunderstorms for hours or days.   I will say that getting struck by lightening or being knocked down by 50 MPH winds, makes me very nervous and while a lightening strike is rare, the thought of having all of our electronics fried while far from shore is pretty scary.

Anyway, by heading north for the first few hundred miles, we were able to stay to the east of the storms.  After they passed, we turned a bit farther to the NW and toward our destination.

We still have a long way to go, nearly 1,000 miles, but it is nice to at least be heading in the mostly right direction.  And, we continue to be heading there at a good speed.  I mentioned that we made nearly 190 miles on our first day and I was surprised to see that yesterday’s run was nearly 180 miles.  Very respectable.

So, with about 25% of the run done, and good a good wind forecast for much of the remainder of the trip, it’s beginning to look like we could end up in Deltaville sometime next Wednesday.

Happily, nothing more has broken and the repair on the jib outhaul seems to be holding for now.  With us moving along on a broad reach, the pressures on the rig aren’t all that great, even though the wind speeds are in the low 20s much of the time.

All of this is good as a broad reach is a comfortable point of sail and with the wind in the low 20s, it’s strong enough to keep us moving along nicely.

I guess that the biggest issue for us right now is that we forgot to get cookies so the supply is pretty limited.  I do have a cake mix and as the temperatures seem to be dropping as we get farther north, perhaps I can whip up a cake or cupcakes in the next few days.

Pandora is happy, humming away and that, along with the possibility of cupcakes, is music to Pandora’s crew’s ears.

So far, so good and pointing in the right direction.