May 2022

One thing that we always worry about when we are offshore is stuff breaking.

Some years ago the headboard at the top of my main tore off, probably because the webbing that attached it to the top of the main decayed in the sun.   Sadly, I didn’t notice that it had any decay until it broke, taking the headboard to the top of the mast and the sail ending up on deck.

Getting that resolved was a harrowing experience that had me going up the mast while far offshort, not an experience that I want to repeat.   It was terrifying, to say the least.

Well, today we had yet another failure but in this case it wasn’t all that bad.  The jib is on a boom and to pull the sail out there is a line that runs from the aft end of the boom up to a block on the back of the jib and out to the end of the boom.   This line takes a tremendous amount of load so the line is a fairly high tech material with a special anti-chafe exterior to help it resist breaking.

Unfortunately, that line failed anyway leaving the jib flapping madly in the wind.

With help from Craig and Alex I was able to rerun the remaining line and tie it back onto the fitting on the boom and after about an hour we were back in business.
I will say that I am not confident that it will hold so I am going to watch the repair carefully.  So far, so good.

One reason that folks opt to leave their boats south for the summer is to avoid the wear and tear on crew and boat and it’s issues like this that are a good example of why that makes sense.

The forces at work as the boat moves through the water at 8-9 kts for days on end are pretty remarkable and it is no wonder that things break.

Speaking of 8-9 kts, we had quite a run for our first 24 hours, a total of just under 190 miles, an average speed of 7.9 kts, an impressive performance.

Chris Parker has had us moving more to the north for a few days to avoid a line of very strong thunderstorms but we should be able to begin heading for the Chesapeake, perhaps Thursday morning.

All and all, the wind should be mostly favorable and behind the beam most of the time.  I am hopeful that we will continue to sail with good wind and hopefully, won’t be hit with any major thunderstorms.

A squall isn’t all that bad but lightning can be a real trial, something that we want to avoid.

So, as of now things have been pretty standard, with the exception of that broken line.

Let’s hope that our luck holds out, along with the favorable winds.
And yes, it’s still hot and sticky.  The good news is as we get farther north things should cool down.

I guess that’s about it for now.  it’s nearly time to think about what to make for dinner.   Simple sounds good.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and we have been underway since 10:00 this morning.  After two days in a marina with the AC running, I have to say that it is hot.  Try 90 degrees down below.

As we have to keep Pandora buttoned up to avoid having the occasional wave find it’s way down below, it really doesn’t cool down much in the cabin.  As the engine is under the galley, all the heat from that mass of iron radiates into the cabin for hours after it’s turned off.

Eventually, it cools off a bit but then we have to run the engine again to charge the batteries and the cycle starts all over again.  Hopefully, once I have a new battery bank and a wind generator, I will not have to run the engine quite as much.  Of course, all this assumes that there is wind.

And there is, wind that is, about 15 kts on the beam.  A lovely point of sail. The sea state is reasonable and Pandora is tracking well at about 8 kts, a a respectable turn of speed.

I tried to set up the wind vane steering today and gave up after a while.  I guess I am out of practice.  Perhaps tomorrow.  It is a good way to cut down on electrical consumption compared to using the electronic autopilot, so I don’t have to recharge quite as often.

I am always amazed about how much has to be done to get ready to head offshore.  Moving from island to island means that we have to put everything away that might come loose and break or crash around down below.  However, at sea for days at a time, there are so many unknowns that we have to prepare for just about everything.   Big waves, rough conditions, high winds, you name it…

While I don’t put the dink on deck when we are moving between islands, offshore I deflate it and put it up on deck, securely lashed to the cabin top.  The engine is put in it’s holder on the stern pulpit and the sailcover is securely lashed out of the way to avoid any sort of chafing.

Between that, changing the engine oil and filters along with checking for loose fittings and belts that might be worn, and grocery shopping for two weeks of meals at sea, it takes a full two days to get everything in order.

And, of course, ultimately it’s about the weather. In preparation for the departure of the rally, about 20 boats strong, Chris Parker spent about an hour last night and Sunday going over what we should expect to encounter along the way.

I won’t go into a lot of detail except to say that we are currently heading due north and not directly to the Chesapeake to avoid a very nasty line of thunderstorms that are directly in our path.  By heading north for a few days and then bearing off to the northwest, we will hopefully avoid the front and then have a better angle of wind to head the rest of the way.

That isn’t much out of our way and I am hopeful that we will have a straight shot to the Chesapeake after perhaps Thursday.

With all of this in mind, and if the wind holds for most of the trip, we should arrive at the mouth of the Chesapeake sometime next Wednesday.

That would be a pretty good passage of about 1,400 miles.

So, all is well and soon I’ll begin getting dinner ready.  A rotisserie chicken, chilled, over greens.  A good first-day-at-sea dinner.

More tomorrow about how it’s going.

The 120 mile overnight run from St Barts to St John was uneventful and we made good time.  Craig and I took a mooring in the national park, a really nice area, for a few days before Alex arrived.  The water was an amazing blue and there were turtles all over the place.  In preparation for our run north, beginning tomorrow, Tuesday,  we decided to head to a marina in Red Hook, on St Thomas.  It’s a lot easier to prepare, getting the dink up on deck and getting provisions from a marina.  The marina is part of the IGY family of marinas, the same company that runs the one in St Lucia that we stayed at in Rodney Bay.  Their rates tend to be a bit more reasonable than others.  Plenty of services nearby.  The view of nearby St John this morning as the sun came up, was pretty nice. Under the category of “it takes all types” how about this boat near us in the marina.  A great party platform, to be sure. Being in a marina for a few days was a good idea.  A bit of luxury, complete with AC, is a good way to begin a long journey.

So on to the passage north.

I have been wondering, and worrying, about what the weather will be like for our 1,300 mile run to Deltaville VA.  I am heading there instead of home as I will be having a new lithium battery bank installed along with a wind generator before taking her to New England and home.

We have been relying on Chris Parker for weather routing for a decade as do all of the Salty Dawg Rallies.  Chris has a good feel for what sorts of conditions cruisers “of a certain age” look for so he does what he can to help us avoid drama along the way.

Of course, weather is what weather is on a trip of over 3-4 days but he tries to “read the tea leaves” with regards to long range considerations.  This is important for a run like ours, that will take perhaps 8-10 days.  While the weather for early days of the run are pretty clear, after 5 days it is possible that we will encounter conditions that look a lot different than what it looks like when we head out.

As an additional tool to monitor the weather, I also subscribe to Predict Wind and am able to download weather GRIBS twice a day via the Iridium Go satellite unit.  It’s an expensive bit of gear but well worth it for the long passages.  By seeing graphically on my screen what I am hearing from Chris Parker’s forecast, I am able to better visualize what he is talking about.

While the confidence of what the forecast is saying is a lot less certain after the first few days, Chris monitors the weather in Canada and the upper atmosphere thousands of miles away to try and get a feel for what is coming our way perhaps a week from now.

I say this as nearly every time I make a long run, Chris’s comments are always something like “well, that’s a long way off and a lot can change” when it comes to the conditions we may face.   Also, there just about always seems to be something nasty ahead of us to make the run a bit more arduous.

However, when we had our weather briefing yesterday, Chris was uncharacteristically upbeat with how he described the conditions that we were likely to face on our run north.  His comment was something like “I can’t imagine a better forecast”.  That’s good, very good.

Without going into too much detail, this is what the current conditions look like for our departure tomorrow.  It does look quite alarming up north where there are currently gales.  However, by the time we get there the system will have moved out of the area.  You can see the various tracks that the computer has recommended based on a number of different weather models.  See the boat icon, Pandora, at the bottom of the image.

It’s a bit hard to see but the green areas are wind in the mid teens and we will be on a broad reach.  Not ideal, as I’d like a bit more wind when it’s behind us, but pretty good.  As we make our way north, conditions continue to be good with favorable winds, and you can see that the nasty low has moved out of the area.  We will continue to have wind aft of the beam, and hopefully it will be strong enough to keep us moving at a good speed. Finally, as we approach the US east coast, there is a bit of uncertainty with a weak low forecasted to exit the coast.  Again, Chris feels a high degree of confidence that it will not amount to much.   Fingers crossed that it will be long gone by the time we cross the gulf stream off of Cape Hatteras and arrive at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. All and all, it looks like the wind will be favorable for the entire trip if perhaps a bit light at times.  Light wind isn’t a huge problem as I have plenty of fuel, so bring it on.

Over the years of working with Chris and getting his forecasts, there always seems to have been something on the horizon that is particularly worrisome but this time I am encouraged by Chris’s upbeat assessment of what lies ahead.

Just for fun, if you want to follow the fleet for the run home, check out this link to the Salty Dawg Homeward Bound rally page and see where we are relative to the rest of the fleet.   There is a list of the participating boats to the right and you can click on Pandora to see where we are at any given time.  If you don’t see the list of boats on that page follow this link to my own dedicated predict wind page. which is a bit easier to use but leaves out the other boats.  The tracker will update our position every few hours as we make our way north.

Let’s hope that when we arrive in Deltaville that we will look back and say “that was the best forecast ever!”

I’m counting on it, I hope…

 

 

 

It’s a beautiful morning here in St Barts, home to the landed, glitterati, i.e.:  Rich and beautiful or at least doing their best to act and look that way.

This afternoon we will leave to make the 120 mile overnight run to St John where we will be meeting up with the 20 or so boats that will be making their way home as part of the Salty Dawg Homeward Bound rally.  The plan is for us to leave on or about May 10th for points north.  You should check out the fleet tracking page at this link.    Better yet, follow the link to Pandora’s Predict Wind tracking page to see where we are and the weather that’s in the area.  You can see the entire season of our movement way back from when Pandora headed south last November.   nd click on “Pandora  SV”, the link to Pandora alone.

If you don’t like that one, try my Garmin Pandora only tracking page to see where we are at any time.   However, the fleet page is more interesting and shows the current weather that we are experiencing, along with my speed.

Brenda and I visited St Barts on our way south our first time cruising the Caribbean in 2018 and we have not been back.   The major reason, beyond the fact that we have been cruising the southern islands, is that it is very roily out in the anchorage so being here can be uncomfortable.

Craig and I did a run from Antigua to St Barts a few days ago, leaving at dawn to make the 80 mile run.  The view of the sunrise to our stern was really breathtaking. On this trip I decided to ask what it would cost to tie up on the dock in the inner harbor.  I was shocked to learn that it was surprisingly cheap, something like $30/day.  Perhaps it’s because it is late in the season as I know that it’s impossible to get in here during the holidays.

The two negatives are that they don’t have electric on the docks,  and I guess that they assume that all those mega yachts have their own generators.  And, the harbor itself has a bit of surge so Pandora is pulling on it’s dock lines most of the time as the water goes up and down a few inches. It took me more than a day to finally work out a way to calm the motion, but I finally did.

This is the view of the lighthouse up on the hill overlooking town from our cockpit.  We walked up there yesterday but that story is a bit later in this post. Anyway, she’s riding well now. To say that we are close to “town” doesn’t begin to describe it. Just behind the dock is main street Gustavia, lined with every imaginable high end boutiques.   French cheeses and wines are abundant and fairly reasonably priced.   The fresh produce in the market, literally 20 steps from our transom, is amazing.  And an endless number of high end restaurants, along with a few for those of us that “have to ask what it costs”, like me.

We hiked up, actually walked, up the road to the lighthouse that is visible from the town.  The view of the harbor was really impressive.  Pandora is on the dock to the left portion of the photo.   Here’s a closeup of where she is, the last boat on the string, near all the dinks. We also spied the St Barts Yellow Submarine, a glass bottom boat that you can go out on to view the local reefs.  I wonder where it was made.  It looks like fun.   Check out their webpage.  Once we were up at the lighthouse, we could look down toward the island airport and watch the crazy approach that planes have to make to land on what appears to be a remarkably short runway. They zip overhead, so close you feel like you could reach up and touch them. After clearing the ridge, or mountain, at the western end of the runway, they dive down the other side to land.   The planes fly at treetop level over the ridge and then go into a steep dive.  Yes, it’s that steep.   Actually worse than this photo suggests.  And then, in seconds, are on the ground.From up on the hill you can peek into the amazing homes that ring the harbor. How about this spot, with “his and hers” pools. I looked in a real-estate office and, as expected, homes were listed for tens of millions.   As you can imagine, the Russian Oligarchs are well represented here, or were before they had to flee due to sanctions.

This place is just dripping with money and in spite of the fact that the island is only 5 miles long, is packed with luxury cars of every description.  The car rental agencies feature tricked out Mini Cooper convertibles, no economy cars for this crowd.   I am particularly taken by the Moks, a sort of cross of a jeep and golf cart. They are everywhere. Being here for a few days, tied up on the dock, so close to town and all the sights, has been a real treat.  Hope that Brenda and I will be able to visit here sometime in the future.

I guess I’d better break now as it’s time for a croissant and to get ready to head out on our overnight this afternoon.  The winds appear to be favorable and I hope we will have a good run.

We should arrive in St John around mid day tomorrow.

Wish us luck.