Sail Pandora – Page 193 – A journal of our time aboard SV/Pandora an Aerodyne 47

Approaching the New Jersey coast. The final leg.

May 22, 2013 | 3 Comments

It’s Wednesday morning at 11:00 and we are sailing along with a solid 20-25kt breeze behind us. Our speed over the bottom is about 7.5kts which is good for putting us at Sandy Hook and entering New York Harbor, if the breeze continues to hold, by this time tomorrow, Thursday. The forecast is for the wind to be a bit stronger with gusts to 30kts later today and tonight, which will help us get there sooner. As we are sailing in roughly the same direction as the wind, we need a strong breeze to keep moving. Keep in mind that a following wind of 25-30kts on a boat moving in the same direction at 7-9kts, feels like a 20kt breeze, which is not too strong. Perfect actually.

Ideally, we’d like to round Sandy Hook about about 5 hours sooner, near daybreak, as the outgoing tide ( and it’s a doozy in NY Harbor and the East River) will begin ebbing (turning against us) if we arrive as expected, mid morning, and won’t begin to flood in the direction we want to go until early afternoon. That means that we will be running up the harbor and East River against the outgoing currents which will slow us down quite a bit. However, the fact is that we are nearly 160 miles from Sandy Hook now, and that’s a lot of miles between here and there, so conditions might very well change in ways that we can’t anticipate as we romp along here, some 60 miles off of the Del/Mar Peninsula.

The good news is that we are in good shape to enter NY harbor at some point on Thursday mid to late morning with a building southerly following wind.

After making our way through New York, we will still have about 80 miles from the East River in NYC to Essex. If we continue without stopping after leaving NY, we would arrive in Essex at some point around o’dark: 30, on Friday morning, which isn’t appealing at all. After nearly 4,000 miles and 8 months onboard, I want to arrive at Essex Yacht Club with a proper audience. Say, in time for cocktails on the deck.

With that in mind, I expect that we will anchor somewhere along the way to get some rest and prepare for our grand entrance. We wouldn’t want to arrive looking and smelling like we have been at sea for a week, would we?

Of course, all of this depends on continued favorable conditions for and only time will tell if everything holds as planned. As is always the case, it’s all about the weather. If I have learned anything over the last 8 months, it’s that you really don’t know where you will be until you are there. You didn’t think I could be so profound, did you?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that we were buzzed by a Navy helicopter several times today. They came close enough for us to see the face of the pilot. I waved to him. He didn’t wave back. Bummer. It seems that the Navy is conducting live fire exercises nearby and they have been alerting vessels to stay FAR away from them. I expect that Pandora would be on the loosing end of that stick.

Sorry, no pictures in this post as I have had trouble finding a channel out here that will allow me to send larger files.

Here’s to arriving and style and in time for an “adult beverage” at Essex Yacht Club with Brenda and friends.

Here’s to continued fast sailing. I don’t need smooth… I need fast.

Wish us luck.

Signing off for now.

Half way home and a FULL measure of excitemen

May 21, 2013 | 2 Comments

It’s nearly noon on Tuesday as we enter the 4th day of our voyage from Abaco Bahamas to Essex, CT, aboard Pandora. I say that we are entering our 4th day as we picked up our anchor in Marsh Harbor at 11:00 on Saturday to begin our 1,000 voyage home and it’s 11:00 now. Is that a coincidence or what?

As we make our way north, we are keeping an hourly log of lat/lon (position), speed over the ground, wind direction and speed along with other data. Keeping this location each hour is critical as it will allow us to better understand where are are in the event of a problem, such as our being struck by lightning and loosing all our electronics. This would be particularly critical if we were to loose our GPS. Unless we had been logging our Latitude and Longitude regularly, we would have no idea where we were.

Anyway, we keep all those stats in a log book designed for that purpose. And…each page has 24 lines on it so day one begins when we leave port and the “second day” begins 24 hours later, in this case at 11:00 daily. Get it? Bob!!! Quit it with the boring stuff. What was exciting?

So glad you asked. In the last 24 hours we enjoyed, or not, the following.

1. NOT enjoyed…Numerous squalls with strong winds and rain, lots of rain. And a few of these were in the dark. The wind was strong and as Pandora surfed down waves , in the dark and rain, I could only imagine what it would be like to be in a real storm.

2. REALLY NOT enjoyed our hunt for the Gulf Stream. For hours we meandered in meanders, along the side of the Gulf Stream. We were given the coordinates for the southern wall of the Gulf Stream but with the light wind and the side of the stream swirling around, we were caught in currents pushing us every where but where we wanted to go. On top of that, the seas in that area were very confused which meant that the boat was rolling wildly from side to side for much of the day. Happily, today is a lot better, more like a mill pond. However, Brenda might not think that “mill pond” is quite the right description.

3. NOT enjoyed…Wind on the stern that wasn’t quite strong enough to make distance and we really didn’t want to motor. (At least the wind wasn’t on our nose.)

4. NOT enjoyed…An uncontrolled jibe. This means that the main sail slammed from one side of the boat to the other in a big bang. It happened when a squall hit us with a 100 degree wind shift without warning. BANG! A move like this can break the boom or worse. Not a good thing, especially 200 mile from shore.

5. NOT enjoyed…When the main sail jibed, it broke the preventer. This is a line that runs to the end of the boom to slow it down if we jibe. Well, there was a snap shackle on the end of the line that exploded when the boom slammed over. What is that about the “weakest link”? Well, it was fine that the shackle broke as the boom didn’t.

6. REALLY NOT ENJOYED!!! Speaking of the boom. We ALMOST had what would have been a REALLY BIG problem with that too. Somehow, the nut, on the bolt that holds the boom to the mast came off. Thankfully, the bolt stayed in place. No simple feat as the nut was on top so the bolt could have just dropped down and out. Had that come off the entire boom would have broken free of the mast, in loads of wind, I might add, which would have been a major problem. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. At the very least, we would have had a major failure of the sail, which would likely have ripped in half. Beyond that, a 17′ long boom would have been flailing around in a seaway, perhaps acting as a battering ram against the side of the boat. I don’t want to think about that scenario,even a little bit. After a bit of jury rigging, we were back in business. All this for the lack of a single nut.

7. Enjoyed? YES and NO…The (big one) that got away. We were fishing and hooked a really large Mahi Mahi. After something like a 30 minute effort to get the fish the boat the line parted and the fish got away with the hook etc. To say that we almost boated it, is an understatement as Chris got some scratches on his leg from the fish’s fins as it thrashed around at the stern. That’s close. Ian got some great videos of the fight which I am sure he will put on YouTube. You will have to trust me on this but it was huge, perhaps 4′ long. Yes, I know, the one that got away. So, I didn’t enjoy losing the fish. I sort of enjoyed reeling it in. But most of all, I WAS SO GLAD not to have to clean a 4′ long bloody fish in the cockpit. However, all the slime would have been washed out a few hours later by the deluge of rain.

8. LOVED and enjoyed… A fabulous sunrise after all of the squalls. Actually, these clouds off of our stern, lit by the sunrise brought us a whopper of a squall a short while after this shot was taken. In the foreground was a large swell. Bummer that it doesn’t show in this photo. Pretty impressive.

9. REALLY ENJOYED!!! A pod of 3 or 4 dolphins visited us for about 15 minutes, swimming all around the bow and darting back and forth across the pressure wave of the bow cutting through the water. I have seen dolphins do this before but this is the first time I have been able to get decent photos. Getting a photo of a dolphin took me only 8 months of this trip. They were beautiful.

10. ENJOYED!!! Being half way home. Yes, I know that I already mentioned that.

All and all let’s call the last 24 hours “interesting” and “mixed”, some good, some not so good. Today? After cleaning up the mess down below and airing out a soggy boat, the sun is out and it’s cool. Did I mention that we are half way home? It’s almost time to begin using that often repeated phrase, “are we there yet”.

So, that’s the 24 hour top ten for Pandora for day three.

When do we expect to be home? That’s hard to say. If we are able to keep our speed up we should be to New York at some point on Thursday or perhaps in the early hours of Friday. We are not going to come in via Montauk as the strong unfavorable winds will arrive too soon for us to go that way. If we can’t get to New York by Thursday night,we will have to pull in somewhere and wait a few days as there is a front coming through on Friday that will usher in strong northerly winds that will make any further progress north impossible. So, in an attempt to keep on schedule we fired up the “iron wind” and are under power as there’s not quite enough wind today to move along at a decent pace.

Fortunately, the forecast calls for freshening, and favorable, winds later today or Wednesday. These winds will likely end up being too much of a good thing in the next few days. While they will be from the southwest (good), they will build to the high 20s and low 30s (not so good) in the next day or so. At least they will be from behind us.

So, half way home, some excitement along the way. Making progress… Speaking of making progress, perhaps I should make some lunch.

Day two and 200 miles from Cape Hatteras

May 20, 2013 | 3 Comments

It’s Monday morning and we are charging along about 200 miles south of Cape Hatteras. With fully 600 miles to go Montauk, there’s still plenty of distance to go. The sea state is a bit lumpy but not too bad. The good news is that the winds have been favorable and pretty strong with nearly 20kts on the aft quarter much of last night. I am not comfortable with the calibration of my knot meter but we saw speeds in the 10+kts range quite a lot and speeds over the bottom from the GPS somewhat less as we have been in some contrary current eddies south of the Gulf Stream. However, I can’t complain as having solid winds aft of the beam have allowed us to make good time so far. And, the forecast for the next few days suggest that we will continue to have favorable winds and sea conditions. That’s good…

There isn’t a lot of activity around us this far off shore and many hours go by without our seeing another boat, much less one that comes anywhere close to us. I’d say that in the last 24 hours we have only seen two or three ships and they were way off on the horizon. It’s pretty clear that when you are offshore, you are on your own.

We should enter the Gulf Stream at some point in the next few hours and will run with it for about 250 miles. As the stream in that area runs several knots to the NE, we should pick up our over the ground speed a good bit for the next 24 hours . While our over the bottom 24 hour distance made good, without the benefit of a current, has been in the 175 mile range, we should cover 225 miles or more while we are in the favorable current of the Gulf Stream. After we exit the stream we will adjust our course to head toward Montauk. The winds are forecast to be favorable for much of the rest of the run and should build a bit further into the 20-25 knot range from the south to southwest as we head into the latter part of the week.

This is a grib file for tomorrow, which I downloaded over my SSB radio. I modified it to show our current location and estimated track to Montauk. The red arrow is our location as of 08:00 Monday. The wind direction flags point toward the direction from which the wind is coming. So, you can see that we are experiencing winds from a southerly direction. This is expected to continue through Friday when a cold front exits the east coast.

Friday is about the time we should be off of Montauk so as the weather forecast becomes clearer we will make a decision regarding if we are going to head into New York and into western Long Island Sound or if we will continue offshore to Montauk as planned. This should all become clearer by Tuesday. All of this suggests that we will be in Essex by the weekend unless we have to hide somewhere as the front comes through. We’ll see…

Last night a few little flying fish landed on deck. Chris told me that a larger one, perhaps a foot long, was on deck yesterday but was tossed overboard before I was able to take a photo of it. Speaking of meals, last night when I was cooking dinner it was hard to keep my footing because the boat was slopping around a lot. I was mixing up scrambled eggs and a wave hit… You know how eggs that aren’t fully beaten can sort of flop, no make that crawl, out of a bowl and somehow some of the other eggs tag along? It’s like the eggs latch onto each other and climb out as a slimy lump. Well, that’s what happened. So much for the galley rug. It was getting pretty nasty anyway. Time for a new one. The eggs were pretty good in spite of that. No Brenda, I didn’t scoop up the ones from the floor and put them back in the pan. I am not that disgusting. Well, I hope not…

There isn’t much in the way of wildlife to look at here. We have seen a number of sea birds as well as a good number of Portuguese Man of War jelly fish. Man of War are the ones that look like a white inflated baggy about 6″ long. This “sail” helps them move along somewhat faster than the current, although much of the animal, and the poisonous tentacles are below the surface. The sting you can get from these is pretty nasty, I am told.

So far, the trip is going well and I am hopeful that we will continue to have favorable weather. Unfortunately, the somewhat bumpy conditions are causing some difficulty with seasickness for some of the crew. Hopefully, everyone will adjust and not feel nauseous much longer.

So, what do we do all day on Pandora? Well, some of the time we sleep. However, we try not to all snooze at the same time. Two down…

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. And yes, it’s still a long way home.

Marsh Harbor to Essex. Off to a great start.

May 19, 2013 | Leave a Comment

It’s 09:30 on Sunday morning and we are sailing along in a moderate breeze of 11-14kts. The winds are on our beam as they have been for the entire trip. Amazingly, we left Marsh Harbor yesterday at 11:00 under sail and are still sailing some 20 hours later. The only time we used the engine was for getting out of the harbor and for a short time leaving the Whale Cay Cut as we entered the ocean. As anyone who sails would know, it’s usually inevitable that the winds will be unfavorable most of the time, regardless of where you are going. I feel pretty lucky to have what looks like forecasted generally favorable winds for the bulk of our trip and really great winds so far.One of my concerns in leaving Marsh Harbor was transiting near Whale Cay Cut, a notoriously nasty piece of water where the depth goes from thousands to around 20′ in a few miles. This causes any waves to pile up as they get closer to shore. This recent post talks in some detail about the cut. Happily, the sea swells yesterday, and today on the ocean, for that matter, are in the 3′ range so leaving the cut was a cinch. Great luck there too.

As I write this we are about 150 nautical miles north of Marsh harbor which translates into an average over the bottom speed of about 7kts. This takes into account the fact that we spent a good deal of last night in a gulf stream counter current or eddy which was flowing against us, sometimes more than a knot and for perhaps 8 hours we had a current in the 2 knot range pushing us toward the west. This meant that we had adjust our heading further to the east to compensate for the westward set. Heading closer to the wind, as we compensated for the current, actually helped our speed as it put us on close reach, with the wind somewhat forward of the beam, increasing our speed into the moderate easterly winds.

Conventional wisdom suggests that you should head west from the Abacos and join up with the Gulf Stream to gain as much help from the northerly current that runs up to 4 knots, as you head up the coast. In our case, Chris Parker, the weather router, suggested a course that stayed well east of the stream and due north as that heading would cut off as much as 100 miles from our trip. It just didn’t make sense, with the forecasted winds, to head west to the stream and then north to our destination.

So, for now, we are continuing north to a point just southeast of Cape Hatteras where we will join the gulf stream, take advantage of that current for a time and then jump out a few hundred miles north of that point and head to Montauk.

Chris, Ian and I have settled in nicely to what will likely be about a week on board with time spent keeping watch , reading and sleeping. Oh yea, and don’t want to forget the eating part. I made fresh biscuits for breakfast today. In spite of some slightly queasy stomachs for Chris and Ian, they forced them down without a moment’s hesitation. As usual, I am blessed with a cast iron stomach and, knock on wood, I haven’t had any problems with nausea yet on this. Of course, it’s pretty calm out here so fingers crossed that my good luck will continue.

Our watch schedule (we have to be sure that someone is on deck all the time, night and day) is pretty simple. From 08:00 to 20:00, when it’s light, the watch is informal as everyone is on deck enjoying the scenery, such as it is, with miles of water in every direction, punctuated by an occasional school of flying fish. After 20:00 hours we go on a 4 hour watch system. Last night, Chris took the 20:00 to 24:00, me the 01:00 to 04:00, with Chris came back on deck from 04:00 to 08:00. Ian, who doesn’t have that much offshore experience, joined us for two hours of my watch and two of Chris’s. This overlap helps as he was fresh when he came on deck as we were getting toward the second half of our watch and feeling a bit sleepy. Tonight, we will switch watches with me doing two beginning at 20:00 and Chris only one. That keeps things fair as we switch every other night.

Last night was particularly beautiful during my watch as there was a bright half moon until it set around 03:00 with the water sparkling with phosphorescence as Pandora made her way steadily northward. I love the 24:00 to 04:00 watch as it’s so peaceful and there isn’t usually much going on. Last night I only saw a single ship and after speaking with the officer on watch, a woman, she indicated a plan pass to my stern and at a good distance. Speaking with her personally made me much more comfortable instead of wondering what her plans were.

For much of the time on watch, I enjoy reading or listening to music on my i-pod. For me, when the sailing is easy and at a good speed, I can’t say that there is any time when I feel more at peace, ashore or afloat. It’s very nice to be at sea. And, it’s a good thing that I feel that way as this trip will keep us underway for a week or more and that’s a long time to be underway. Most folks tend to break up a trip like this into segments but I prefer to just go without stopping and avoid entering or leaving harbors along the way, especially ones that I am not that familiar with. I’d much rather be 200 miles from the “hard stuff” than to be inshore dodging rocks and shoals. Being close to rocks with Pandora gives me plenty of cause for anxiety, that’s for sure.
It’s an amazing contrast from the trip south with Brenda which we stretched to a full three months as we meandered down the Intra Coastal Waterway (A great trip BTW). That same distance, now in a straight line offshore, will only take about a week.

So, where’s Pandora? We are currently about 200 nautical miles east of north Florida. That’s a really long way from land. If you want to follow our trip on this site, just click the “where’s Pandora” button and you will see… I will be updating our position every four hours for the entire trip. These position “spots” will be in place for up to two weeks and then they are automatically deleted.

So, how’s it going? So far so good with our first 24hours taking us in the neighborhood of 170 nautical miles, and with some unfavorable currents against us, that’s pretty impressive. With some luck, the weather will hold and we will be able to sail much of the nearly 1,000 miles home and arrive in Essex at some point toward the end of the week. It would be perfect if I could arrive in Essex, at the club, in time forFriday or Saturday cocktails. One can only hope… By that point I’d have to make a pit stop for a shower prior to joining the folks in the bar. Minor detail.

It’s quite beautiful out here on the ocean and last night’s sunset did not disappoint.

So far, so good with our trip less than 20% completed. No, that doesn’t sound like much but don’t forget, we only left yesterday.
Wish us continued smooth, and fast, sailing.

That’s all for now, SV Pandora signing off…

Heading Home from the Bahamas,Finally

May 18, 2013 | 1 Comment

It’s 13:30 on Saturday and we are offshore and headed for Essex and home for the summer. It’s hard to believe that I have been aboard for nearly 8 months since Brenda and I left Essex Yacht Club way back in early September.

I can still recall when, not that long ago, our trips aboard were measured in days instead of months and I have to say that I am really looking forward to being home for a while and not worrying about the weather and gear issues with Pandora every day. So far, and there is nearly 1,000 miles ahead of us until we arrive in CT, there have been no major gear issues but a number of fiddly things that have caused problems, mostly minor. Fingers crossed that my good luck will continue for the rest of the voyage. On the gear side, fingers crossed that things will continue working for the next week. 22 miles into our trip, so far, so good.

I spoke with Chris Parker, the weather router that we work with, both yesterday and this morning to get the latest information related to wind, seas and current for our trip. Usually, it seems that the wind is always from the direction that you want to go but it seems that we should have fair winds that should hold for most of the trip. That will be important as I do not carry enough fuel to allow us to motor all of the way. I was very concerned that a great weather window would come and go prior to my crew arriving but as luck would have it, a great window that opened up yesterday, so it looks great.

If all goes well, we hope to make the trip in about a week and that’s important as there is a strong possibility of a cold front heading off the east coast later in the week, around Friday. By that time, if we are not past Montauk we may have to stop somewhere until the weather passes and fair winds come into play again. We will know more on that point in a few days.

In order to make it there in time, we will have to make an average speed of about 6kts, which should be pretty easy for us, provided that the wind stays fair. As I write this we are averaging about 6-7kts, and most of the time at 7kts or better, with fairly light winds of about 10ks on the beam. Of course, as they say, “past performance is no guarantee of future success”. Well, I think that’s what they say or something like that. As I am way out of phone and WIFI range, there’s no Google to lean on for answers.

Speaking of WIFI, I will be preparing these posts and will send them to Brenda via the SSB long range radio. She will take them and publish them, along with some photos, hopefully.

Our plan is to use the SPOT, GPS communicator, as we have in the past, and will be “pushing the button” every four or so hours, 24 hours a day for the next week, or until we get home. Check out the “where’s Pandora button to see our current location in real time, sort of. I also hope to put up a post, provided that Brenda’s social calendar permits, at some point each day for our voyage.
The last few days have been very hectic as I have been preparing Pandora for this trip, with runs up the mast to repair burned out bulbs, trips to the grocery and other final preparations. To say that a 1,000 mile voyage, hundreds of miles from land, is a big deal doesn’t begin to make the point, as it seems to me. I have sailed thousands of miles but have only been offshore a few dozen times including a trip back from the Bahamas last May on a friend’s boat. And, for that run, we were much closer to the coast and stopped half way, in Beaufort for fuel and gear issues. And, of course, there were the 15 or so trips to Maine, across the Gulf of Maine, but those trips are only a few hundred miles and we were never more than 100 miles from land, usually closer. I also did a trip back from Bermuda which was about 700 miles, and that was over 15 years ago.

However, Pandora was built for trips like these and she is fitted out with all the latest safety gear including a four man life raft. I am very hopeful that the raft is one piece of equipment that I will never try out. So far, so good.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful day here on the ocean just north of the Abacos and if you are wondering, “nope, we aren’t there yet!“

Perhaps I will close with a shot of the last sunset, sort of as it was two nights ago, that I saw in the Bahamas this year. Yes, I am happy to leave but I am very much looking forward to returning next February. For now, I am all about being HOME. Hey, here’s an ideaůhow about a hot shower? Now, that’s something that I have not had since early September, unless you count the brief visit home for Christmas. Hmmm… only a week to go. Oh, will I be ready then.

A fitting shot of a beautiful Bahamas sunset and a perfect metaphor for Bob and Brenda’s FIRST most excellent adventure.