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.

On Wednesday I’ll be heading back to Antigua to begin the process of bringing Pandora back to the US.   My friend Craig is joining me for the run to the USVIs where we will join up with my friend Alex and the Salty Dawg Homeward Bound Rally back to the US.  Alex and Craig will do the run to the US with me.

I’ve already written about all the plans for upgrades to Pandora and at home, so I won’t repeat them except to say that from Antigua we plan a week cruising, stopping in St Barths and St Martin before meeting up with the Salty Dawg Homeward Bound Rally fleet in St John.  When I head to the US, around the 10th of May, I plan on heading to Deltaville VA where I am having some work done on Pandora before taking her home to New England in June.

As I look at the current weather forecast I can see why Chris Parker suggests that we wait until mid May at the earliest to head north as the weather north of the Caribbean and Bahamas is positively terrible, a sort of “you can’t get there from here” mix of gales and wind from the north.

This is the weather map last week, for Wednesday April 20th, conditions that are typical for April and early May.   It’s not bad down in the Caribbean but any farther north than the DR, and there is no easy way to head north.   The best we could do would be to head to perhaps the Abacos, northern Bahamas and then on to the SE US coastline, perhaps Charleston, NC.   Fast forward a week and it’s still unpleasant with a major low heading east off of the coast.  It is this sort of pattern that is the norm until things settle down in the late spring, think late May, early June.   Sure, the wind direction NE of the Bahamas isn’t all that strong but it’s right out of the north.  Not good at all for heading to the Chesapeake. Sure, these two snapshots of the coming weather don’t tell the whole story but it’s clear that it’s way to early to try to “get there from here”.

I mention this as I have been fielding calls recently from folks that have deadlines or other reasons that make them want to leave to head to the US sooner than the rally.  Early spring weather, as in nasty, is why we planned the departure for the rally no earlier than May 10th.  I think that I convinced most of them to wait a bit.

I have a friend that flew down to Puerto Rico a few weeks ago, in the first half of April, to help bring a boat back to the US.   This qualifies as a  “You don’t know what you don’t know” sort of move, and it is clear that they left too early.   Their trip, made more difficult as the boat is only a 34′ lightly built costal cruiser, took weeks and I believe that they ended up making landfall in the US in Charleston instead of the Chesapeake, their planned destination, as they battled persistently strong northerlies.

Chris Parker did a very interesting webinar recently that characterized the weather that cruisers should expect on a springtime run to New England and the Mid Atlantic.  It’s worth looking at.

Chris breaks the run into three distinct legs as you make your run north, regardless of the specific weather that you might encounter on any given run.

The first half is his presentation and the second half, a Q&A session. The fact that questions took up another half hour, after his review, suggests that there is considerable uncertainty in the cruising community about the whole topic.  This is a must see for anyone considering such a run.In my discussions with skippers that are planning to make a run either north of south from the Caribbean for the first time, I try to stress that it is critical that they plan in a way that has the best possible opportunity for a fun trip or they may make one run and decide that there will not be a second trip.

I still recall someone we met on our first season heading south to the Bahamas, on the ICW just north of Charleston.  His advice to me, after hearing Brenda’s anxiety about the trip, was to caution me that I needed to do what I could to make the run good for her or there would likely not be a second trip, something that he had seen time and time again, over the years.

That was good advice and is a big reason why she flies and meets me in the Caribbean.  A decade later I am still grateful for him taking the time to “caution” me about stressing Brenda too much.

It’s hard to say how our trip will turn out but hopefully, my coming home for a few weeks and leaving a bit later than I would have liked, will make for a more pleasant run.

If you are interested in following along check out “where in the world is Pandora” or by clicking on this link.

Better yet, go to Salty Dawg Homeward Bound Rally page to following the entire fleet.  The link will be posted soon, or at least by the 10th, when the rally is scheduled to depart, as a button on this page.

Wish me luck.

 

 

It’s been more than a week since Brenda and I left St Lucia, and returned to Antigua and we will be flying out on Sunday.

Normally, I would stay behind and wait for crew to arrive but this year I decided to make the trip back to the US to help Brenda prepare for the remodeling of our kitchen, a job that is expected to take several months.  However, it’s not looking great for a timely start for the job as our tile guy just bowed out of the job due to some sort of family issue.  That’s a real setback so it’s doubly important for me to spend a few weeks trying to get things back on track.

One of the reasons that we hustled back to Antigua was with the hope that I’d be able to get aboard Columbia a reproduction of a classic fishing schooner for the Classic Yacht Regatta, an event that brings beautiful yachts from all over.  There are plenty of great boats that would be racing but she was the one that I wanted to be aboard.

My friend Franklyn had spent a lot of time aboard Columbia and put in a good word for me with the captain, Seth.   At first it didn’t seem too promising but when I showed up on the first day of racing as directed by the Captain, he waved me aboard.    After we all went below and signed in and were issued shirts, we assembled on deck for a briefing.

Captain Seth is very focused on safety and while he wants to win and expects a lot from his crew, he made a point that we were supposed to have fun and, of course, stay aboard Columbia.   At the end of his daily briefing, he led the crew in a rousing chant of “hail Columbia”, a great way to begin a day of racing.  It was awesome to be aboard such a spectacular yacht for three days of racing.   The wind was forecast to be breezy and that’s exactly what we got.  

Even getting her underway from the dock is a sight to behold. Each day we had different colored shirts, including those donated by Carib beer.  I love that brand and to have a bright yellow shirt and hat to match was great fun. What a thrill to be aboard and underway.  The “crew” from Carib beer.The crew thought nothing of climbing, no make that scampering, up the mast to untangle whatever.  To sail on Columbia in “sporty” conditions is nothing short of spectacular!  Blasting along in 25-30kts of wind made for a pretty wet ride.  At the end of this short video, watch someone be swept down the deck by a boarding wave. My primary job was to tail the port foremast runner.   Split second timing was needed to secure the line during a tack.  It took three of us to manage the lines.   The next three images compliments of Ed Gifford, a great guy, who was onboard as one of the photographers. This is what happens if you get the timing off, heading to the leeward rail too early.  When we were preparing to tack, the three of us would get into position just before the tack.  The captain would bear off a bit to gain speed and nd blue water piled up over the rail.  I was swept off of my feet once before I learned better.  Sometimes, it wasn’t possible to stay out of the maelstrom.One of the other visiting crew was swept down the side of the boat and while he stayed aboard, his pants came down, underwear and all, to his ankles.  Good thing that he was able to keep them from being swept over the side.   I doubt that he had a spare pair of shorts handy.  “Excuse me, do you have a spare pair of drawers? Mine went over the side.  I’d really rather you didn’t stare, or laugh, thankyou very much.”

The amount of water that swept aboard was remarkable.  What a view of Ashanti IV, a 110′ schooner that we were racing against.  When I saw these waves sweep the decks, I could only imagine what it must have been like to be in the North Atlantic in the winter fishing for cod when boats like Columbia were the norm.   These waves were pretty big and it was just a lovely day for sailing.   Imagine a storm…

Captain Seth was recognized by the race committee with the overall prize of a beautiful new Locman watch from Italy.  They were an official sponsor of the race.  With my birthday coming up soon, Brenda insisted that I get one too.   This photo is probably the coolest that I will ever look.   As much as I try, I am just not a particularly cool guy.  It is a really spectacular piece. The regatta was put on by the Antigua Yacht Club.  They are very supportive of the Salty Dawg Rally and are the center of the sailing community in Antigua.
Of course, where there is Carib beer, there are Carib girls.And a lot of spectacular yachts including Aquijo.   She is huge, at nearly 300′ long and billed as the world’s largest performance sailing yacht.   Check out her specs and photos.   To get a feel for her scale, notice the kayak on the water just behind the forward mast.Columbia is less than half of her length and is still a really huge yacht herself.  Yes, I realize it’s tough to see so here’s a closeup. Everything about her is enormous.  Note the size of the main boom with a member of the crew walking along the topAnd, she is as shiny as she is huge. Of course, what would a visit to Antigua be without spending time with our friends at the Antigua and Barbuda Royal Naval Tot Club, and we did just that. Of course, we had some “Tots” on the lawn in Nelson’s Dockyard.  And even a Tot aboard the lovely 110′ schooner Aschanti IV. Members of the Tot Club, including the owner of Ashanti IV, can fly the official burgee of the club, the White Pennant.  I have been saying for years that Antigua is the best place to begin and end the cruising season and being back here, our last stop before I begin running Pandora north and home.   We decided to treat ourselves to a few days on the docks in Nelson’s Dockyard, a wonderful end to a great season of sailing in the Caribbean.So, here I am, finishing up on what is likely my last post before heading home to the US until I return in a few weeks to begin my run home.

It’s been a wonderful season, and a lot different than we expected back in the fall when Covid was raging around the world.

All I can say is “Hail Columbia”, and Antigua.  It’s been a great season and I can’t wait until next fall to come back again.