It’s noon on Friday and we are booming along on a close reach in 13-15kts of wind and making between 7-8.5 kts.  It’s exhilarating but at the same time, as the hours roll on, the seas are getting choppy, with Pandora crashing into wave after wave, sending spray everywhere.  This is not a casual holiday sail.

However, it seems that each day brings with it an entirely different experience, sometimes exhilarating like now and sometimes depressing as we inch along making virtually no headway against current and wind.  In the ocean even the smallest amount of breeze on the nose can slow you down to a crawl.

Last night was perhaps our most frustrating yet, as the wind shifted south to around 6-11kts, directly on the nose, and that combined with a slight northerly current, slowed our progress to a glacial 4.5kts.  Given the fact that we are still something like 800 miles from Antigua, that was painfully slow progress.

Even with the engine running and sails up, we were lucky to make even 5kts and usually less.  Of course, Pandora can go a lot faster under power but as we continue our laser focus on the amount of fuel left and the amount of time we will be motoring, I have been running the engine at a very low RPM.  As the speed of the engine increases even a little bit, the fuel consumption per hour goes up a lot but not in proportion to the increased speed, substantially reducing the number of hours and distance traveled that we can continue under power.

On my last trip south, two years ago, I ran the engine for a total of 130 hours, arriving in Antigua with fuel to spare, and as of today we have a long way to go to beat that.  That’s good but it’s hard to say what will happen given the fact that the wind shifts around the compass so often.

When I spoke to Chris Parker today his forecast suggested that we would likely enjoy sailing for the next day and then the wind would just about go away when and we will face another 24-30 hours under power before we reach the more predictable trade winds.

By comparison, as we beat our way south into SW winds, two years ago I had a spectacular multi day run with solid easterly trade winds, in this exact same area.  There is a large high pressure zone over us that has basically killed the northern parts of the trade winds, pushing them hundreds of miles south, reversing the wind direction or killing the wind altogether.   Fortunately, for now at least, we have wind and can sail in more or less our intended direction.  When it comes to long distance passage making, it’s better to keep moving than to go where you intend.  And, on top of that, it feels better.

I expect that you may be following my travels on the tracker, my own or on the joint Rally page that I shared and know a lot more about where we are verses the other boats in the fleet.   I know that there are some boats behind us and plenty in front, but I understand that there are a many in the fleet within a radius of perhaps 75-100 miles of our position.  Given the fact that we’ve been at sea for nearly a week, it’s unusual to have so many boats in a relatively tight area.

Twice a day I am in communication with about two dozen boats that are equipped with SSB long range radios and it’s fun to hear what they are up to.   Most of the boats are doing fine but a few days ago one boat was struck by lightening and had to divert to Bermuda because their electronics were nearly all ruined.  On my last run south, two years ago, another boat lost their electronics and two others experienced structural damage.

The constant movement and large loads on equipment means that things can break, and they do.   That reality explains why I tend to spend so much time and energy, not to mention dollars, on keeping Pandora in top shape.   Broken stuff can surely ruin your whole day, especially when you are over 600 miles from the closest land, as we are now.  Come to think of it, it’s the farthest from land I have ever been, if you don’t count flying on a passenger jet.  Trust me, this is different and a lot more sweaty.

I have written about the recent addition of a Hydrovane wind vane steering system last month and have been largely silent on the subject since leaving.   My silence was because it wasn’t working particularly well and I found myself wondering if it was a waste of money and a big effort for nothing.

However, after tinkering with it for several days, I am happy to report that it steers remarkably well and given the fact that it has only a few moving parts, no electronics and uses no power, I have to say that it (she?) is proving to be the most reliable crew member yet.

It’s pretty amazing how easy it is to set and modify a course and as the wind direction changes, even slightly, she adjusts and keeps us moving along without a complaint.   I am told that just about everyone that has one of these ends up giving “her” a name and given my history with Brenda, she will have to decide what our new crew member should be called.

So, here we are, having the best day of sailing yet under a sparkling clear tropical sky and near perfect conditions that follows the worst night yet on this trip.   As the say, “what a difference a day makes”.  Here’s hoping that I haven’t jinxed the good sailing.

Brenda arrives in Antigua on Wednesday evening and I am beginning to accept the fact that I won’t be there to greet her as I doubt that I will arrive before Thursdsay.  At the very least, I have alerted Astrid at the Admiral’s Inn to expect her to arrive unannounced and to have a room ready for her.  I also asked her not to treat Brenda too well as I’ll never be able to pry her loose and move aboard Pandora.

So, the question remains, when will we arrive in Antigua and given the ups and downs of the last few days, I guess the answer is “I have no idea.”  However, for the moment, things are going well.
Let’s hope that things keep going well.  That’s what’s supposed to happen when it’s good?  Right?

Will there be wind?

As I write this it is mid afternoon on Wednesday and we are sailing along at nearly 8kts on a broad reach.  Yes, sailing

I am particularly impressed as we spent much of the morning trying to figure out, really figure out, just how far we can motor and exactly how much fuel the three built in tanks hold as the wind was impossibly light and expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

The “brochure” for the boat says that we carry 150, or 50 gallons in each of our three tanks, but when you are talking about a design where only three boats were built, it’s hard to say exactly what’s what about anything.   In the past I have described working on Pandora as a sort of “scavenger hunt” to find out what wire does what and exactly how to fix anything.

After considering the weather predictions of no wind for much of the trip I felt compelled to check, once again, my assumptions for how many hours we could motor.

We had to begin motoring again as of about 02:00 today and after listening to the motor drone on and on for hours and speaking with folks on other boats, I found my anxiety about running out of fuel to be on the rise.

So, George and I decided, actually I decided, that we’d take measurements of the three tanks and try to calculate the volume in cubic inches, feet and ultimately gallons.  Of course, I didn’t know how many cubic inches a gallon of fuel is but did some rough calculations using a gallon engine oil container.  Then we took measurements of the tank that was the closest to being square, the one under the floorboards in the galley.  I had been told that the tank was 50 gallons but as near as I can tell, it’s more like 40.  Bummer about that.  After thinking about that for a while longer, Cliff remembered that on our trip back from the BVIs a few years ago, we had run that tank dry, so I looked in my log to see how much fuel it took to fill the tank up again when I got home.  Magic, 40 gallons.  Ok, so now I know that what is perhaps my largest tank is about 40 gallons, or at least has 40 gallons of usable fuel.

We then took measurements of the other two tanks, the ones under the settees port and starboard and after a number of rough calculations of these really oddly shaped tanks, we estimated that each of them holds something like 35 gallon which suggests that between the three tanks we might have more like 110 gallons, not the 150 that I had assumed.  However, in the past I have always assumed that some amount of fuel remained in the tanks when they were “dry”, so my “”new number isn’t all that much different.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time on this and came out a belief that, unless the wind were to pick up, that we’d be in pretty tough shape by the time we reached the more predictable trade winds.

It is human nature, well at least my nature, to assume that whatever is going on at that exact moment will continue.  If there is good wind, of course, it’s going to continue to be good.  Motoring?  Well, you get the idea.  Ask Brenda, she will back this up.  What a great day!  Tomorrow will be great too.  What a terrible day…

So, the motoring continued until about 13:00 and then the wind picked up to near 18kts and we are now moving along really nicely on a broad reach at around 7 to 8 knots.   Who knew?

Will the wind go away again?  For sure.  Will it come back?  Well, ask me later when the wind is light…

I guess all this leaves me with the questions of if our voyage will end before the fuel is gone.  I guess we’ll be the first to know.  All I know for now is that for every hour we sail we will burn less fuel and that’s good.

Right now, we are sailing so I guess it’s going to be OK.   Well, at least I’ll feel that way until the wind dies.

It’s Thursday morning and we are again sailing along on a beam reach, flying the big code zero sail in wind of about 10-15kts which gives us about 7-8kts, which is good.

In spite of our fears of light wind, and the worse has yet to come, I am told, we have run the motor for a total of 44 hours since leaving Hampton VA on November 3rd at 07:00 hrs.  While we have been underway for nearly 100 hours, we have only run the engine for a total of 54 hours, less than half of the time.  Well, slightly less…  That’s good.

However, from here on in, as soon as our good fortune runs out, perhaps in a few hours, we will soon be motoring and may be looking at as much as an additional 100 hours of motoring, something like four days straight.  Yes, that sounds like a lot and it is but even with our reduced fuel capacity assumptions, we should be able to manage things well.

It’s been a bit stressful to think about how far we can motor and not be delayed too much but this morning I began to put everything together and realized that even if we use the motor often, we are likely to end up motoring somewhere in vicinity of 140 to 150 hours in total for the trip.  The good news is that on my last run south I ran under power for a total of 130 hours and had plenty of fuel left over once I arrived in Antigua.   Of course that’s old news but I’m goin with that.

But wait, more good news.  We have recalculated the amount of fuel we had when we started out from Hampton and are fairly confident that we have 140 gallons of usable fuel which translates into  somewhere in the vicinity of 200 hours of motoring, assuming that we keep the RPMs low and operate as efficiently as possible.   Heck, that’s two more days than my best guess.   No problem.  “Ha, we’ll see about that Bob as you are still a long way from Antigua.”

One of the issues we face is that the trades have been suppressed recently so the reliable easterly winds we are looking for won’t kick in until further south than is normal for this time of year, perhaps around the same Latitude of the southern Bahamas.  This means that once we reach good wind we will be able to sail at last the 400 miles to Antigua.

One thing that particularly stresses sailors is the fear of being struck by lightening and I have to say that I share that fear given the fact that I have several friends whose boats have been hit.

Well, last night many in the fleet sailed through some nasty squalls, including us, and one of the boats was struck.  In nearly all cases of lightning strikes, there isn’t any risk to crew as the rigging on the boat forms a natural shield.  However, sensitive electronics, such a big part of sailing today, doesn’t fare very well.  In this case, their electronics were all fried.  Fortunately, their engine wasn’t damaged and they were fairly close to Bermuda so that’s where they are headed.  If I recall, someone was struck on the last run I did two years ago, with similar results.

So, where does all this leave us with regards to getting into Antigua?    I am mindful that we have less fuel than we thought but we’ve been lucky so far and had more wind.  I hope that our luck continues to hold.

I am also mindful of the fact that Brenda will arrive in Antigua on Wednesday afternoon and it would be really nice to meet her when she arrives.   However, a lot has to happen between now and then so…

However, given what I know about the upcoming weather, I expect that we will be arriving around that time so let’s be optimistic and say Wednesday.

Wish us well.

How far can Pandora go under power?

As I write this, it’s Tuesday afternoon and we are about 1/4 of the way to Antigua.

We knew before we left Hampton that we were looking at a light wind trip, something that looks pretty appealing on the face of it.

Having done a “heavy wind” trip a few years ago with gales behind me for nearly five days, the idea of more “moderate” conditions sounded appealing.  I also recall a “light air” trip two years ago when I put 130 hours on the engine.   It is with all this in mind that I tend to heavy up on fuel, bringing along an additional six five gallon jugs of diesel to supplement Pandora’s three 50 gallon built in tanks.

For a boat of Pandora’s size, to carry a nominal 175 gallons of fuel isn’t all that common and it generally gives me a good amount of confidence that I can “power my way” out of most everything.

However, I wasn’t prepared for the news that Chris Parker, the weather router, delivered last night on the evening SSB net that we may be looking at nearly the entire 1,600 mile trip with little or no wind.

Pandora is a pretty good light air boat and she can generally keep up with boats that are considerably larger than she is.  However, I have never motored more than about 800 miles in a single trip and the thought of perhaps having to run the engine for 1,000 or more miles was pretty daunting, as I don’t carry that much fuel.

When Chris delivered the news, we were motor sailing along in around 5-8kts of wind, not nearly enough to sail, and it was distressing to hear him say that we were facing light conditions for much of the rest of the run.

He did suggest that we might run into about 36 hours of motoring if we were to slow way down and wait to run into a ridge with wind come about Tuesday.  The problem with that idea is that we were already quite close to that area and the idea of “drifting” around for several days to get 36 hours of sailing left me feeling pretty uneasy.

Oddly, a few hours after his forecast, the wind filled in at around 10-15kts from the east, although it was quite variable and required us to constantly adjust our sails and direction.  Eventually the wind settled in so we could sail on a reasonable close reach, able to make a decent turn of speed toward our destination.

As I write this, around noon on Tuesday we have been sailing for 12 hour since the wind came up and while we haven’t covered a lot of distance, as conditions are light, we have traveled about 60 miles which translates to a 120 mile day.  Not a lot given our normal days in the 170-190 range.  I was also heartened to learn, during our SSB radio net this morning, that other boats, some 150 miles ahead of us, had similar conditions with decent wind for sailing which give us hope that we may be able to sail for some hours longer before the wind dies.

As they say, “past performance isn’t a guarantee of future results” but every mile that we put under our keel without burning precious fuel, is a mile I the bank on our way to Antigua.

So, where does all this leave us?

We have already covered about 325 miles out of a total of more than 1,200 and Chris says that even if we don’t have much more sailing before the wind gets very light again, we are only about 750-800 miles from picking up the easterly Trade Winds, which are fairly predictable and should make the last 400 miles fairly easy sailing.

All of this suggests that even if we loose the wind soon, and it does appear to be getting lighter over the last few hours, we can still make it to the trades with the amount of fuel that we have left.

Since leaving Hampton with something like 175 gallons in three 50 gallon tanks and 5 jugs, totaling 25 gallons, we have run the engine for 29 hours, consuming about 19 gallons which suggests that we have perhaps 130 gallons of usable fuel left.   I say “perhaps” as I have not actually calculated the volume of usable fuel in each tank as there is always something left when the tank level gets low enough that the engine can no longer draw fuel.

I find that at low RPM I burn about .65/gph so if I have to motor an additional 800 miles I’ll burn approximately 80 gallons in addition to the 20 gallons that I have already used.  If that’s all true, I should end up in Antigua with some fuel left over.

Of course, all of this depends on many variables that will come into play over the next few days.

Bottom line, if all goes according to “plan” we should arrive in Antigua sometime between late Monday and late Tuesday.  And then I’ll know a bit more about just how far Pandora can go under power, or not.

As they say “we’ll see about that!”.

Antigua here we come. Day one done…

It’s mid-day on Monday and we have been at sea for a little more than 24 hours. I don’t have a lot to report beyond that it’s been mostly uneventful.

We picked up our anchor at 07:00 on Sunday and headed out to sea along with quite a few other boats in the rally. It seems that a good number of them left about 12 hours earlier than we did and when I spoke to a few of them on the SSB radio this morning they reported that they had been sailing most of the way since leaving Hampton.

I wish that was the case for me as we have found ourselves motoring much of the way in little wind, about half of the time, more than I’d like.
Chris Parker, the weather router advising us on this trip, has said that the winds this year are likely to be pretty light for much of the trip. That’s unfortunate, as we will have to balance the need to keep moving in light conditions with a need to conserve fuel. In spite of the fact that I carry a nominal 170 gallons, I doubt that I can actually use much more than 130-150 gallons, with the rest stuck below the fuel pickup in the tanks.

I keep careful track of hourly consumption throughout the year and am pretty confident that I can move along at a decent clip under power, using about .65gal/hour. That’s not bad and I can likely stretch things even more if I run even slower.

I can generally motor/sail at about 6.5 to 7kts at that consumption level as long as there is some wind to fill the sails and am not motoring directly. This translates into somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 miles. As Antigua is around 1,600 miles from Hampton, I can afford to motor quite a bit of the way.

However, I’d much prefer to sail as it’s a lot more pleasant and for every gallon of fuel that I burn early in the trip, I have a lot less flexibility when I am close to my destination.

The conditions in the often dreaded Gulf Stream have turned out to be pretty benign with a bit of a chop, as expected, but not much more to report. That’s a lot different than they were a few days ago when there were gales pushing up huge waves, something that we really need to avoid.

While conditions are pretty calm, the one thing that has proven to be a bit bothersome is the watermaker which isn’t working properly. I had some problems with it earlier in the season when the computer that monitors it malfunctioned and I thought that I had it fixed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to properly test the unit until I was out in clean water yesterday morning. A few hours out of Hampton I fired it up and it seemed to be working fine but after about an hour it went into a backflush mode, out of the blue, and dumped nearly half of my fresh water overboard. After messing around with it to see if I could figure out what the problem is, I decided to just shut it down and wait until today to resume my diagnostic efforts.

I am afraid that nothing has changed and as soon as I turned it on it again began pumping my water tanks dry. Not good.

Fortunately, over the summer when problems first cropped up, I installed some backup plumbing so I could run it in manual mode, just in case I had a problem like this with the computer again. I am really happy that I did as we would have been down to about fifty gallons to last us for the entire trip which would have made for a real hardship.

I have no idea what is causing the problem with the computer and I guess all I can do is to pull it out and take it back to the US when I return for the holidays. Perhaps they can tell me what’s wrong.

The good news is that I can run the unit in manual mode, which I did today, so now our tanks are full again.

So, there you have it, another day and another problem to be sorted out. It’s surely always something with a boat, especially one as complex as Pandora.

Oh yeah, am also trying to get a handle on my new Hydrovane self steering system, and I have to say that’s turning out to be a steeper learning curve than expected.

So, here we are about 200 miles into our trip and things are going pretty well.

I guess that’s about all I have to report.

Wish us luck.