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Written by Trudy and Graham |
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Chilly autumn weather had been upon us for a few weeks, bringing with it fond memories of our previous winter escape to tropical paradise. It was time to leave the comforts and friends we’d made in the small town of Oxford MD on the Chesapeake’s eastern shore in order to explore new territories further south. Having successfully completed an 825 miles passage from the Bahamas to Beaufort NC earlier in the year, we figured we were as prepared as we could be for a longer trip. The warm climate and predictable trade winds of the Virgin Islands some 1500 miles to the southeast sounded ideal…
A crisp sunrise in Oxford, Maryland Preparing to Leave Just days before the much anticipated arrival of the first departure window we were presented with an unexpected challenge in the form of an intermittently inoperable battery charging system. Naturally it wasn’t obvious which component was causing the problem, and of course the first manufacture we contacted was convinced their product couldn’t possibly be faulty. Thankfully the Honda service dealer in Annapolis was extremely patient and supportive, and after a few days delay they had diagnosed and fixed a potential problem with our 2kw portable generator. Late in the afternoon on Thursday 6th November we rushed back to the boat, plugged everything in and discovered the charging problem persisted as before. Not good. With another weather window supposedly on its way, we lashed the dingy on the foredeck deck, dropped the mooring pennant and hastily set sail for Norfolk, 100 miles south of us at the mouth of the Chesapeake. During the overnight hours we carefully checked the weather outlook for the next 5 days and concluded we might be able to take advantage of a strong cold front scheduled to be moving into the area sometime early the following week. Our original plan had been to depart directly from Norfolk, but now it seemed this couldn’t possibly work as we were also forecast strong northeasterly winds until at least Monday. Beating our way east beyond Cape Hatteras and across the Gulf Stream with opposing winds and steep seas did not appeal even slightly. Hatteras’ reputation for being the Graveyard of the Ships had been well earned, and we certainly didn’t want to experience it firsthand! Our best option appeared to be a rapid transit down the ICW to Beaufort NC, where we could put to sea with comfortable pre-frontal southwesterly winds during the Gulf Stream crossing, followed by a downwind ride with the stronger northerlies after the front passed. Se we now had a plan with just one small hiccup – it was currently Thursday night, we were still in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and we had to be in Beaufort by Monday to make the most of the next weather window. At the current rate of motor-sailing progress, we expected to arrive in Norfolk around noon on Friday, which would leave us a little over 200 miles of ICW to travel in 3½ days – a pretty aggressive schedule if ever we’d seen one! Late on Friday evening we dropped anchor near Pungo Ferry at ICW mile 28.5 after traveling 158 nautical miles (nm) including the most tiresome, bridge strewn sections of the ICW in a little under 35 hours. On Saturday evening we stopped at the head of the Alligator-Pungo Canal (ICW mile 103), on Sunday at Oriental (ICW mile 181) and finally on Monday afternoon at Town Creek Marina in Beaufort (ICW mile 200). The overnight stopover at a dock afforded us the rare opportunity to fill our fuel & water tanks with ease, change the genoa out for our (smaller) working jib and plug in to shore power for a few hours to “equalize” our battery banks. During the latter activity we finally traced the cause of our previous charging problems to an arcing sound coming from the Prosine 2.0 inverter/charger unit mounted under the chart table. After a quick call to Xantrex the manufacturer, we had a replacement unit dispatched to our mailing service so we could ship it onward to our eventual destination. With much relief we finished our preparations for heading to sea, checked the weather forecast and cracked open the cold beer. Tuesday 11/11/03 (Departing Beaufort, NC) As dawn arrived on Tuesday 11th November, we rose early, rechecked the weather and cast off from the dock into the morning mist. After a short wait at Beaufort Town Bridge for its 6am opening we continued onward to sea, in the company of a few like-minded sail boats and numerous large sport-fishers. Once clear of the main navigational hazards, all that remained was to take advantage of remaining cellular minutes and talk with our families while still in the coverage area. Before long we were out of sight of land and finally on our way south. Prior to departure we had arranged with our friend Chris Parker on s/v Bel Ami to help us with weather routing and validate our own interpretations of the available data. For the next few days we were able to keep in voice contact via our Single Side Band radio (SSB), but as we moved further south, propagation conditions made this less feasible so email became the primary mechanism. For onboard access to weather resources, we primarily relied on a Globalstar satellite phone, OCENS Mail and WeatherNet products and MaxSea Yacht charting/routing software. Backup tools consisted of NOAA’s various mail-on-demand products and SSB Weather Fax from Boston & New Orleans if we ever became really desperate. We were getting into the swing of spotting large container ships and making the appropriate course changes when suddenly one particular freighter passed by and then for inexplicable reasons, started to circle back around towards us. Attempts to call the vessel on the VHF met with no success and we began to feel like a very small dot on the landscape. As we were not eager to become a new bow ornament we motored as fast as we could away from their position even though we were not certain quite what the best direction would be. We were both grateful when eventually the ship stopped turning and headed away from our location.
Cape Lookout Sea Buoy As we reached the Cape Lookout sea buoy, some 30nm offshore, we were experiencing light & variable winds across the stern, and confused seas from a 4-6’ northeasterly ocean swell intermingled with chop from the nearby Gulf Stream. Such an unpleasant combination resulted in the boat rolling around with sails slating & banging furiously despite attempts to tighten everything up. The conditions eventually took their toll on the crew, and by lunchtime Trudy found herself afflicted by a severe bout of seasickness. At the onset of the first symptoms she applied a Transderm Scope patch and subsequently retired below to sleep and wait for the patch to take effect. Around sunset, after a long day on watch, Graham retired below to claim his first period of off-watch sleep. Around two hours later he woke to the sounds of a very disconcerted Trudy trying to figure out why a large irregularly shaped orange blob on the horizon did not have a radar return. You really had to be there to experience the moment when she realized that orange glow was the moon rising! By midnight we had cleared the southern wall of the Gulf Stream and noticed an improvement in both the sea and wind conditions. With our sails set for a close reach we made good progress to the southeast in the 15kt southwesterly breeze. The eight hours of diesel we burned to get across the stream had been worthwhile as we‘d seen comparatively few ships and had transited the area in favorable conditions. Neither of us wanted to be anywhere near there when the next weather system arrived! Wednesday 11/12/03 (33°42N, 074°03W) Throughout the day conditions continued much as the night before, with winds easing slightly and veering a little further to the southwest. We were both trying hard to settle into the offshore watch routine as all weather forecasts were predicting tougher conditions likely to catch up with us in the next 24-36 hours. Thursday 11/13/03 (32°23N, 071°38W) Winds were slowly building from the southwest, and were forecast to continue doing so all day. After lunch, with sustained winds in the 20-25kt range we decided to have a trial run setting our storm jib, our previous attempts having undertaken in the comfort of an anchorage. Thankfully the addition of a pitching foredeck and occasional saltwater shower seemed nowhere near as bad as expected, and we duly discovered that a double-reefed mainsail/storm jib combo really didn’t power up until apparent winds reached 28-30kts. With the wind well aft of our bear, we shifted strategy and dropped both the main and storm jib, replacing them with just the working headsail. Over the early nighttime hours we saw winds climbing steadily into the 30kt range until 9:00pm when there was a sudden drop in humidity accompanied by a 90º shift to the northwest. Following the frontal passage we received a little light rain, and continued winds in the 30-35kt range. Seas from astern had correspondingly grown into the 15-20’ range, and at one point we clocked 9.5 knots surfing down the face of a wave. Trudy likened the experience to skiing down a continuous mountain range.
Waves do not photograph well! Friday 11/14/03 (31°15N, 069°17W) The breezy conditions persisted through the morning hours, but eventually began to subside somewhat during the afternoon. For most of the day we’d continued to surf the large waves, at first using a poled out jib, then as the winds decreased, with a main and preventer. (A preventer is a rope tied between the boom and deck which stops the boom flying back and forth in rough conditions). Having ridden safely through the worst of the bad weather, the captain was beginning to believe life was good… Saturday 11/15/03 (29°35N, 067°27W) As you might imagine, it came as a bit of a shock when the aforementioned captain discovered his beloved and very essential crew was hallucinating, and had been for quite some time. We subsequently discovered in the small print of the instruction leaflet that hallucinations are one of the side effects known to occasionally affect Transderm Scope users. Medication and the lack of sleep brought on by the bad weather were conspiring against Trudy and she was seeing vivid images of cartoon characters in the clouds, a young boy standing on the stern rail where the outboard motor should be, and a creaky cockpit floor was trying to communicate in Morse code. With the patch removed, Trudy resorted to the good old British over the counter seasickness medicine called Sturgeon. The convenience of applying a simple patch behind the ear once ever three days did not necessarily make a drug any more useful that taking Sturgeon every six hours. We were at a loss to how best to treat this potentially disastrous situation so at 7:00am we called the Divers Alert Network (DAN) medical emergency number on our Globalstar phone. Despite being over 300 miles from the closest landfall in Bermuda, we were soon speaking directly with a physician, whose prompt and outstanding advice soon had Trudy sleeping using nothing more than the over-the-counter antihistamine medication. During the day, DAN called back a couple of times to check on progress, and by the evening we were relieved to report the worst of Trudy’s symptoms had abated and she was feeling much better having slept for most of the day. Sunday 11/16/03 (27°28N, 066°23W) Day six brought us the joys of easy sailing, beautiful weather and a well rested Trudy. We took early morning showers in the cockpit and fresh baked bread for lunch. At first light Graham noticed our radar reflector had broken free from its top attachment point and was swaying back and forth precariously in the breeze. Most likely the bolts had worked loose from all the banging about during the last few days, but whatever the cause, it naturally chose to complete its descent while Trudy was half way through her shower. Luckily Graham was below deck checking the price of a replacement unit when he heard the bang as the “Firdell Blipper” threw itself overboard. Seemingly in the blink of an eye he had the boat turned around and was grabbing the (expensive!) man overboard dummy from Neptune’s clutches. As we congratulated ourselves for a successful rescue we dubbed the whole exercise a Radar Overboard Procedure!
One recovered radar reflector Monday 11/17/03 (24°59N, 065°37W) Our 6:00am position placed us a little under 400nm north of our anticipated landfall at Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Overnight we had experienced fairly breezy conditions, with sustained NNE winds in the 20-25kt range, however weather forecasts for the remainder of the journey looked hopeful, and promised steady 15-20kt breezed out of the northeast. Of course, nobody bothered to discuss these forecasts with the wind gods, who seemed happy to continue dishing out stronger stuff all day. We pressed on southwards, despite suggestions from Chris that we may find gentler conditions 50-60 miles to our east. For an hour or two we tried working a more easterly course, but this put us on a close reach sailing into some rather uncomfortable square-sided seas, so eventually we reverted to our more comfortable southerly course. Rising temperatures and noise from the rig and cabin made sleeping below impossible. We therefore took turns dozing under the relative protection of the canvas dodger, although the occasional errant wave dumping itself over the occupants of the cockpit made us both glad to be wearing our Musto foul weather gear. Tuesday 11/18/03 (22°48N, 065°09W) We spent a tiring night dodging small squalls that we’d noticed starting to pop up with increasing frequency, and winds had built back into the 25-30kt range. We were puzzled that neither the winds nor the squalls we’d been encountering were mentioned in any forecast up to now, and were therefore somewhat relieved when the NOAA’s 12:00Z Surface Analysis chart showed a significant tropical disturbance reaching from Puerto Rico out several hundred miles east of our position. This system was dissipating, but had stalled and was also responsible for dumping over 40” of rain on nearby islands! Similar conditions persisted for most of the day, eventually subsiding somewhat towards nightfall. Wednesday 11/19/03 (20°35N, 065°04W) As dawn came upon us, we sailed into clear skies and were amazed to look back at towering cumulonimbus clouds forming an impenetrable barrier behind us. Somehow we’d passed through unscathed, as if a mystical door had opened up to let us pass, then slammed shut in our wake.
Weather firmly behind ‘Luna Azul’ Feeling rested following calmer overnight conditions, we decided to turn our attention to catching fish. Earlier in the year we’d purchased a second rod/reel combo, and since this was our first opportunity to try them out, we had them rigged in record time. Not ten minutes later, we had a fish on the line! Whether due to our new “bird” fish attracting device, or just plain luck, we soon landed the 10 lb mahi-mahi that Graham later confessed to nearly throwing back because he thought it was just a baby! The cats were both very pleased he didn’t, especially as we soon decided we didn’t have enough energy to try landing anything bigger. Throughout the day we continued our gentle meander southwards, with an eye to making landfall around first light the following morning. We’d originally hoped to check in at Road Harbour, Tortola, which is Luna Azul’s port of registry, however the delay in securing the required cat import permits, and need to ship the replacement Prosine inverter made Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas the more sensible choice. Thursday 11/20/03 (Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas) After a little over nine continuous days at sea we made an uneventful landfall at Charlotte Amalie harbor in Saint Thomas, USVI. We attempted to clear customs at the ferry dock, but because we were arriving direct from the US, the officials weren’t too interested, and sent us happily on our way with little delay. After formalities were complete, we arranged to have our mail and packages forwarded by St. Brendan’s Isle, and much to our amazement, they arrived the following afternoon!
Our picture postcard from St. Thomas There were definitely moments underway where we wondered quite what possessed us to start the trip in the first place, and also there were moments when we were so exhilarated just to be doing it. As each day passes, our initial reservations fade, and leave room for the possibility that we might again make a similar journey sometime in the future. Visit our photo gallery for more pictures of the trip. Some statistics:
Click the map below to see a larger version of our route:
Special thanks must go to Chris Parker on s/v Bel Ami for providing weather forecasting expertise throughout the journey. We were grateful for our DAN membership as Dr. Molk and the rest of the team provided us superior service. Thank you to our friends and family who have been there to listen to our preparations and antics. Crew: Trudy and Graham Norbury, and their cats Sylvester and Shadow
Written between 28th November and 7th December 2003
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