A 3 Hour ...er... Month Tour

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale..." a tale of a potential misunderstanding. It has come to my attention that my last post about the Bahamas trip may not have been as clear as it was in my mind.  So, to avoid confusion, I will try again.

At least a couple people have thought that the length of the trip I was trying to put together was in the 6 to 9 month range.  That is not my intention.  The time window I have to make the trip is between 6 and 9 months (sometime in October or November to the beginning of June), but the trip itself will not be that long.  Although I may be crazy, even I'm not crazy enough to believe that most people have a free 6 to 9 months to spend sailing the Bahamas. My goal is to spend a month or more in the Bahamas with the total trip length being up to 3 months from start to finish.

I also know that many people do not have the ability to take 3 months out of their lives to go on a trip, so I am perfectly happy to split up the trip into multiple segments. I believe many of the islands have airports and/or ferry services, so it should be possible to embark or disembark at several locations. Since I have two cabins available for guests, there is also room for some overlap here (or if someone wants to do the whole trip while others cannot). Obviously priority will be given to those who will be available for the larger passage segments (from Southport, NC to Florida to the Bahamas and/or the return).

Right now the big unknown is still the schedule. I have a family trip planned for next month and I won't be able to get out to the boat until after that.  I have a caretaker looking after the boat in my absence and reports are that it is doing fine (engines were started and checked just moments ago in fact), but I assume there will be at least a few things requiring my attention when I get there.  This is just part of life when you have a vehicle that sits in one of the more corrosive environments on the planet. Of course this means that the boat could be ready to go in a week or it could be more than a month and I'll only really know that once I do get out there. Naturally, once the boat is ready, the other variable will be the weather. The winter months tend to become a bit tricky with regard to weather windows. Thus having some flexibility in travel dates is key to joining this adventure.

Of course, I can't expect flexibility from others without having some myself.  So, I'm happy to work with others schedules within that time window as well. I fully understand that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays fall within that time window and many people will have family obligations, so sliding the start and end dates is not a problem (I may return home and come back out to the boat later if needed). I am also open to suggestions as to where the crew would like to go while in the Bahamas, etc.

If you have already contacted me, do know that I have added you to "the list" and will send out an email to that list in the coming week or two.  If you have not and this clarification has you thinking you may be interested or able to join the adventure, please let me know soon so I can include you in the discussions.

Rebooting The Dream

Well, I could apologize once again for the lack of posts, but it is getting old and tired and I think you all understand there is very little in sailing related stories that can be told from Colorado...particularly in the winter. But I do finally have some news to share...and perhaps an opportunity for someone with an abundance of free time and desire to travel by sailboat.

As you probably know, we tried to sell Rover after moving back to Colorado.  Unfortunately the closing company and broker we used when we bought the boat failed us during the original sale and we did not discover this issue until we tried selling the boat. The combination of this fact, being so far from the boat, and frankly my lack of enthusiasm for selling and we still have her.

One of the original plans that we had when we set out cruising was to make it to the Bahamas. The idea was that trip would be an adequate first real test to see if we would like the longer term cruising lifestyle. Of course, this never happened.

Photo by Gregory Culmer on Usplash

So why am I telling you this...well...I'm reviving the idea of taking the boat to the Bahamas. I still have the boat and I put in all that work on it so I might as well....right?  The only problem is that I'm lacking a crew.  While I have found that I can single-hand the boat, it is much easier to have additional hands to take watches and to help with docking or anchoring.  Besides, a trip like this is far better when shared.

Image by PublicDomainPictures fromPixabay

As of now, I don't have much of a plan for this trip, but as they say "cruising plans are written in sand at low tide" so even if I had one it would likely continue to change. Right now the goal is for me to return to the boat in September or October and spend some time getting the boat back in shape.  I'm not sure how long this will take, but I hope she will be ready in November if there aren't too many surprises. The time window for the trip will be sometime from the time the boat is ready until the start of hurricane season the following June.

Image by buckeyebeth from Pixabay

Once the boat and crew are ready, the trip will start with a cruise down the east coast from North Carolina to southern Florida. From there it is a wait for a weather window to cross the gulf stream to the Bahamas.  Spend a month or three exploring some of the various islands of the Bahamas, then use another weather window to return. Depending on time and weather (and any potential new anchoring restrictions in Florida), we may also spend a little bit of time in the Florida Keys.

The swimming pigs at Staniel Cay
Image by Lisa Larsen from Pixabay

Photo by tavius on Unsplash

In the past when I've looked for help moving the boat, I tried to find people with at least some sailing knowledge since I was paying for room and board while aboard the boat and the goal was to complete the task of re-positioning the boat.  Well, that worked out well at times and other times it did not.  I realize I don't really need people with sailing knowledge or experience for this trip. I just need folks that are honest about their abilities, willing to learn what little I will need them to know to help out with the boat, have a somewhat compatible lifestyle to mine (since we will be living in relatively close quarters - imagine a very small "3 bedroom" apartment), and want to spend some time seeing what it is like to live on a sailing catamaran. The right person/people will also need to be flexible with time, have a passport, and want to spend some time in the beautiful islands of the Bahamas.

Bahamas Lobster and coral. 
Image by Paulo O (Creative Commons)

I'm sure you might be wondering how much a trip like this would cost.  Unfortunately, that is like asking the question "how long is a piece of string".  A lot of it depends on your lifestyle.  I'll provide the boat (two double berths available), cover the costs for any boat maintenance, the first tank of diesel (67 gallons) and other durable supplies.  We will split costs for food and drink on board, stays at marinas, customs and cruising/fishing permit (currently a flat $300, but theoretically changing in 2020) and other group related costs. You would be responsible for getting to and from the boat, your own restaurant and bar tabs, and any other personal purchases.  So, depending on how well we provision the boat before we leave, how much water and diesel we use, and how much time we spend at marinas and restaurants and bars, the costs can vary quite a bit.  I will only say that I'm pretty flexible as far as food and entertainment goes and am happy to anchor out and sail as much as others desire to help keep costs down.  If you want to get an idea of how much this type of trip may cost, you can Google "cost to sail the Bahamas" to get an idea. All I can really say is this should be significantly cheaper than a similar land-based stay in the Bahamas and you will have the chance to go places that are not accessible to those staying in one of the resort hotels.

What the accommodations look like.
Images and videos available at The Boat link.

Does this sound like something you would be interested in doing?  If so, shoot me an email (the tool at the bottom of the right hand column of the blog can do this if you don't already have my email address). Someone able to complete the whole trip would be ideal, but I'm happy to entertain different people for different segments of the trip if we can find others to fill in the empty slots. I'm posting this here first to give those that are following my blog the first chance at this opportunity before I post it on some of the crew wanted sites.

Rover at No Name Harbor...where many people make
the hop to the Bahamas.

Deltaville to Brunswick, By the Numbers

I thought it would be interesting to see a few numbers related to the last trip.  And I thought I would throw in a couple other pictures as well. Most of the numbers are calculated from the tracks recorded by OpenCPN.  Engine hours are the total number of hours run per engine (so if I ran both engines for an hour, the number would indicate 2 engine hours).  In most cases the time and speed numbers include time spent deploying and hauling the anchor, waiting on bridges, etc.

The first leg of the trip was from Stingray Point (near Deltaville) to Mobjack bay.

• Distance: 24.1 NM
• Average Speed: 5.5 Kts. (approximate)
• Time: 04:20 (approximate)
• Engine Hours: 10.7 (including system testing time at start)

(I forgot to turn on tracking for part of this leg, so numbers are approximate)

The second leg was Mobjack Bay to Great Bridge Lock

• Distance: 43.5 NM
• Average Speed: 4.47 Kts.
• Time: 9:43
• Engine Hours:  16.3

The third leg was Great Bridge Lock to the Broad Creek anchorage.

• Distance: 44.55 NM
• Average Speed: 5.8 Kts,
• Time: 7:55
• Engine Hours: 11.2

Fourth Leg from Broad Creek to the Pungo River anchorage.

• Distance: 60.87 NM
• Average Speed: 4.25 Kts.
• Time: 14:19
• Engine Hours: 17.9

Fifth Leg from Pungo River to the Whittaker Point Marina.

• Distance: 53.43 NM
• Average Speed: 5.23 Kts.
• Time: 9:11
• Engine Hours: 16.5

Sixth Leg from Whittaker Point to Ft Macon anchorage.

• Distance: 23.4 NM
• Average Speed: 4.82 Kts
• Time: 4:10
• Engine Hours: 8.4

Seventh Leg from Ft Macon to Brunswick.

• Distance: 408.67
• Average Speed: 5.3 Kts.
• Time: 3 days 09:03 
• Engine Hours: 39.0

More time running the engines than I would like, but it can't be helped when traveling the ICW. I don't have good fuel numbers since I was unable to fill up before the trip started, but my best calculations show we were burning less than one gallon per engine hour. Hopefully next year I will be farther south before the cold arrives.

Here's a nice picture of where we anchored on Pungo Creek. Just after we dropped anchor another boat decided it looked like a good place to spend the night too.

And here is a picture of Neal sporting the appropriate wardrobe for much of the trip. A far cry from the t-shirt and shorts trip I made getting the boat up to Virginia.

Southport to Oriental

My new volunteer arrived in Wilmington NC last Tuesday and we spent a few days waiting for good weather, shuttling my car up to Deltaville, VA. and getting a couple last minute fixes done on the boat.  With all of that complete, we set sail on Saturday, leaving Southport behind.

Working hard on a sailboat.

Since Cape Fear and the Frying Pan Shoals are just north of the Southport inlet, I decided we should just take the ICW up from Deep Point marina and head out to the ocean at the next inlet instead of taking the hours it would take to skirt around the shoals.  Of course the next inlet, Carolina Beach, isn't navigable by larger boats due to the constantly changing shoals, so I chose the Masonboro inlet instead.  Motoring up the inlet it was immediately apparent it was the Memorial Day weekend.  There was a ton of traffic on the water and lining most of the local beaches.  After a few hours of dodging boats, we made it back out to the Atlantic.

Sailboats and motorboats, and jet-skis.

From there, the plan was to sail on the outside to Beaufort, and then continue via the ICW up to Oriental, NC so we would bypass Cape Hattaras.  Everything I've heard of Cape Hattaras indicates that you need to give it a pretty wide berth or it can be pretty dicey.  The winds weren't as favorable for this leg as they were for the last one, so we weren't able to go directly to Beaufort, but sailed more up along the coast.  This wouldn't be a bad thing, except there is a big restricted area that is surrounded by a bigger "danger zone" where the military likes to conduct training.  Not wanting to be a recipient of their training exercises, I ended up tacking several times to get far enough out to clear the zone during the night.

The tacks would result in the boat heading southeast, so a couple times I went and sat on the foredeck and just looked up at the stars.  It still amazes me how many stars you can see when the light and pollution of civilization isn't around.  By the end of my night watch, I had made it just far enough out to clear the danger zone and we should now be able to make it most of the way to Beaufort in a relatively straight course.

We were fortunate that we had wind most of my watch as the forecast called for them to lay down in the evening. Naturally, after I went to bed, the winds died down and we didn't end up making a lot of progress the remainder of the night.  I got up just in time so we both got to see the sun rise over the ocean.  With the sun up, you could see how amazingly calm the sea had become over the past few hours.  There was barely a ripple in the water, just a smooth and gentle roll like the ghosts of yesterdays waves.  We finally gave up on pure sailing and fired up an engine so we could make it to Beaufort in time for low tide and wouldn't have to fight a strong current going back in the inlet.  Other than the lack of wind for sailing, it was a beautiful day.

Once near Beaufort, we were again greeted by all the people making the best of the Memorial day weekend on the water.  Dodging a number of boats, we (along with several other sail and motor boats) made our way up the ICW and we ended up in Oriental, NC. around 4pm.  We took advantage of the marina showers, used the marina courtesy car to make a run to the grocery store, had dinner, and called it a night.

Our Route.

Rango, or another little green lizard, made an appearance as well.  Unfortunately when we found him later hiding under the cover of the BBQ grill, it appeared that his back legs were not working well.  We decided that his story would not end well if he were handicapped and trying to live on a boat, so we took him to shore at the marina and left him there.  Hope he can manage better in Oriental. Good luck little stowaway.

Is this Rango, the lizard from the earlier trip?

Goodbye Brunswick, Hello....Southport

As I'm sure you are aware, I am trying to move my boat from Brunswick Georgia up to the Chesapeake bay area before the end of the month.  As the result of a recent post, I had a few people volunteer to help out.  One blog reader that contacted me said he had taken the ASA courses and had done some sailing but might be a bit rusty.  Since he was nearby and was willing to do the entire trip, it sounded like a good solution to moving the boat.

We met a few days before the planned trip and talked a little bit about the trip and the boat and everything seemed to go OK so we planned to have him come down last Wednesday and spend the night so we could get an early start Thursday and hopefully make Beaufort NC by Saturday.  The winds were forecast to be in the teens for our trip with seas of 1 to 2 feet on a four second period (for those that aren't aware, the comfort level of the ride has as much to do with the distance, or period, between waves as it does the height of the waves...and the closer the period in seconds comes to the wave height in feet, the more uncomfortable the ride is supposed to be).

We get up and make our way to the fuel dock at the marina to get fuel and a pump out before departing.  While I had arranged to get fuel when they opened in the morning, apparently someone came the night before and bought all of the fuel they had so we had to go to another marina to get fuel for the trip.  This put us a bit behind on our ambitious schedule to make it to Beaufort by Saturday.

We headed out the inlet and into the Atlantic, raised the sails, and started heading north/northeast.  The wind wasn't as high as forecast initially, so we started out motor-sailing (using both an engine and the sails to power the boat).  After a little while the winds picked up to around 12 knots and we were able to shut down the engine.  Finally, really sailing, with no motors, toward a new destination.  It felt good.

Yes, this IS a sailboat.

The weather was great, the sea was comfortable and we were making between 5 and 6 knots.  Speed of just a little under half the wind speed seemed pretty good to me.  At one point I discovered a stow away on board, I have a feeling he will be surprised when we get to our destination....if he survives the trip and gets off the boat at that point.  At one point I felt a little bad for him and offered him a little fresh water but he didn't seem interested.  Don't know how long he can survive without food, but I hope he knows what he got himself into.

My little stow away.

As the sun set, the sailing conditions remained very nice, with one foot seas and winds from the east/southeast between 10 and 12 knots.  This gave us a nice beam to broad reach sail.  For safety overnight we reefed the main sail and that reduced our speed to between 4 and 5 knots. A little after sunset we were off the coast of Savannah, Georgia.  Savannah is a pretty large port and there were a number of large cargo and container ships moving about in the area.  I periodically fired up the radar to check for vessels in the area and we kept a look out for them.  Since it was a nice clear night, we were able to see and avoid (although I don't actually recall having to alter course...but perhaps we did).

Sunrise from the helm.

We took 4 hour watches overnight and it was uneventful.  The water rushing past the hull with only the occasional need to fire up an engine or the generator to recharge the batteries (I'd run the generator if I needed AC power for other things...like cheating and using the microwave, otherwise I would use an engine so we could get a few more knots for a little while).  As morning approached, the winds died down and so the "iron genny" (the motor) was started again so we could maintain a 5~6 knot speed.  During my morning watch there was a small pod of dolphin (I think I saw 6 or so jumping out of the water) heading directly for the boat.  I thought they might be coming to play at the bow as they often do so I went to get my camera.  Of course, when I got back out with the camera, they were nowhere to be found.  Oh well.  It was cool to see them.

Track of the first half of the trip

We passed by Charleston around 8 AM and continued motoring most of the day.  In fact, the wind was light enough from behind us that I couldn't keep the sails filled when motoring so I doused the sails entirely. Doing some calculations on where we were, I decided we weren't likely to make it all the way to Beaufort before sunset on Saturday, so I decided we would divert to Southport, NC.  Finally in the afternoon, the winds started picking up and we were able to raise the sails and once again shut down the engines.  By sunset we were in Long Bay and about 45nm from Southport.

Sunset.  There is land over there somewhere.

Naturally, the winds picked up a bit overnight and even with reefed sails we made it to Southport at about 4am.  Since I didn't want to navigate the channel at night and no marinas would be open anyway, I decided to heave-to and wait for daylight and the local marinas to open.  After sunrise we made our way into the channel and, after a little additional waiting, got a hold of the marina and we were back on a dock.

Track of the second half of the trip.

I wish I could say that everything went well on the trip, and as for the sail itself it did.  Unfortunately I made some decisions that led to quite a bit of frustration.  With the fuel fiasco and the added delay, I skipped doing a few maneuvers that I had planned before we headed off.  Had I stuck to the plan I think I would have realized earlier that my crew was more than just "a little rusty".  I'm no sailing instructor, but perhaps if I had better understood his lack of basic sailing skills I could have compensated before the frustration set in.  We ended up parting company in Southport and I shuttled him back to get his car and to pick up mine.

I learned quite a bit on this trip.  For one, I need to do a little better job evaluating crew skills before setting off on a trip.  I learned that, while it is easier to have a hand, I can single-hand the boat if I need to.  I learned the grace of a dolphin swimming through the ocean in the morning.  I learned the peacefulness of watching the sun rise over the ocean when no land is in sight.  I learned that I really need to get my wife out here with me soon.

P.S. If you are in the Southport, NC. area (or somewhere else) and would like to go sailing and help me move the boat, let me know.  You don't need to be an expert, just have some desire...and an honest evaluation of your skills so I can set proper expectations. And don't be offended if I quiz you on a few things so I get an accurate assessment.

P.P.S. If you are concerned with our stowaway...despite his occasional precarious perch (at one point I found him on the foot of the genoa when I unfurled it) and lack of food, I did see him roaming the boat after we made it back to dock.  So, he survived the trip too.  Hope he likes North Carolina.