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2011-08-25T02:19:00.003-04:00

Saturday, August 20 We left Loctudy early and had a good wind to start. It soon died and we were once again motoring. We anchored for the night off Belle Isle. What more can I say, the no wind is old.

Sunday, August 21 We left Belle Isle with a good wind to start. It soon died and we motored to Ile D'Yeu where we anchored for the night. I guess this no wind is what sailing in August is like, a bit like the Bay.

Monday, August 22 We left Ile d'Yeu early to a glorious wind and headed for Ile de Re. This time the wind did not die and we were soon thinking we should take advantage of it and head for Port Medoc. We dithered and changed course a couple of times but by noon this wind was still perfect and we finally decided to go home. We got safely back into our slip at 11 PM.

Tuesday & Wednesday August 23 & 24 We have spent 2 days cleaning up the boat, packing the car, enjoying chausson aux pommes and grand creme, and are ready to head back to the house today, Thursday, August 25.

Back to France

2011-08-19T15:20:00.006-04:00

Tuesday, August 16. Kinsale to The Isles of Scilly. We woke up in Kinsale on Tuesday morning to the news that a Fastnet boat (100 foot)had overturned just after rounding the rock. Not a good omen for a passage. But we left Kinsale with the tide and headed for the Scillies. We had a good wind to start and it was predicted to be force 5-6 for the trip. The seas were at least 2 meters on the beam, not a happy motion. By 1PM the wind was gone and we were motoring despite the small craft warning

A Captain Ahab Moment (Almost)

All trip I have been hoping to see a whale and disappointed that we were leaving the colder seas without a sighting. Out of Kinsale however, I saw a group of dolphins acting oddly. We were still sailing and it was quiet. I went to look over the side at the dolphins when I spotted a large spray of water about 50 feet off the port bow. HUM. Second spray of water behind the first and getting closer. Third spray of water almost at the bow. Time to take avoidance action. So 3 lovely whales serenely floated across our bows as we serenely sailed behind to avoid them. For the rest of the trip I recalled all the stories I have ever read about boats being holed by sea mammals, all sinking within 11 seconds. However, that was offset by the sighting and the tranquility of the 3 whales enjoying a fine sunny day.

We completed the trip in 22 hours arriving at 6 AM, to take a mooring, and go to sleep. All along the way the smaller Fastnet boats passed us, so we never felt alone. Prince Charles as Duke of Cornwall exercises his right to charge for the use of his land under the water. Mooring cost: 20 pounds. We only paid for a mooring 1 other time otherwise they were always free. He also charges to anchor, just less.
The Scillies were lovely but the anchorage was very rolly. We cleaned up the boat a bit and made realy for the next leg.

Thursday, August 18. Scillies to Loctudy, France.

We left the Scillies at sunrise with a good wind but with a warning of strong winds around the islands. Outside the harbor we danced around the Fastnet boats all coming back from the rock. This time they were not spread out and all really pushing. Again we found the seas to have 2 meter swells on the beams and unplesant. By 1 PM we were motoring again. No wind was getting old.

We motored all the way to Loctudy south of Brest. We were hoping to stop over on the Iles of Glenan but we needed fuel so ended up here in this very quaint Brittany fishing village. We are in a marina which is packed full of boats and vacationers. We are in the height of the French holidays and everyone is enjoying the warm and sunny weather here. Dante and Calypso are quite the show.

Tomorrow we continue our route south to Port Medoc. No more all-nighters, we will mosy down the coast and take about 4 days to get to our marina.

Weather Window

2011-08-15T10:33:00.003-04:00

Sunday & Monday, August 14 &15. We arrived in Kinsale yesterday afternoon after a wonderful sail. The town is very picturesque and it was packed with French and American tourists. This is the gourmet capital of Ireland so we had dinner at a restaurant called Max's. It was wonderful food and a nice menu to choose from.

Looks like tomorrow we will have good weather for the next few days to get us back to France, so we are planning on taking advantage of it. We will leave for the Isles of Scilly around 9 AM. It should be a 24 hour sail. Thursday wind is supposed to turn north which will give us a good sail over to France. We would like to make it as far as the Isles de Glennan where we stopped on our way up.

So we will wait until the morning forecast to make a final decision about leaving but right now it is looking that way. We have filled the tank with fuel and the necessary food is aboard.

Aran to Valencia

2011-08-12T10:26:00.003-04:00

Aran Isles, Doolin, Kilrush, Valencia
Tuesday, August 2. After leaving Roundstone, we headed for Inishmore, the largest of the 3 islands knows as the Aran Isles. Not a bad sail although seas were not Calypso friendly, with winds from the northwest. We took a visitor mooring in the new and still under construction ferry port in Kilronan. We arrived mid-afternoon and took the dingy into town. Our plans were to meet up with our Irish friends again who would take a ferry from their home in Doolin the next day. We would spend a day on Aran and then sail down to Kilrush on Thursday.

Inishmore is a beautiful island and a MAJOR tourist destination. Ferries come from several towns hauling hundreds of holiday-makers to the island every day. They are met by jaunting cars (pony and trap) or mini busses to take them on tours around the island. Like clockwork, our friends arrived on the morning ferry from Doolin and we spent the day touring the island. We took a mini bus around for half a tour and let the driver go at the Iron Age fort Dun Aonghasa. This is a stone fort built on a rock promontory. The scenery is spectacular and is definitely worth the journey. We walked back to Kilronan and finished the day with a delicious meal on board. We had Burren smoked salmon and mackerel from a prize-winning small producer near Doolin who is currently in the US meeting with Dean and DeLucca about carrying her smoked fish.

Thursday, August 4. Kilronan to Kilrush. The sail from the Aran isles passes the Cliffs of Moher which is considered some of the most dramatic coastline in Ireland. We planned this trip for Thursday because the weather was forecast to be relatively good. One thing we have learned about weather in Ireland is: it is not predictable. We sailed out near 8 AM in not terrible conditions but by the time we had passed Inishmann conditions we deteriorating. Visibility was decreasing and seas were kicking up. We ended up experiencing the roughest seas of our whole trip and the visibility was not such that we could really appreciate the coastline. Once we rounded Loop Head and entered the Shannon River sea state calmed somewhat and our last 2 hours were passed pleasantly. We off loaded the cats and went to spend a couple of days with our friends in their home.

Friday, August 5. The Doolin Respite. Doolin is renowned as a center for traditional music. It is also in a very particular geological region called the Burren where there is a vast limestone plateau. We spent 3 days seeing the local sights while eating scones along the way and dining on fish and chips in the pub which draws crowds for nightly music, and some excellent home cooking. Dante and Calypso thought they had died and gone to heaven. They spent 3 days in a house with lots of windows from which to watch interesting things. They were also able to go outside themselves to explore and eat grass. They were really hoping to be adopted by the nice Irish couple and never have to go back on the boat again. But no. Sunday morning came and they were in their carriers again in a car driving back to Kilrush Marina and the dreaded boat.

Sunday, August 7. We are in a marina for the first time since Troon. The only thing we want to do is laundry. So that is how we spent the afternoon through evening. This marina has a home not commercial washing machine and dryer so it took many, many hours to do most of what we needed wash. Some things will wait until we get back home. On Monday, we walked around Kilrush, did a final shop of fresh fruit and veg, filled water tanks, and washed the boat. There is a lock to get in and out of the marina which operates from 9 AM to 9 PM. We planned to be out on the tide at 6 AM on Tuesday so at 9 PM we locked out of Kilrush Creek to spend the night in the sea lock.

Tuesday, August 9. Kilrush to Valencia. We left Kilrush as planned at 6 AM and had a lovely sail down the Shannon River. Once we got out to the coast however, the winds soon died then changed direction so that we were heading into them, and then they freshened. Seas were once again rough until we passed behind the Blasket Islands. Our original destination was the Blaskets but with the weather deteriorating and Irish coast guard predicting gales for the next day, we decided to make for Valencia which is well protected. We found that a marina was here, still under construction but completed enough for us to tie up to its floating pier.
Valencia is a lovely small island with a new port built to accommodate water sports for children. Kids were kayaking, swimming, and jumping on a floating trampoline inside the protection of 3 sea walls and the floating pier. A ferry ride of no more than 5 minutes connects Valencia to the mainland. We enjoyed a walk around the town and sat down for a relaxing Guinness. Weather continued to deteriorate and we planned for another day here.

Wednesday, August 10. It is mid afternoon as I catch up on my trip log. We have been battered by winds and rain for hours now. This is the first storm we have had to sit out since Penzance, not bad for 2 months on the go. It has given us time to plan our trip back to France. We lost the red running light on the way down to Kilrush so we have to replace that before doing much else. There are few marinas and even fewer chandlers here so we do not know where we will find the replacement. Tomorrow we are heading to Baltimore (NOT). RXC likes to say we started this trip out from Balmor, MD so it is fitting we should stop at the one over here. Hopefully, there will be a chandler there that will have something we can use for the trip back.

If the storm lessens a bit, we will go have a coffee at an internet café and I will be able to get this posted. Our internet connectivity has been the main frustration of the trip. Not only has it been infrequent but increasingly we try to connect to a hot spot only to find our US computers cannot read the signal. We have set up accounts that are supposed to give us good coverage such as Boingo but they have not worked. When we can catch something at cafes, we have to try to remember to check so many things beside email such as bills, bank and credit cards statements, weather, etc. This is the one thing that has been fairly problematic for the trip as we depend on the web for so many things.

Friday, August 12. We are still in Valencia. The weather has kept us pier bound. Tomorrow predictions are for lighter winds, we will see. If we get out we will try to get as far as Kilmore. from there we will jump to the Scillies when we get a weather window. Weather is supposed to be poor through the middle of next week at least. From the Scillies we will head to La Coquette north or Brest or the Isles of Glennan.

A Day in Galway

2011-08-02T04:12:00.000-04:00

Monday, August 1: Galway. We took the bus into Galway on Bank Holiday Monday. The inland scenery was just beautiful. We saw the sights in town which was winding down from a festival weekend. We were to meet up with friends for lunch who were also coming into town by bus. Amazingly, all transportation details worked out. We found each other, had a great visit, and a very fine lunch. Our respective buses left Galway at 6 PM and 6:15 PM. Back in Roundstone at 7:45 PM we were astonished by the crowds of people standing in the road, we thought it was a parade! No just folks having drinks outdoors in the evening sunshine. This is the major vacation time in Ireland and obviously people were taking advantage. Roundstone is also a place where the more affluent Dubliners come to holiday, but we also heard quite a few folks speaking with English accents too. Tomorrow we are off to the Aran Islands.

The West Coast

2011-07-31T13:33:00.003-04:00

Killybegs

Tuesday, July 26. Touring by Bus. The mooring we took belonged to a sailboat which was scheduled to return today. We picked it up because it was yellow which in EU land is supposed to mean it is a visitor’s buoy. But here visitors are to tie up on the town pier where there are both small and huge fishing vessels. We wanted to do some touring today so we got up early to be able to move the boat. We tried to find a place to anchor given the alternative but no anchorage was to be found. The harbor is full of fish farms. Reluctantly, we tied up to a 45 foot fishing boat which was outboard of a 60 foot one. We hung around until we could contact the harbormaster who said the boats were not scheduled to go out for awhile so we were good to stay.

Numerous folks here talked about how depressed the fishing industry is here. The EU imposed quotas so boats only go out about 4 months a year. The rest of the time they are virtually mothballed. The town is quite small and dependant on the fishermen.
We took a bus to the lively weaving village of Ardara. Only 1 bus a day goes there leaving Killybegs at 10:45 AM. Only 1 bus comes back to Killybegs at noon. Not much time to spend in town. From Ardara we could get a bus to Donegal also at noon. But from Donegal we could get a bus back to Killybegs in the late afternoon. So we boarded the bus for our day out.

Ardara was lovely, had better services than Killybegs, had lots of tourists visiting the weavers, and generally was a very pleasant village. We made good use of our hour there and then off to Donegal at noon.

It is nice to get off the boat and see the inland countryside. The decent into Donegal with a view of the bay was glorious. We would have sailed there but the harbor dries out which is why we extended our stay in Killybegs and decided on taking the bus.

Donegal was very busy with tourists. We found a small gourmet food shop there that sold amazing Irish cheeses and a very unusual bacon. They also stocked wine from a winery we like near Le Fleix. We were able to stock up on fruit and veg. We were back in Killybegs by 6 PM.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011: A Day for the Boat. After a month on the go, there was a lot of boat maintenance and cleaning to do. We started the morning off by sending RXC up to the top of the mast, my favorite activity. Various repairs were accomplished, line for the topping lift was replaced, but to repair an antenna would require a second trip up to the top. Unfortunately, it began to rain so that second trip is put off until another day.

While up the mast RXC noticed what he thought was a problem with the engine’s turbo charger. So his next project was to search for a Yanmar mechanic. A trip back to the shop where the line was purchased was fruitful. He was hooked up with a mechanic who came by to look at the engine within the hour. As it turned out, there was no problem so we can be on our way tomorrow.

Thursday, July 28, 2011: Killybegs to Broadhaven: Crummy weather, crummy seas, crummy sail. We left Killybegs at 7:45 AM in sunshine and light winds. Within the hour it clouded over and the winds kicked up. The seas were 2-3 meters and very lumpy and confused. We had a 60 mile sail, all of it unpleasant. We banged badly and one wave knocked out our wind instrument. We still have wind direction but do not know the speed. Finding out what part is needed will take another trip up the mast. Our compensation for such a lousy day was a welcome by about 40 dolphins that came swimming towards the boat to usher us down the river to a mooring. The anchorage was not that much calmer that the seas.

Friday, July 29, 2011: Broadhaven to Killary Harbor. Today’s sail was only slightly better than yesterday’s. Seas were still lumpy, wind was still strong, and it rained. We were about an hour and a half away from stopping for the evening when we picked up a lobster pot. We could not get it off the prop using a boat hook so it took RXC donning his dive gear and going overboard to release it. The boat was bobbing away and it took about an hour to release us. We finished our sail another 60miles and anchored in tiny bay with beautiful scenery. This anchorage was a bit calmer.

Saturday, July 30, 2011: Killary Harbor to Roundstone. A third day of crummy seas and weather. It was clear and bright in the early morning, so we washed down the boat. We started out about 10 AM just when the clouds moved in. The sailing conditions had changed little. We sailed and motored around Slyne Head to ease the banging of the bow. We arrived in Roundstone which is a quaint village built on a hill. We plan to stay here a couple of days at least until the seas change.

Sunday, July 31, 2011: Roundstone. This is a Bank Holiday Weekend in Ireland so things are busy. The tiny village is bustling with tourists and the pubs and restaurants are overflowing. We had a good pub lunch of smoked salmon sandwich and seafood chowder. It is still rainy but the wind seems to have eased. We are trying to go to Galway by bus from here to meet friends but it might just be easier to meet them on Aran Island because busses don’t run on Sunday and will run on a holiday schedule tomorrow.

Adieu Scotland

2011-07-27T11:44:00.001-04:00

Port Ellen, Islay to Sheep Haven, Ireland: Across the North Channel

Saturday, July 23. Back to watching tides, currents, sea state, and weather. We needed to set out from Port Ellen at 5 AM to catch a favorable push across the North Channel to Ireland. Our intended destination was Lough Swilley, which is in the Republic of Ireland and 50 odd miles from Port Ellen. We were up at 4 AM to get ourselves ready to get underway. We were rewarded by the most magnificent sunrise over Islay. There was a Force 5 wind coming out of the northwest and a smooth sea state (just the way Pumpkin likes it). We set out on what turned out to be our best sail of the trip. The sun was shining, the winds were steady and from the right direction, there were no swells and we booked it across the channel. When we got to Malin Head it was still early in the day, conditions were still perfect, and we were still having a great time. We decided to pass Lough Swilly and head towards Sheep Haven which aside from a great name got us in a good position to round Bloody Foreland the next day. We travelled 62 nautical miles in 9 hours.

Sheep Haven has beautiful beaches and there were a lot of people out enjoying them. The anchorage there has visitor moorings so we picked up a mooring and enjoyed the show on the beach. We spent a relaxed and quite evening but early to bed as we had to be off again about 5 AM the next morning.

Sheep Haven to Aranmore Island: Diesel and The Lobster Pot

Sunday, July 24. Light wind between Force 2 and 3 would usually have us motor sailing but today we have only a third of a tank of fuel left so we are sailing. It is very slow going, eventually the wind dies, and the current turn against us so we are forced to motor. We decide to make for a town called Burtonport for fuel. Being a Sunday we were worried that the fuel dock would be closed. Burtonport has a ferry service every 10 minutes to the nearby island of Aranmore so it is all diesel al the time there. We got the tank filled, just as a Customs boat came into the harbor. Are they looking for us? We went off to have a seafood lunch at the Lobster Pot where an enormous lobster decorates the façade. By the time we got back to the boat Customs had decided to go ashore and get their own lunch perhaps. So we motored off to look for an anchorage for the evening. We went around to the south side of Aranmore and anchored in a protected cove.

Monday, July 25. Aranmore to Killybegs: We are boarded. We left Aranmore to sail along some of the most beautiful coastline in Europe. Spectacular rugged cliffs and waterfalls and white beaches were our views for the whole trip to Killybegs where we were planning on spending a few days. Just outside of Killybegs, the Customs ship is coming up to coast towards us. Yes they were looking for us yesterday and they found us today. They stopped the ship, launched a dingy and before we knew it they were politely asking if they could come aboard. Papers in order, pets imported legally, all in order we can go on our merry way. We arrived in Killybegs which is very much a fishing town. There was a mooring that we picked up for the night.

The Rest of the Malts Cruise

2011-07-22T08:31:00.002-04:00

Out of Tobermory to Loch Sunart

In my last posting I mentioned that we had a group dinner Monday evening, July 11, in Tobermory. The next day boats would go their own way until Friday when another rendezvous was planned. The dinner was at the Western Isles Hotel and it was FABULOUS. It was a buffet of local seafood and nothing was spared. There were crabs, langoustines, and salmon, to mention only a few of the delicacies. A piper welcomed us to the hotel and later piped us into the buffet. We were offered a welcoming dram of the Tobermory Distillery’s best actually 2 different whiskies, both excellent but hard to find outside of Scotland we are told. We enjoyed our evening and met more of the interesting people who are on this cruise.

Tuesday, July 12. We were scheduled for a morning tour of the Tobermory Distillery. We needed to do a bit of shopping so it was past lunch time when we got back to the boat. We decided to go only as far as Loch Sunart which was just across the Sound of Mull for the evening as there was virtually no wind. The next day we would have to go around Ardnamurchan Point which has a notorious reputation so we wanted to take it easy after our busy morning. We went into a picturesque bay named Drumbuie where we spent the night. About 8 boats were there.

Wednesday, July 13. The next morning we set out in a light wind and flat seas making our rounding of Ardnamurchan Point completely without drama. Eventually, the wind picked up and we had a glorious sail around the isle of Muck then the wind died. We were planning to visit Loch Moidart that evening which is said to be one of the loveliest anchorages on the western coast. But with no wind at about 2 PM we decided rather than motor for several hours to get there we would anchor on the southeast coast of Eigg. We found a deep pool in an area without boats. The next morning we pulled out the jib and coasted all the way to our next destination, the island of Rum.

RUM
Thursday, July 14. Rum is the largest of the Inner Hebrides and is quite mountainous. We arrived in Loch Scresort a day earlier than the cruise schedule so that we could get off the boat and hike a bit. Wednesday afternoon we took a rather easy walk up a glen in “persistent” rain. Then we called into the only café where about 11 cruisers were having their afternoon cuppa and swapping stories. Only one set was from the Malts Cruise. About 6 boats were in the Loch that evening.

Friday, July 15. We got off the boat early and made a rigorous hike up to a caldera where we had a spectacular view of the boats in the bay. We had a tour scheduled for the afternoon.

Rum is owned by the National Conservancy of Scotland and is primarily a nature preserve. But there is the 19th Kinloch Castle on the island built facing Loch Scresort. It is the most complete example of an Edwardian furnished stately home in the UK. We toured the house which was a conservator’s nightmare. Then we headed for a lecture about Rum by the island’s only ranger/interpreter. The evening barbecue was held in the tiny village hall and it was excellent. It was catered by 2 young women who did the serving of the local venison delicacies from outside the hall in force 7 winds and heavy rain with only the fly of a large tent covering them. Again there was a bit of bagpipe playing to close the evening.

RESCUE US

Back Story: We began our trip out of Port Medoc by helping a new acquaintance bail his sinking wooden boat after it was put into the water. It had been on land for bottom work for a couple of weeks and it was so hot and dry in France, that the planks of the hull dried out enough that when launched, and by the time he got the boat over to his slip it was taking on water so seriously that his pump could not keep up with it and it was sinking. His was the last boat launched before lunch so no help was to be found at the travel lift to get him back out of the water. His wife drove around to ask us to help which we did by RXC using a hand pump in the cockpit while the owner used a battery powered pump inside the boat to keep her afloat. The wife finally found someone who could contact the dock workers. For emergencies, the French will come back to work from lunch so the boat was re-hauled and left to be worked on another day.

Back to Rum: RXC and I are walking back to the harbor after dinner (earlier than most folks but probably about 10 PM) and we look out to see a boat lumbering on the shoreline among the rocks. She was behind Petillant and remember I said it is blowing stink and pouring rain which were perfect conditions for anchor failure. At the opening talk for the Malts Cruise, it was recommended that we leave keys in the ignition in case of an emergency. We took off for the wayward boat and I hopped on board and yes there are the keys and the engine starts! RXC ties up the dingy, gets on board and oh happy day the windless controls are there too. We get the anchor up which is covered with weed and a metal crab cage. We got the boat off the rocks and called to a group coming back to their boat to help us and get the owners who were still partying at the hall, which they did.

The village hall was quite a far distance from the harbor so we milled about for 45 minutes until the owners arrived. I have never been so wet in my life as the boat had no bimini. We got back to Petillant and needed to dry off and warm up. This boat had dragged completely across the loch but luckily damaged no boats along the way. Later that night we were making one final check outside and there was yet another boat back of us in nearly the same position the boat we rescued. We had our fill of rescuing boats and hoped that there were people on board who would figure out they were on the rocks.

Saturday, July 19. By morning the storm had passed although bad weather was predicted for the next few days. We had hoped to go on an eagle walk but that had to be cancelled because of poor visibility. So about 11 am, we pulled out our jib again and sailed to the Isle of Canna.

CANNA
Canna is owned by the National Trust of Scotland. Its climate is generally better than its neighbors as we can attest. We anchored in Canna Harbor where there was only one small fishing boat. We were basking in sunshine as we watched the gray clouds and rain envelope Rum only a few miles away. There were Highland Cattle grazing close to shore, lovely stone buildings surrounding the bay, and seals popping their heads up begging for treats.

Spray of Wight a classic gaff-rigged catch and the Malts Cruise “Head Boat” glided into the harbor, so now we were two. We walked a bit around the island which had a completely different feel from the others we had visited. More flat but utterly green bathed in the afternoon sunlight, one could imagine staying at anchor here for another week at least.

Spray of Wight organized and hosted the whisky nosing and tastings, so that evening we had our chance to taste and discuss whisky with the expert from Diageo. We brought goose and duck foie to share and discuss what whisky to pair with them. We learned quite a bit felt very lucky to have had such a personalized tasting.

Sunday, July 20. Predictions were for the weather to deteriorate and there was a gale warning for Mallin our destination area. Spray was going to Coll and we were thinking of going to Gometre or Ulva. Both could be achieved by sailing downwind in force 7 winds without distress. We headed out for Gometre at about 11 AM in light winds and sunshine. But true to forecast once we left Canna we had strong winds and the seas were kicking up. At one point we clocked winds at Force 8, make that gale Force 8. It rained, we were cold, visibility was not great, the cats were very unhappy, but the jib was fully out and we surfed down to Gometre sometimes at 11 knots. We got in the tiny harbor to find one boat there already but sensibly placed to permit another boat to anchor. We dropped the hook in Force 7 winds plus heavy rain and had one heck of a ride that night.

Monday, July 21. By morning all was calm, the sun was out, the seas were flat, and weather predictions were still for strong winds and gales. But not right now. We once again pulled out the jib and headed towards the south coast of Mull to Ardalanish a tiny inlet on the Ross of Mull. No “bigger than a bread box” we dropped anchor in a walled cove in sunshine and little wind. By evening the Highland cows came down to the edge of the cliffs to graze. The cove can safely hold only one boat and about 6 PM another boat tried to anchor less that a boat length away from us. We told them there was an identical cove around the corner where they could anchor but they said no. We warned them that they were too close but they persisted. Finally the winds swung us close enough that they did go to the next inlet over, perfectly lovely and about the same size and protection. We had sunshine but later force 7 winds kicked up so it was a good thing they left.

Tuesday, July 19. Our next destination was Loch Tarbet on Jura for another rendezvous and picnic. Once again we could pull out the jib and sail downwind for a great day of sailing. Malts Cruise boats were streaming into the Loch and we were able to sail all the way into the anchorage. We found a beautiful, large bay which reminded of us Shaw Bay. We anchored and got ready to go ashore for the 5 PM dram and canapés that were selected to go with the various malts on offer. At 6 PM a barbeque was catered by the gentleman we bought our fresh seafood from back in Oban.
Loch Tarbet is the most remote loch in the isles as there is no road there. So our chef sailed in with the mussels, venison steaks, and homemade shortbread dessert, not to mention the pots, pans, and charcoal. The food was delicious enhanced by the setting and camaraderie. Two pipers played that evening as well.

Wednesday, July 20. We did not read the program schedule thoroughly and we thought we could sail to Gigha for the evening and then to Port Ellen for the final day of activities which in our minds were 2 days away. We did not get up early after the party ashore and it was very foggy that morning so we did not even open the companion way doors to look outside. After tea and breakfast, when we did look out the 30 or 40 boats in the anchorage were gone. As it turned out we needed to get to Port Ellen today because we had signed up for a 9 AM tour of Islay the next day. Tides and current were such that the boats left early to catch the push to get them down the Sound of Islay. So in dense fog and no wind we left Loch Tarbet wishing we had one more day of sailing before the rally ended. We were still out enough to get a good push from the current, so we got through the Sound of Islay before it ran against us. The sun came out as we coasted along Islay toward Port Ellen passing one distillery after another: Caol Ila, Ardberg, Laphhroaig, Lagavulin….

When we got to Port Ellen all of pontoons and moorings were taken so we anchored quite far from the marina pier for the evening.

Thursday, July 21. Our wrap up. At 9 AM we were on the bus taking a half day tour of Islay. We went to an archaeological site where the first seat of government was established for the island. The “Lords of the Isles” ruled this area for centuries until James II broke their power and demolished their communities. There were the ruins of a church, great hall, and early stone carvings including a cross set in a remote and haunting location.

Next we went on to a great house with a magnificent garden where in order to maintain it they community has put into use for those who want to come and harvest your own fruit and vegetables as a modest cost. We bought lettuce, parsley, and a yellow courgette. Also in this village was the island’s only brewery. The beer is distinguished by the fact that they used the peated malt which the island is famous for. The beers were like nothing we had ever tasted. Of course, we bought a selection of the darker brews. Good thing we were on a bus and had a very long dingy ride back to the boat or there would have been more purchased.

Our last stop was in the town of Bowmore where we bought venison steak at t
he local butcher and stocked up on yogurt and plants of fresh herbs from the grocery shop. In the afternoon we toured the Lagavulin Distillery where we had to wait for an hour for our tour as we were waiting for some Belgian cyclists to join us. They plied us with many drams to ease our wait. We bought an amazing whisky available only at the distillery and feel here at the end of it all we have an impressive selection of island whiskies to get us through the year!

Our final gathering began with a dram and canapés on the shore again with pipers. Since boats had been following their own whims it was a time to catch up and swap stories of where they had been and their adventures. This was followed by a seafood buffet and a final ceilidh. Most boats were planning to leave early in the morning, many folks bemoaning the fact they had to be back to work on Monday.

Friday, July 22, 2011. Today is our final day in Scotland. I am hoping that I can find wifi ashore someplace and I can get this narrative posted. Photos on the Flickr account will take much more powerful internet connection than I suspect is here in Islay. We want to find haggis for lunch somewhere and walk around town. Tomorrow we head for Ireland as we begin to make our way back towards France. This should take 4-5 weeks. Thankfully, we do not have to be back to work on Monday!

Oban to Tobermory, Mull

2011-07-12T07:44:00.003-04:00

The Malts Cruise festivities kicked off on Saturday night with a piper leading a parade of rally organizers and participants along the marina pier to shore where more than 100 sailors were waiting for the opening words of welcome, a toast, and a dram of Oban 14 year whisky. This was followed by a buffet dinner complete with a VERY good white Burgundy and a Chateau Neuf du Papes wine. After dinner there was a ceilidh band so folks could dance, but the evening music ended with Johnny Cash for the 12 Kentuckians who had chartered 2 boats and were participating in the rally.

Earlier in the day, we had several lectures about sailing the west Coast of Scotland, the Malts Cruise and it’s beginnings, suggested routes for this year, and possible anchorages. A wildlife conservationist/sailor presented a slide lecture on enjoying local wildlife that we may see and how to approach some of the more impressive creatures such as the basking shark should we sight one. There was also a briefing for all the participants on rally procedures, activities, and schedule.

Sunday morning boats prepared to sail up the Sound of Mull to Tobermory. We had spent 3 nights on a mooring to please the kitties so we headed into the marina to fill our water tanks before taking off. From now on will we rely solely on our water maker because we will be anchoring out for the rest of the rally. We have been running it since we left Port Medoc and it is working very well. We are using more fresh water these days because of our new head.

Our departure began with a parade of sail around Oban Bay, a very pretty sight. There was wind from the northwest to get us started up the Bay but it required a lot of tacking. Most boats started the day under sail but resorted to motoring the last hour or so. We took a mooring in Tobermory and went ashore for a fish and chip dinner and dram provided by the rally.

On Monday we signed up to take a half day bus tour around Mull. The sky was bright and sunny so we had a great tour of this beautiful island where there were sheep everywhere. The evening will begin with a lecture about the history of Mull and its people by a local historian. It will finish up with seafood buffet dinner. The last thing left for us to do here is our tour of the Tobermory Distillery which is scheduled for 11 AM Tuesday morning.

All of these activities have been organized by the World Cruising Association which has the Malts Cruise in its portfolio. Previously Diageo Distillers had sponsored the Classic Malts rally so tastings were only at their distilleries and activities did not extend to tours and wildlife activities (there is an upcoming eagle spotting excursion). Last year the rally did not take place while it was evaluated and reorganized. We are certainly glad we are able to participate in the Malts Cruise version. Some of the participants have been on 7or 8 of these.

Tuesday afternoon the boats go their own way. Anchorages and interesting destinations have been suggested. We all come back together again for shared activities Friday on the Isle of Rum. Every evening there is a whisky tasting with an expert. The host boat will be visiting these suggested anchorages so that you can participate in a tasting evening in the anchorage. The site is announced daily on the VHF.

It is highly unlikely that I will find a wifi access point after this posting for quite a few days. Access has been difficult in most places due to a combination of reasons. I will post what I can when I can. In the mean time, we will be enjoying the wind, the water, and the whisky.

Oban and Dressing Ship

2011-07-10T04:52:00.002-04:00

Oban

We arrived in Oban just before 6 PM as it was only 25 miles from the sea gate at Crinan to the marina where the Malts rally had berthing reservations. Once again there was no wind and the seas were flatter than a pancake. A Pumpkin favorite. The marina was already closed for the day and jammed to the gills with boats. There were several moorings free so we took one. The moorings are great for the cats because we can leave them unsupervised and not worry that they (read that as Dante) will suck up to an owner with a bigger boat. Troon was definitely a problem as there was a lovely 48 footer next to us with cat lovers on board. They even tolerated his 8 AM visit. Dante is quite the ice breaker with many people. And he is also a complete suck up to the ladies as he brushes up against their legs and rolls on his back to show off his tummy for them, quite the performer.

The Malts Cruise registration began at 10 AM on Friday when we received our itinary, fleece jackets, hats, briefcase, etc. Registration accomplished we took off for Oban for the rest of the day. The marina runs a ferry service to the town docks as the marina itself is across the bay from the town.

Oban is a busy place where the rail and coach lines and island ferries converge so there is much to-ing and fro-ing. The town seems very prosperous. We had another wonderful seafood lunch and RXC bought himself a nice waterproof jacket that is lighter weight than foulies. We get numerous free tours of distilleries with the cruise and Oban was our first. A small production (1 million bottles annually) it was an interesting contrast to our tour of Glenfiddich (27 million bottles annually) last year. And the whisky was quite good.

The day was beautiful ly warm and sunny but a squall came through while we were learning about the Oban whisky. Then back to the boat for the evening as we needed to dress it for the festivities which begin tomorrow.

Dressing Petillant

By now we have accumulated many fine flags and decorations for the boat. We of course have to fly our stars and stripes at the stern as we are an American registered boat. We then fly a courtesy flag for the country where we are cruising at starboard, right now the red ensign of the UK and below that the blue and white cross of Scotland. On the port side at top is our “cats on board” flag, followed by the Port Medoc flag and today we added the Malts Cruise 2011 flag. While in ports, the rally organizers ask participants to dress ship meaning run signal flags from stem to stern. We had way more help to dress Petillant than we needed thanks to Mr. Dante.

With the ship dressed we were free to explore Oban again on Saturday morning before the rally briefings and welcome activities were to begin at 2:30 PM.

Troon to Oban

2011-07-09T10:28:00.002-04:00

Our departure from Troon was delayed by an hour because the bow thruster failed as we were pulling out of the slip. After deranging bicycles, 160 pounds of kitty litter, bedding, and cushions to dig deep into the bow of the boat, we discovered a fuse had blown. Not bad. A simple repair and we were off to the Crinan Canal. Needing to time the tides, lock opening schedule, and currents we wanted to get into the canal by mid afternoon so we could get through lock number 2 before 5 pm. Again it was a day of completely flat seas and no wind, so we had to motor the 40 miles to the canal entrance. We arrived at 3 pm and got through the sea lock and registered with Scottish Waterways and paid our usage fees.

As were we about to enter the next lock, the bow thruster failed again. We had to pull along the sea wall and trouble shoot once again. This time it turned out to be a breaker that would pop because of a low battery. So running the engine helped to get us through this canal where we tied up to a pontoon for the night at exactly 5:30 PM when the canal shuts down.

I was looking forward to this segment of the trip along the canal. Our trip last summer through the Caledonian Canal was fabulous. The Crinan Canal was a very different experience. It is 9 miles long, has 5 bridges, and 14 locks most of which are hand operated by the boat owners. The gates were extremely heavy and it took all available strength to open them. We had purchased a 6 ft long heavy board in Troon to protect our side against the sea walls. It is very difficult for just 2 people to handle the locks and the boat. We learned (eventually) that many boats hire someone to drive from lock to lock to open and close the gates for them. The canal was busy as it is a way to make passage and not a pleasure trip so boats were hurrying along and skippers and crew were not always pleasant.

However, the scenery was beautiful. The cats really enjoyed their time there. Dante jumped ship at the first bridge and stowed himself under it. After that he had to be locked in the cabin during lockings and bridge openings. But at the pontoons they did get off world to hunt wee beasties and eat grass. There was lots of rain, “the rain is persistent in Scotland” as the BBC weather reports like to say.

We had a great seafood meal with a tempura haggis starter yummy! in Cairnbaan at the hotel which is one of the designated www.theseafoodtrail.com restos. We met a very nice Dutch couple who were going through the canal at our pace and who we will see again in Oban. They too are out for 4 months and have sailed widely in northern Europe and gave us some great cruising suggestions. We spent 3 nights in the canal and left Crinan on the tide at 3 PM on Thursday to head for Oban and the Malts cruise. However, before leaving Crinan we replaced the old battery for the bow thruster. Hopefully we will have no more problems with that equipment.

Bangor to Troon

2011-07-03T12:06:00.006-04:00

We set out from Bangor last Tuesday knowing there would be no wind. We motored the 64 miles in flat completely smooth seas which made the cats very happy. We pulled into the marina in Troon planning to spend 5 or 6 days here. Wednesday we took the train into Glasgow for a day of touring. The high point was lunch at the Willow Tea Room. On Thursday we took Bernadette's Mum out for lunch in Troon. Friday we rented a car to be able to go to Costco. There we bought 560 lbs. of cat litter for the crew. The litter from Costco is amazing and we have not found a litter in France which works very well, so importing it was in order. We are now carrying 14 plastic jugs of it. We also stocked up on a few other things we normally carry back from our visits to Costco in the US. Now we will not have to worry about visiting one in NY in September. Saturday was boat maintenance day as the windless is not working properly. RXC spent the better part of the afternoon trying to fix it but could not. Sunday saw the windless fixed but not permanently. It turns out it only has the fiberglass deck supporting it and will need a support structure under it. Winter project I guess.

The weather has been warn and sunny since we arrived in Scotland. We have eaten great seafood meals at a restaurant at the marina. Dante has charmed everyone on the surrounding boats. Tomorrow (Monday) we will leave early in the morning to be able to get into the Crinean Canal before it shuts down for the evening at 4 PM. It looks like it will be another day of motoring as no wind is accompanying the warn weather. By Wednesday we should be in Oban where we will meet up with the rest of the whisky tasters.

Carlingford, the Boyne and Newgrange to Bangor

2011-06-27T13:16:00.005-04:00

After Dublin we made our way to yet another funky marina in Carlingford Lough. Carlingford is just on the border of North and the Republic of Ireland and largely a medieval village. It has been recently named one of the top 5 places in Ireland to live. It also has a nationally acclaimed butcher who purveys local beef and lamb. We arrived after a long day of sailing that started out motoring out of Dublin. It was about a 60 mile trip and per usual we arrived at the marina just as a blow and rain was about to hit. It seems that most mornings start out clear and calm but we have finished almost all of our sails wondering if we are going to get into a port and settled before the rain comes. That day we made it.

The next day we were went with an interpreter from the Boyne Battlefield for a grand tour of that moving site. Photo of JLM at a Boyne Wayside. Last year we visited Culloden and this battle is closely aligned historically. We toured first as Williamites and then as Jacobites. After lunch we went to the Stone Age site of Newgrange (photo 2), a site where the winter solstice is marked through a passage in stones. It was a long and wonderful day. Our guide convinced us that we should stay long enough to visit Carlingford village, so we stayed on another day. We bought a great T-bone steak for dinner, a lamb shank to stew with beans, an a package of gammon and streaky bacon from the famous butcher. None disappointed. We walked around the village, ate fish stew and Guinness in a pub and had a thoroughly enjoyable day on land. A boutique distillery is just outside Carlingford and we bought a very nice bottle of whiskey.

So once again at 5:45 AM we were out on Friday leaving Carlingford for Bangor, Northern Ireland. The plans to visit the Isle of Man were squelched because of weather. Another 50 plus mile sail that took about 12 hours. Little wind to start and good wind by afternoon. Do we detect a pattern?

So we have been enjoying a first rate marina in Bangor. On Saturday we took a train into Belfast, saw the sights and ate a delicious lunch in the oldest pub in Belfast (photo). Sunday we walked and shopped a bit. There is an ADSA in the center of town, that translates to Walmart. Today we did boat maintenance and cleaning and tomorrow at 7 AM we leave for Troon, Scotland.

Across the Irish Sea to Dublin

2011-06-20T14:54:00.007-04:00

After 3 days in Penzance the weather cleared enough to move on. We set out at 4AM along with 2 other boats for Padstow, a quaint village that would take us around Land's End and on our way northward. We had to motor for the first half of the trip as there were no winds whatsoever. The swells around Land's End were not too bad, nothing like what we experienced in the Raz de Sein. Padstow turned out to indeed be very picturesque and the home of a famous chef, Rick Stein. He seems to have bought up the town as there were Rick Stein cafes, deli, home decorating shops, and a highly touted restaurant where we ate a excellent seafood meal. I have come to the conclusion that quaint seaside towns are to shop and eat in and little more.

The next day the weather forecast was good for us to cross the Bristol Channel so once again we were up at 4 AM and off by 4:30 for the 14 hour trip to Milford Haven. The trip was only 75.3 km but the tides and currents pushed and pulled at us so that we ended up taking 14 hours to make that distance. We pulled up to a pontoon set out by the Dale Sailing Club in a nice cove and spent the night.

We had been struggling with where to go once we got across the Bristol Channel. The coast of Wales had few ports that did not dry out and we were more interested in visiting Ireland than Wales. Finally we concluded we should head for Dublin. Dublin however, was too far to go in one shot unless we did an overnight. So the first port we could get to in Ireland would be Arklow which turned out to be 84.4 km and a 13 hour sail, the last 6 hours of which were quite exciting. A front was expected to keep us land locked for a couple of days but the next day (Thursday) we would be able to get to Arklow. So we were at the wheel again by 6 AM. While the early morning forecast made no mention of strong winds, at 11 AM a small craft advisory went out. We were in Force 7 winds by the end of the trip and well reefed with waves of 9 to 10 feet. Just as we were looking for the entrance to the Arklow port a rain storm came in decreasing our visibility to zilch. We puttered around until it cleared up enough to see the narrow entrance and finally arrived in Ireland.

That rain stayed with us for 2 days so we had time to clean up the boat, visit Arklow, and give the cats the attention they deserved. By Saturday we were ready to set out for Dublin which was only 42 km away.

Tides were favorable for a 6 AM departure. The 42 miles took 6 hours motoring as there was no wind. Dublin has one marina whose location is the absolute pits. It is in the cargo, ferry, and cruise ship port. We have rocked and rolled for 3 days now and are anxious to leave. Bow thrusters wake us up in the middle of the night and last night the boat was lit up like noon when a 3,200 passanger cruise ship can in at about 2 AM. The cats (us too) hate the rocking and all the noise. In addition the marina is a 1 1/2 miles out of town and not close to any type of transportation. I think few boats cruise to Dublin so there is no need to make a more hospitable place for them.

We did have a good time in Dublin. We took one of those sightseeing buses that gives you a good orientation to the city. Our first day we walked into town from the marina and it was grim because of all of the lovely but empty buildings a result of the economic crises here. But once in city center, it was full of tourists and the 10th annual Eurpean Street Performer Festival was in progress. The Chester Beatty Library was wonderful and we had a great high tea at the Shelborne Hotel.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we are moving north. We are going to visit the Boyne battlefield before jumping over to the Isle of Man on Thursday if the weather holds.

News not Pirates from Penzance

2011-06-13T04:30:00.003-04:00

I sit in the Sutton Marina in Plymouth, UK finally having the time to start to write up our trip log. It is June 9 and we have sailed from Port Medoc to Plymouth and brought the cats into the UK legally in just 6 days. A feat I still cannot believe we accomplished.

Shakedown Cruise La ROCHELLE to Ile de RE

When we finally got out after the boat was hauled to clean the bottom and change the zincs. With the morning tide occurring about 10 am, we took off for La Rochelle. Speed was once again up to par and we had a nice sail to this coastal stronghold whose entrance is bordered by towers that were built in the 14th century. We arrived an hour before the scheduled opening of the tidal gate or ecluse which keeps the inner harbor from drying out every 12 hours.

The old town center has 3 marinas two of which have gates to hold in the sea and therefore do not dry out. We puttered about until the 5 pm gate opening and entered the Bassin des Chalutiers which can handle yachts over 12 meters. This marina was not on the town’s main quay so a nicely quiet spot. We stayed for 3 nights and enjoyed the sights and market of La Rochelle. The weather was very warm and sunny and the town is filled with seafood restaurants and cafes. The 3 towers in town are museums and we toured all 3. There is a wonderful aquarium set right beside the marina. During the dinner hour of our second day we went in after most people had gone home to drinks and nibbles and their dinner. We spent 2 ½ hours looking at the fish and other sea life in a nearly empty aquarium. It was very impressive.

The covered market in town was nice and we enjoyed our morning chaussons des pommes and café in the sun outside of the very lively market.

After 3 nights in La Rochelle we left at the morning opening of the ecluse at 8:30 am for the town of Saint-Martin-de-Re on the north coast of the Ile de Re. We had to hurry along because we had to arrive before 11:30 am when that town’s ecluse would close to keep the inner harbor from drying out. We found a very crowded holiday town but luckily there was room for our boat along the wall in the heart of town. Ile de Re is famous for its salt beds. We off loaded the bikes and cycled around the island where we saw men working the salt ponds and cycling through a water fowl refuge. The weather remained hot and sunny. On our last evening on the island a sailing school Jeanneau rafted next to us and the good natured students we up with us at dawn to let us out of our slip to make the opening of the ecluse at 6 am. We sailed directly back to Port Medoc arriving about 9 pm that same day.

The shakedown cruise concluded and we had learned how to lock into these small towns with floating harbors, how to time tides and currents, that waiting buoys lay just outsides these harbors for those who missing the openings and the boat systems were all working. We went home to pick up the kitties for the adventure of their lives.
Images of La Rochelle and Ile de Re are at our Filckr site.

Port Medoc to Lezardrieux, Brittany

We took off from Port Medoc on Thursday, June 1 having waited a bit for good winds. Finally predicted NE winds were forecast and we set off about 9:30 am. Our hopes were to sail from Port t Medoc to Brest in one shot. While the weather predictions said winds would be from the northeast, they never got that way. We had good winds from the north. Basically we sailed close hauled and had to tack so we end up going very far off shore and not making much distance over ground. Finally we gave in and motor sailed for quite some time until the winds finally came round to the NE. By the evening of the 2nd day we were still one more overnight sail from Brest. We were tired and we had to face the Raz de Sein, a “white water rafting” type of experience to coincide with tides and current and thought it best to face the Raz in daylight. So we decided to drop anchor among the Iles de Glenan, a small archipelago with white beaches and crystal clear water. We had sailed about 200 nm. Mid day of our second day out we were entertained by dolphins gliding through the water and surfacing alongside the boat. I had certainly witnessed this behavior before, but never with so many dolphins and many of them were babies. We think we were surrounded by 40 or more.

We were starting the trip over Ascension holiday weekend, 4 days for the French to vacation, so the anchorage at Iles de Glenan was packed. It reminded me of Swan Creek on Memorial Day weekend. We enjoyed a lovely sunset and early to bed. We had to be up and out at dawn if we were to make the Raz de Sein with the tides and current with us.

The Raz de Sein is a short cut between the Ile de Sein and the mainland head called the Pointe du Raz. It is known for swells and contrary winds. It was indeed a remarkable trip. We took it at slack water as recommended but even so it was a very rough tumble ride and the kitties were NOT amused. The bow slammed into large swells and we took water into the v-berth through the foredeck hatch. By this time we decided to bypass Brest and continue making passage to our destination: friends in Lezardrieux. We went directly up the Chanel du Four and anchored overnight in a tiny but crowded cove called the Anse de Porsmoguer. This was Saturday evening and we were the only occupied boat as all the other boats were permanently there on moorings. The anchorage was extremely rolly. We arrived close to dark at 9:45 having gone about 70 nm, ate, and then off to bed to be ready for an 8 am start the next day.

We were now very used to going north against the prevailing winds and watching a significant number of boats registered in the UK and Holland heading towards the sun. More than once we wondered if we were crazy to be heading to Scotland.

Our fourth day out found us fighting the currents the entire day. Progress was slow and seas were unpleasant. We were in Roscoff by 6 pm and still the currents were against us. We tried to look for somewhere to spend the night but the marina dries out and the mooring buoys would not support a boat our size. We were uncomfortable anchoring just inside the channel. We carried on to a marina in Trebuergen which had a locking gate. At 6:30 the currents began to give us a boost (finally) so we got to the marina with an hour to spare. However, the marina was hosting a Dutch rally to the Azores and was packed. There was literally 1 slip available which we tied up to, ate dinner, went to bed to be up at the 6 AM gate opening.

Mercifully we were only 40 miles from Lezardrieux at that point and were looking forward to a visit with friends. We had had perfect weather to transit the several hundred miles from Port Medoc to destination number one. We arrived in Lezardrieux at lunch time and took a slip in the marina. We fueled up and set off for lunch at the home of G&J. Later that evening we enjoyed a wonderful seafood meal at their favorite local restaurant as we watched the sunset on the craggy shores.

We never imagined we would leave Port Medoc on a Thursday and arrive in Lezardrieux on Monday, less than 5 days. G&J were planning on helping us get the cats into the UK legally via the ferry from Roscoff to Plymouth. We thought we would have a few days to visit, rest, wash the salt off the boat, take the cats to the vet to be de-fleed and de- wormed and wait for a weather window to cross the Channel. Not to be. Our weather window was open Tuesday, the next day. So on a Monday afternoon when most of France is closed, we were looking for a vet to see the cats and found one who gave them their treatments at 6 PM. During the afternoon we had to make reservations for the ferry to Plymouth, do some minor provisioning, and get JLM and the cats packed and ready to move ashore to G&J’s home for 2 nights while G moved aboard Petillant to help RXC cross the Channel. This whole event was like a precisely planned military operation. Petillant had to leave Lezardrieux on the morning currents at 6 AM, the crossing was likely to take 20 hours. The cats had to wait 24 hours after their vet treatments before they could arrive in the UK. A ferry left Roscoff at 8:30 AM on Wednesday arriving in Plymouth at 1:30PM BST. It departed for Roscoff again at 2:30 PM. That gave RXC time to get the boat to Plymouth, JLM and the cats time to take the ferry, and JLM exchanged for G for the ferry ride back to Roscoff.

While stressful, it all went off without a hitch. However, the indignity of all of this was when the cats arrived legally in the UK, there were no animal health care workers to clear the cats into the country. So in what was an immensely expensive operation Calypso and Dante are here with no proof whatsoever they arrived according the regulations. I will undoubtedly submit a diatribe about Britland in a subsequent posting.

THE UK

RXC and G arrived in Plymouth at 1 AM BST on Wednesday June 8, 2011. We had decided to go into the Sutton Marina as it was close by to the ferry terminal. Tides were such that the marina gate was manned and could be opened at that hour so they settled into the marina and crashed. The marina is in a district reminiscent of the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. Lots of tarted up restos and shops. It had a fab laundry and was well placed for shopping. We were all (4) exhausted and ready to take it easy for a few of days. Oh! but tides and time wait for no man especially if you are trying to round Land’s End.

Plymouth to Penzance

A blow was coming. A storm was predicted to sit over SW England for several days at the weekend. While we would like to have stayed in Plymouth another day we felt that we needed to begin to make our way around the Lizard and Land’s End to take advantage of the southerly winds that would blow us up towards Wales that were predicted to follow the storm. We sailed out of Plymouth and headed for Helmsford Creek, a lovely cove with forested slopes in the heart of Daphne de Maurier country. We only spent one evening but it was tranquil and we did not have to worry about drying out. The next morning we were off to Penzance where we intended to sit out the storm.

The morning was lovely with great winds and lots of sun. We rounded the Lizard about 3 miles off shore to keep the swells in check. We arrived in Penzance at the moment the port gate opened and rafted up to 5 boats. We felt lucky to be inside the port as lots of boats were coming in for refuge against the storm and the harbormaster was running out of room because a Royal Navy mine sweeper, the Penzance, was visiting and open for tours and a large cargo vessel berthed inside the port on weekends.

The storm was nasty and even in a very small walled port the boat rocked and rolled from the wind in our stays. We are in day 2 and I do not think we will be leaving tomorrow.

In town we have enjoyed very good coffees, a lemon drizzle cake, excellent beer battered locally caught fish. We toured the mine sweeper and have had time to finally write this trip log. We have needed to heat the boat in the morning and evening today but are very comfortable.

I am about to post this trip log on Monday morning June 13, 2011. We are in port for one more day as the seas are rough. The gate will open at 3 PM this afternoon and the cargo and war ships will depart. We will leave at 4 AM tomorrow on the first opening of the gate for Tuesday. Good winds and calmer seas are forecast for the trip around Land’s End.

The cats are great. Calypso has acquired sea legs at last and does really well in the boat. I so feared a sick Pumpkin for months on end but the drooling stopped about 4 days out. Yahoo!

The Shakedown Cruise

2011-05-18T09:33:00.004-04:00

Surprisingly about 7:30 PM on the Sunday after I posted my last entry saying that the canvas for the boat would not arrive on a holiday, the nice canvas lady and her husband showed up with all the canvas repairs finished and offering to help us set up the dogger and bimini. We thanked them for their dedication but said we would install it ourselves the next day which we did. That meant Tuesday (May 10) we could be off to Ile de Re. The weather was perfect and we left with the tide. We had 10 1/2 hours to sail 40 nm in order to get to the island's protective ecluse by it's opening at 8:30 PM and get into the harbor.

Steering was sluggish which was to be expected on a first time out. We had not hauled the boat this spring to clean off the bottom because we hauled it last year and there was nothing growing on it so we thought we could get away with a season without a haulout. WRONG.

Our usual 8-9 knot speed was trailing at 4 knots. We were not making much progress. At 5 PM we decided we had another 5 hours to go and were not going to make the ecluse opening. We would be looking for an anchorage in the dark which was not how we wanted to spend our first cruise of the season. So we turned back and got back to the marina before dark. The next day we arranged for a haul out.

The travel lift is very busy at this time of the year and we had to wait a week for a slot. We went back to the kitties until yesterday when we drove back to the marina. We were hauled this morning and there were all types of mussels, clams, oysters, etc. growing on the prop and rudder. The bottom was power washed and we are back in the slip ready to head off to Ile de Re tomorrow.

Hopefully we will have better luck this time. The weather is supposed to be great for the next 3 days.

Rounding the Mark

2011-05-08T10:51:00.005-04:00

The Sunday regatta was just inside the Garonne today but there was little wind. We cycled to Souliac for breakfast. We remain at the marina awaiting our canvas which is being checked over and repaired in a couple of places. The canvas lady is running behind, she was supposed to deliver it yesterday and we planned to take off for Ile de Re today. But she was a no show and with it being Sunday and a holiday (victory over the Germans) today we do not expect her this afternoon either. Maybe she will turn up tomorrow. It isn't as if there is not plenty of work to do on the boat and places to cycle around here, so no hardship staying put. The new chart plotter is very nice and the new head much quieter.

Leaving the Vines for the Sea

2011-05-04T13:05:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow we head for Petillant. We are planning on a short shake down cruise to Ile de Re. We have work to do on her before we leave such as install a new chart plotter and a quiet fresh water head. Canvas is being mended so we will have to install that. Work should be done by Sunday so that we can take off. We have to make one more trip home in order to pick up the cats before we begin our cruise up the Atlantic coast of France and on to England, Scotland, and Ireland, about 4 months in all. Stay tuned for updates on our adventures.

Where Are My Ruby Slippers?

2010-06-30T01:59:00.004-04:00

We are back home after our travels to Spain. We had a wonderful trip sailing and tasting tapas and local wines along the northern coast of Spain as far as the city of Gijon. For the most part the weather was very nice although we had cloudy weather once we got to the area around Gijon.

We took our time and did not get nearly as far as we thought we would get, Portgual. We had to be back at Les Raymonds for repair of a wall on our barn so after a month away, we headed back from the Spanish town of Hondaribia to Port Medoc, a sail that was about 33 hours. Wind and waves were not good and we slogged our way north to be able to be home by June 16th. Calypso, shown here in her perennial state of drooling, really suffered on the way back.

When we got home, we found our telephone pole had been struck by lightning and we had no phone or internet. It took France Telecom 11 days and 3 trips to repair it. We had service for 2 days when the pumper truck delivering cement for our barn repair cut the line so once again no service for 4 more days. All but our TV antenna is operational now, so I will be able to post highlights from our trip until we leave for the US next week.

Alone, Alone, All Alone

2010-06-05T17:11:00.007-04:00

We have had not internet access during our trip to be able to answer email or post anything on the blog. We are currently in Gijon, Spain and have paid 10 euros to get connected for 24 hours. The trip has been wonderful. The weather excellent for the first leg and cloudy when we hit the mountainous areas as expected. We decided to stay at a marina in Gijon and rent to car for 3 days to go inland. We went to Leon, Santiago de Compostella, and Picos de Europa. We have learned how to take moorings, tie up to a wall for the night and put out enough but not too much line to accommodate 10 foot tides. Until Thursday, we have been the only boat in any port we have pulled into. Tomorrow we head back to Port Medoc as we need to be home by June 19th. Some images of our trip go uploaded today at our flickr site.

Getting Their Sea Legs

2010-05-15T13:39:00.003-04:00

Dante and Calypso arrived on Petillant on Thursday. Calypso drooled all they way to the boat but thanks to some drugs from the Vet the drooling was not quite so bad. They knew exactly where they were and where their favorite hidy holes were to be found. They have had 3 days now to get their sea legs. Hopefully older and wiser they will not want to be outside the enclosure, nor will they want to jump off the boat and go visiting when we are at port. We leave at high tide tomorrow heading south for St. Jean de Luz which should be about a 24 hour trip.

Provisioning Petillant

2010-05-10T08:52:00.003-04:00

One of the things I learned travelling down the ICW, Florida, and the Bahamas on Petillant involved our meals. I did not want to do any cooking that used lots of pots and pans, numerous ingredients, or took a lot of time. I also wanted to try the local foods and restaurants along the way and provision with what was available. Now thinking of what to stock to head south more thoughts come to mind. I do not want to haul a lot of food from shore on the dingy and I want to be prepared to deal with any fish we catch. Also as we will be in European waters, I should not depend on buying ice and we do not have a freezer. So in planning the provisioning, I have tried to stow what will be useful (and heavy) staples such as canned chick peas and pasta and leave a lot to what we will find in the markets along the way. At this point we have everything on board that I think is sufficient and we will see how it goes. Natalie had the guys label all the food brought on board before they took off from Stuart. It works really well.

Port Medoc en Fete

2010-05-06T13:40:00.004-04:00

We arrived at Port Medoc just before May Day which is a national holiday here in France. Our marina was preparing to host a "Quai des Vins" festival. Three days of music, food and wine, sail boat races, fishing tournaments, and rides and games for children. The weather was splendid.

This is our first posting here after a long hiatus. Petillant is getting ready to cruise south to Spain. To see how we got to Port Medoc last week and why we are still sitting here as well as reading about our land-based life in France go to Ste-Foy-Bordeaux.blogspot.com.

Autumn Update

2008-10-20T07:57:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note to let you, the gentle reader, know that Petillant finally cleared customs in mid-August, and is sitting happily in Port Medoc. We did not do any sailing this summer, preferring to get re-acquainted with the house, but we are looking forward to spring sailing next year. We have visited the boat since arrival in June, and it looks like it is in amazingly good shape, after completing the traverrsee. We have decided that this is such a nice marina, and a great spot to be based here, that we will take a long-term lease on the slip. More info in upcoming posts.

Summer in France

2008-08-05T05:25:00.002-04:00

We have loaded a number of new photos to the FLickr site, and video will becoming soon, as well. We hope to organize the photos in a day or so, showing what part of the trip they describe.

Petillant is still in Port Medoc, where she arrived on June 28. Customs clearance is still in progress, with an agent based in La Rochelle - our latest word from him is that he thinks we will be able to clear the boat through, without paying the import/VAT. We have purchased our internal cruising passeport at the douane in Bordeaux, so we have the proper internal papers. However, without the customs clearance we are hesitant to go anywhere that we could be controlle by the douane, so Petillant will likely sit in Port Medoc for the rest of the summer.

Not that we don't have other things to do - we have made major progress in working on the house, with a terrasse underway, with the architecte now under contract to give us a rennovation plan, and with continuing work to clean up the grounds. We have been busy, and will continue to be busy thru the end of August, at least. We will be going off on a canal barge cruise at the end of August/early September, for a week, with friends from the US.

Since it does not look like we will be doing much sailing this summer, we are also considering setting up a blog of life here in France. There will be a link here when it gets set up, probably some time after the middle of August. Stay tuned...

Nous Sommes Arrivee!

2008-07-04T02:37:00.002-04:00

We have arrived in France! Landfall was on June 27, 2008, and we received a personal escort by the French government into the Gironde. Following is the log for the last leg.

June 17, 2008

The day started grey and damp, but it looked like it would eventually brighten up, so after taking a last-minute look at the weather, we decided to leave today. There was a brief discussion between the owners representative and the leader of the operational team, and it was agreed that we would try to avoid heavy weather during this leg of the trip. The original plans for this leg included heading NNE to 45N, and then along the parallel to Bordeaux, in order to have plenty of room to deal with north winds in the Bay of Biscay. However, both the Passageweather site and the NWS agreed that there will be a low right at the spot we had picked, when we had planned to be there, so we are now heading more NW, towards 43N 15E. AS cleared us out before lunch, and the FBs left around noon, so we spent an hour bringing the dinghy onboard, and disconnecting from shorepower, and then had lunch before leaving the jetty at 2 PM.

On the way out of the harbor, we noticed that the autopilot was curiously showing us moving backwards – the heading seems to be 180 degrees off. This prompted some desperate searching through user manuals to try to figure out what was going on, and we eventually discovered that the autopilot, which includes the heading compass, needed to be “swung” to determine its deviation, and then aligned with the steering compass. As we were doing this, it dawned on us that it was probably due to the reset that we applied to the depth/speed instrument to get the depth readings back. For some reason, when one instrument in a Seatalk network (the proprietary network sold by Raymarine) is reset, it evidently sends out a signal on the net to the others instruments to reset themselves, too. So all of the Seatalk instruments that were online at that time reverted back to their original factory configurations.

This caused us to have to spend some time in the harbor at Horta doing slow circles, and then when we got out into the ocean we found that the autopilot could not hold a course very well. This was caused by the autopilot being reset to the default control settings for a displacement boat (e.g., a trawler), rather than a sailboat. So we had to go thru the entire dealer configuration menu for the autopilot and reset the boat type, rudder gain, counter-rudder, sensitivity, wind-trim, and other control parameters for this boat. Later, we realized that the calibration for the speed instrument was also reset, so we did a temporary calibration against the GPS, with the hope that the current was not too strong. We will probably not be able to fix this till we get to France. We anticipate that we will find a few more settings that need to be calibrated before we are done.

Our initial heading was NNE between Faial and Pico, but we decided to head east between Graciosa and Sao Jorge islands to try to take advantage of the wind. Sao Jorge is a very high island, at least at the western tip, and it was tricky getting around the tip with strong gusty winds coming down off the top of the island. Eventually we cleared the island, and set sail at about 080M for our waypoint, sailing pretty much downwind at about 5 kts.

June 18, 2008

The wind pretty much died during the mid-watch, so we started the engine, leaving the mainsail out to try to benefit somewhat from whatever wind there is. The mid-watch saw one fishing boat, but the morning watch saw nothing, nothing, except the moon, some small swells, and gulls waking up. The morning watch saw a large pod of porpoises, and then we had eggs and chili for brunch. With our watch schedule, we have more “brunch” than breakfast, because the mid and 3-6 watch-standers usually sleep till about 10, and even the morning watch tries to take a nap before noon. So chili and eggs make a good menu for this meal. We also started to make some water, even though we filled up in Horta, because we are already down by about 125l. We took farewell showers before leaving Horta, and since we are running the engine, it is a good idea to top off the tanks. We also made a gal of water to a jug, to use for making coffee and tea, because some were able to detect a “metallic” taste in the watermaker water from the tanks. One gallon made in 9 minutes – 6.5 gal/hr, which is close to the spec for the watermaker. It will be pickled once we get to France, and that should restore it to its original efficiency (7 gal/hr).

Started sailing again at 2 PM, downwind at about 4 kts. Winds are ~10kts, dead astern, but skies are sunny with cumulus clouds, and the sea-state is quite tame, with swells less than about one foot. We saw a nice turtle about 4. It was hanging over a school of small fish. We circled it for a while, and it didn’t seem to mind us, as long as we stayed far enough away and didn’t appear to threaten it. The top of its shell had some brilliant red patches, which was surprising, because I had thought that they were green or brown.

We have altered course to the north to try to get some better speed, and maybe some better winds to the north. But the afternoon WEFAX says there is a low moving to the east, NW of us, so we will not try to go too far north. Better to take it slow down here – we have lots of food on board.

After seeing the WEFAXes, we decided to go back to the rhumb line, and started motoring towards 43N15E. Not enough wind to sail.

June 19, 2008

The winds started to pick up during the mid-watch, so we let out the sail, and it turned into a glorious night. The winds kept building, and at the end of the mid-watch we were doing a steady 6.5 kts straight for Bordeaux. The morning watch noted a slight windshift and took in a small reef on the jib, but we otherwise stayed on the stbd tack, at speeds between 5-7 kts over the ground, and thru the water, all day. The sunny morning eventually clouded up, and a few sprinkles hit us, but nothing serious. Seas built up to about 2-3 feet of gentle swells.

About 9 AM, however, we had a serious plumbing problem. The main head did not want to empty. It would suck in water, but not expel it. This was a serious problem, and it required about 4 hours of work to fix, involving removal of most of the hoses from the toilet, unbolting it from the deck, and removal of the macerator unit from the bottom of the bowl. Inspection of the macerator unit revealed some plastic-like material around the chopper blade, and on the pump impeller behind that. Re-installation of the macerator unit, however, did not solve the problem, so we proceeded to the really ugly part of the job, involving the discharge hoses. The heads on this boat have a joker valve on the toilet itself, but Jeanneau also decided to install an additional, separate one in the line to the holding tank. Luckily, the hose is not too elevated from the toilet to the tank, but it sure was nasty when we took the valve out of the line. We found that the discharge line was blocked significantly with salt deposits, and the separate joker valve was completely clogged. This is likely due to the chemical reaction between urea and seawater, which is known to create such deposits. We had been treating for this with vinegar, but evidently not frequently enough. We had to clean the joker valve by hand, and try to scrape out as much salt as possible with a screwdriver. The toilet then went back together and it works fine.

We had seen a precursor for this problem about 4 weeks ago, and we dealt with it by throttling the inlet valve, but this, in hindsight, was exactly the wrong thing to do, because it cut down on the flushing of the lines, allowing the urea/SW mix to stand in them and crystallize. In the future, we will flush vigorously and long, to try to get the urea out of the line into the holding tank. It looks like the hoses will need to be removed in Bordeaux and mechanically cleaned, or alternatively chemically cleaned, if that is possible. We treated the both heads with the remainder of the vinegar that we had on board, in the hope that it will prevent this problem from showing up in the next 10 days. More research will also be needed to figure out how to prevent this in the future. Crossing our fingers…

Needless-to-say, the head got a thorough cleaning after this event, with fresh water and bleach, and the engineer who took it all apart got a nice hot shower.

The winds died around 4 PM, so we started the engine again, and motored till about 7:30, when the winds picked back up, so that we are making about 5 kts to the NE. The WEFAXs say that we should be avoiding the low to the NW, if we stay on this course, and we should see winds pick up to ~10 kts in a day or so. The forecast for the weekend is not so pleasant, but involves a high passing overhead and taking all the wind, so we may have to motor for a while on Sunday into Monday. Not pleasant, but mush preferable to slogging into the 35 kts E winds to the north of us.

Evening meal was ratatouille with rice, using fresh veggies from Horta. We also opened one of the cans of chipotle peppers, and they added an additional element of complexity to the dish. We are also eating salads each day, for lunch, so we are getting plenty of veggies, and have little risk of scurvy.

The winds continued to increase thru the evening, and by the mid-watch they were up to 20 kts, with seas rising to about 3-5 ft (1-2m). The boat speed picked up to 6.5-7.5 kts, with occasional bursts to 8 kts.

June 20, 2008

The morning watch reefed-down the mainsail, because we were humping along at hull-speed, and didn’t need the additional drive that just caused us to yaw around. The boat sat up better and still went fast. The 6-10 watch saw the sun come up and the day begin with sunshine and clear skies, but the clouds eventually appeared. Rain started to come down on the 10-2 watch, and the jib was reefed down when the winds reached a steady 25 kts. Boat speed is still at 6.5-7.5 kts, with bursts to 9.3 surfing down some waves, but the boat is in good control, and the motion is not bad. The daily run was 160 miles, a record for this trip, and it looks like we will continue like this for at least 2 more days. We are down to less than 850 miles to go to the sea-buoy in Bordeaux, and have advanced the waypoint from 43N15W, to the waypoint at the mouth of the Gironde. The original waypoint was close enough to the direct rhumb line to Bordeaux that we decided to just go for it. We will come about 75 miles close to the NW coast of Spain, and there are plenty of harbors there to run into, if we need to, because of weather or to pick up fuel. If we keep up this pace, we will arrive in Bordeaux on the 27th…

The first WEFAXes of the day, from the UK and NOAA, seem to show that the low to the NW will continue to track to the NE, in parallel to our course, which means that we should see this weather continue, which is a good thing. SW winds continuing at 15-25 kts would be just about perfect for us. It is interesting that we have been essentially on a stbd tack for nearly 6 weeks straight. It has caused some of the interior joinery in the boat to become distorted – doors do not quite close, and the top for the fridge has been displaced so that it is really tight to close. Hopefully the boat will eventually re-arrange itself and the doors will close properly. The hatch for the fridge will probably need some help…

The wind started to die during the start of the 6-9 watch, so we shook out the reefs in both the main and the jib, but the wind also shifted more to the west, so the jib is flogging a bit. Still managing 6 kts, but just barely.

June 21, 2008

Reefed down the main and job on mid-watch, but then wind started to drop off again, so morning watch let out reef in main, and speed went back to 6 kts. 6-10 watch let out reef in jib, and speed went back to 6.5-7.5 kts, with little flogging of jib. Just a little bit better angle on the jib produces some very nice speed and boat motion, even in these seas, which are now running 3-6 feet. If we can get the speed up, we have a grand sail down the front of the swells, and everyone can sleep well.

The radar started to act up again on the mid-watch, and was put to sleep on the 3-6 watch. At 11, we noticed that the batteries are down quite a bit, so we decided to run the engine to charge batteries. Even a good solar system struggles when the winds are not consistently above 20 kts, and the sun don’t shine. Today, we have bright sun, and winds of 15-20, but that is still barely enough to keep up with our demand, much less recharge deeply charged batteries, and make water. Once we started the engine and brought the voltage up above 12.5, the radar lit off without a hitch, and works fine, even staying on when we flush the toilet. It seems that it doesn’t like low voltage, and may be a good precursor signal that the batteries need to be recharged. We also started the watermaker while we are charging batteries.

The 1200 UK WEFAX shows a large low way to the north that is trailing a front behind it. Our position is just behind the front, which should be giving us NW winds, but we are consistently seeing WSW, so we wonder what this is all about. Maybe the front has not yet passed over, but it looks like really nice weather astern. Oh, well. Che sera, sera.

5 PM winds still west at 10-15, and we are still motoring, making water and charging batteries, doing about 6.5 kts.

June 22, 2008

Kept motoring thru the night, but the wind shifted just before midnight, when a front came thru, to the north. We kept the main up for a while, and then about 1 AM the mid-watch thought we could motor-sail, so the jib came out a bit and the boat speed increased significantly. So, the motor was throttled down a bit, and we motor-sailed thru the night at about 6 kts. It was tricky, though, because we could just barely head directly towards Bordeaux, losing a tiny bit of ground to leeward. The wind shifted a bit more to the north during the 6-10 watch, which caused the jib to flap, so it was rolled in and we continued to motor-sail with just the main.

We shifted 5 jerry cans of fuel into the main engine tank around noon, because the gage showed us down to 1/3 tank. 5 tanks is about 25 gal, and we should have been able to put in another 1 or 2 cans, but the gage read full after 5, so we stopped. We now have a barely full tank, and 8 full jerry cans on deck. If we can sail for a few days, we will eventually get to the point where we have enough fuel to motor the rest of the way, if necessary.

In reaction/response to our refueling, the weather gods started to smile on us, with some shifting of the winds towards the north, so that around 1 PM we let out the reefs in both the main and jib, and started to sail close-hauled directly towards Bordeaux at about 5-6 kts over the ground. We also turned off the engine. The winds are holding around 10-15 kts true, and the seas are running less than 3 feet, so the motion is not bad. The constant heel is an irritant, but much preferred to corkscrewing and slamming off the tops of 12 foot waves. We also appreciate the quiet of not having the engine running.

Lunch was tomato, onion, and artichoke salad, with several different cheeses and cold cuts from Horta. A nice meal, well appreciated. NL is trying to get AS ready for France, with the plethora of cheeses. He is quite adventurous about this…

We are starting to have a hard time picking up the US WEFAX transmissions now, because of the poor propagation conditions. Normally, there should be lots of sunspots right now, causing good ionization in the ionosphere, which should give good reflections of radio waves, but this year the sun is silent. So, the SW radio propagation is bad. We heard Herb talk about this a lot, when he was trying to communicate with boats east of the Azores. But at least we have the UK WEFAX to fall back on. They are closer, but we have noticed that they use pretty fine lines in their weather charts, and these have a tendency to get lost in the noise. We will post a few sample WEFAX charts on the photo page so that you can see what we are depending on for weather out here.

Pasta carbonara for dinner with some smoked ham that we purchased in Horta. Just right.
The evening watches went well, with the wind reasonably steady in the NNE, at about 10-12 kts. We reefed down for the evening meal, and then let it all out again once things were cleaned up. Boat speed rose to about 5.5-6 kts after dinner and stayed there for the nite. The wind wandered about a little bit, around about midnite, but the mid-watch and the morning watch had quiet night. We are starting to see more ship traffic, as we get close to the coast. The moon was quite gorgeous when it rose tonight, big and bright (but past full).

June 23, 2008

Bright sunshiney day today, at least at the beginning. There is a bank of clouds off towards Spain and Portugal, about 150 miles away, and we are wondering whether there is some rain over there in Spain, maybe on a plain somewhere. The winds freshened during the 6-10 watch, and the boat speed go up to 7 kts over ground, 8 thru the water (this value cannot be relied on too much, because the knotmeter lost calibration in Horta, and was only very roughly re-calibrated). If we can keep up a 5 kt averge, which is very reasonable, we should arrive at the Bordeaux entrance bouy on Friday. If we can do 6 kts, we will get there in the evening on Thursday, which would probably not be a good idea. Low tide is in the early AM on both days, which gives a good flood tide to enter during the morning.

We are probably at the point now that we could motor the rest of the way to Bordeaux, just using the fuel on-board. This is a relief, in that we don’t have to worry about ducking into somewhere in Spain to refuel. We were a little bit concerned at the end of last week, after we had spent so much time motoring, early in this leg, but the wind gods have smiled on us, and we are doing well with sail-power.

Sailed most of the day till about 5, when we realized that we needed to charge batteries, so we started the engine and motor-sailed till about 8 PM, when we had Chinese stir-fry for dinner. We stopped the engine to make the motion easier for dinner. The seas are down quite small, but the swells do tend to make eating a bit harder, especially when we are running faster and occasionally fall off of one.

The evening watch sailed at a nice pace, but the wind eventually came on the nose, so we started the engine again on the 9-12 watch.

June 24, 2008

This night was the first to see significant amounts of shipping, and they were truly significant tonite, because we were passing right through the N-S route from the Channel down to the Med, and to Africa. LOTS of ships, moving in both directions, LOTS of LARGE ships, and even some fishermen running in circles, causing everyone to wonder where they were going to head next. We also saw a large pod of dolphins swimming around the boat as the sun broke the horizon, and the boat was barely making way under sail – it was quite amazing.

The wind eventually came back on to the beam around 5, so we tried to sail, but could only make 3 knots, which may have been acceptable in the past, but now everyone has fixed it in their mind that we will arrive on Friday morning. This means that we have to maintain about 5.5 kts between now and then, so we will do some motor-sailing to get the speed up, if necessary. Also, thinking about tales we have heard about the douane, it would be a good idea to have all of the fuel in the jerry cans down in the tanks, so that they don’t decide to tax us on it, because it is the red/untaxed variety, mostly still from Stuart. So we will do some more motor-sailing to get there in a reasonable amount of time, and to remove temptation from the French officials. We still don’t know what is going to happen when we get there, from the point of view of the douane. Hopefully jlm will be there with all the info.

Moved clocks ahead one hour today.

We also figured out how to receive NAVTEX messages, now that we are in the land of NAVTEX, which is not very common in the US. After fiddling around a while, and waiting, we finally made contact with the NAVTEX station at Coruna, Spain, and received 4 messages warning about NATO naval exercises, hydrological studies, and power line work off the north coast of Spain. No weather. We will listen to the French station when we get closer, and also keep an eye out for weather info. We also noted that we can pick up BBC Radio 4 on long wave with the SSB receiver. The AM-FM-LW receiver can’t pick it up yet, but there is still hope. Radio 4 will be good for receiving the Shipping Forecast(e.g., “There are gales in the Hebrides and NE Iceland tonight.”).

Changed engine oil, filter, and transmission oil this afternoon, and shifted 3 more jerry-cans of fuel to the main tank. Making water while motoring towards Bordeaux.
Land Ho! At about 3 PM, we sighted land – the NW tip of Spain. So, we can officially declare that we have crossed the Atlantic from one continent to another. Now we just have to make it up Biscay Bay to the Gironde.

Received another set of NAVEX messages at 5:30 local time, including many that were not broadcast at 1:30 PM. Messages about fishing limits, more NATO exercises, and one about firing exercises in France, south of the Gironde. This is a military training area for the French, and they are evidently doing some training this week. You would think that with the summer holidays coming up they would be winding down, but I guess not – you never know when Nelson may come back, or the Germans…

We also heard a Spanish weather forecast for the north coast – force 3-4 winds today and tonite, with calm seas. They put out a warning message on channel 16, and then read the weather forecast, in English and Spanish, on channel 10, every four hours. We think there are similar announcements in Portugal and further east along the Spanish coast. We looked for something similar in France, and we eventually found it. The Europeans seem to broadcast weather info about 3-4 times/day, at fixed times, unlike in the US, where it is sent out continuously on its own set of frequencies. Weather is also supposed to be included in NAVTEX broadcasts, but we have yet to find any such messages. It also appears that the French also provide marine weather info to people who pay for it, by some sort of subscription. You can then get the info by cell phone or internet connection. It is interesting that the most socialistic country in Europe has a very capitalistic setup for weather info. I had heard that the current US administration wanted to go a similar route in the US, to have the govt weather people gather the data, but then let private organizations “analyze it”, and then disseminate it to the public, for a fee, but that seems to have died. Probably a LOT of farmers complained about having to pay to find out whether it was going to rain, and other people complained about the need to pay for warnings for events like tornadoes or hurricanes. The administration probably figured that it would be enough to publish such warnings in the Federal Register…

With the NAVTEX capability, it is clear that it really is essential these days to cruise with a computer that can do all the sort of chores that would otherwise be provided by dedicated pieces of equipment, printing out piles of paper – the WEFAX, NAVTEX messages, logs, email messages, documentation of all sorts for the stuff on the boat, inventories of the boat supplies. I wonder if anyone has put this all together into one package, at a reasonable price, for the cruiser. I think there might be a market for it, if it was priced correctly. It might be a good idea to include some way to carry the computer, and protect it from all the water, from whatever sources, on board.

The first WEFAXes of the day seem to indicate more of the same weather – 10-15 kts from the W-NW-N, with nothing interesting to provide us with a good shove. Not bad, we will NOT complain, and we will plan to get into the Gironde early Friday morning.
One last item. We had been hearing a low rumbling sound when the steering wheel turned, and investigation revealed that the sound was coming out of the linear actuator for the autopilot. It appears to be a noise coming out of the gear train in the actuator itself. AS commented that he had learned (when his unit failed) that these units need to be serviced every 2 years, and upon looking in the manual, we found exactly that advice. So, we have another item to fix when we get in. Hopefully it will last 3 more days – we don’t want to hand-steer for even one day.
Dinner was paella again, with some baccala thrown in. NL will be making brandade de morue tomorrow, but she decided to throw some into the paella. Tasty, but salty. Some of us drank a LOT of water, and used the head quite a bit.

June 25, 2008

Night watches were quite pleasant. Motored till about 2:30 AM, when the wind shifted to the beam, so we put out all sails and sailed on a beam reach, at 5-6 kts, for rest of night. Wind gradually shifted again to NE, so 10-2 watch had to harden up, sailing closehauled, till about 1:00 PM, when we decided we were making too much easting, and started to motor-sail towards Bordeaux.

Saw one sailboat on the 10-2 watch that was headed in the opposite direction, and it was interesting how poor a radar target it presented. Sometimes there, sometimes not, until it was within 2 miles. A fisherman that followed presented a similar radar target.

From about 11:30 am to 12:30 PM we took on another passenger – a homing pigeon that landed on deck, and proceeded to gradually make his way into the cockpit. He was quite tame, and had bands on both legs, so he was obviously on a mission. But the sight of a good resting place was too much, so he decided to stop and chat. When he started to make motions in the direction of taking a berth down below, however, we drew the line. He was tame enough to allow himself to be picked up, and launched on the next leg of his journey. Bon voyage!

Thar she blows! At 1:30 ch spotted two whales spouting off the beam. We could not see the whales themselves, but their spouts were quite distinctive.

Brandade de morue for lunch, with mashed potatoes on the side and green beans – French comfort food!

We finally raised the French NAVTEX site, and received their messages in both English and French. It looks like we will not be near the area where they are conducting live-fire exercises, but we will listen to the voice broadcast this evening to make sure.

Could not receive the voice messages for the firing range. Don’t know why, but we won’t be anywhere near them, so we won’t worry about it.

Pasta with tomato sauce for dinner. We also used the last of the parmegian cheese.

June 26, 2008

Motored thru the night, with the wind dead on the nose, at about 10-15 kts true. We are on track to arrive at the mouth of the Gironde around 4 AM, just when the tide starts to change. The seas have grown quite lumpy overnite. The large swell from the NW is still with us, but there is also a bit of cross-swell, with a short period, from the NE, probably driven by this headwind. It is not large, but it is short, so the motion has gotten bad again. It is a lot like the sort of waves we saw on the Chesapeake – short and square, and unpleasant. The UK weather FAXes are still showing us with N-NW winds, at about 10, but we are seeing NE. We heard a weather forecast in French on Ch 79 at 7:45 French time, but it was a bit crackly, and we could not really understand it. We will have to get closer to be able to make out the French forecasts.
We have a list of stuff to do on the way into the marina, and then in the marina, to put the boat away once we arrive. At the top of the list is pickling the watermaker, which we will do later today. We will also transfer the rest of the fuel from the jerry cans into the main tank – finally all of the Stuart fuel will be in the tanks.

Productive and entertaining day so far. We did transfer the fuel from the cans, so we are pretty well topped up. We motored till about 5:30, when the wind backed, so we are now sailing nicely, and it looks like we may sail thru the night. We have a deeply reefed main and a slightly reefed job out, and are making 5.5-6 kts SOG, and 7 thru the water, which is plenty to get us to our waypoint in the Gironde early tomorrow AM. We don’t want to be too early, and have to fight the current, and in any case, we don’t need to heel over any more to make more speed, so this is much more comfortable.

The watermaker was successfully pickled. We all took showers so as to be more presentable on arrival, thereby using up all of the Stuart water, and starting to consume the Horta water, as well. We should be fine for another day, at least.

We were mightily entertained by a large pod of porpoises that came alongside and played with us for nearly 2 hours. They jumped out of the water all around the boat, under the boat, and alongside the bow. Supposedly, they like to play in the bow wave that the boat generates. We got a number of video clips, which will be put up on the FLIKR site.

June 27, 2008

Last night at sea. The wind backed, and we headed east towards the mouth of the Gironde, trying not to arrive too early in the AM, so that we could catch the tide. As we got closer, the VHF traffic increased, and we started to hear call from the French coastal guard (CROSS) about boats in distress, SE of us. It sounded like they were having breakdown troubles, not life-endangering type of troubles, so we pressed on. About 5:45 AM, while we were looking for the Bordeaux sea-buoy, we spotted something that, with the sunlight behind it, looked like it might be the light, but it seemed to be placed on some sort of rock-pile. Checking the charts showed that the buoy should be floating, not fixed, and just as we were starting to digest this, the “buoy” turned on a set of running lights and headed straight for us.(!)

A few minutes of observations confirmed that this vessel was going to intercept us, and it did, coming up astern, shining a spotlight into the cockpit, and just sitting there for several minutes while they checked us out. They were the French Douane(!), guarding the coast from potential intruders. We held up the microphone for the VHF, so that they could see that we wanted to make contact, but nothing was heard on Channel 16. By now, AS and NL were up, and on deck, along with ch, and we decided to call them up. NL was a bit shy, so rxc called them (in English), and they responded (in English(!!)), that they were the Douane, and they wanted us to slow down so that they could board and inspect.

So, the sailing stopped, we started the engine, and we rolled in both sails. The revenue boat, probably about 100 ft long (30 m), lowered an inflatable and sent a crew of four agents over to see us. They came aboard easily, and we started to talk. We explained that we were on a delivery trip to France, that rxc was the owner, and AS was the captain. We provided them with the boat’s papers, our passports, the papers from the shipment of the household goods to France, the inventory that we had provided to the shippers and French customs, and the papers that certified that we had changed residence to France in September.

They then asked if they could search the boat, to which we said of course, so two agents descended into the cabin with rxc, where they searched the forward cabin, looked into some lockers in the middle cabin, and also looked into lockers and personal effects in the aft cabin. All the while, the agents on deck were talking to their boat, and to shore-side people about our situation. Given that this was happening at 6 AM, everyone realized that it would not be possible to contact our shipping agent till they opened, so they decided at about 7 AM that we would be going into Royan instead of Port Medoc, and they would accompany us. One agent went back to the boat while three others stayed on-board, and we had a formal escort into the Gironde.

The winds were blowing as we passed the Banc de Mauvaise, and the surf was up, so it was nice to have local knowledge to help us into the estuary. It was also lucky for us that the tide was coming in, so that we had plenty of water into the harbor at Royan, which is just across the Gironde from Port Medoc. As we came up the channel we chatted with the agents, who at one point asked us how we were going to pay the TVa on the boat. rxc then pulled out his printouts of the Douane web pages that explicitly state that personal effects are exempt from TVA when they accompany a move into France, and explicitly list “bateau de plaisance” (pleasure craft) as an exempt item. This pulled them up short, and prompted additional discussions over the radio, while they considered it.

About 10:30 AM we arrived in Royan, and tied up alongside the customs vessel that had preceded us. They told us that we could go ashore while they contacted our agents and their main offices to figure out what to do, so AS and NL went off to check emails, while rxc and ch stayed on-board to answer any questions. We also started to get the boat ready for moving over to Port Medoc. Soon after AS and NL went ashore, the head of the local customs office came aboard and explained that they had gotten into contact with our agent, and they were satisfied that we were not trying to do anything “creative”. However, they explained that they did not normally do “demenagements de bateaux”, and were not experts in this process, so they were going to document their boarding and inspection, and the discussions with our agent, and let us go if we promised to get the proper paperwork and send it to them. They wrote this down in a long document (in French), which rxc signed, and which was then signed by all 4 (!) of the agents who participated in the boarding and inspection, and their management.

AS and NL came back to the boat, and we talked about what to do next, and since they had planned to take the ferry to Royan from Port Medoc, it seemed best to say au revoir to them there, and let rxc and ch take the boat over to Port Medoc. So, they packed their bags and headed off for some nice meals up the coast, and eventually in Paris.

At about 1:30 PM, rxc and ch cast off from the douane boat and headed SW towards Port Medoc. The tidal currents in the Gironde were fierce, but our powerful motor propelled us to the entrance to the marina, where two lovely ladies stood on the pier waving us in. We docked the boat in our slip, the ladies helped with the lines, and the good ship Pétillant finally made its arrival in its new home port in France. We celebrated our arrival with a quite tasty lunch at the restaurant in the marina, where rxc and ch finally got to drink some nice red wine again, and ch became acquainted with andouilette.

Then it was back to the boat for the afternoon, and the process of unloading the “stuff” started. The four of us took as much as would fit onto the pickup off of the boat, and this was enough to open it up so that it could dry out a bit after 7 weeks at sea. Everything was damp, and lots of places were wet. It seems that we need to do some serious waterproofing in the bow, and the port chain-plate needs to be re-bedded. We did not get to wash the boat, though, because we did not have a hose connector. Then, it was off to the house in the truck, looking like a maritime version of the Beverly Hillbillies.

On to France!

2008-06-17T07:36:00.003-04:00

We are all set now to leave. After looking at the weather forecast for the next week, it appears to be more prudent to head ENE towards 43N 15W, rather than NNE to 45N 25W, which was the original waypoint. There is supposed to be a low swirling around 45N 25W in about 4 days, when we would expect to be there, so we plan to be somewhere else. We may have to motor a bit when we get to the tip of Spain, but we will see what the weather gods do to us and adjust accordingly. Everyone on board has agreed - NO MORE GALES!!!

We will make one last run to the market for lettuce and bread, while AS is clearing us out, and then once the FBs leave we will hoist the dinghy on-board, and shove off.

Sorry we haven't loaded photos of Horta. The connection here was not solid/fast enough to support the needed bandwidth. They will get loaded when we get to France.

See you in Bordeaux!!

Long Productive Weekend in Horta

2008-06-16T14:10:00.003-04:00

Well, the weekend here has turned out to be quite successful. We arrived on Friday afternoon with a number of issues to be resolved, and discovered a serious new one, but it looks like everything is now “go” for departure on Tuesday, June 17. The issues involved the wind instrument, the depth instrument, the GPS sensor for the chartplotter, a need for propane, a loose radome, and rig tuning issues.

After dropping off the propane bottle on Saturday, we went around to the harbormaster’s office to see about coming in from the anchorage, and they told us to go to the jetty and raft up there. We up-anchored, and got into a raft to fill up fuel tanks, and then went to the jetty to raft up for the rest of the weekend. We were originally the outermost boat of 3 in the raft, next to a Beneteau owned by a couple of fussy Brits, who fretted over the possibility that our dinghy might hit their topsides, and could we please shutdown our windmill, and take off our shoes when we crossed their boat, and go forward during the day, but aft at night, etc, etc. We acquiesced to their requests, and got ourselves nicely tucked in for the weekend.

We spent Sunday doing grocery shopping, in the very modern supermarket up the hill. We bought so much stuff we had to take a taxi back to the boat, which was quite worthwhile because the taxi was able to go out on the jetty right next to the boat. The afternoon was spent stowing groceries, and then we swapped places with the inboard FBs, who said that they were going to leave the next day, so since AS and NL were going to be gone all day, we decided to do the swap on Sunday. Rxc used the dinghy as a tugboat to move both boats out from the deep raft, and then back into place. Quite well done, and even the FBs were satisfied that we could move boats carefully and re-raft.

In discussing rafting with other boaters here it is curious that few seem to have much experience with it, like we used to do all the time in the Chesapeake. They use all sorts of really heavy lines to tie the boats together inside a very well-protected breakwater, and are all quite apprehensive about having another boat alongside. This prompted a sea-story session, relating a number of memorable raftups on the Chesapeake, and interaction of large rafts with exciting weather and changing tidal flows…

rxc then went up the mast to see about the wind instrument. It turned out that the sensor on top of the mast was not quite tightly screwed into its socket, and the tail of the vane was a bit distorted, so some judicious bending straightened it all out, and it now indicates the relative wind much better. He also aligned the Windex indicator better, so it is now symmetrical.

On the way down he took some time to look over the state of the rigging and even pulled off the cover of the radome to see if there were any loose wire connections, but all the wires were secure. Fortunately, though, he noticed that the radome itself was not securely attached to the mast. In fact, it was missing 5 of the 12 attaching screws. The mount for the dome has four feet that are screwed to the mast with 3 screws each. One foot was completely unattached, while two other had one screw missing, and all of the remaining screws were loose. The bolts that attach the radome to the mounting feet were also quite loose. This was a major discovery, as it identified the source of the some of the screws that had been dropping down out of the sky on us. Unfortunately, the screws were all metric, and we had none on board, so repair had to wait till Monday AM. It was a miracle that the dome had not come off at sea, and it was lucky that we decided to go up the mast to check out the rig here in Horta. After securing the worksite, AS and NL went off for dinner with some friends, while rxc and ch had another dinner ashore at Peter’s café sport. We also noted that the WiFi connectivity became noticeably worse after this boat swap.

On Monday we were up early. NL and AS went off for the day to an adjacent island to do some hiking and sightseeing, while rxc and ch spent the day being productive. This included (1) tuning the mast so that it is now straight and vertical, and hopefully the roller-furling main will be easier to operate; (2) re-doing the propane connections in the propane locker to try to trace a very slight propane leak that has been draining the bottles faster than expected (this was not a safety issue, because the box drains overboard); (3) pulling out one of the tool buckets and emptying it of seawater that has dripped in during the gales, so that the tools do not rust too much; (4) heading over to the marine supply place to find screws for the radome, which were available, and purchased; (5) talking to the electronics technician at the marine supply place about the depthsounder, and getting the suggestion to apply a dealer reset to the instrument; (6) finding out that they actually had a Raymarine GPS unit available for sale, if necessary, so that we could do some exploratory surgery on the installed unit; (7) coming back to the boat and performing the reset on the depthsounder, so that Voila!, it now works; (8) opening up the cable into the GPS unit and finding that it was in fine shape, and was probably only flaky because excessive twist probably got some of the individual wires too close together; (9) going up the mast and re-attaching the radome securely to the mast; (10) going further up the mast and applying some tie-wraps to some wires and antennas that needed to be better constrained; (11) going off to buy some more paper towels; (12) picking up the full propane tank and a replacement bulb for one of the flashlights;(13) thanking the technician for his idea about resetting the depthsounder (he was quite surprised, because he had tried the same thing today on another boat that was showing the same symptoms, and it had no effect); (14) stopping at a local bakery for afternoon coffee and a snack; (15) filling two water tanks in preparation for departure tomorrow.

We now have essentially one task left, and that is hoisting the dinghy onboard, before we can leave. We will also have to pay our slip fees and checkout.

It is not clear when AS and NL will be back tonite, so rxc and ch will probably be dining out again. Hopefully there will be more restaurants open, giving us a better selection than last night.

The FBs did not leave today. They said that there was not enough wind, and they hate to motor, so they would prefer to lie here against the jetty than bob around in light airs. They really seem to be purist sailors, which is nice to see, rather than sailors with goals and missions and timetables to meet. On the other hand, they are also extremely low-tech, with no radar or solar cells (but 2(!) windmills) on a 46 ft boat, and they also collect rainwater, which they manage to use 3 times before it goes overboard. Ms FB commented that when she gets back to the UK, she will never be able to take a bath again, because the idea of bathing in an amount of water equal to the contents of one water tank is too distressing. They much prefer showers out of sun-shower bags. We did not comment on the size of our water tanks, or on our watermaking ability… They are actually nice people, once you get to know them. It was too bad that the initial contact was so confrontational.

The boat inboard of us is another Brit with a Jeanneau 40 CC, and he has some significant steering problems due to a leak in his hydraulic steering system, and a failure of the autopilot (a dual failure!). Some of were quite surprised to hear that a production boat in the 40 ft range had hydraulic steering, but he explained that there is no was to run cables thru the interior of the boat, so hydraulics are the only solution. He is a second (or maybe third) owner, and laments the way the boat was “upgraded” and maintained by the previous owners. Very nice guy. We are starting to wonder if Jeanneaus as a class are prone to steering issues…

Preparations for Transatlantic Crossings

2008-06-16T14:08:00.001-04:00

During the course of the past several weeks, we have considered the many things that other potential transatlantic sailors could do to prepare themselves for this event. Following are some of our recommendations, based on our experience to date.

1. Learn to skate in the bed of a pickup truck while driving through West Virginia.

2. For a month, wear only four changes of clothes. Note: you are allowed to wear your cleanest dirty clothes.

3. Hang a sheet outside your bedroom window to flop all day and night.

4. Sprinkle you belongings every day for a month with saltwater.

5. Change your schedule for a month so that you can only sleep at night every 3rd day, for only 5 hours.

6. For 6 weeks, sleep only 5 hours per night, and then wake up and watch a TV test pattern for 3 hours.

7. Sleep on a roller coaster for 6 weeks.

8. Turn off the TV, radio, phones, PC, and avoid all your family and friends for 6 weeks.

9. If you are male, you must sit down to tinkle for 6 weeks. This can be swapped to peeing on your shoes.

10. For 2 weeks, sleep in your garage with the car engine running to get used to odors and noises.

11. Spent 6 weeks living entirely inside your house using only the kitchen, bathroom and 2 bedrooms, with 3 other people.

12. For your next 3 shopping trips, go only to markets with labels in languages you cannot read.

13. For 6 weeks, eat all your meals while playing on a see-saw.

14. Learn to cook using a hibachi on a swing.

Two Weeks at Sea to Horta

2008-06-14T11:15:00.004-04:00

Well, we are finally in Horta, after a 15 day transit, which is not bad for such a distance (~1800 miles). We understand that we were evidently in a "dead spot" for SPOT, for a while, so there has been some anxiety about our whereabouts. Rest assured that we did fine, and no one was hurt, and nothing major broke. Following is the blow-by-blow, day-by day. We were anchored in Horta last night, but a lot of boats left today because the Azores high is starting to re-form, so we now have a spot on the jetty, as the third boat out in a raft, next to some fussy Brits (sorry Geoffrey and Janet). We finally got a good Wifi signal, and have now even converted the boat's electrical system to plug into 220v, so we are ready for the marina in Port Medoc. Now if we can only get some things fixed, and get one propane tank filled, and see some favorable weather that does not involve gale-force winds...

Read and enjoy the story. We will post some photos later.

May 29, 2008

We left Bermuda in bright sunshine, about 2:20 PM in the afternoon. We did some final grocery shopping, sent some final emails, and finally filled up with fuel ($1.92/liter!!) after one of the cruise ships left. We waiting a bit too long to up-anchor, and had to wait in line for the fuel – seems like lots of other boats have the same idea about leaving today.

Capt. AS thought it would be a good idea for us to sail out of the harbor, so as to not use fuel unnecessarily, so we did, and it was a ball. Underway again after 2 weeks waiting for parts. The boat handles well, everything is working again, and we were off. Winds were from the southwest, about 15 kts, so we did well the first day and evening. Hamburgers for dinner, with some initial mal-de-mer getting sea legs back.

We managed to finally find Herb Hilgenberger’s radio weather forecast, and it seems like we are in for some good, if light winds for a while. We are supposed to have a cold front come thru some time tonight, and the winds will shift to the northwest, but that is not a bad thing.

May 30, 2008

Second day at sea, with all still going well. The front came through about 8:00 PM this morning, and the wind shifted accordingly, but to the NE, and about 10-15 kts. We are now sailing closehauled, with just a bit of the jib out, but a full main. We have seen a few ships passing towards the NW, but otherwise not much interesting. The seas are down to 3-6 feet, and dropping, which is quite a change from our last leg.

The radio weather forecast is for continued NE winds like this thru Sat and into Sunday, when another front is supposed to come down. Herb is telling other boats that they need to get further north, and we are trying, but it is difficult to sail closer than about 070T, and we are being set back by an adverse current of 2-2.5 kts. This is really frustrating because the boat is really hauling along at 7-8 kts thru the water.

Dinner tonite was penne primavera with onions and zucchini and parmesan. Quite tasty and satisfying after a first day at sea. Our first day’s run was about 130 miles, which is pretty respectable, considering the light winds. We are hoping that the winds will back a bit and give us a better push.

May 31, 2008

Wind started the day holding from the NE, at about 10 kts. We had to reef during the night because we had full sail out and we were pushing 9 kts at some points, and the boat was heeling a bit much. With reduced sail, it was much more pleasant for watchstanding and sleeping. We are trying to sail to the wind, holding the boat as close-hauled as possible, on the port tack. The wind is not very constant, however, and we are wandering about 30 degrees to either side of the rhumb line to the Azones. We ran the engine last nite for about 3 hours when the winds shifted dead in our face. We tried to tack, but the stbd tack has us pointing almost directly back towards NY, which is NOT where we want to go.

After lunch, the wind pretty much died, and we started to motor-sail, and then just motor on the rhumb line, or a bit north of it. In his broadcast, Herb is starting to advise boats leaving Bermuda for the Azores to head NE, towards 35N60W, which is about 120 miles north of us. He says there is a ridge located about 34N, and the winds are good to the north of this. We are seeing no wind whatsoever, sitting just south of the ridge. We then decided to head about 060M, which will move us further north, and hopefully we will start to see some wind tonite.

Breakfast as quite calm, and NL decided to take advantage of the calm and make bacon, eggs, and grits. We also like the whole-wheat bread we bought in Bermuda – it is from a local bakery and is not as sweet as the stuff from the US. Late afternoon snacks included our first peanut butter and jeyyly sandwiches of the trip.

After lunch, we started the engine again and also made water, heated it, and took showers. We think this may become a routine, to put the engine to best use to make electricity, to make water, to heat the water, and also to help move us along. The wind and solar panels are doing a good job of keeping the batteries charged, but they can’t provide a hot shower.

The second day’s run is only 76 miles, which is a bit disappointing. We need to start whistling for some more wind. NL says that we should be careful what we wish for…

June 1, 2008

Spent the whole nite motoring towards the NE, and finally found some wind up around 34N. Most of the day was sailing at around 4 kts in light SW winds 10-12 kts. We made contact with Herb, from Southbound II, and he advised staying on this course to the NE, to find better winds. He said that the Bermuda-Azores high is building, and we don’t want to have to motor right thru the middle of it. It was quite fun to talk to someone in Canada over the SSB. We spend some time every day listening to people around the world talking on the short-wave. There are nets for the east coast cruisers, for west coast cruisers, for weather for people in the Bahamas, and for hurricanes, which have just started up, with one deep in the SW Caribbean. Hopefully, that one won’t come near us.

The evening passed with a nice gratin of some sort of tropical vegetable, called chou-chou(sp?) that NL knew from her days in the south Pacific. Quite tasty, with tabouleh and asparagus (out of a can). Because of our long voyage, we are sadly forced to eat stuff out of jars and cans, but NL does a great job with what she has – it seems like ALL of the cooks on this boat have been quite inventive and successful when faced with the limited resources of a boat.

The day ended at midnite with a few rainstorms bearing down on us. The days run was about 120 miles, which was quite respectable.

June 2, 2008

We got rained on during the mid-watch, but this was accompanied by some nice favorable winds, so we did not mind at all. Unfortunately, the winds dropped around dawn, so we started up the engine and motored for a few hours till the wind returned, and we were rewarded with a few hours of sailing at 7 kts with a 15 kt wind on the beam, on a flat sea. It doesn’t get much better than this. We have also picked up about 0.5 kts of a favorable current, which is nice considering that we have been fighting an unfavorable current of up to 2.5 kts for the past few days. Today we made about 104 miles, which seems a bit low, considering how fast we moved during the nite. But we were probably only making 2-3 kts during the day, so it all evened out at about 4 kts average for the day.

We also did a dive into the forward deep storage, under the V-berth, to try to find a bigger pot for pasta, and the muffin pan. Found the larger pot, but the lids have gone somewhere else, and the muffin pan is not here. Where-oh-where has the muffin pan gone? We also found a bit of water up forward, probably from the leg to Bermuda. We opened it all up and aired it out, to dry things, and also re-stowed a number of items.

Wind dropped a bit during the afternoon, but we are still making 5.2 kts. Decent, respectable speed. No need to motor. Quiet. Good. Talked to Herb again and he encouraged us to get north of 35N, where good wind would be. We will stay on ~081T because it edges us up there, and does not sacrifice any easting.

June 3, 2008

Finally made it to 35N, and winds have picked up to very respectable values – 15-20 kts from SSW. As a result, boat speed has gone up to 6-6.5 kts. We are still seeing current against us of ~0.5 kts. Occasionally we will get a boost from current, but it seems that more often than not, it has been agin us. We saw a few rain clouds on radar in the night, and the mid-watch had to close the hatches because one of them came and sat on us for a while, but it was welcome to have a fresh-water washdown. AS also saw a large fishing boat, all lit up like a cruise ship. We gave it a wide berth, and passed like two ships in the night. Days run was 121 miles, which is a bit disappointing, considering how fast we have been going. This is not a bad value, because it shows us making a respectable 5 kts, but hopefully our fast French boat is capable of a bit more…

AS has been trying to catch some fish, but no luck so far. He has used one of the poles, and even a hand line with a piece of heavy seine-cord on it. Fresh fish would be nice right about now. During the day we also passed a long line of floats that appeared to be attached to either a long net or a line of fishing hooks. We could not see what was below the surface, and even though we tried to avoid it, at one point we ended up sailing across the line between two floats, but we did not hit anything. We wondered what would happen if we hit one of these in the night. They are not large, but would certainly make a loud noise, and maybe even cause some damage.

The wind kept blowing at 15-20 kts all day and into the night, and we did not have to motor at all. Herb advised staying at this latitude and heading east. There is a Low forming over NY that will be heading to the north of us, and we don’t want to get too close to it.

June 4, 2008

We made a consistent 6.5 kts through the night, so our days run today should be great. Weather is holding, with bright sunshine. Batteries are down a bit, so today would be a good day to run engine to charge batteries, make water, heat it, and take showers. We will also download some wefax charts to see what has developed with the Low that herb mentioned. Started engine at 9:50 and commenced making water. Speed went up to 7.5 kts, even with the engine just ticking over at 1500 rpm,

The swells are down quite a bit today. Yesterday we noted that they seemed to rise quite a bit in the afternoon, to about 6 feet, and we also noted that we were seeing swells from the south as well as from the NW, which made the ride a bit lumpy. This morning we still have swells from the S, but the NW component is gone, and the surface between each swell is much quieter. The boat motion is a bit better, but this is still not a full-keel boat – it reacts to every wave, from whatever direction, in spite of all of the stuff that is packed on-board.

Ran engine till 2:00 PM, and then tried to transfer fuel from jerry jugs to center tank. Was only able to transfer one and a half cans before we had problems with sloshing, due to boat being on stbd tack, and fill pipe is on port side of boat. We probably could have filled the tank more, but the boat movement was throwing fuel back up the fill line and sloshing it out. We decided to hold off on this evolution till we are eight flat or on a port tack.

Everyone took advantage of engine run time to take showers, and now all feel quite a bit better. The boat speed was a steady 7.5 kts while we ran the engine, but has now dropped back to about 6.2. We made 148 miles for the day’s run, which is quite good – 6 kts average. Sea swells have come back up to about 6 feet, but they are long period and not a problem.

We have now discovered two pieces of hardware on deck for which we have no idea where they came from. One is a small 1-inch machine screw, while the other is about 1 inch long, and looks like a clevis pin without a head or hole for a cotter pin. The pin looks like it could be a center pin for a block, but all of the blocks have plates on the side to keep the pins in. The machine screw looks like it comes off of a cover, and we will have to take a close look at the radome in Horta to see if it came from there. We will also go to the top of the mast to see if anything is missing up there. We tried to look for missing parts with binoculars, but all the important stuff looks like it is still there. Nothing looks like it is missing. This is the sort of thing that will drive you nuts. AS thinks maybe the pin has been down a long time, because it was trapped under a spring that holds up one of the fairlead blocks for the mainsheet. It would have been a real fluke for a pin to have dropped and bounced to fit perfectly through this spring. The block itself is fine, and there appears to be some wear on the plate where the pin was resting, so it really does appear to have been there some time. AS thinks that maybe the rigger dropped it when he inspected the rig in Baltimore. Maybe someone in France wanted to have some fun with future owners…

We are also noticing that the mast is pumping a bit, indicating that the lower shrouds need to be tightened up a bit. If we get a period of calm we will cinch them up, or we may have to wait till Horta. The mast makes an irritating sound as the heel works in its socket on deck.
Although we are listening to Herb, we are also picking up the NWS weather faxes out of Boston, and it is interesting to see the ice reports that show icebergs as far south as 43N. We have on board one chart of the North Atlantic from Imray that shows historical icebergs, and early in the 19th century they were sighted as far south as Bermuda (32N), at this time of year. Maybe this is one thing to be grateful for, in these days of “Global Warming”.

Tonite, Herb advised people to stay south of 36N, even around 35N. We are just below 36N, and are trying to head directly east. The wind piped up during the 9-12 watch, and at midnite we reefed down both the main and the jib. Still making 6.5-7 kts over the ground, with a favorable 0.5 kt current. However, we are making strong leeway, and have to aim quite southerly to keep on a straight east course. We are now close-hauled on stbd tack, with 2-reefs in for the nite.

Great meal tonite. We are out of long-grain rice, so NL used arborio rice to make paella, and it was very much like a risotto, but without the cheese. Quite tasty. We will have to load up on staples in the Azores.

June 5, 2008

The night was lively, after reefing down at midnite. We had to shut all the hatches because we were taking some water on deck. Boat speed stayed pretty constant thru the night, at 6.5-7 kts and the winds rose to ~20kts, still from the south. The Low that we are watching is supposed to shift the wind to the SW, which would be more welcome than from the south. Boat progress for the day was 155 miles, which is a record for this trip. We are now under 1000 miles to Horta, and making very good progress.

Talked to Herb tonite, and he recommended that we move further to south, below 35N, to avoid gale conditions from the approaching low. It is supposed to be building, and unpleasant. This provoked some discussion among the different levels of management on the boat, with one faction wanting to head in a more southerly direction, to avoid the blow, while the other wanted to stay at least on this latitude, and avoid losing northing to get to Horta. In the end, it was agreed to stay on the current latitude, and hope that the low will move north, and also prepare for some more excitement…

Dinner was nachos and leftover paella/risotta. Quite good. Some of us really long for a nice glass of wine, but we will remain “dry” till the anchor goes down in Horta. Then we will be able to try some vinho tinto and vinho verde.

June 6, 2008 (An appropriate day for a group of Americans to be headed in the direction of France)

The overnite sail was quite nice, at about 5 kts with reefed sails. The favorable current comes and goes. Looking at the pilot charts, we are in a region of eddies in the north Atlantic, and sometimes we get a good current, other times it is agin us. C’est la vie. We wanted to have a pleasant nite to get some rest in advance of a future blow, so we sacrificed some speed for a calmer ride. It turns out that there is one nice sea-berth in the boat, right in the middle, next to the salon table. By organizing the salon cushions properly it is possible to set up a narrow berth that is padded on 3 sides, where one can comfortably wedge-in, and get some sleep. This spot is the one that our oldest cat (Zabelle) picked out for her time on the boat, and she evidently knew what she was doing. The aft cabin is alright if you sleep athwartship, while the forward v-berth is only tenable for one person, and then only of you are willing to relocate to one side or the other. It also moves the most vertically, and is not nice in a high seaway.

Winds are still from the SW, at 15 kts, and we started the engine to charge batteries around
11:00. We also changed clocks one hour ahead at 11. Days run was 125 miles, a decent 5 kts, under reduced sail.

1:30 pm – we are battening down for a blow, and waiting for the WEFAX to arrive. At 4:45 we reduced sail a bit more, in anticipation of even more severe conditions, possibly worse than we saw on the way to Bermuda. This engendered some more discussion about the need for more excitement this trip, and a desire to hold down the level of excitement, even if it meant having to go out of the way and take more time getting to the ultimate destination. Unfortunately, we are where we are, and we have to deal with the situation we are in, right now, so we are preparing for more excitement.

5:30 pm – the 24 hr forecast says that the big low will move north, but it has spawned secondary low that is coming down to our latitude. It will be interesting to hear what Herb has to say about this. We may have chosen the correct course, in spite of concerns about staying south. In the end, we may actually thread the needle between a couple of nasty low-pressure systems.

8:00 pm Herb was a bit taken aback that we were still up around 36N, and he encouraged us to move towards the SE. He said that we would see the front pass us tomorrow afternoon, and the wind would shift from SW to NW and N, maybe even NE. He thought we should slow down and wait for the winds to gradually return to W or SW once the front passes us. Until then, we should see SW winds at 25-30, with gusts to 35.

In response to this advice, we have decided to hold the course, and stay at 36N, in the hopes that the front will pass quickly, and we will not lose any ground towards the Azores. We have seen stronger winds and done reasonably well in them.

With this decision made, we set sail for heavy winds, with a scrap of jib and main out, and had a hearty dinner of soup. We are glad that we got out the corners of the enclosure, and they fit well, so we not have a completely enclosed helm station. We are also seeing currents going in our direction of 1-2 kts. This is a nice change from earlier in the trip.

June 7, 2008

The winds rose during the night, peaking during the 3-6 watch, with the max speed seen of about 40 kts. Generally they were in the 25-30 range, with gusts up into the 30s. Seas continued to build, to 9-12 feet, and sleeping was a challenge. During the morning watch the winds abated a bit, and the during the 10-14 watch we got our first appearance of the front on radar. A large batch of rain cells descended on us from the NW, and about 1:30 pm it hit us, with some squalls at first, and very heavy rain, which was welcome to wash down the boat. once the leading edge passed, we settled into a steady rainfall, and cooler temperatures. The winds shifted to the W, and dropped to 15-20, with gusts as high as 30. The rain also knocked down the seas a bit. All-in-all, nothing we could not handle. Days run of 134, which is quite decent considering the small amount of sail that we are carrying.

6:00 pm The NWS weather charts for tomorrow are showing a developing storm right where we are, with winds of 45 kts and seas of 21 ft. We are waiting for Herb to get to our area to see what sort of advice he can give. I expect that he will tell us to slow down and wait, but we have everything reefed down, and are still making nearly 5 kts. Looking at the charts a bit closer, it looks like we may be able to skirt this low along the south. The 500mb charts show a strange loop dipping down to our latitude, and the 48 hr prediction shows the low pushing back north. The winds on the east side of the low will be from the S-SE, so maybe we can sneak around it and then head NE to the Azores.

Herb was again surprised that we were so far north, and he urged us to move SE towards 35N-40W, to avoid serious winds/waves from the large low to the north. After some discussion, it was decided to head more towards the south, so we tried to sail SE as close to the wind as possible. This worked until about midnite, when it became apparent that we were losing the southing we had made earlier, and were in fact drifting NE. So, at midnite we started the engine and tried to motor sail towards the SE. This caused much pounding as this course was opposed to the swells, and about 5:30, we gave that up. During the nite, the mid-watch and morning watches saw winds in the 45-50 kt range, and seas building

June 8, 2008

The 6-10 watch took over and stopped the engine, to see if it was possible to still sail. It was, but only just about dead east, with a little northing. This was considered preferable to pounding, so the day began. Radar revealed pockets of cells marching up from the south, and these dumped torrential rains on the boat, as well as stimulating high-speed gusts, up to 57 kts. Seas were knocked down by the rain somewhat, but were still in the 12-18 ft range. The boat rode them quite well with just a scrap of job and main out, and the wind on the stbd quarter. We had several washover waves, that put green water over the cockpit, and once over the enclosure. We also had one of the water jugs washed loose, but managed to retrieve it before it went completely. We also had to retrieve one of the Life-Slings that lost two of its attachment points to a sideswiping wave. During this watch, there was also a quite intense exchange of views between the owners representative, and the head of the executive team, about whether this all could have been avoided. Nothing was resolved, and both parties left unsatisfied. The use of weather data to try to avoid bad weather is sure to come up again in the future…

After noon the winds seemed to subside, but gusts to 59 kts were still observed. It was very difficult to steer the boat during these gusts in any other direction but downwind, which was approximately 060T, which is exactly the direction we do NOT want to go, so we try to hand steer during the gusts, and let the autopilot take it other times. Around 1 PM the wind shifted more to the W, which may be a good sign that the low is moving north. (We hope!) We took in all sail and are trying to motor east with the winds at our back.

Normally, at this time of the year there should be an enormous stationary High Pressure system right over our heads, with no wind underneath it whatsoever. This requires most boats to go around to the north, or alternatively motor thru the high. But not this year…..

We are currently waiting for the afternoon WEFAXes, to see what the NWS is going to throw at us now…

No good reception in the afternoon, but much improved in the early evening, so we got a whole set. We did not listen to Herb tonite – it would not have made any effect on our plans…

NL decided to do some cooking and made some fresh tomato sauce, with spaghetti, which was well received as a hot meal after a cold day.

At least the winds have subsided, as the low moved north, although the swells are still pretty high. We let out more sail and are moving E at 5 kts. Will stay like this tomorrow, when winds and seas are supposed to be down a bit. But there is ANOTHER low dropping down from the maritimes, and it should be here in about 48 hours. Hopefully we will be well east by then. It is also raining quite a bit, and we are all in full foulies. The temperature has also dropped quite a bit.

The evening watch also had to deal with problems with the GPS and a thunderstorm. The GPS problem had shown up once before, on the trip south, and it appeared to be a loose connection in the GPS “mushroom”. For non-sailors, we should explain that many GPS units for boats are mounted in a small structure the size of your fist, in the shape of a mushroom. It generally mounts on the rail, aft, or up on the arch. This mushroom contains the entire GPS unit, and the wires that connect to it provide it with power and take the GPS information out. There are no other GPS boxes inside the boat for this instrument. We think it actually talks “Sea-Talk”, a proprietary format used by Raymarine, who provided our instruments. Well, the cable for this unit is potted into the bottom, and does not have any user-accessible connections, and it appears that one of the wires, not clear which one, has a break, and is making intermittently. So, we had to fiddle with this, in the rain, haning over the edge of the boat, in 25 kts of wind, to try to get the wires inside the cable to make contact. Eventually, with the application of enough tie-wraps, we were successful, so our GPS connection to the chartplotter was restored. In the Azores we will have to look for a new one, and see if the old one can be fixed. We also have 3 handheld GPS units to use for backup, if necessary.

The thunderstorm was spectacular, but luckily all the lightning was cloud-cloud. We just hung on and prayed that we would not get hit, and we did not. Ahhh the power of prayer…

June 9, 2008

A quiet night, at last. The winds dropped to 15 kts, and eventually we had to start the engine because they all went away. Finally, we have found the Azores High, but the pressure isn’t that high (1010mb). The wefaxes say that we should be in the middle of a band of clear weather, with light NW winds, and this is dead-on. We all got some good sleep in the night, and the 3-6 watch watched the sun some up through the band of clouds to the east – the remnants of the front that battered us. The swells were still about 9 feet when the sun came up, and the seas were generally very confused, on top of the swells, so the boat moved around a bit, but not like during the storm. Full foulies were used thru the night, and were appreciated for their warmth.

By about 9 AM we were able to shake out the sails and do some sailing, about 5 kts to the east.
The Azores now lie about 500 miles east. We also refueled from the jerry jugs, and now have about 85 gal left. If necessary, we could motor the entire remaining distance to Horta.
Breakfast was a treat – eggs, bacon, and grits – when the weather is nice, NL likes to make a special meal.

Now we start the afternoon watch, and we are back into bathing suits and T-shirts. The wind also died about 1 PM, so we are back to motoring. Days run of 97 miles. Good considering the conditions. Took the opportunity to make water and take showers. Clean underwear for all!

Fresh fish! At 5:45, AS hooked a large yellow-fin tuna. He fought it for over 45 minutes before rxc gaffed it and brought it aboard. It dove deep and took a lot of line, and then went in circles, so that we had to maneuver the boat to keep it from getting caught in the rudder or prop or keel. When we finally brought it up, it seemed to be followed by at least one other tuna. It was probably in the 40 pound class, and we got a LOT of meat out of it. The cleaning process was, again, quite messy, with blood all over the cockpit. One might think that we had engaged in a major sea battle to fend off attacks by those dastardly British, who have been known to board American vessels in these waters, looking for sailors to press.

Luckily, we have a SW washdown system, so we were able to give the cockpit a good washing, and we don’t think it smells too much like a fishing boat. Sauteed the first tuna steaks, and they were wonderful. One member of the crew, however, was not enthusiastic about eating a creature that had just looked him in the eye. Maybe tomorrow, after the vision has receded into the distance. BTW, fresh sushi, at body temperature, is quite good, but I think I prefer it slightly chilled.

Evening watches were quite gentle.

June 10, 2008

Midwatch was a good exercise in trying to find patterns in the radar screen. Winds were gentle (15 kts) and favorable, but rain cells kept popping up all over the place, some coming overhead and dropping gentle rains, others going their own way. No excitement. The morning watch did lose most of the wind, though, and decided to start the engine. We then motored for a while, and then began to sail again around 10 AM. This seems to be the pattern – sail when possible, but don’t hesitate to start the engine. We made 134 miles today, which is again a good run.

Breakfast was pain perdu, with sirop d’erable.

Around noon, the winds piped up again, and after an exciting round-up , we reduced sail, but are still heading east at about 6 kts. Made more water and had tuna for lunch, with boat-made mayo. Finally figured out what is screwing up the WEFAX – it is the inverter. Interesting that this just showed up. It looks like something changed in the way the wires run thru the boat, and now we must have a power wire running close to an antenna wire, or other lead into the SSB radio. I checked a few places that might have been prime suspects, such as the antenna wire back aft, which crosses the main power leads into the boat, and where we have been storing trash, so see if we moved anything, but no amount of relocating back there changes anything. We can deal with this in the interim by turning off the inverter and the fridge while receiving faxes. Since the laptop can run on batteries for about 2 hours, we will do this till we can figure out how to shield the inverter. I think we will have to buy a LOT more chokes and hang them all over the boat wiring to suppress RFI.

Dinner proved the earlier conjecture that tuna is better chilled. It turns out that we were able to actually freeze a lot of our catch by placing it against the cold plate in the fridge, and when she went to make tuna provincial tonite, NL left some out to thaw, and we tried it sliced like sashimi with some soy sauce – fabulous! We ate quite a bit raw, and it could easily turn into a regular evening aperitif.

After dinner, we reefed down, as the winds were starting to pick up. The 9-12 watch was uneventful, but some rain came over during the mid-watch, and the morning watch saw the winds pipe up considerably. We also had to talk to a container ship at 5AM, when it appeared to be headed straight for our stern.

June 11, 2008

We are now in the throes of our THIRD gale of this trip. The whole purpose of making this trip in May-June was to avoid this sort of weather, which is just not supposed to be here at this time of year. Unfortunately, the low pressure system to the north is still going strong, and it is therefore churning up some strong counter-clockwise winds that we see as gales from the S and soon the SE. There are some boats that we heard were going straight across, north of the low, but we cannot imagine how they are going to do this, in the face of 30-40kt gales. They will have to go south, and go by the Azores, like us, and we can’t imagine that they won’t stop.

jlm had expressed some concern about making this trip, citing the possibility of boredom, but it can definitely be said that this trip is NOT boring – exhausting maybe, but not boring.

We will be having survival cup-of-soup for lunch today. The winds are steady 30 kts, with gusts to 40-45. We are back to deep, deep, deep reefs, going east at 4-5 kts.

We caught another flying fish last nite, and it eventually washed down to the level of the cockpit around 11 AM. This one was bigger than usual, around 12 inches long. Photos will be posted. We have caught quite a few flying fish, and even one squid, which was found on deck just aft of the mast. How it got there is anyone’s guess – maybe washed up in a green water wave.

1545 UTC - The latest weather charts show that the front has already passed over us, and we are on the back side of the permanent low. The winds should be gradually moderating and backing to the SE, which means that we may have to either beat hard or motor into the wind to get into Horta.

Dinner was tortellini, with olive oil and parmesan. The evening watches settled in to sailing small, with quite reduced sail. No one had a good time sleeping, however, because the seas were so confused that we continually corkscrewed and fell off the edge of waves into the troughs. This can be particularly jarring when you hear it the first time, because you might very well think that the boat has run into something, but it is just the flat bottom of the boat hitting the water below it, with a big smack. Similar smacks on the side of the boat sound quite loud inside, but not up in the cockpit.

June 12, 2008

The winds picked up during the night, and we started to have some problems with the radar scanner. During this trip, it started to trip off when ever we flushed a toilet, either because of the voltage drop caused by the powerful motor, or due to RFI from the motor. However, because this is a new problem, it is more likely related to a loose connection somewhere, probably in the power to the scanner. During the night, this problem got worse, to the point that we had to shut it down completely at about 5 AM this morning. It was not a good thing, because we depend on the radar to see other ships at night, as well as weather. We had many rain-cells pass over during the night, and in the morning, we had a few flashes of lightning, but these seemed to be cloud-cloud. We shook out a bit of the reef in the jib at 5, and then started the engine, because we were not making good progress to windward to make our mark in Horta.
The slow speed of the boat, coupled with the strong winds on the beam combine to push us quite hard to leeward. Later in the forenoon watch, the skies cleared up a bit, and the wind veered more to the SW, so we stopped the engine and unfurled the mainsail completely. The jib is still deeply reefed. Made 7 kts and up to 8 at times before having to reef down again because of blows. Sea-state was still high, but no whitecaps. Finally shook out reef in main around 2 PM.

Sailed nicely at 6 kts thru the afternoon, and just before dinner we shook out the reef for the jib, and with all sail up headed towards Horta at 5 kts. Patches of sunshine all afternoon, interspersed with rain cells, and even some green water over the bow as boat fell off of waves into troughs. We are mightily glad to have the enclosure. Dinner was more tuna provencial, with green beans and mashed potatoes. The tuna was a bit moister than the first time around, because NL had essentially marinated it in the sauce for 2 days before cooking it.

Winds and seas continued to diminish through the evening, and eventually we rolled in the jib and started the engine, motoring east at about 6 kts. The current has been fickle today, as throughout the entire trip. Sometimes 1-1.5 kts with us, sometimes against us. During the mid-watch, we are losing 1 kt to the current. We are now down to less than 60 miles to Horta!

June 13, 2008 (Friday the 13th)

Soon after the mid-watch started, we noticed that the winds were blowing again, so we stopped motoring, rolled out the main and jib, and sailed east at about 6.5 kts. This pattern continued thru the night, sometimes sailing, sometimes motoring. We made water during the night, filling up the central tank in anticipation of needing it in Horta.

Land was sighted about 8:30 AM. The mountains of Faiel appeared briefly and tenuously thru the clouds, and then disappeared. The western end of the island appeared next, and eventually we were able to see the coastline, including buildings and other structures. We sailed almost continuously after about 5 AM, at speeds from 5 to 9(!) kts, sometimes close-hauled, sometimes on a reach, but the boat handled quite nicely. We reached Horta entrance about noon (boat time), anchored in the harbor, and went ashore to clear in. Customs was quite easy, and we talked to some other boaters about sources of re-supply and repair. So far, it appears that we need to deal with the GPS and the depthsounder, which is not responding. The Raymarine GPS works, but it would be best to fix it before we leave. The sounder is a significant problem that may require hauling the boat. The radar has come back on line, after we unplugged and replugged the connector cable. We also had quite a scare when the genset had a “surge and die” episode, but that seems to have passed. Probably some air got into a fuel line, or some water, but the fuel filter looks fine. We also have some mast tuning to do.

Re-provisioning includes fresh fruits and veggies, propane, other consumables. We also discovered that we had to advance our clock by 2 hours, instead of the one hour we thought. We are definitely getting closer to France…

AS and NL went off hiking in the hills while rxc and ch went off in search of good food and likker. We found both at the Peter Cafe Sport, an internationally known dive for sailors in Horta. It is decorated with all sorts of boatie-stuff, and is right there on the water. Food was good, at a reasonable price, and we got both local beer and vinho tinto to asuage our thirst.

June 14, 2008

We were up early this AM, to get to the laundry and to the nearest marine supply place, which is supposed to be a Raymarine repair center, to see whether they could do anything about the GPS or the depthsounder. Unfortunately, it is Saturday, and their technician does not work on weekends, so we will have to come back on Monday at 10. We also left the empty propane bottle but that will not be ready till Monday at 3:30(!), so we are consigned (?) to stay here till probably Tuesday.

We did get laundry done, and NL found the local market, which is not open on Sunday, but which will be open on Monday. We now have enough to cook on board, so we will see what we do tonite. It looks like there is not much left to do on the boat till Monday, and we are trying to decide whether to even try to fix the depth sounder. The track into the Gironde is well-marked, and deep, and if we have good GPS fixes, we should be fine. Replacing the tranducer would require hauling the boat, and we are not sure it could be done in slings, but might instead require putting the boat on the hard for a few days. The GPS seems to be fine, and we have confirmed that we can hook up one of the handhelds thru the autopilot, as a backup.

While AS and NL and ch worked on laundry, rxc put together a 220v shorepower cable, and rewired the taps on the isolation transformer to take 220, and we now have shorepower. The fussy Brit (identified from this point as the FB) offered to let us plug into one of his outlets - he said that it had French plugs, and we could use it, but we declined. We didn't want to sully his pristine sockets with our connectors, and in and case, we don't have any French plugs on board, yet.

Success!!!

2008-05-28T18:19:00.002-04:00

Success!! The parts both arrived today, and have been successfully installed. The Racor filter was easy to replace, and tested fine. The quadrant was a bit harder, but we installed it and the steering and autopilot are back in operation. We will do a quick-cruise tommorrow to fill up on fuel, and last grocery shopping, to give it a real test, and then we will be off, probably tommorrow afternoon.

The SPOT position reports will resume as soon as we start out the harbor.

See you all in Horta!!!

Rainy Wednesday

2008-05-28T09:47:00.001-04:00

Well, we received confirmation that the parts are here, and they have cleared customs. Unfortunately, there seems to be some problem on the part of the agent here in getting them down to he customs dock for us to pick them up. The latest UPS status says that they attempted delivery last nite at 4:51 PM, but no one was there to sign for it. We will go ashore this AM to see whether they tried to make a delivery today. We will also call the agent and start to complain… And we have already sent an email to UPS complaining about this agent, so maybe we can light a fire here.

We did some provisioning yesterday, but not perishables, because we want to make sure everything is fixed, first. Today will be a day for fixing the rudder, doing laundry, hot showers (and making more water), and hopefully, final provisioning. Tommorrow we will head over to the fuel dock and top off, and then checkout. The winds towards the Azores look good for the next week.

One comment about services here – we are glad we have the genset and the watermaker, because slip space is limited, and many days the boats in the slips have moved out to anchorage because the weather made the slips untenable. Some boats tied up to a long wharf also had to move out to anchor because a second cruise ship arrived yesterday. The genset and the watermaker make waiting here at anchor much easier and less stressful.

We have uploaded a bunch more photos from the parade and other scenes around the island, but they don’t have captions yet.

News!!!

2008-05-27T13:25:00.002-04:00

Well, it appears that our parts have arrived in Bermuda. The Racor filter arrived last Friday, but is waiting for some sort of clearance thru some customs broker.

The better news is that the quadrant left Newark NJ this morning, and as I type this, I believe that it has arrived somewhere at the airport. Unfortunately, the UPS tracking system does not have any record of it arriving here yet. It went from St. Herblain, France on the evening of the 22nd, to Koln on the 23rd, to Louisville on the 24th, and then on to Newark the same day. It looks like it spent the Memorial Day weekend in Newark (instead of going sailing, like it should), and left for Bermuda this AM.

The weekend here was pretty good, in spite of some showers. The wind died down, and shifted to the east, so we ended up with the stern of the boat protruding into the channel. On Monday morning we were approached by the pilot boat, which asked us to move so that we would not get run over by the cruise ship, so we up-anchored and moved in about 100 yds(meters). We were not alone in being asked to move.

After lunch we took the ferry to Hamilton where we watched both the Bermuda Day parade, and all of the people who lined the streets for the event. It was fascinating to see how it seemed like every family on the island had brought out chairs, tables, food, portable tents, and whatever else they needed to have a grand picnic. There were relatively few vendors, compared to what would be seen in a situation like this in the US, maybe because no one wants to pay for food they can make themeself. We talked to some of the people after we noted that spots had been laid out on the sidewalks in duct-tape with names on the tape. It turns out that there is a first-come-first-served opportunity for people to “mark their spot”, starting at 6:00 AM the day before the parade, and evidently some people start a bit earlier. But everything was civilized and well-ordered. We were wondering how such a thing would work in, say DC....

The parade had lots of floats covered in flowers and local plants, dance groups, high-school bands, drum corps, and all the rest of the usual parade participants. It was quite nice. We took the bus back to St. Georges and had croque-monsieur sandwiches, salad, and Natalie’s pumpkin pie, all quite excellent. We are gradually working on Art’s French so that he will be able to order food in France when we get there.

I will post more when I know more about the parts. The photos on Flickr have been completely reorganized, with title and comments added, so take a look. If I don’t get the parts this afternoon I will upload photos of Bermuda and the parade. I hope that we get the Racor before the quadrant – I don’t want to have two projects to do at the same time…

Another Day in St. Georges Harbour

2008-05-22T13:54:00.001-04:00

Well, this is starting to get old, waiting here with the wind blowing. Our latest info from Jeanneau is that the entire quadrant will not ship until the end of this week, or maybe even early next week. And the word from France is that there is a major trucking strike in progress, shutting down transport of gas and diesel. So we don’t know when we will get this very important part.

We have otherwise been productive, making water, changing fuel filters, and getting all ready for installation of the quadrant. The canvas is all repaired. We discovered some stripped threads in the vent valve for the Racor filter that feeds the main engine, so we have ordered a new one from Defender. They responded quickly to the request, but have taken a day to pick the item off the shelf and pack it, so it is still sitting in Ct., when it should be on a plane on its way to Bermuda. We could probably do without the Racor, but it would not be wise to leave with a filter housing that had a potentially significant leakage path (some training from a former career is influential here). We have also determined that the Raymarine navigation equipment on board is indeed putting out GPS navigational information on the NMEA output connections, so it SHOULD be possible to see these on the VHF and SSB radios. The next part of this task is to make sure we have the correct wires identified, and also to find out what NMEA sentences the radios expect to see. And to push the right button combinations on the radio to see if it needs this "push" to see the GPS info. The work to make the boat work never stops…

We have been having cine evenings here on board. Before we left WV, we recorded a number of films that the local PBS stations broadcast, and we have been enjoying them. First up was “High Noon”, and then last night we watched “Hairspray”, the one by John Waters done in Baltimore. Highly appreciated. We thing we may progress to dominoes tonight. I don’t know when we will get back to SG1, but we have discovered a number of Stargates on Bermuda, and they are in some of the photos on Flickr.

Dinner last night was Breton galettes de sarasin, with oeuf, jambon, et fromage, and simple galettes with butter and sugar for desert. We even have some movies of crewmembers making the galettes. We made enough for dinner last night and breakfast this AM, and were mightily satisfied. We had some nice English scrumpy to accompany them, instead of the traditional cider, but it all went together well.

The weather continues to be unpleasant, blowing out of the SW at 20-25 with gusts to 35. It makes a LOT of electricity, so that we only run the gen-set to heat our hot water, but it is getting tiring. A high is supposed to move in tomorrow and get things settled down a bit. We have seen a few boats leave from the ARC rally, but we don’t know where they are headed – surely not to the NW. The cruise ship also left this morning, with help from a tug to get off the pier.

The weather situation has also affected our internet connectivity. The best signal, with the highest speed, is pretty weak, and when the boat moves a lot, the antenna loses sight of it, or something gets in the way. This is why I haven’t uploaded more photos yet – the connection times out. There is one much stronger signal coming from Bermuda Yacht Services, but the speed is quite slow – they likely have a LOT of people hooked in. And they occasionally won’t accept our connections. We have just found a third AP, which is stronger than #1, so we have some diversity, in case things get really nasty. It is amazing how dependent we are on this technology – before it existed I guess we would all just sit on the pier and wait for the mail boat to come in with letters. And parts would be a REALLY long wait…

We are hoping for better weather this weekend, if only so that a LOT of boats that are here would LEAVE, and we would then have been internet connections….

We will set off the SPOT device later today so that you can see right where we are anchored. We think we will start doing this each day, so that this page does not appear blank. The SPOT shared page evidently drops all position reports that are more than 24 hours old, although they are still available to the subscriber.

Monday in Bermuda

2008-05-19T17:40:00.000-04:00

Still no word on when Goiot is going to ship the part to us. We have found the part in question on a website in Europe that sells Jeanneau parts, and it appears from the drawing that the entire quadrant with its “clamp” is considered one part. The key is a separate part, which we don’t need, either. We just have to wait, but it is clear that we are not alone in waiting, because the entire ARC fleet is also waiting. Next Monday is “Bermuda Day”, so we will likely be here to help them celebrate.

The winds they are blowing again, and a trip to town in the dinghy today was a wet event. The forecast is for more of the same, getting even windier on Wed and Thurs. We think our anchor is well and truly dug in, and we don’t plan to put out a second one. The boat rides quite well to this one, with two snubbers sharing the load. We watched one other boat take down a jib today, in the middle of this high wind, and we wondered why they decided to do it now. They put it up later in the afternoon, so we can only conjecture that they needed to do a simple repair.

We ran the watermaker to make water, and the genset to make the water hot for showers, but the windmill is putting out enough power to keep everything else on board well-powered. Dinner last nite was whole-wheat pasta with garlic and olive oil, with a touch of hot pepper and shavings of parmesean on top. We started with a very nice salad compose and overall, it was quite good. Lunch today was rice salad, and we figured out a way to provide anchovies for those who prefer them, while not sullying the plates of those who disdain them, and everyone was happy.

We also finally fixed the anchor windlass control connector, which had gotten doused with salt water and the contacts corroded. It turned out to be relatively easy to remove the existing connector from the anchor locker by disconnecting the interior connections, so that the new connector could be soldered on in the comfort of the interior cabin, instead of on-deck.

We have heard several visitors comment that more photos would be appreciated, so this evening we will try to load a bunch of photos. This may be delayed because our latest internet connection is a bit slow, however. Photos of cats and the Bahamas will be moved to the “Moving South” folder on Flickr, while the transatlantic folder will be limited to photos of this trip. If any of you have any photos of us shoving off from Stuart, please send them along so that they can be posted on the website (we know who you are).

Enjoy the new photos.

A Sunny Day

2008-05-18T12:00:00.004-04:00

We were without connectivity yesterday after about noon because of the high winds. Today is a lot calmer, and we have found another unguarded access point that has a better signal. It has a name of Bermuda Yacht Services, so I don’t know when they will start to ask for money for it, but as long as it is free, we will continue to use it. We were seeing 25-30 with gusts to 35+ yesterday afternoon. The seas were quite choppy in the anchorage, and a lot of boats that were med-moored in a nearby marina moved out and anchored. We are really glad we are not tied up against the sea-wall, where there are some large boats rafted two deep. They must really have pounded against one-another yesterday. Our anchor held absolutely, and we put out another snubber to share the load, and we just rocked all day, listening to Dylan and Roy Orbison. There is a nice Alden ~50 next to us, and their bridle parted during the day, and we had to call over to them to tell them about it. It was surprising that they did not feel the change in motion. We also got a good rain-water wash-down yesterday, which was well appreciated. Chick spent a large amount of time in the cockpit, under the enclosure, monitoring our anchor situation. We also figured out a way to tie the emergency tiller to the wheel so that we can use the wheel somewhat to steer. We do not plan to really test this, though, because we plan to stay right here till the quadrant arrives.

Today the dawn broke on a flat calm and we took advantage of the conditions to climb the mast and tie off the SSB antenna to the top of the backstay, and regain use of the topping lift. We also tried to rig a second halliard for the jib, but it appears that our line is too thick. So, we need to buy more line. When we get to France… We also re-organized two of the lazerette lockers, and as I am writing this, Art and Nathalie are off hiking.

We had nachos and partied last nite while starting to watch Stargate-SG1 videos. Nathalie did not like the Goauld “monsters”, but after two episodes she may be willing to admit that the show is not just monsters and special effects. rxc told them to give it some time, and maybe this will become an evening staple for us, at least as long as we are here in Bermuda, and maybe even while we are underway.

We are also trying to find a working link to a webcam in St. Georges Harbor. There is one at the weather office, but it is too wide-angle to see any detail in the harbor.

Blowing Again

2008-05-17T11:36:00.004-04:00

It is Saturday morning and we are all tucked in, waiting for the wind to stop blowing 25-30 kts here inside the harbor. We had planned to go ashore and buy another zipper to replace on the bimini, but with the chop that this wind is stirring up, the dinghy ride would not be very pleasant, so everyone is just reading, or napping, or just waiting. At least we are making good electricity, and water into the tanks with the power from the windmill. The internet connection is sporadic, though, as the boat moves back and forth, so I have to save messages before trying to sent them off, because they occaisionally don't make it out of the boat.

Some other boats in the anchorage have moved to the west end to get away from the chop, but since our steering situation is not easy, we will just have to tough it out here. It should blow through by the end of the day.

We had a very nice birthday dinner last nite at Cafe Gio, and tried the local specialy drink - "Dark and Stormy" - which is rum and ginger beer over ice. Nice, but not spectacular.

Ahh well, just a lazy day on the boat. And we can't even do some of the planned chores, like oil filter changes, because of the boat motion. We may start a Stargate SG-1 festival later...

Waiting for Goiot

2008-05-16T15:04:00.002-04:00

We are still here in Bermuda, waiting for the replacement quadrant clamp to arrive. The weather is wonderful, it is quite a charming place, and we are all getting along wonderfully. Unfortunately, we all want to be on our way to the Azores, but we are stuck waiting for Goiot.

Goiot is the Jeanneau supplier for parts like the quadrant, and we have just learned from Jeanneau that they only sell the quadrant as an entire unit. And it is not a stock item, so it will take them until the middle of next week to ship it here. We are trying to find out whether (1) the parts are interchangeable, so that the new clamp will fit on the old quandrant, and if so, (2) whether they can ship just the clamp here to Bermuda, while the larger quadrant piece goes to the house in Margueron. This would have a significant effect on shipping costs. However, if they cannot guarantee that the part will be replaceable, then we will have to have the entire quadrant sent here.

We are still doing a number of chores, like replacing the connector for the windlass control, and fuel filters, and doing some work up the mast. However, it looks like we will be spending a considerable amount of the next week doing some sightseeing. Not a bad way to spend a beutiful week in the springtime.

I don't know if I commented about this, but there are a LOT of other boats waiting here to go north back to the US. We talked to one today, probably about 55 ft long, which lost their autopilot on the trip north from Tortola. We traded sea stories about how bad the wind was, and how high the seas were. They had to hand steer for 2 days, while we had to steer with our feet for 12 hours. Not clear which was worse. And the sailmakers are full-up with work to repair blown-out sails.

Ah well. Off to a restaurant tonite for a birthday party. More tommorrow.

Bermuda at last

2008-05-15T15:07:00.002-04:00

This is a running log of the days at sea, from Stuart to Bermuda.

May 8, 2008

The first day of the trip started out quite well. We left the pier at 1210 pm, with the tide going out, and made it out the St. Lucie inlet with no problems, not even running aground in front of Mannatee Pocket. We turned left, put up the sail, and had a glorious beat to the NE with 18 kts of indicated wind. Art put out a fishing line and we waited. The sun was shining, we were doing 7 kts, and all was well with the world. Art thought he got a nibble around 4 PM, and then at 5, rxc saw something moving quite quickly thru the water across the back of the boat, and Art said that it looked like a fish was going after the lure. Sure enough, he then got a strike from a 4-foot long mahi-mahi. He set the hook, and off it ran, jumping and moving on both sides of the boat. He kept the pressure on, though, and after about 30 minutes, we landed him. A big male mahi-mahi, all different colors of the rainbow. He changed colors before our eyes, and it took some work to subdue him, but in the end we did, and now he is just a pile of fish-steaks waiting for the pan.

About the time we landed the fish, the wind shifted more to the NE, and the seas turned lumpy, so it became impossible to cook anything. We even had to turn on the engine to make it across the Gulf Stream, which was pushing us too far north. We eventually ended up rolling in the sails, and motoring thru the night till the wind clocked around more to the south in the early hours of the morning on the 8th. Up went the sails, and we have been reaching along since then doing a steady 7 kts thru the water, 6 kts over the ground. It looks like we have caught a back eddy of the Gulf Stream that is against us.

The noon-noon position shows us making 6 kts on average, which is great. The wind is still clocking some more, and while I am writing this, I am receiving the WEFAX on the SSB, to see what is coming.

We had a little bit of queasiness on board, and breakfast was mostly cereal. Lunches have been sandwiches, with wonderful bread from Mr. Bread in Stuart, and we hope to have fresh fish tonite. Nathalie warned us that the fish event would be messy, and it was. It was a good thing we have the salt-water wash-down, to rinse away all of the fish debris.

The boat is doing well, but we discovered some leaks up forward, through the hatch and down the windlass, whenever we get some water on-board. These will have to be looked at when we get to Bermuda.

May 9, 2008

Good night passage. Winds gradually shifting to south, and boat is riding much better. Seas are about 6 feet , with occasional larger swells, but boat riding well. Blue skies and puffy white clouds this morning. We are now thinking about installing the preventer before the winds clock completely astern. The main is slatting occasionally as the swells pass, and the jib is also starting to be shadowed by the main.

We cooked up the mahi-mahi last nite, and it was great. We will likely have more today, since the fish was so big. Breakfast included some choc chip cookies made by Mary before we left they are quite super, and I really need to get that recipe from her.

French lessons with Nathalie are progressing quite well. We are learning a number of new French words, and customs. We are also teaching her some au courant boating terms that she did not know. We are getting along quite well. Chick commented that we are also developing a routine where we don’t have to be together all the time, but are able to go off on our own to take naps or do other things. I noted that I am doing much more sleeping than I expected. It is hard to get any real restful sleep, with the boat motion and the sounds of the waves against the side of the boat, so you need more sleep to make up for the fitful nature of it all.

Our watch schedule is 4 hours each from 6AM to 6PM and then 3 hours from 6PM to 6AM. This works quite well, and Nathalie is also helping with the watches, because it is not possible to do much cooking with the size of the swells we are seeing. We are a great group, working well, and having fun.

May 10, 2008

Another great day at sea. The wind has clocked even further and we have furled the genny because it was not contributing much (we do that with things that don’t contribute). Art and Nathalie saw a whale yesterday, but I was asleep, and did not respond to the cries of “Whale ho!” They also noted that we have been attacked several times in the night by flying fish. I noted one of them on deck this afternoon when we were checking out the rigging. It had turned quite stiff, and was only usable as bait, which we do not really need now. We had more mahi-mahi last nite – still quite good, and we still have quite a lot of it. We all took showers today, and feel much better with the salt washed off. We also had to run the engine to charge batteries, and we used that opportunity to make water for 3 hours. We are still on the central tank, and it appears that this crew does not use much water at all. We could probably have made it all the way to Bermuda on the water in the tanks, but it is nice to have the watermaker available.

Lunch was steak with Roquefort sauce, and Caesar salad. Quite nice. I think that overall, we are not eating as much as we anticipated. Maybe that will change during the next leg. The boat is doing well, as are the crew.

May 11, 2008

First excitement of the trip. The wind has been gradually clocking towards the north, and we have been adjusting our course to deal with this. We have dropped the genoa because it was non-productive, and have been running thru the nite with the main up all the way. Last nite, we went to bed doing about 5 kts, with a sizeable swell running from directly astern. Rxc was awakened about 4:00 by a significant increase in boat motion, and noticed LOTS of lightning around. LOTS of lightning. He went to the foot of the hatch, and asked Art whether he needed some help, because it looked like a blow was coming on. Art thought that he could work his way thru the cells that seemed to have popped up, so rxc went back to bed. Chick has been sleeping on deck, and he was also awake, so all seemed OK. At 5:30, Chick came below and woke up rxc with the comment that they needed some help up top. The lightning was still quite spectacular, and the windmill was making some amazing sounds as it dealt with 42kt winds. Everyone agreed that they were really praying that the lightning would not strike, and it did not, so maybe there really is something to this prayer thing…

Art had the engine running, and wanted to reef the main, so rxc helped get in, at least a double reef. During this evolution, the wind wandered all over the place, and so did the boat. The movement was quite exciting, but since they had lowered the enclosure side curtains, they managed to stay dry in spite of the strong rain that had fallen. After about 45 minutes, the winds dropped to 4 kts, and it was time to roll the main all the way in, and motor. We have been motoring since the change of the watch at 6 AM, and made a lot of water with fully-charged batteries.

We had a late Sunday brunch of bacon and eggs (quite tasty!) and a good French lesson from Nathalie. We also found out that this trip with be Art’s first meeting with Nathalie’s parents, who live in Paris. He has learned how to say Bonjour and enchante, and Nathalie has hopes that he will be able to say some other things to them when we arrive. So this trip will not just serve to relocate the boat, but also to arrange for a meeting with the inlaws.

Nathalie is gradually re-organizing the galley, as we figure out what is stowed where. Now that the seas have flattened out, this is now possible. Dinner last nite was a fantastic paella with the last of the mahi-mahi. Just right before an exciting nite of sailing.

We motored quite a bit today (it is now 5:00 PM), and decided to shift fuel from the jerry jugs to the main tank. This evolution went well. Unfortunately, we then decided to check the fuel filters, because the engine was surging a bit. Rxc decided to check the pickup tube first, and found that the tank is REALLY full, because he had some diesel spill out of the tank. This caused a quick halt to fuel filter changes, until we burn down the fuel level in the tank a bit. We think we got all of the fuel that spilled.

May 12, 2008

More excitement. The first evening watch last nite was rewarded with a spectacular lightning show that lasted from about 7 pm to 8:30 pm. We watched a large squall line drift down on us from the NW, and we headed a bit more to the SE to try to avoid it. We only received a small amount of rain during this first bout with these cells, but the next watch from 9-midnite was not so lucky. LOTS of rain cells, and LOTS of rain. At midnite, the skies cleared, and we stopped motoring, putting out the mainsail and a bit of the genny. This increased boat speed quite a bit, so that when the 3AM watch came on, the boat was doing a steady 6-7 kts. The 3-6AM watch watched the winds continue to build, to 30-35 kts, and the boat speed built to 8-9 kts, with following winds and waves. The waves also built steadily, reaching easily 9-10 feet.

This caused us to reduce sail even more, to a scrap of main and a scrap of genny, and the boat speed dropped down to the 6 kts range, until about 7 AM, when the building winds(30-35 with gusts to 45 kts) and seas caused us to furl the main entirely, and just leave out a bit of the genny. We could not keep the boat on a steady course towards Bermuda otherwise.

It is now 11:45 AM, and the wind has dropped a bit. The NWS says that we should be seeing 20-30kts, with seas of 11-17 ft., and it appears that they are correct, for once. Yesterday, they said that we should be seeing 25 kts here today, and 40 kts tomorrow, but it looks like tomorrow arrived a bit early. We still think we will make it to St. Georges cut tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon before dark.

Conditions are too rough to do much cooking, but we will have cup-of-soup for lunch. The side curtains in the cockpit have been a godsend, because we have already had several breaking waves pound against the stbd quarter, and the enclosure has kept the worst of the weather out of the cockpit. We still have to wear foulies, because the corners are not installed, and the overhead zipper leaks, but we are not totally miserable, and at least it is not cold.

May 15, 2008

Well, it was premature to announce “excitement” on May 11, or even May 12. Rather, up to that time, our experiences should have been labeled as “unpleasantness”. We were not scared, but the motion was miserable, and we were having trouble sleeping well. On May 13, all that changed, in a few seconds.

We had been watching the weather charts coming out of the NWS, and they foresaw one low after another coming out of the US, heading east, and piling up winds of 30-40 kts down in the area where we were sailing. The winds were favorable, at least, coming out of the W-SW, but with wind comes ocean swells, and 30 kts of wind over a long fetch can generate some mighty large swells. We did not mind the wind, but the swells made the sailing quite difficult, especially since we were headed dead down-wind.

On the morning of the 13th, we were headed about 082 degrees with the wind dead astern. The winds were supposed to build thru the day, to 35-45 kts, and the seas were supposed to be 15-18 feet. We had the jib out a bit, and the main as well, but eventually we gave it all up because they were flogging too much as the boat jibed. We had lots of fuel on board, so we decided to run the engine at low speed to maintain steerage, and we let the autopilot guide us to the waypoint at Gibbs Hill. The autopilot was doing well and we surfed down the front of the waves all day. We had the enclosure up in the cockpit, so we did not feel the entire force of the wind. We also had some breaking waves over the stern and the quarters which were mostly stopped by the enclosure. The winds continued to build, and the maximum speed that we saw was 55.5 kts.

But overall, all was going reasonably well, considering the conditions. Around 2:00 PM, however, right after lunch, we were about 40 miles from Bermuda, discussing something (no once remembers quite what) when the boat took a great lurch to starboard and laid over on its side. The side curtains on the stbd side kept a LOT of water out of the cockpit, but we still got quite wet. The boat eventually righted itself, but did not steer away from the waves, so Art grabbed the helm, and found that he had no steering. Not good.

We opened the emergency tiller access and looked down to find the quadrant broken away from the rudderpost. There is a clamp with a key in it that attaches the quadrant to the rudderpost, and it fractured in two places. Photos are available on flikr. We got out the emergency tiller, and rxc and Chick rigged lines from the tiller to the winches and tried to use this to steer down the front of the waves. Art called Bermuda harbor control, and let them know about our situation. We even got out the EPIRB, and prepared for the worst, if necessary.

Art then joined the steering effort, and figured that if he sat on the deck with his back against the seat, he could push with his feet. This was a great improvement, because the previous method using lines was not able to respond quickly to the waves, and it also kept pulling the emergency tiller up off of the rudderpost. Rxc sat on the opposite side and pushed with his feet, and together they managed to steer a course generally in the direction of Bermuda. We kept checking in with Bermuda harbor control every two hours, and kept pushing the OK button on the SPOT device, and eventually we made it to the Gibbs Hill waypoint, where we were able to put up a bit of jib to make the steering easier. At that point rxc and Art figured that they could steer the boat by themselves, pushing with feet, and pulling with shoulders, so they alternated for an hour at a time to steer to the entrance to St. Georges harbor.

When we got to the entrance to the harbor, it was not possible for the helmsman to steer a straight course thru the cut, so rxc took the tiller between his legs and used thigh-power to muscle the boat into the harbor. We then had to anchor in the quarantine anchorage, because we arrived at midnite, after customs was closed. Art handled the helm while rxc and Chick handled the anchor. We set 175 ft of chain in 30 feet of water, surrounded by some very LARGE traditional sailing ships and a fair number of racers and cruisers, had a GREAT pasta meal, and then crashed for the nite.

Next day, we had to retrieve the anchor and motor over to the customs dock, where we tied up to do paperwork. We tied up ahead of a boat that had her jib completely blown out. There was also some others in harbor in the same condition who had come up from the south , beating to weather(extremely unpleasant) in the same conditions we had seen going downwind. They are still there on the customs dock today, so they must have had some other major issues to be allowed to stay on the customs dock.

We, however, being hardy sailors, checked in, cast off, and (still using the emergency tiller) proceeded to the regular yacht anchorage, where we are currently set.

We have luckily found an unguarded WiFi access point, which has given us internet access while we are here. Once again, the external antenna has proven to be a major asset. It is seeing lots of access points that the laptop cannot, even including the large cruise ship that was here till noon today. We tried to hook into their system, but it is password protected. And there does not seem to be any public WiFi service here in St. Georges, which is strange, given the wide availability of such systems in the Bahamas. There are a few internet cafes here in town, but we don’t have to schlep the computer there, with this access.

With the internet access, we were able to call Dorothy and jlm and let them know where we were, and how we got here. We were also able to contact Jeanneau in Annapolis to order a new clamp, which was supposed to be delivered here by Monday. Unfortunately, we just received an email that they sent the wrong part, and the one we want is back-ordered. We sent them photos of the broken part, which is how they figured out that they had the wrong one(!) So, we are not sure now how long we will be here. The weather is nice, but not as warm as Florida (not sultry), although we have noticed that people can grow bananas here, so it doesn’t get cold.

We did laundry yesterday, and today we dropped off the side curtains to be re-sewn at the sailmaker in town. There are LOTS of boats still here who should have left a long time ago. They are trapped by the weather, which is now showing ANOTHER LOW coming out of the US, and what appears to be a major storm developing between here and the Azores, where we are going next. Talking to locals, it appears that the weather this year is unusually rainy and windy. They said that one cruise ship had lost someone overboard between the US and Bermuda, and they were never able to find him – the helicopters could not cope with the conditions.

So, we are here for a while, waiting for parts. At least this is something we can fix ourselves, and does not require hauling the boat.

More to come as things develop.

Last shopping

2008-05-06T15:56:00.002-04:00

We did a grand tour of the Stuart area this afternoon, stopping at several CVS pharmacies to look for extra clip-on sunglasses(success!), propylene glycol antifreeze for the watermaker when it eventualy gets winterized in France (amazingly, SUCCESS!), a reasonably-priced gaff (success!), personal sundries (success!), and lunch(success!). Chick had never been to Mr. Bread, so we went there for lunch, and he is looking forward to coming back with Dorothy. We also checked in the lawnmower store for the key, but the UPS delivery had not arrived, so it was not there. We will go back tommorrow on the way to pick up Art and Nathalie.

Now, it looks like all is set, so it is off to the pool for a bit.

Last minute preparations

2008-05-06T10:49:00.003-04:00

Chick arrived here yesterday, and was immediately put to work hauling the dinghy on deck, securing "stuff", and stowing "stuff", and today he helped raise the genoa. His presence is a real godsend, in view of the amount of "stuff" that needed to be stowed/done.

Art and Nathalie did the shopping for provisions yesterday and we found it all in the cabin when we came back from drinks with Marty and Steve, who are supposed to be heading north on May 15. We were a bit daunted by the amount of provisions to be stowed, but we found room for it all, and now the boat is riding a bit down by the bow - on her lines more in the bow than in the stern. And to think that when we started out with this boat, the bow rode at least 6 inches above the waterline.

It looks like the SPOT device works quite well. It tracked me all the way down to FtL and back, including the side trip to PBI to pick up Chick. The shared page look great and friends and family will be able to track us as we progress. We plan to push the button every change of the watch.

Tommorrow, we will pick up Art and Nathalie at 10, move to the fuel dock as soon as they get settled in, and then shove off some time after noon, on the high tide. We are now off to do some very last minute shopping.

Preparation for Sea

2008-05-04T16:08:00.004-04:00

rxc has been working hard to get the boat ready for departure, which is currently forseen to occur on Wednesday, May 7, around noon (high tide here in Stuart). The list of stuff to buy and stuff to do has been quite long. He recovered the genoa from the sailmaker - they just replaced the leech and foot tapes which has deteriorated in the UV down here. The medical kit is supposed to arrive tommorrow (Monday). We now have 2 backup handheld GPS units on-board, and Art will be bringing his handheld, as well. Tommorrow, rxc will go down to Ft. Laudredale to pick up the new electronic chips for the chartplotter, and Chick will be arriving at PBI at about 12:30.

The boat is quite garish at this point, with 12 bright-yellow diesel gas cans all over the place, and the dinghy engine is stowed, but the dinghy itself is waiting for help from Chick. The engine oil was changed yesterday, and the watermaker checked out fine 4 days ago, when it was un-pickled. We also have flashing lights to hang on our lifejackets, powerful SOLAS-grade signal flares, and LOTS of kitty litter and kitty food and kitty grease and a kitty dental kit for the cats that are NOT on-board. rxc will be picking up a new key for the lawnmower (in France) on Tuesday, and will also be rigging the jacklines on Tuesday. Art and Nathalie will be provisioning the boat on Monday while rxc is in Ft. L and picking up Chick.

All-in-all, quite a bit to do for the trip. But the weather looks good, and the SPOT website now has a "shared page" location that will show (I think) the location of the boat. I think that it will also show the track, or at least the history of messages sent. We will have to check this out over the next few days - maybe with some tracking messages sent from the car as rxc goes down to Ft. L and back.

Back in Stuart Again

2008-05-04T15:57:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been a while since we updated this blog, but it has been quite a busy time, with amazingly good results. We spent 2 weeks here cleaning up the boat and getting ready to move the kitties, which included a last-minute trip to the vet to get an up-to-date health certificate. This was a good practice session for the big trip, and everyone seemed to do quite well. Dante caused a stir in the vet office when we let him out of the carrier – one person asked whether he was really a domesticated cat.

On April 17, we left the boat with 4 kitties, 7 bags, 2 bicycles, and 3 carry-ons, for Miami airport. We were joined in Hobe Sound by our friend Karen, and we had a limo-service pick us up there for the trip to the airport. We had an entire full-size van and a trailer to ourselves, which was good because of the large number of bags, and the 2-hour drive passed with no delays.
At the airport, we found Jim and Patty, who had flown down from Jacksonville, almost immediately, and we merged all of the bags and presented ourselves to the Air France check-in. We wondered, at first, whether we might be able to get the kitties on-board without declaring them, because the initial check-in person did not say anything about carry-ons, but the ticket person noted that we had told AF that we would have a cat, and she asked us to weigh them. Our original plan had been to check in two cats with two people, and then switch the cats in the carriers, and check them in again, with two different people, but because things were going well, we decided to play it straight. We put the first two kitties on the scale, and they were under the 4kg limit. Then, Calypso went on the scale, and she registered 6kg. The agent looked hard at this, but didn’t say anything, and just asked for the fourth cat. So, next was Dante, and he tipped the scale at 9.6 kg (21 lbs, with the carrier). She looked at this, furled her brow, and said that he was too big to take inside the cabin. We responded that he was in the same carrier as the other cats, who were below the limit, and she insisted that he could not go in the cabin. We insisted that he could not go in the hold, and this started a review that escalated through 3 levels of AF management until we found a sympathetic manager who was also a cat owner, who decided that we could take him along. rxc asked at one point whether they wanted to see him, outside the carrier, and this was met with a firm “NO”. They clearly did not relish the thought of a monster cat loose in the check-in area.

With this approval, and boarding passes in hand, we moved next to security, where we had to remove the cats from the carriers and hand-carry them thru the metal detectors. The TSA people were quite amused by this procession of people schlepping cats, and of course, the big red slug attracted the biggest attention. The four felines did not complain at all over this handling, but Dante did resist a bit going back in the carrier. In the end, we made it to the gate about an hour before boarding. Boarding went well – no one wanted to see anything, and we settled in for the trip.

The kitties stayed quiet for the whole trip to Paris, getting a few reassuring pets through slightly opened zippers, but otherwise just accepting their fate, whatever it was to be. In Paris, we passed through immigration quite quickly, and then changed terminals, and had to go through security again for the connecting flight to Bordeaux. Security in Paris was a bit more exciting than Miami, because the supervisor of the screeners there was highly allergic to cats, and when we brought them out to go through the metal detectors, she fled in terror. She came back as rxc was trying to get Dante back in the carrier, which took a bit of time – he seemed to want to get out and take a look around this new world. She told us to move the cats out of the area quickly, in quite a nasty tone. A true Parisian…

The connecting flight to Bordeaux was uneventful, and we landed about on time. We picked up all of the luggage, which all made the connection with no issues, and then proceeded to customs. They saw all the baggage, and started to ask questions about where we were from and where we were going. We explained about changing residences, and that the cats were going to their new homes. They next asked for their papers(Papers pleaze), and we were so glad that we had had them chipped. They pulled out their chip reader, checked the batteries several times, and verified that we had 4 cats with the same chips that were listed on the papers, and wished us a good trip. It seemed like they were quite happy to be able to use their chip reader on a real animal. We then picked up the rental car, which was a medium size VW van. Unfortunately, because we had so much luggage, and 5 people, we had to rent another small car to get it all to the house. But we loaded it all up, and headed to the house, where we arrived about 3:00 pm, and let the cats out of the bags. They immediately headed for the litter pans we set up (everyone held everything for the entire trip, except Zabelle, who had to let loose on the absorbent diaper we installed in the carrier), and started to explore the house.

We then spent nearly 2 weeks getting installed at the house. We showed Jim and Patty and Karen around the area, with trips to St. Emilion, Marmande(which included our first French traffic accident), and up the Dordogne as far as Domme. A great time was had by all. Jim and Patty left to go up to Paris for a few days, and Karen stayed to help unpack and enjoy the French countryside.

On April 29th, rxc and Karen came back to Florida, and rxc has been working hard on getting the last bits ready for the crossing. More in the next installment.

Back in Stuart

2008-04-10T09:14:00.002-04:00

We have been back in Stuart since March 30, trying to get the kitties ready to go to France, and the boat ready to go across the pond. We cut the Bahamas trip short because we were worried about getting stuck in the Abacos by a front, and then being forced to do something stupid to make it here in time to make the plane.

After we left Bill and Dot, we motored up to Spanish Wells, just off the north coast of Eluthera. We got a slip in a marina there because the weather predictions said we were going to get hit by a good front, with strong winds greater than 30 kts. We spent 3 days there, walking around town, which is really different from the others we have seen in the Bahamas. It is clearly very prosperous, from the fishing, and the houses show it. We did not find any interesting restaurants, however, because the island is “dry” (no alcohol is sold there), so the only restaurants are just luncheonettes.

We had been looking forward to spending two weeks wandering thru the Abacos, including March Harbor, but listening to the weather forecasts and the other cruisers talking, it became apparent that these three-day fronts where you spent the time hunkered down in a marina or on a mooring, or anchored in a hole, are quite common. And, they can occasionally last for a week before you get favorable winds/seas to get where you want to go. So, considering that we were only 3 weeks away from flying to France, we decided to start to head back.

Our first idea was to head back thru the Berry Islands, which we had visited on the way to Nassau. This would have been a downwind sail from Spanish Wells, but would have been a long day. Instead, listening to others as we left, we decided to head north towards to Sandy Point, on the SW corner of Great Abaco Island. We decided to leave Spanish Wells to the west, instead of taking the northern route thru the reef because the weather forecasters were predicting 3-6 ft seas, and it looked like they were breaking on the reef north of the island. So west we went, and when we made the turn thru the cut into the Northeast Providence Channel, the winds were on the beam at 15 kts, and the seas were flat.

As the day progressed, however, the winds and the seas both rose considerably. We eventually saw 25 kts steady wind, with 30-35 kt gusts, and the seas built to about 9-12 feet. We had both sails double reefed and were doing 8.5 kts on a beam reach as we surfed along the waves. A grand time was had by all. Eventually, we made it to Sandy Point, where we anchored in the lee of the island, and spent a quiet night recovering.

Next day the wind died completely, and we had to motor for 10 hours to Lucaya, which is the resort district near Freeport. We stayed in a nice marina there, and had a great meal in a local restaurant recommended by other cruisers. Next day, we left late, headed for West End, where we planned to stage for the trip back to the US. We heard on the radio that 57 boats left the anchorage at Lucaya that morning for Lake Worth, to try to get ahead of the weather. We were alone on the trip NW to West End. We passed the big commercial port of Freeport, and saw one of the Yachtwise Yacht Transport ships anchored there, empty. This is ironic, considering that we wanted to use their services, but their prices and lack of timeliness in getting back to us caused us to decide to sail the boat across. There were several other ships anchored there, seemingly with nowhere to go. We guess it is cheaper to lay ships up than to drop prices and attract more customers…

At West End, we anchored outside the marina and watched an evening wedding on the beach. We are probably in the happy couple’s wedding photos somewhere. Hope they like the nautical touch…

Next day, the 30th, we left West End, hoping for E winds at 15 kts, but we only found about 7kts, so we ended up motoring all the way back to St. Lucie inlet. There were some threatening clouds over the Lake Worth inlet, but they dissipated before they got to us. Our return to the US was accompanied by a return to US boaters, who don’t seem to know the rules of the road. One sailboat heading north up the ICW insisted that there was a special rule for boats in the ICW that they had right-of-way over boats crossing from the right. Later up the river, we faced one large boat heading down the narrow channel, and as we watched in amazement, and then in horror, another large boat passed them and headed directly towards us. It was like being on a two-lane road with two large trucks heading towards you in both lanes. rxc gave them 5-short blasts, and the guy who was passing waved at us as he tucked in at the last second. It really got the heart pumping…

Back in Stuart, we are also back in the same slip, and Mary and Eric helped us tie up. Shane and Annie were also there to greet their favorite kitties, who are very happy to be back in FL.

We have been doing all sort of stuff for the trip. We have packed up 4 large bags to travel, and will pack 3 more before we are done. We are also going to take the bikes along, even though we have to pay for their transport on AF. It will make the boat much easier to handle if we don’t have to deal with them onboard. We have put down some carpet from Walmart to replace the throw-rugs, and the cats really like it.

All-in-all, we are gradually getting ready for the trip. More to come later…

Comments Now Allowed

2008-03-26T15:15:00.001-04:00

We have just discovered that coments were only allowed on this blog for readers with google addresses. We have opened the comments up to all, hoping that they will be civil, constructive, and witty. We can always hope, can't we?

Food Clarification Part 2

2008-03-26T15:06:00.000-04:00

Well, we have now received a demand for additional clarification of the food situation. It appears that some of us are NOT getting enough food out of a can, and certainly NOT the type of food desired, out of a can. Yes, there is LOTS of dry food, and water, but this is NOT ACCEPTABLE. These feelings are being made clear, and given all of the assurances that we are eating well, some of us want the world to know that they have been shanghaied, kept aboard against their will, allowed to fall into the water when they have tried to escape (numerous times), and have not been fed any of the wonderful fish that is all around us.

On the other hand, some of us had a wonderful meal of pasta with fine-aged red sauce (Harpers Ferry, 2006), accompanied by a Brunello di Montalcino (2001) last night....

Rock Sound and Hatchet Bay

2008-03-26T15:02:00.000-04:00

We left Warderick Wells on Saturday the 22nd, with a very nice SSE wind. We had to use the engine to get off the mooring and out of the cut, but once we were in Exuma Sound, the sails came up and we stayed on one tack all the way to Eluthera. It was a GRAND sail, in 15 kts of wind, going 7 kts, on average. We arrived at Powell Point around 1:00 pm, and then pinched our way into Rock Sound, until we couldn’t quite round Sound Point without tacking to get the last half-mile to Rock Sound. Since we wanted to be nice to our four-footed passengers, who do not like the sound of aggressive sailing (i.e., tacking) we decided to start the engine and motor the last bit. If we had tried harder, we could have done the entire trip on one tack. We anchored right in front of the town, and it was clear that they were celebrating something (we found out later it was “homecoming”, but we are not quite clear what this means). We stayed on the boat and made some very nice seafood risotto with canned salmon and crab out of a pouch, and were well satisfied with the results.

Next day, up at 7, to hear the weather, which was for south winds, around 10 kts, so we motored out of Rock Sound, and up north to Hatchet Bay, which is near Bill and Dot, who now have a family vacation home on Eluthera. We motored all day, because the winds were too light from the south, across 40 miles of calm water that never got deeper than about 25 feet. We got our first real taste of crab/lobster pots in a while (we think). At least that is what they looked like, with lines of floats across our path north. Being well experienced with such critters, we stayed away from them, and arrived in Hatchet Bay around 2:30 PM. We took our time checking out the harbor, because Bill and Dot were off at a pig-roast, and we decided to set the anchor in one of the deepest parts of the Bay, about 30 feet(!).

For those of you who are Ches Bay sailors, this sounds a bit daft, but the only spots to anchor in shallower water were taken up with moorings, which were occupied. The charts all say that the holding in Hatchet Bay is poor, with lots of grass, so we put out 150 ft of chain and increased the pulled on it gradually, until we thought we were well set. Then we got ready for dinner. Bill called from the govt pier about 4:45, and we went off in the newly-speedy dinghy to meet him.
We had to weave our way under the mooring lines of the local ferry, to the small dock where we left the dinghy and went off to see the new house.

Bill and Dot’s house is up on top of the ridge north of Hatchet Bay, with amazing views of both the Bight of Eluthera to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Bill’s grandfather bought the land 60 year ago, but they didn’t build on it until last year, when one of Bill’s sons found a good contractor, imported a lot of building materials, furnishings and other assorted stuff to Eluthera, and spent considerable time and effort to make sure that the job was done right. And he really did, because the house is spectacular. We had diner with Bill and Dot, son Mike, his wife sandy, and their children Ryan and Sarah. Great meal, great wine, and great conversation. Bill and Dot are absolutely wonderful hosts, and we would LOVE to come back after we get settled in France. We finally had to say goodnight when the lightning from the approaching storm became too frequent to ignore. Bill took us back to the dinghy landing, and we got back to the boat just as the drops started to fall.

We have been diligent this trip in not leaving the dinghy in the water at night. Part of this is to minimize the chances that it might decide to “walk away”, but also because we want to be able to start up the boat and move, if we have to do so in a hurry. We also don’t like to hear the slap of the water against the dinghy in the night, or hear it bump against the boat. We therefore have gotten quite good at getting the dinghy up on the stern quickly and ready to move, and this stood us in great stead that night.

No sooner did we have the dinghy up, and ourselves stowed down below, when the winds just started to HOWL. The windmill gave out a sound that we don’t think we have every heard before, the rain started to come down in buckets, and the boat heeled over like a drunken sailor. Given the reports of poor holding in this anchorage, we abandoned the interior for the cockpit, turned on the navigation instruments and the radar, and prepared for some heavy weather. The wind shifted 180 degrees from the direction we had set the anchor, so we were mightily concerned about dragging. We were also concerned about another boat that had anchored a bit closer to us than we would have preferred, after we had anchored.

With the wind howling, and the GPS saying that we were doing 1.6 kts, we started the engine and tried to hold position with the engine and the bow thruster. The chartplotter showed that we had moved from our original anchored position, but we were still in 30 feet of water. Eventually, we realized that we were doing 1.6 kts sideways, as the boat swung back and forth, horsing in the wind. It was a bit unnerving to see the speed on the GSP display, but the speed vectors on the chartplotter were consistently showing lateral motion, not dragging aft, so after about 45 minutes, when the winds abated and we were sure that we were still set, we buttoned up for the night. jlm did not sleep much, and rxc got up a few times after some quite vivid dragging-dreams, but in the morning, we found ourselves back in the identical spot where we had originally anchored. Evidently, with 150 feet of chain out, the anchor was indeed well-set, and we had just swung in a circle. The boat that had anchored after us was in the same spot, although one other boat that had been on a mooring, with a bit of a long mooring rope, now had an anchor out, as well as the mooring, and they had shortened the line to the mooring.

We got under way from Hatchet Bay at about 9, after hearing Chris Parker the weather guy, on the SSB for the first time. Everyone is convinced that the weather is going to turn nasty tonight, so we wanted to be up in Spanish Wells, in a marina, when the front came thru. The trip across the Bight was quite lumpy, with3 very unhappy cats, but we made it, and then made the passage through the Current Cut with no problems, and the short leg up to Spanish Wells, where we are now firmly tied up in the Spanish Wells Yacht haven. More in the next installment…

Cats on Hatch Screens

2008-03-21T18:01:00.000-04:00

Today was pretty slow, after a fast start, when the rains started to pour into open hatches at 7AM. It was grey all day, with occasional rain, and nasty winds. Not a good day to snorkel, like yesterday, when we explored the reef at the north end of the mooring field. Saw a number of large fish that would probably taste quite good, if only we could fish for them inside this park.

But instead, it was a day for maintenance and paperwork. Getting estate papers done, re-doing lifeline connections, fixing the damn hatch screens, again.

For those of you who don't sail with large cats and hatch screens, it turns out that the screens are considered to be great places to hang out. They have lots of air flow, which is a good thing if you are covered with 2-inches of fur. And you are cool everywhere, because the air flows BELOW you, as well as on top.

Unfortunately, if you are a gigantic Maine Coon, you eventually find out that the screens were not designed to support a 20 lbm cat. Or even a 12 lbm cat. So, you fall through, onto the table below, landing on your feet, maybe on top of the computers, shaking off any suggestions of a loss-of-dignity accident, and go eat something. Or whatever.

This leaves the screen behind, wide open, for the human staff to deal with. Back in the US a long time ago, we bought a screen repair tool, which is used to stuff the rubber gasket into the groove to hold the screen in place. This was purchased to repair ONE screen door that had been shredded by a couple of Maine Coon cats, and then it had sat in the tool box for several years. It is now out of the tool box, being used several times each week, to re-install screening. In fact, we will likely have to purchase a roll of screening material when we get back to Florida, because this material is hard to find in France, and expensive. We will probably also buy some rubber gasket material as well. And, we will keep the handy tool available for duty in European ports...

Food clarifications

2008-03-20T12:44:00.001-04:00

One of us has expressed some concern that the previous posts do not accurately describe the food situation on board, so this post will try to clarify this.

First of all, the cats are well fed, with a choice of two types of dry food that are fish-free, and small cans of wet-food (turkey) that is also fish-free, for Zabelle. She only likes the food within the first 30 seconds after the can is opened, though, and can only eat a few mouthfuls, so the rest goes to the kittens. They also get fish-free treats every morning and evening, and whenever they have to be convinced to come down into the boat off the dodger/bimini.

The two humans have also been eating quite well. We stocked up the boat with staples, and filled the fridge with fruits and veggies before leaving Florida, and have been replenishing fresh food as it has become available. Nassau had a full-service supermarket across from the marina with every fresh food we could desire, and the Exuma Market in Georgetown was also well stocked. We noticed in Nassau that they had last-day steaks on sale in the morning, and a fair number of cruisers made it a point to be there to buy up LOTS of good beef for their freezers. We had to step in front of one guy who was discussing the availability of space in his freezer over the phone with his spouse, to determine whether to take ALL of the steaks, or just about 8 of them. In the islands, we found some really nice local tomatoes and peppers in Staniel Cay, and onions and potatoes are always available.

We are still eating some fruits from Stuart, over a month ago. The citrus fruits lasted quite well, and we still have the basil, sage, rosemary, and parsley plants, in spite of their being attacked by the red cat with great regularity. Today we had one of the grapefruit, which held up quite well. Unfortunately, the thyme did not survive - we think it did not like the salt air.

We have done some baking on board as well. This was a regular thing on land, but the boat oven has a hard time reaching baking temperatures, so we have been limited to focaccia with rosemary and sea salt (French(!) - not harvested off of our decks) and a cake. We found some good home-made bread (white, whole wheat, cinnimon raisin, and coconut) on Staniel Cay, which has been trementously appreciated.

So, we have NOT been subsisting out of cans, as some might believe based on the previous posts. Rather, we have enjoyed quite tasty meals, prepared with skill and care, using all of the various resources at our disposal. Even the pasta has involved goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, and really nice Costco salmon(out of a can, unfortunately), and fresh herbs. The availability of fresh water has made this a bit easier, but we want to make sure no one thinks we are eating Dinty Moore stew heated in, and eaten out of, a can. In fact, we want to go on the record and make it clear that we do not have ANY Dinty Moore stew on board, anywhere.

The only item lacking so far has been fish, because we have been completely unlucky at catching anything. It has not helped that we have spent quite a bit of time in a national park that doesn't allow fishing. We have trailed as many as 3 lines at once, but the only bite occurred on the trip from Bimini, and it seems that whatever bit was BIG, with SHARP teeth, because it took an entire rig off the end of the line. We will continue to try to land a fish, or pick up a conch, as we move north, and will document any success.

Back in Warderick Wells

2008-03-20T12:15:00.000-04:00

We are back in the Exuma Park, at the same mooring (#5) that we occupied on the way south. And it is still quite nice here, with a well-protected mooring field, reasonably good internet access, and of course beautiful scenery.

We came up from Staniel Cay yesterday in winds of 20-30, gusting to 35. It was all downwind, and a great ride, with only the jib out. We stayed at a steady 6.8 kts, sometimes getting up to nearly 8 kts, in the gusts. The last leg into the cut was a bit exciting, as we had to turn into a beam wind and seas, but we got the sail down, the engine started, and all tucked in. We will stay here for a few days, before leaving for Eluthera to see Bill and Dot.

We bought a frozen chicken in Georgetown, and it finally thawed out the other day, so we have had two very nice evening meals of roast chicken. Zabelle really appreciated our efforts to make roast chicken for her, and even Calypso is starting to enjoy it, as well. The big red slug (Dante) LOVES canned turkey cat-food, but he doesn’t seem to be interested in roast chicken. Go figure.

We also think that we have finally fixed the Honda outboard. It has been giving us fits this trip, because it would not get the dinghy up on a plane, and it seemed to be stuttering and hesitating quite a bit. This started about 2 years ago, after we had a tuneup done by the dealer in Annapolis, and it now appears that they did a rather poor job. We found that they left off one of the hose clips on the fuel line attached to the fuel filter, and now it appears that they left out one very important mounting bolt for the condenser that powers the spark plugs. rxc was convinced that this was a “lack-of-fuel” issue, caused by some sort of gumup in the fuel system, and he added all sorts of additives to the fuel to clean up the system, and finally took apart the carburetor yesterday, where he found that one of the adjustments made by the dealer was incorrect.

This did not fix the problem, unfortunately, so he took the cover off yesterday again, but this time while the engine was running, to see how the fuel flow looked. It was great thru the fuel filter, but he noticed that the condenser was loose, and further inspection revealed that one of the two bolts was completely missing, while the other one was very loose. Sparks appeared at these mounting points, so we think that they were the individual grounds for the ignition system, and were not being made, so that the engine sputtered – bad spark, not bad fuel.

This was not an easy fix, though, because the dinghy was in the water, and there was a good wind and swell thru the anchorage. In addition, the bolt that was missing was attached with a blind bolt in a pocket that was inaccessible when the condenser was properly positioned. It therefore required the application of some grease to a bolt to get it to stick while the condenser was properly positioned, in a rocking dinghy. Luckily, it all came together, and now the engine operates the way it should. We will have to buy the proper bolt in Florida when we get back. We will also buy a number of engine spare parts in case we need more service in France.

Today we will do some snorkeling on the local reefs, and some paperwork.

Staniel Cay, Georgetown, and south Exumas

2008-03-18T11:44:00.001-04:00

I am behind on blogging, due to WiFi being a bit sporadic, so I will try to catch up in one long post.

Staniel Cay

We arrived in Staniel Cay on March 13, supposedly for one nite, after coming down from Warderick Wells on the tail end of the front that came, planning to stay only one night. We were on the beach at Warderick Wells at happy hour for the assembled boats, watching the clouds build, and everyone was taking bets on when it would hit us. We waited till the first drop of rain started, and noticed that the boats had shifted their direction from W to N, just a few minutes before. The front was so well defined that we could actually see it travel across the anchorage. We arrived there, looking for an anchorage, but it was blowing like stink, and all the moorings and anchorages were taken, so we decided to go into the Staniel Cay Yacht Club.

Staniel Cay is a small hamlet whose main claim to fame is the Thunderball Cave, which was used in the James Bond movie of that name. You can snorkel into it and it is wonderful. We have now done it twice, and discovered that the fish really like canned peas. We had dinner in the marina restaurant twice, after finding the food to be really good the first night. We sometimes get a bit tired of what we have on-board, although jlm has been incredibly creative about putting meals together that don’t require refrigeration. We bought a number of items such as bacon and ham in Miami and Stuart that we thought would last till April, and they have, in general. But we have been hoarding them, and trying to make do with stuff in cans, or dried, that only require adding some water, and we have been generally successful. Risotto is one of our favorite meals at home, and it travels quite well on the boat. We have also made some interesting hors d’ouvres by combining leftovers with the last bits out of some jars (artichokes, bruschetta, etc), so we haven’t eaten badly at all. But a restaurant meal now and again is a nice treat.

We stayed in Staniel Cay for two nights, to wait for availability of fresh local bread, and have a second meal. On Tuesday we headed further south, to the “cut” where we left the Bahamas Banks, down to Lee Stocking Island, where we anchored for a night. This leg was quite nice, with gentle winds and pretty flat seas, and we decided to push it past our planned stopping point of Little Farmers Cay. Passage through the Galliot Cut was uneventful, although there was a strong ebb current, and the sea was quite lumpy on the outside of the cut. A boat that was coming in had a rough time, but we just kept enough speed to maintain steerage, and let the tide take us out.

These legs are generally not very long - ~25 miles each, at most, and we are happy with this pace. It would have been nicer to have been able to made the legs even shorter, and checked out some other spots, but we have a plan, and now a deadline (!), so we are making the best of the weather windows. We are NOT taking any chances, though, to make the deadlines.

Kitties were very happy to be here in Staniel Cay, because there were birds on the docks, and these were highly amusing. They haven’t been on a dock in a long while, so we have to be careful that they don’t desert. In addition, there are about 6-10 nurse sharks swimming around the docks, and one very large stingray resident in the marina, which fascinated them to no end. They ddidn’t understand that these fish are quite out of their league, and we had to be vigilant that they didn’t jump overboard in their enthusiasm.

Lee Stocking Island

This anchorage was located in front of a NOAA-funded research station, and there were about 10 boats there on moorings. We anchored with two other boats, and passed quite uneventful night, after a spectacular sunset. Then off the next morning for a short trip down to Georgetown, on a close reach, in glorious conditions.

Georgetown

Georgetown (named for some ancient British monarch who seems to have a town named for him EVERYWHERE) is the cruising mecca for the southern Exumas. As we were headed there, we listened to the weather reports from individual cruisers, which include the number of boats in their anchorages, and the boat at Georgetown announced that a LOT of boats had left, but they still had probably 280-300(!) boats in the anchorage. And when we arrived there, it was clear that this was not an overstatement. We arrived at high tide (for a change), and had no problem getting into the cut or down the length of Elizabeth Harbour, past “Hamburger Beach” and “Volleyball Beach” on the eastern side of the harbour. It looked like the fourth of July in Annapolis, with so many boats, and the boats anchored so close together. We did not want to stay here, so we continued south, till we were just about even with Georgetown itself, on the eastern side of the harbour, about 1 mile away. We anchored in 15 feet of water, in sand, fairly far from other boats. We think that our spot had been recently vacated by other cruisers, and this has been a constant observation of this trip. We started late from Baltimore, and are about 4 weeks behind the “normal” cruising schedule, and are therefore finding places to anchor, to moor, and in marinas, that would not be available if we were on the normal schedule. It has not been a bad thing, at all, except for the fact that we have less time to poke around in small cays. Maybe some time in the future…

We went ashore to check out the town, and found it to be quite active and cosmopolitan. You enter a pond via a very narrow road tunnel, and tie up your dinghy at the dinghy dock provided by Exuma Markets, which is the main grocery store in town. They even provide a free hose tap on the dinghy dock for cruisers to fill up water bottles with RO water. This is one of the very few places we have seen free water here in the Bahamas, but it is limited to what you can carry (literally, in your dinghy). We are really greatful that we have the watermaker, or we would also be hauling water, too. Instead, the watermaker is working its little heart out, on the boat, using wind and solar power, while I type this sitting in the bar at the SCYC.

The Exuma Markets is quite well stocked, to the point that we saw many types of bruschetta toppings, LOTS of ice cream, LOTS of fresh fruits and veggies at semi=reasonable prices, and even some jars of French black truffles(!). Given the number of very large vessels here, it seems that some people MUST have truffles in their eggs in the morning, or on their pasta in the evening.

We did some snorkeling on the reef just down the harbour from the boat, and saw some very nice coral and fish, and found an internet connection that we could use from a mile away, but which was a bit spotty. We think that there are so many boats here that they swamp the ISP with their need for service. Lots of people seem to have found out about external antennas that really extend the range of WiFi, and they are using this service for Skype and Vonage, which takes a fair amount of bandwidth. In response, the ISPs seem to limit the amount of time that they will hold a connection, and some even seem to be able to detect Vonage boxes, and really cut down on service to access points(like us) that have them connected. So, in these situations, we disconnect from Vonange, which makes sense, since we don't have a working regular phone any more.

We also went up to Volleyball Beach to check it out, and found a fairly large number of well-aged, retired cruisers playing volleyball and hanging out in the Chat ‘n Chill bar and on the beach. You can really understand why people would want to spend a whole season down here, after seeing what life is like in these enclaves.

We spent 3 days in Georgetown, and then headed back north. This leg was the most perfect of the entire trip from Baltimore. A beam reach in about 12 kts of wind, flat seas, and glorious sun. Calypso, who had taken to drooling at the sound of jingled keys, or the beep of an engine starting on a neighboring boat, spent the entire trip lounging in tranquility, and did not drool a drop. We therefore considered this leg an unqualified success. We pushed this leg a bit, doing about 40 miles, to get to Farmers Cay, just up the coast from Galliot Cut. We arrived with no problems and set the anchor in a sandy spot, and then dove to make sure that it was buried, and discovered that we were right next to a really nice coral reef. This meant that we had to do a late afternoon snorkeling trip, which was highly satisfying. Overall, quite a good day.

Farmers Cay

The next day, rxc was awakened by the deep thrum of a large low-speed diesel engine, and we were both jolted out of bed by the single blast of a loud horn from a commercial landing craft, of the type that is typical here in the islands. It had managed to sneak itself through our anchorage, between 3 boats that were not very far apart, to land 2 large tanker trucks, and then wait for them while they dropped off their loads. The boat next to us was evidently terrified by this experience, because they up-anchored and left immediately, while the other boat just moved. The captain of the landing craft asked us to move when he left, so we shortened scope and re-positioned the boat around the anchor so that he had plenty of room to back out, turn around, and leave. We also did some more snorkeling, which was really nice in the good morning light. We also went into the settlement at Farmers Cay, looking for fish or lobster, but it was Sunday, and everything was closed up, so back to the boat, up anchor, and off we went back to Staniel.

Staniel Cay (again)

We are now back in Staniel, on a mooring in front of the Thunderball Club, with the wind blowing like stink out of the east. The entrance to the harbour from Exuma Sound is breaking with waves, and we have some tremendously lumpy seas here inside when the tide changes. But we are all now quite used to it, and we even made a dinghy trip yesterday to the Yacht Club for lunch, to pick up some bread, and to check up on email. The WiFi at the Yacht Club is free, but it is so weak that you can only pick it up in the club itself, or on the piers. I think we might pick it up if we anchored across from the piers, but out here on the moorings, we can see the signal, but cannot make any useful connection. So today we went into town to pick up some coconut bread and post this.

Staniel has become quite familiar to us now, and we can well imagine people staying here for a long time. The YC is quite civilized, the weather is wonderful, and you can get every basic necessity here. So why go anywhere else? We have been here 2 nights, and will stay another, heading off for Warderick Wells tomorrow, and then to Exuma after that.

Kitties are still doing quite well. The rolling in this mooring field does not seem to faze anyone, and we wonder if Calypso has finally found her sea-legs…

Warderick Wells

2008-03-06T10:59:00.000-05:00

We are on a mooring at Warderick Wells, within the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. The park was established in the Bahamas in 1958 and it is a very prominent part of the Exumas cruising experience. We are taking a vacation from cruising here, because the moorings are well laid out in a well-protected cove, we have plenty of food and water, and we have WiFi service, after being cutoff for 4 days.

We stayed in Nassau an extra day, to finish up some items that required internet/phone connectivity, and then left for Allens Cay, about 35 miles SE. The trip started well, and the winds were generally favorable (NE 15-20), but the seas were a bit lumpy, and we forgot to close the small hatch just aft of the mast, so the interior cushions got drenched, and we have lost the Vonage phone to seawater contamination. The Vonage router and the external antenna made it, but we also have some questions about the charger for the Blackberry, so we will not be talking to people for a while. Email still works, though, and we will try to buy another cheap phone when we get to Georgetown.

Allens Cay was interesting, but the anchorage was quite rolly. We went ashore to see the iguanas, and putted around the anchorage, waiting for the upholstery to dry. Two nites there, and then we were off for Norman’s Cay, just south. This was a bit better, until the middle of the night, when the winds blew 25-35 kts from the NE. The windmill made LOTS of electricity, and kept the batteries charged, but both the cats and we were not happy by the motion, so we came down here on Tuesday.

You have to call the park in the morning, and get on the list for moorings, and sometimes they are full in the north anchorage, so you have to take a mooring at Emerald Cay, or in the south of the island, but we lucked out with a mooring up here in the north. We have taken two hikes into the interior of the island, and it is spectacular. We plan to stay till Sat or Sunday, when the wind will shift back to the north, and we hope to ride that further south. We are running the genset to make electricity and water, and cool down the boat during the day. We are glad to have the watermaker, because we would have been really constrained without it.

The kitties like the moorings better than up north, and they get to go out at night, because it would be a good swim for them to try to abandon ship.

More photos go up soon.

Guard Cat Foils Burglary

2008-02-27T17:42:00.001-05:00

Well, we hope the title got your attention. We are in Nassau, at the Nassau Harbour Club marina, where we have been for 2 days. We left Chub Cay with a NW wind, and could have sailed all the way here, but we were fighting a 2 kt current, and it would have taken nearly 12 hours to get here, so we motor-sailed, and had a great trip. Even Calypso was a bit better, because we were pretty flat all day.

We waited outside the harbor for 2 large cruise ships and one water tanker to exit, and then we followed the line of boats making their way to the marinas and anchorages here. We decided to take a marina because there is a “norther” coming thru this evening, and we wanted to be secure when the winds get to 25-30 kts. The marina/hotel is undergoing renovation, but it is full of boats, most like us heading south. Nice people, and lots of services within walking distance. We will do some re-provisioning tonite and we hope to leave for the Exumas tomorrow AM, on a (hopefully not too bad) north wind. We have eaten twice at the Poop Deck restaurant down the street. The first nite was an enormous hog snapper that they covered in jerk seasoning and grilled. It fed both of us, for both dinner and lunch the next day. Today we went back, and jlm had the lobster, which was good, if a bit overcooked, but we were shocked when we got the bill for $49(!). We had not asked the price, but it was a bit high. Maybe we will ask in the future, when they just say “market price” on the menus.

rxc got the engine oil changed yesterday, and took a tour of the auto parts stores, looking for a new belt for the alternator. He had thought that we needed a shorted belt than the one that was on the engine, and which was identical to the spare we carry. This was because the new alternator pulley is a bit smaller than the original one, and when it was tightened properly, the alternator contacted the side of the steps just slightly, and made an irritating noise. It looked like a belt about 1-inch shorter would fit and solve the problem, so off he went to find one. Unfortunately, 45” is NOT a common belt size, so he had to walk quite a bit to find one. Then, when he took off the old belt, which is the original to the engine, with only 400 hours on it, he found that the new belt was much too short. In fact, the spare 46” belt was just the right size for the new alternator. It seems that the old belt had stretched quite a bit. So, this morning, we walked back to the auto parts store to get the correct one. Ahhh the joys of boat repairs with non-standard configurations…

We then went all the way into the touristy part of Nassau, just as 3 large cruise ships discharged their cargos for a day of shopping. We were just window shopping, but we did have a major need for some sippin’ whiskey, which we eventually found. Nassau has LOTS of liquor stores, but their selection seems to be very constrained. We must have checked 5 stores before found the brand we wanted. They didn’t have our preferred Scotch, either, which is troubling. At least we have a good supply of wine on board.

So, you are probably wondering when you are going to hear about guard cat. It happened last night, after we were both asleep. rxc woke up about 11:30-11:45 when he thought he heard something like claws on the deck above us. He listened a bit more, and heard them again, and wondered whether the dynamic duo had made a breakout. He got up and went out into the cabin, where he noticed that the screen in the main hatch was hanging down, like a cat had gone through it (they like to sit on it from outside the boat, and it has had to be re-mounted several times). This caused the full alarm to be raised, and he went out on deck (sans culottes, bien sur) to search for the little devils. Surprisingly, they were not there. In fact, after searching only 1 minute, rxc was called below by jlm,who had done a full tail count and discovered all 4 still inside the boat. jlm then chastised rxc for his over-imaginative dreaming, and he went back to sleep. However, since she was now fully awake, jlm stayed up and read for 3 hours while Dante the guard cat went back and forth from one window to another like a caged animal, and would not calm down.

This morning, as we inquired in the marina office about the laundry facilities, we ran into one of the people from a boat two slips away from us, who rerpoted that they and the boat next to us had been burglarized in the night. The robbers had gotten into the boats, and had been so good as to steal money out of purses inside the cabins of the owners, as they slept! We have heard about theft problems here in Nassau, and we keep the dinghy locked up and nothing of value in the cockpit available to steal, but it was quite a shock. rxc talked to the owner of the boat next door, who had the same story, and related that their cell phone had also been stolen. No credit cards or anything else – just cash and the cell phone. We think that the thefts occurred about the time rxc was awakened, and maybe he scared them off, and maybe Dante was restless because he sensed that there were people outside who were bad. In any case, he has become our guard cat.

The other kitties are doing well, and we are all set to go further south. The Exumas are supposed to be beautiful, and there is a national park down there that we will go thru, so maybe one of us can do some professional development, but only as a hobby. We don’t know when we will next have WiFi connectivity (we are paying $12/day here, but it is worth it for the Vonage connectivity), but maybe there will be something in the park. If not, we hope to be in Georgetown by March 15, after which we will turn around and head back north, stopping to see Bill and Dot.

More photos to be loaded tonight.

As I finish this, the wind is freshening and veering to the NW. Let the north winds blow!

P.S Listening to the debate on WAMU this morning about the future of nuclear power left at least one of glad that he no longer has to deal with it. And the incoherent reporting of the Florida blackout/Turkey Point trip yesterday reinforces that feeling.

Chub Cay

2008-02-24T09:05:00.000-05:00

We are in Chub Cay today, at the semi-luxurious Chub Cay Marina, a brand-new development here. We are starting to discover a trend in marina development. They build a gorgeous new marina somewhere, accompanied by luxury condos/villas, without having any real buyers for the slips or the condos. They get all of the landscaping and stuff like the restaurant done, so that the place really looks nice, but they wait till they have some customers actually using the facility to finish stuff like the showers and laundry. The priority of what gets done is interesting – eye-candy first, and functionality after the paying customers start to pay. Oh, and they charge very high rates from the beginning for the eye-candy, even though the functionality is not yet complete. I guess it makes sense from the marketing point of view, but we think they would get more boats into these marinas if they lowered the rates at first and established functionality, so that more people could see that these are places to want to go into, instead of being empty with only a few trophy boats.

We spent 4 days in Bimini, having a good time seeing the island, and doing a LOT of paperwork/internet connections. Because of the WiFi access, we were able to research everything on-line, and then make phone calls over the internet to redeem frequent flyer miles, and purchase tickets for the trip to France. We decided to sail the boat to France, leaving sometime between May 7th and May 14th (latest advice from our hired Captain – he doesn’t want to compete for space in Bermuda with the ARC – this makes some sense). We will be moving cats to France on April 17th, by Air France, from Miami->Paris->Bordeaux. We have Karen, Pat, and her husband Jim coming along to give us one person+ per cat. We have figured out a way to convince AF that Dante and Calypso are less than 4kg, so that they can come into the cabin with us. This will be revealed after the trip, if it is successful.

Ralph and Karen will come back to Stuart on April 29th, and Ralph will have at least a week to get the boat ready for the crossing, which is good timing. The boat should then get to France in about 6-8 weeks, in late June.

We left Bimini yesterday AM at 6:30, on a rising tide. We headed south, and cut thru the pass at Turtle rocks, down behind Cat Cay, and then east across the Great Bahamas Bank. The wind was marvelous, and we could have sailed the whole way on a beam reach, but the wind dropped considerably about 2:00 PM, and we didn’t want to come into Chub Cay in the dark, so we did some motor-sailing and got in here about 6:15, at dusk, at low tide. We tried to fish, but did not catch anything that we could see. One leader rig was clipped off, like someone used a tin-snips on it, which tells me that something BIG took a taste. Unfortunately, we did not see it happen.
The trip across the banks was about 85 miles, most of the way in water never deeper than about 15 feet. We saw two other boat heading in the opposite direction, and we sailed away from another one that was headed our way – they didn’t seem to be sailing too well, which was surprising. One boat was Canadian, and we were surprised that did not seem to have the normal complement of cruiser equipment hanging around, like solar panels, windmill, or diesel jerry jugs. It looked just like a Chesapeake Bay cruiser out for a weekend sail. This in the middle of nowhere, with no land at all in sight. Normally, the Canadians who make it this far have ALL of the stuff that we think is necessary to cruise here. It was a long day, and we slept quite well last nite. The luxury marina here has WiFi, which is how we are updating the blog, and simultaneously listening to WAMU in Washington. It is amazing how many WiFi hotspots there are, in out-of-the-way places like this.

We have uploaded a bunch of additional photos to Flickr, but they are not organized, and only a few have captions, because I can’t get the Flickr Organizr to load properly. It seems to be a bit buggy, but considering the cost, it is to be expected. Maybe I will try it again later this AM.
After I dive on the boat here in the marina, and check out the bottom, we will leave for Whale Cay, to the east a short distance. We plan to get to Eluthera some time on Monday or Tuesday, to see Bill and Dot, who are supposed to have arrived yesterday. We have their Bahamas number, and since we now have a Bahamas number, as well, it should be a local call. It was very nice to see that the Blackberry will actually work as we planned. When we get back to the US, I just have to change out the SIM chip and we will have the WV number back. When we get to France, I will buy a SIM chip there, to have a cell phone in France.

I have sent out the telephone number by email, but if someone has not received it, send me an email and I will send it to you. I don’t want to post those numbers on a public site, but will provide them to family and friends.

Kitties are doing well, except for Calypso, who has a seasickness that does not respond to drugs, and which also seems to be psychosomatic(sp?). There was a Beneteau 321 next to us when we work up this morning, and we let the cats up on deck. The owner left early (7:30) to get to Nassau today, and when he started the engine on HIS boat, Calypso started to drool on OUR boat. We think maybe the buzzer on the engine set he off, or maybe the buzzer and engine noise. She calmed down after about 3 minutes, when she realized that we were not moving, but left a drool deposit on deck.

Well, off to dive down and check out the boat bottom – we hit something in 2500 ft of water that caused the prop to vibrate a bit, and we want to clear it off, if possible before we go any further. Then off to Whale Cay.

Bimini

2008-02-20T17:38:00.000-05:00

We are sitting at a dock in Weech’s Marina, about 100 feet from “The End of the World Bar”, in Alice Town, Bimini, Bahamas. We arrived yesterday at about 10:30 after a mostly uneventful crossing of the Gulf Stream. We started at the planned hour of 2:30 AM, at low tide (comme d’habitude) with light S winds, and we motor-sailed thru the nite at 7 kts of boat speed. The Gulf Stream appeared as expected, with a 5 kt current at one point, but the seas stayed flat for the entire passage. It was fascinating to be steering 120° magnetic to make a course of 090°. Several cruise ships passed up and down the straights, as well as several freighters, but we managed to avoid one-another quite well.

At about 8:30 AM, we spotted several water spouts in the line of clouds that approached from astern, but they dissipated before reaching us. The front eventually caught up about 9:00 AM, and we had good solid rain for about an hour, till just before we entered the Bimini entrance. Everyone got wet, including especially Dante, who insisted on staying up on deck, inside the cockpit during the rain storm. He demonstrated the Maine Coon ability to shed water from his long, shaggy fur quite well.

We tied up here are Weech’s because there were already a few sailboats here, and because none of the other marinas responded to VHF hails, on any channel. The entire town looked pretty deserted, in fact, and it turns out that it deserted at this time of year. Their “season” runs from March thru Labor Day, when hordes of Floridians come over here to escape the heat. At this time of year, they evidently stay home, huddled in front of their fireplaces.

We have had two meals here so far, and they were quite tasty – both at small roadside restaurants featuring fish and regional cuisine, aka Jamaican. Lots of food served in Styrofoam containers, eaten outside on rough wooden picnic tables. Also not cheap, but we will not begrudge the locals their business. We found these places by walking the entire length of the island up to the grand new development at the north end, which has a giant two-story gate(!) and a marina that looks like a major port. The existing towns are quaint but a bit “battered”, and it is clear that the developers do not want their clientele to have to pass thru. They have a separate channel dredge straight to the marina, and high-speed ferries from the airport on South Bimini Island that bypass Alice Town. Which is too bad because this place has so much history that could be built on, if only someone wanted to do so. Some of the locals mentioned to us that the development has all of its own infrastructure, and the residents will not have to come south to do any shopping whatsoever, so they are worried that the boaters will also bypass them.

We are planning to stay here till Friday, when the weather is forecast to be nice for a passage across the Great Bahamas Bank. We will stop next in the Berry Islands, and then over to Eluthera, where Bill and Dot have a house, and are going to be next week. After that, we will head down the Exumas.

Staged and Ready

2008-02-18T16:08:00.000-05:00

We are sitting at anchor in “Hurricane Harbor”, a small inlet on the south side of Biscayne Bay south of Miami. We are waiting for the weather to moderate so that the kitties will not be unduly discomfited by our planned passage to the Bahamas.

From Lantana, the trip south enters what is known as “The Canyon”, a region of the ICW that is almost completely developed with houses and apartments and condos and golf courses. The walls of the ICW are lined with walls that can make the wave action reverberate and generate some serious chop. Luckily, we made the trip from Lantana to Ft. Lauderdale on a Friday, before the weekend traffic got going in full. It was mostly smooth sailing till about 10 mile north of Ft. L. when the early weekenders started to show up. We saw an enormous number of amazing houses, interspersed with 1950’s bungalows and even some real “fixer-upper” shacks.

We timed the bridges well, and only had to wait longer than 5 minutes once. When we got to Ft. L, we ducked into Lake Sylvia, and anchors with about 6 other boats in 8 ft of water. The charts say this lake has a really shallow entrance, and shallow spots inside, but we found 7 feet everywhere, and only had one surprise, when it seemed like we hit some sort of submerged obstacle as we were leaving on Saturday morning. No damage seemed to have occurred, and we proceeded into Port Lauderdale, where there were 8 cruise ships docked where rxc used to come in his Navy ship. At that time, there were only a few cruise ships around, and one that arrived while the SoCar was in Ft. L. was an event for the locals. South Florida has clearly come a long way since 1975…

We went outside at Ft. L. because we can’t fit below the Julia Tuttle Bridge in Miami, and the weather could not have been better. NW at 10-15, with seas less than 2 feet. We set the sails and cruised at 7-8knots down the coast, in 400 feet of water, about 3 miles offshore. The two humans thought the motion was great, but the kitties did not agree. In spite of having a quarter of Bonine tablet in her, Calypso drooled from breakwater to breakwater, Dante stayed up on deck in the “dead-cat” position, and the old ladies variously suffered as best as they could. We entered Miami about 2:00 pm, motored past the Miami boat show into the region of islands behind Miami Beach, and anchored within a stone’s throw of Miami Beach near the Collins Canal.
We discovered that we have been very lucky up in the Chesapeake with the relative lack of hot-dogging motor boats. Down here they are EVERYWHERE, going flat out right past anchored boats, not caring at all about their wakes. Luckily, they seem to almost completely disappear after dark, so we slept well. We took the dinghy up the canal Sunday morning and had breakfast and did some last-minute shopping at the Epicure Market. It took some bravery to leave the dinghy locked to a rusty ring-boat on the canal, but the cruising gods were kind to us, and it was still there when we returned. We left Miami Beach and motored down into Biscayne Bay in a gathering storm, which dumped a lot of rain on us throughout the day and into the nite. We filled up with water and fuel at the Crandon park Marina, and dropped off our last trash before staging here, with the alarm set for 2:00 AM.

The alarm went off at 2, and we listened to the NWS prediction, which is notorious for its inaccuracies – south winds 15-20 with offshore seas of 4-6 feet. Considering the kitties, we decided to go back to bed, and wait for better weather. This turned out to be a good decision.

Today was a slow day, with a general boat cleanup, fixup of various small items, and finally a successful connection to the internet. This last item is really amazing, because our laptops cannot sense any WiFi signal hear, but the external antenna is picking up a signal from somewhere and connecting us for free. Highly recommended for cruisers. We just looked at the weather forecast for tonite, and it looks like 5 knot winds, and seas as calm as they get, so we will set the alarm again for 2, and motor over, if necessary. At 7 knots, we should get to Bimini in the early morning and we can recover at a marina there before pushing on.

We STILL do not have a quote on shipping the boat, so our plans for May are still up in the air, but it does look like we will be back in the Stuart area in mid-April, to either stage for a transatlantic sail, or to stage to bring the boat down to Ft. L to ship it over. We think the kitties will have to go by air, on Air France some time in late April, and if we sail the boat back, rxc will return to Stuart to meet with the crew. This will also give us some time to find a place to park the boat in France, whenever it arrives.

Off to the Bahamas tonite…

Searching for Warmth

2008-02-15T08:22:00.000-05:00

We left Stuart yesterday at 9:30 AM with a great sendoff from our friends in the marina, and the entire doggy contingent on the pier. Mary and Eric and Carla and Bob and Brenda helped with the lines, while Annie and Shane and Sophie waved goodbye to their friend Dante. It was a bit brisk, though, with temperatures in the low 50s, so we started out with flannel shirts, eventually adding an additional layer that stayed on till we anchored here in Lantana. It is a very nice anchorage SW of the Lantana bridge, just off the waterway, with WiFi provided by a nearby restaurant, so we have full functionality.

The trip was pretty uneventful, other than a few minor groundings. We started out of St. Llucie on dead low tide (comme d'habitude), and brushed bottom outside Mannatee Pocket, but then passed down the inside of Jupiter Island, and into Lake Worth, which is an amazing place. It was surprising to see all that water with relatively few boat using it, for windsailing, fishing, etc. Maybe because it was the middle of the week. The port of Riviera at the mouth of Palm Beach inlet was quite a contrast to the mega-yachts and mega-houses in Palm Beach. Once again, we just missed a CG inspection, but we think we would pass with flying colors.

We went thru 8 bridges (I think), and we didn't have to wait for any of them till the last one (Lantana). The timing was just right, and we made it to the anchorage about 5:15 pm. Settled in, nice dinner, and a video, and then to bed.

The kitties did a bit better. We gave Calypso a bit of Bonine, and she was not happy, but she only drooled once, for a short bit. Dante spent most of the trip on deck in the cockpit, and even the old ladies came out a few times to cehck out the rich people.

Off to Ft. Lauderdale now. It is warmer, so we may not need the flannels...

Waiting for Weather

2008-02-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

We were ready yesterday morning to leave, but the weather gods seem to really want us to stay here in Stuart. Monday was a day of running around, to buy a flag and flag-hanging stuff, a handheld GPS, new dive equipment that should have been purchased a month ago(!), new sunglasses to replace a pair that have disappeared into the bowels of the boat, to wash the car that Karen and Pete were generous to let us have during this stop, to buy cat litter and food and toys, and all that last-minute stuff you need to stock a boat to go to the islands.

Last week was also productive. The alternator arrived as expected, and rxc spent a day and a half installing it. The Jeanneau wiring from the alternator to the main switch was woefully undersized, even for the alternator that came with the boat, so that had to be replaced, which made this project a bit longer than anticipated. This is surprising, because Jeanneau installed some serious cable from the batteries to the switch, but they skimped on the alternator wiring – go figure. You can’t run 120 amps thru 4ga wire, and I think even 80 amps is too much for 4ga. Luckily, there is a marine electric shop here in Stuart who had a really great deal for me on 1ga, black wire. About 10 ft for $10(!). Those of you who do boat electrical work know that this is a real deal. I had to wrap some of it in red electrical tape, but that was easy and a cheap solution. My handy-dandy whacker-crimper did its thing, and now I have a fully compliant wiring system. It was tight to install the alternator, and I think I may need to buy a shorter belt in the future, but this will be fine to get us over to the islands.

The boat stamp was completed by the nice people at Stuart Rubber Stamp, and they also made up a very nice plaque with the call sign to install next to the radio.

The trip to Palm Beach was informative. We have now been cleared by the doctors to continue on our way, and just have another checkup in about 10 months, in France. We celebrated by buying a bottle of 2002 Silver Oak cabernet which we will give to the Bassos when we arrive. This was in a Total Wine in PB, which had more high-end wine than I have seen in a long time. People in PB evidently have a higher standard for wine than the rest of us. At the other end of the wine scale, we found an incredibly good merlot in Walmart for $2.97(!), and went back for a case - Oak Leaf Vineyard from Ripon, Ca. Karen tried it at dinner on Monday nite, and said she was going to stop at Walmart on the way back to her house to pick some up. We also tried their cab, but it was a bit thin. We probably should have bought 2 cases…

We also stopped at an Italian food store – Carmine’s – and bought take-out stone crabs to picnic on. We have become stone-crab aficionados here. We served them together with a risotto Milanese to Pete and Karen on Monday, and had a great time.

We did some major food shopping at several different Wal-marts, at Publix, and at our favorite fruit/veg place (Rorabach on Indian Street), and re-arranged the storage in the boat. Now that the electrical work is complete, we moved excess wire to deep storage in some bilge locations that are under screwed-down floorboards. We also put some books there that we won’t need for a while. This freed up space for wine and food and storage of other “stuff”. Storage on a boat is a continual dance, as you figure out new/better places to store stuff, and move it all around. A lot of our issues here arise from the excess amount of stuff we brought down from the house, and from jlm’s mother’s apartment, but we were pressed, and erred on the side of having too much, rather than having to buy it again. However, if you don’t know where the stuff is stored, you can end up buying it again, in any case. We lost a bag of lentils for about 2 weeks, and were going nuts trying to find it. I think I have enough tools at this point to take apart anything on the boat, but I can’t do any fiberglass work because I don’t have any resin. Hopefully, I won’t need it.

We planned to leave yesterday, but the weather was truly miserable, raining and blowing all day and all night. There were tornado warning boxes all around us at midnight, and we even started up the boat radar to see if we could spot threatening weather. Luckily, we didn’t get any damaging winds and the lightning stayed away. If we had left as planned, and anchored where we intended, we would have seen 60 mph gusts, which would have been too exciting…
So today we decided to stay and catch up on paperwork. We have our taxes essentially complete, and one mother’s taxes, as well. We are now waiting for the last of the paper from the other mother. We also sent off all of the medical claim paperwork. The amount of work needed to keep up with life’s mundane chores is troubling – why have we let it get so complicated? We try to have everything paid automatically, with as little paper as possible, but the paper storage on the boat is becoming an issue. At home, it would all be scanned and shredded, but we don’t have a scanner here, and we have to keep the paper till we get to France, so it has to be stored. Sigh…

Speaking of going to France, the plan there is still unresolved. We now have two estimates for experienced captains to take the boat over, with rxc and one other volunteer crew member. However, we are still waiting for shipping cost estimates from the company in Ft. Lauderdale and Jeanneau, and we will don’t know how we are going to move the cats, because the container ship company out of Guadeloupe has not responded to our enquiry about taking jlm and 4 cats. One possibility involves leaving the boat here in Stuart in April for 7-10 days while both of us travel with 2 friends to France with the 4 cats. This can work because it looks like mid-late April is not a high-travel season to France from Miami. Then, after they are installed in France, rxc can come back alone and either take the boat down to Ft. Lauderdale to ship, or meet the captain and crew and head east. Alternatively, if Jeanneau is able to ship the boat out of Baltimore, we will have to bring it back north and then do the same trip to France out of the DC area. If only the shippers would give us a price, we could make a decision… We hoped to have this resolved before we left Stuart. We are thinking more and more that we will have to sail the boat to France.

Kitties are doing well. Dante had an “event” with the two large labs last week. jlm was off at the marina in the morning, while rxc was checking email. While this was taking place, Dante decided to take a stroll down the pier. He made it all the way to the catamaran next door, where he jumped up to check out the poodle that lives there. jlm started back down the pier, and he knew that he was going to be busted, so he jumped down and started back to our boat. However, he did not realize that it was also time for the dogs to take a walk, and he ended up face-to-face with Annie and Shane on the pier. He turned sideways and puffed himself up to look as big as possible, and they just stopped in their tracks.

THEY SHALL NOT PASS!

And they did not, until rxc came down and scooped him up. This action was met with a big hiss, probably aimed at rxc – not the dogs.

I have been writing this all day, during which the weather has changed from sunny and warm, to pouring down rain, back to sunny, but cool, and now, at 9:00 PM, it is cool and clear and blowing a gale from the NW. We plan to get underway tomorrow around 8, which will require an early rise, to fill water tanks, take on board the bikes, raise the dinghy, undo the cable TV and shore power, and then figure out where to stow the myriad lines and other stuff.

Time to go to bed…

Parties and progress and paperwork

2008-02-06T13:14:00.000-05:00

It appears that we will be receiving the alternator tommorrow. Jackrabbit convinced the Balmar people to send the alternator directly to us, instead of thru them, and they are sending the regulatory separately. This guarantees a busy weekend, and I just realized that replacing the alternator would also provide a good opportunity to check the engine SW pump impeller, so I will get to test Bill Beck's advice about using the special needle-nosed pliers.

I think I will also be doing some exploratory surgery on the main roller-furler. Our neighbors furler seems to slide on the boom much better than ours, and I wonder if we may be missing some internal rollers. The only way to check is to take it apart...

We ordered an "official boat stamp" yesterday, to stamp official documents like crew lists, etc, when we clear into countries. We have heard that officials seem to like these, and they are not expensive. It should be ready this afternoon.

The local chapter of boat people in the marina held a pot-luck party last nite, and we went along, providing box wine and wrap-sandwiches. A good time was had by all, but we did not exceed the levels of celebration achieved during the Superbowl, so we all slept well, and woke up feeling good. Overall, a successful party.

Taxes and paperwork are taking up some considerable time right now. I don't know how people who are not literate in government and its ways can do any of this, and I suspect it is all a conspiracy by the lawyers and accountants to generate work for them. Hopefully, our accountant and lawyer friends will not take offense at this remark. We are also still dealing with paperwork related to jlm's mother. Bills for medical care in the spring of 2006 are still being cleared, and now Medicare won't let us into her account (because she has died). I wonder how they think that the executor of the estate can resolve outstanding debts without access to their documentation.

We will make a run down to Palm Beach tommorrow for some medical tests, a Costco run, and more kitty litter. They are using about 1 box every 3 weeks, which means that we have to have 4 boxes on board to get to Guadeloupe in May. The food situation is a bit better, but we still need more wet food. And now that we have restarted Zabelle on her antibiotics, she is more lively and eating a lot more. The devil-duo has restarted running thru the boat in the AM. They desparately want to go ashore somewhere.

Back to taxes...

Bouncing Kitty and The Red Otter

2008-02-04T02:48:00.000-05:00

We watched the Giants beat the Pats last nite at a Superbowl party here in the Marina. It was a fantastic event, and they had about 75 people upstairs and downstairs having a ball. Great food, great conversation, and an overall great time. Karen was there to help us party, and it was a lot of fun.

This past week was marked by several kitty events, and the start of some serious efforts to figure out how we are actually going to get to France. We had made some inquiries about shipping the boat, but the outfit in Ft. Lauderdale that does this was only able to give us quotes from Ft. Lauderdale to Genoa, or St.. Thomas to Southampton. We called them on Thursday and they say that they can likely take us from Ft. Lauderdale to Southampton in late April, which is a bit early for us, but doable. We also exchanged emails with one clearinghouse for delivery captains, and a local fellow who does deliveries. He came out to the boat on Sunday AM, and we talked quite a bit about having him and his wife help us, and he is quite enthusiastic. We are waiting for a proposal from him and the clearinghouse, and will make a final decision this week. The really hard part of this may turn out to be the cats, because Air France has a 6kg weight limit on animals in the cabin, and we also have 4 cats to move. We are looking into the possibility of having jlm take a containership with the cats, if we can convince them to let her take them along.

We ate out more this week than any other week since Charleston, and discovered some nice dining spots. The first one was Osceola Cafe in downtown Stuart. We went there for breakfast when we found the Pelican Cafe was not open on Wed AM for breakfast (only Th-Su). The Osceola was full of people, and both the egg sandwich and the bagel with hummous were tasty and delicious. They also provided LARGE mugs of tea. We eventually made it to the Pelican Cafe on Sunday, but were dissapointed, because there was only one server and she was overloaded. The grilled raisin-bread was nice, but the eggs were cold (not enough help). The location was superb, though, at the foot of the Roosevelt Bridge.

Wahoo's here in the marina continues to amaze us. Their seared tuna is a favorite and we combined it with steamed clams for a nice pre-Superbowl lunch.

Saturday we went up to Ft. Pierce with Karen and Pete to The Ramp, which is a small hole-in-the-wall raw bar. rxc had the "snapper reuben" and jlm the grilled flounder sandwich, which were quite good. We have noted that there are lots of faux-"reuben" sandwichs down here, with all kinds of fish, turkey, and chicken substituting for pastrami. Pete thinks that the transplanted NYers insist on having their favorite NY sandwiches, but since their doctors won't let them eat meat, the restaurants have come up with "healthier" versions that keep most of the flavor. You can also get real reubens, if you wish, but they are not widely available.

The kitties had an exciting week. Calpyso finally got up the courage to leave the boat and go ashore, on Wed evening. Unforunately, rxc had finished installing the netting on that side of the boat that day, and she did not notice it when she went to jump back on-board. She bounced off the netting and tried to grab the toe-rail, but was not successful. We had to use the net to help her up the piling that she grabbed onto. She is now convinced that she should NOT leave the boat, under any conditions - there lies trouble....

Dante has been fixated on the new large boat tied up behind us, and has been extremely willful about jumping up and down onto it. Sat AM, while rxc was filling water tanks, he took off down thepier at a good clip, and when warned not to do anything bad, he decided to do exactly that, and tried to leap up on their highly-varnished handrail. Normally he would have made it ok, but that morning there was a heavy dew, and everything was quite wet, so the varnished handrail was quite slippery. He tumbled about10 feet down the side of the big boat into the water. He immediately turned and swam to our stern, about 50 feet away, where he tried to haul himself out. Unfortunately, the dinghy was in the way, and rxc had to give a hand. jlm was on the pier when he swam underneath, and she says that he looks just like a red otter swimming thru the water. It was a fantastic sight. Unlike Calypso, however, this does not cause him any hesitation about jumping ashore. He wasn't even dry before he decided to try to go ashore again. Boys...

The damn high-output alternator is still not here, and we will have to call Jackrabbit this AM. They promised to ship it in January, but we still don't have any shipping details. This is not good, because we hope to leave in 9 days.

More later after we attend to various chores...

Internet access

2008-01-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

We seem to have figured out what is going on with the internet access. We disconnected the laptops from the new hardware, and operated for a while directly connected to the Marina AP, and discovered that they do cut off the connection every half hour, about 13 minutes after the half-hour. We have to wait a minute, and then re-login to re-establish the connection. I think that this is done to prevent streamers from monopolizing bandwidth, and our Vonage connection is therefore caught by it. The Vonage box disconnects, and unless one of us re-establishes a connection it can latch onto, it is dead.

Interesting strategy to control access to a limited resource. We may go up to the Marina and see if there is a way to fix this, but we have to be careful that they don't take offense at our use of the signal for Vonage. I have heard that some ISPs do NOT like to have their bandwidth used for telephone service that they are not paid for. Especially if the ISP is a telephone company...

Ahhh... we live in such an interesting age.

Rainy Sunday morning

2008-01-27T09:38:00.000-05:00

We woke up about 5:30 AM to the sound of quite hard rain falling on the boat. We had to close a few hatches quite quickly, but did not notice that the USB hub for one computer got a bit wet, and therefore the mouse stopped working later. We are more sensitive to rain(and other sources of water, such as Calypso) than we used to be, but still have to work on this a bit more.

The Access Point and Vonage now work, but there are still a few bugs to iron out. The Vonage box seems to cause our ISP here in the marina to time out the connection frequently, and we have to re-login to the network. It is a hassle, especially because the phone becomes disconnected and cannot accept incoming calls. The disconnections occur every 30 minutes, or so. I think there may be a setting in the router that can fix this, but haven't found a solution yet. It may have to do with DHCP, and the periodic reassignment of IP addresses. It is a pain that I have to understand TCP/IP subnet strategies in order to connect a telephone, but I guess we are asking for some cutting-edge capability, and should be willing to suffer a bit to attain it.

"Connect everything to everything else." That was the headline on an IBM ad that I used to have posted in my cube, and I think it is a good philosophy. I still don't understand why it is so difficult...

We had a great dinner last nite. London broil, rice pilaf, spinach, salad, and a bottle of 2000 Chateau Julia(!), which we bought in NY, for only $40. Outside a restaurant, we don't often buy $40 wines, but this seemed to be a good deal, and it was. The wine was fantastic, and really went well with everything in the meal. Finished up with some nice chocolate, and a private viewing of another SG-1 episode. This am, we did eggs poached in the microwave, with herbs from our herb garden, on toast from our favorite bakery. Not bad.

The red cat is getting more and more stir-crazy. We have a new large vessel (~90-100 feet) parked behind us. It is home-ported in Nashville, and the buzz is that it was once the private yacht of some country-western singer, before it was purchased by the current owner, who seems to spend his time on the back porch staring into the distance. jlm thinks he is mean, and not amenable to red cats scampering across his decks. Dante therefore desparately wants to go on board and explore. He has already jumped down to the aft swim platform twice, willfully, in complete disobediance of direct instruction to cease-and-desist bad thoughts. We will have to spend a LOT of effort to control these bad thoughts.

We also cycled down to the Port Salerno seafood festival yesterday am. It is south of the airport, about 5-6 miles away, but the trip was not difficult, because the roads here are ALL flat. rxc had some "shark bites", while jlm enjoyed mussels. It was only the 2nd annual festival there, but they had a large number of booths, and the number of people was overwhelming. We were lucky to get there shortly after it opened. I think they will have to reconsider their planning next year, because parking will be impossible. On bicycles, it would even have been difficult to find a place to lock them up if we had arrived later. We may go down to the Greek festival at the Martin County Fairgrounds today.

At this point, the boat mods are pretty much complete. We are still waiting for the high-output alternator from Jackrabbit Marine, but that will be an easy install. Having done this sort of thing before means that I understand what needs to be done, and it will not involve much re-wiring - I have already done those major mods in preparation for this event.

I would also like to install a backup potable water pump, but first I have to find it, somewhere on the boat. This is really frustrating. We bought and brought so much stuff on-board that we have forgotten where it is stowed. An in-line water filter in the pot water supply would also be a good idea, but I can't figure out where to mount it, or plumb it. This will take quite a bit of thought, because the natural location is already taken up by watermaker plumbing and hardware.

So now rxc will settle into doing some studying for the ham radio license, and maybe doing some computer-related paperwork. Also, maybe some rationalizing of the tools and parts. We have a LOT of extra wire on this boat that we should not need for a while, so it should go into deep storage. Same with nuts and bolts and storage units for nuts and bolts. Then, we can start to buy fishing tackle!

More on Monday.

End of week report

2008-01-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

Well, only one more "work day" left this week to finish up a few projects, but we made great progress yesterday, so success looks possible.

Wednesday, we spent most of the day with Karen down in the South Florida Fair, watching the pig races, eating "fair food", looking at the way people used to live in FL, before all the developers identified all of the value in the land here and built houses and condos. Quite amusing, and a very nice diversion from the simple life on the boat. We also visited a very nice ice cream stand in Jupiter that Karen knew that served a very interesting mix of custard ice cream and gelato. Just the thing in the heat the last few days.

Yesterday, while jlm worked on the book, rxc finally bit the bullet and worked on the wireless access point. The boat is torn apart (again), while we figure out where to put the boxes, and the power supplies, and the wires (the damned wires). (new photos will go up on Flickr) It is not quite as bad as it could be, though, because we were able to find a pull-rope in one of the cable runs (left behind, conveniently, by Jeanneau), which enabled a relatively easy trip for the wire from the arch to the electical panel. The arch was a bit problematic, because rxc lost the pull rope for the hole he wanted to use, but then recovered because another rope was nearby. It only took about 30 minutes to deal with this. The cable made it all the way to the watermaker before we had to stop to wash up and get changed for the theater.

Last nite we walked to the Lyric Theater here in Stuart to see the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2 dance troupe. They are a small troupe (7) of young (18-25) people who are sort of an adjunct operation of the main Hubbard Street Dance organization. They tour and do workshops in schools, and did two show last nite here in Stuart before going on to Tampa(I think), and then back towards Chicago. The dancing was very nice, and the dancers came out after the performance and talked to the audience for about 30 minutes. Nice young people.

Dinner last nite was at the Basil Garden Thai restaurant in Stuart. The peanut sauces and the satay were a bit on the sweet side, but the chicken salad that jlm ordered had a great ginger sauce, and rxc's pork/eggplant/basil entree was also really good, especially with a bit of chile pepper sauce. The walk back to the boat was nice.

This AM, rxc should be able to finish installing the wireless AP, which should also enable the Vonage phone, which will be very useful to jlm for talking to her co-author and working on the book.

The kitties really like the weather that has blown in. Highs in the high 60s, lows in the low 50s, and nice winds. Great MC weather. We had a bit of excitement Tuesday nite when Dante came back from the 470 next door, and tried to jump thru the netting. He bounced off, and ended up hanging over the side on the aluminum toerail. jlm was on-board and heard this loud thump, which did not sound good. She went out to check, and there he was, hanging on for dear life. She lifted all 4 feet of him over the rail, and he just melted into her arms. No struggling, no claws, just happy to be rescued.

He has also turned out to be a little busy-body when the other cats go onto the pier. He follows them (Zabelle and Siren) down the pier, and never leaves their sight. We think he thinks he has to supervise them.

More to come after we get the AP working.

Backstory Part 5 - Jacksonville and Florida!

2008-01-22T14:21:00.000-05:00

Jacksonville Beach was a great stop. We met Jane Lynn’s cousin Pat and her husband Jim, as well as Kathy and Bill Little. We had a fabulous meal down in St. Augustine, and did some major re-provisioning at the stores that were within walking distance of the Marina. Then we were off down the ditch again, thru St. Augustine by boat, anchoring right next to a NPS historical castle south of St. Augustine. One more day took us further south to another anchorage at Ponce de Leon Inlet, where we planned to jump off for another off-shore sail.

Up late that day, at low tide (we seem to be in a rut about tides), we felt our way out of Ponce Inlet, and sailed south past Cape Canaveral. The Shuttle launch had been canceled, but we did manage to see the tail end of the launch of another rocket from Ponce Inlet. The high point of this trip, though, was the announcement, at 3AM, by the US Air Force that they were about to commence a “live fire exercise” about 15 miles SE of Cape Canaveral. Upon hearing this, we checked our position and discovered that WE were about 15 miles SE of Cape Canaveral, so Ralph called the USAF and asked them if they were going to shoot at US. They asked for our coordinates, which he provided, and then they explained that they had us in sight, and would not fire at us(!). We had the radar on, but could not see any targets in the vicinity, so they must have been using something in stealth mode. We didn’t see anything, but Lynn heard the noise of the firing.

The other interesting sight as we proceeded south appeared about 5AM, when a very bright light was sighted. At first we thought it was a large city, or maybe a large cruise ship, all lit up, but eventually we figured that it was the St. Lucie power plant, all lit up like a XMAS tree. It is a target that stands out from everything else on the coast. So much for security.

The NWS had predicted west winds, clocking to the NW, so of course the winds backed to just south of west, and we ended up beating the entire way south, with the need to motor-sail the last 2 hours to get in-shore. The kitties did not appreciate beating to windward for 18 hours…

We made the entrance to the St. Lucie River at 8AM, about the time of low tide(!), and proceeded up river where Ralph picked the Harborage Marina because it has WiFi, and (supposedly) has plenty of water for us to get in. The dockmaster pointed us to a spot on a long pier, and we got within 10 feet before going aground, so he offered us a 75 ft(!) slip, where we are now tied up. It is grand. It is so big that we cannot get lines on the pilings on the other side of the slip from the finger pier, so we have to use bumpers when the wind is from the west.

Backstory Part 4 - Down the ditch, and offshore

2008-01-22T14:19:00.000-05:00

We left Beaufort right after Thanksgiving, with National Weather Service predictions of north winds, shifting to the northwest. We had met some other boat heading south, and it appeared that we all had the same idea – namely to head directly for Charleston from Beaufort when a nice weather window opened, and this looked like the window. We left at 5:00 AM and the winds were astern, as predicted, but they gradually shifted to the NE, so that we had the wind directly astern. The winds also did not stay in the 10-15 kt range, but built all day, to 20-25, with gusts in the 30-35 foot range. The seas also built up considerably, to about 8-12 feet, so that we were doing some amazing corkscrews down the face of the waves. We made great progress, but it was quite hard on the kitties. Calypso, in particular, was miserable. She drools continuously, and it is quite an effort to anti-drool-proof the inside of the boat. In fact, during this day, she managed to drool all over our main cell phone, shorting out the power-charge connectors and corroding them into non-existence. We have since been dependent on the backup cell-phone, which is a pay-as-you-go phone, and therefore much more expensive.
After 8 hours of corkscrewing, we decided to head into Wrightsville Beach, NC. We arrived about 6PM, just before they started their annual XMAS boat parade. We had heard about these sort of things in Annapolis, but had never seen one close-up before. They made us un-anchor from the spot we had chosen because it was inside the fireworks safety zone. All-in-all, an exciting day (not a good thing).

Next day, we decided to go back to the ditch (the ICW) for a bit. We started late and motored down thru the Wilmington area, and almost made it to the infamous bridge that does not open at low tide (because it is a floating bridge that goes aground at low tide), and then we were stuck, because there wasn’t anyplace to anchor or any marinas open to duck into. We tried to find our way into a few creeks, but the tide was too low. Eventually, we begged a slip at a marina that was being renovated, and they let us tie up for the nite. We also befriended a nice young Iraq vet named Matt who was driving his 25 ft sailboat south, all by himself. He had an 8HP outboard that he ran flat-out, and told us quite a few tales of life in the army in Iraq.
Next day, we motored all the way past Georgetown, NC, into the swamps. It was quite beautiful, with few boats, meandering down the rivers and thru the swamps. Near Georgetown the USCG seemed to be filling their monthly quota of inspections in one afternoon. We heard them stop one boat after another, for “safety inspections”. We were not, however, stopped.

fter the night in the swamps, we motored on to Charleston, SC, where we stayed at the City Marina. Quite civilized, living the big life on the “Mega-dock”, with hot showers and the courtesy van into Charleston. We got the bicycles out and cycled all over town. We had some really great meals, and the weather finally told us that we were “in the south”. We could have stayed for a month and eaten a LOT of shrimp and grits, but we had to keep pushing south, for some reason.

We motored out of Charleston in drizzle, back into the ditch, and spent the night again in a swamp, but a nice one. It was interesting that none of the guide books mentioned the spot we stopped as a potential anchorage, but two boats that followed us decided that we had picked a good spot, and anchored right next door. (hmmm…)

They left the next morning at dawn, but we decided to sleep in, and then head out again into the ocean. The NWS was predicting NW winds, 15-20, clocking to the north, so we decided to make a run down the coast past Savannah and Brunswick directly to Jacksonville. The first few hours went as predicted, but the wind stayed stubbornly from the west, so we were close-hauled for about 8-hours, and then we had to do some serious motor-sailing to windward to stay close to shore. The seas also built up to 5-8 feet, and we once again had to deal with unhappy kitties. Dante was the only one to come up on deck thru the night. He just wanted to be held, although at several points he tried to get out of the enclosure onto the deck, and even on to the back porch(!). We made our entrance to Jacksonville at about 8AM, and motored up the St. Johns River into the ICW, and then south a few miles to Jacksonville Beach, where we ploughed out way into a marina (at dead low tide) to stay for 4 days.

Busy LONG weekend, part 2

2008-01-22T13:41:00.000-05:00

Back to the productivity.

We want to have a phone on board, but don't want to sign up for a cell phone service, and the pay-as-you-go plan gets expensive fast, so Vonage looked like a good solution. However, it requires a broadband connection, and it is not clear from their web site that WiFi on a boat qualifies as broadband.

They do have an alpha-application called Vonage Talk which works on the PC alone, using the microphone and speakers on the PC to give you a phone. So I downloaded this last week, andtried to get it to work, but the app seems to have problems recognizing customers, and I gave up. Sunday, sitting in the boat with nothing to do I decided to try again, and Voila! it worked. Called Joy in Pittsburgh, and she could hear us, and we had a nice talk. We even got her to send us the last of the boat stickers (details on another post) for the big boat.

So, now we have a phone, wherever we have a laptop and a WiFi connection, which is cool.

Monday, we went off to shop for groceries. Down Rt 1, to Publix for some pork chops and sald greens, and then over to the farm stand, where we buy LOTS of great fruits at really great prices. The fruit there seems to be much juicier than we ever got up north.

When we came, back, the Engenius box had arrived, and while jlm went off to the gym, I put it together, and tried to make it work. I didn't mount it, but just stuck it up on the book and ran an ethernet cable down thru the hatch, where it connected to a PoE injection point, and then to the laptop. All powered up well, and I was able to get into the router to configure it, but for 2 hours I could figure out how to make it pick up the WiFI and send it to the PC.

Lots of surfing on the web, looking for others who had similar problems, and Voila! I found a recent thread that explained that although you have to set the IP address and subnet mask manually to get IN to the AP, you have to re-enable auto IP addressing when you are done with the setup for it to recognize the computer. Do this and Voila! you have a connection.

Then it was on to the Vonage box, which sits between the AP and the PC. This was the tricky part, because I didn't know whether it could be convinced that the AP was really a cable modem. More ethernet wires were strung across the cabin, connecting the AP, the PoE injector, the Vonage box, a wireless phone(!), and the computer. With power cords everywhere, as well. I should have taken a photo.

Once again, I made it into the Vonage box to configure it, and it talked to me. It also recognized the AP, and proceeded to spend a LONG time downloading firmware upgrades before the lights finally arrived in the magic configuration, and Voila! I had a dial-tone on the phone!

Once again, called Joy to see how it worked. She is starting to wonder about us, because I am calling her to see if she "can hear me now". I figure that if SHE can understand us, given her bad hearing, everyone else can, as well.

I even used the Vonage Talk software to call the watermaker people to see whether I need to rally run the watermaker, or just flush it. They said just flush it, which is what I wanted to hear.

Celebrated this productivity success with some really nice pork chops, brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and cab/shiraz blend.

This AM (Tuesday), I started to see about locating the AP and the Vonage box, and have determined that this is going to be more hassle than thought. The mount for the AP antenna wants a vertical pole, which only exists in one suitable location on the arch, next to the SSB antenna. I don't want the AP antenna radiating into the SSB, or vice-versa. Also, it looks like I may have to cut off the ends of the cable and crimp on new plugs, to make it thru the holes in the arch. Then, I will have to find ANOTHER power strip to be able to plug in all of the new power bricks. As well as figuring out how to get the wire from the arch into the fwd part of the boat.

Ahh well. Life on a boat.

We also went to Mr. Bread this AM to buy the preferred loaf. Last time we went in the late PM, and they were out. We have learned. Also bought some stone crabs for dinner tonite.

Weather has moderated, and we are no longer rocking and rolling. Tommorrow we are off to the South Florida Fair in WBP with Karen and Pete. It should be interesting.

Busy weekend

2008-01-21T09:23:00.000-05:00

Well, the weather stayed quite excreble over the weekend, but we still managed to be productive(!). Saturday night jlm asked, just before we went to bed, whether it might rain, because she wanted to leave some hatches open for ventilation. I said that I thought it would likely rain, so we closed up, which was a good thing, because it poured all night. Buckets and buckets. With lightning and thunder to beat the badn. We unplugged computers and hoped that the big Catalina 470 next door with its taller mast would protect us. Luckily we all made it thru the night with no strikes. The catamaran two boats away was struck before we arrived in Stuart, and he is gradually working on replacing damaged equipment.

Lightning is funny stuff. I was talking to the owner of the C470, and he said that he was surprised when he found out that his big boat did not have all of the thru-hulls bonded, and Catalina told him that it was NOT protected from lightning. I told him that I thought that lightning protection on a boat was a real black art. Lightning is a very large mix of different electrical signals, at very high frequencies, which follows its own path to ground, and that path is very hard to predict on a boat. The current does not want to change directions, but you never know when it is going to decide that a sideways path to the water is preferable to a slightly tortuous path down your ground wire. Some people clamp welding cables to the shrouds and hang them in the water, while others run very expensive large diameter wire from chainplates to keelbolts to try to encourage the bolts to go out the keel. I think the high frequency cmponent in the bolt is what makes it so difficult to predict. Stranded wire is best to handle the high frequency, and flat conductors like the ones used for SSB grounding would probably be best, but I am not sure that flat foil could even handle the current. In any case, we all came thru OK.

I also helped the 470 owner track down a problem with his 110 outlets. It turns out that he had an additional GFCI installed in the chain of outlets on the starboard side or his boat, and it tripped. However, we did discover that the GFCI in his aft head was not tripping at all, which is NOT A GOOD THING. He plans a trip to the hardware store to buy a new one, and he will likely remove the one that was added, because the computer that used to use that outlet is no longer installed.

I tried to hook up the GPS to the two radios yesterday, but it does not look like the Raymarine system is putting out an NMEA signal. At least I found out that the boat was wired with this eventuality in mind, so I don't have to run more wire. I also found out that Jeanneau very thoughtfully pre-wired a number of other switches to terminal blocks, so that the additional of new electrical components would be easier. The more I discover about this boat, the more I am impressed with the forethought of the builder. Who says the French don't know how to build things correctly?

I also found the instruction manual for the anchor windlass, and in reading it(!) I discovered that I can calibrate the windlass so that it reads out the correct length of chain deployed. This is something that has also bugged some of the other Jeanneau owners, and I will report on my success with this project. It also looks like I will have to do some maintenance on winches and the windlass this week.

The biggest success of the weekend, however, and getting Vonage to work. We have been waiting for the WiFi access point to arrive, and I wondered whether other options might work.

More in the next post.

Rainy interlude

2008-01-17T09:42:00.000-05:00

It is raining, which they really need down here, and which is a good break from the winds that have been howling thru for the past 2 days. When we decided to stay another month, we also decided to re-tie the boat, which is in this 75 ft(!) slip. We originally tied up thinking we would stay for 3 days, and we just used bumpers to hold us off the finger pier, but several northers convinced us that we needed something more substantial. They would pound us against the finger pier, and the motion was horrible.

So we unplugged from electricity and cable, and untied all of the lines(!) to get underway 35 feet(!) to the far piling, where Ralph attached our longest dock line. The bow-thruster was quite useful for this evolution. Then back into the slip, and re-tieing the lines, and re-hooking the power and cable. At least the inverter worked well to provide AC while we were "at sea". Small tests like this are reassuring. The motion now is much better, and we don't have to worry as much about the fenders.

Since it is raining, the kitties are staying inside, and they, especially Dante, want to be amused. He has become a royal PIA about getting attention, to the point that he now bites when ignored. Not any sort of serious bite, but he just opens his mouth and lets you know that he has teeth, which is quite disconcerting. We have a squirt bottle to try to discourage this behavior, but it is never quite readily at hand. He used to do this in HF when he wanted food first thing in the AM - he did it to rxc regularly when he got out of the shower at 5:25 am. Just a lite nip to let you know that he is there, with needs...

We are also waiting for the delivery of a new WiFi access point that will (1) give us better connectivity (it is already great in this marina, but elsewhere it will be better), and (2) allow us to hook up to Vonage, so we will have VoIP phone service, with a Pittsburgh phone number. The Vonage box arrived in only one day, but the AP seems to be on a slow UPS truck. Hopefully the ISPs here and other places we hook up to will not filter out Vonage. I think we will even be able to use these two items at the house in France, and maybe even on the boat in Europe.

Maybe I will do some more paperwork. We have left the printer out, since we are not going anywhere, so I can print out some stuff and get it ready to mail.

Backstory - Part 3 - Down the ditch

2008-01-16T16:50:00.000-05:00

The first day into the ditch was quite an experience. We had to leave the marina at 5:00 am to be able to make two bridges that are normally closed during Norfolk rush-hour, so we made the initial part of the trip in the dark, and it was also quite foggy. It was challenging, trying to figure out where the marks were, and which way to go, but we worked quite well together, with jlm looking out for lights, while rxc steered and navigated. We had an interesting conversation with one bridge tender who said that she would "try" to open the bridge, but was not sure whether it would open(!). We also had to duck a few freighters who were coming out. Luckily, we did not meet any warships. The chartplotter was also a great help.

We had originally wanted to take the Dismal Swamp route, but it is closed for the winter because of low water in the swamp, so we had to take the Virginia Cut. All of the guide books say this is a miserable, monotanus(sp?) route, with no redeeming qualities, but we found it quite interesting. Maybe we have a low threshold for amusement. We saw lots of birds, few boats, and the low-lying marshes were quite interesting. The wind was on the nose most of the way down, except for a very few moments. We tried to sail, but quickly gave up.

Because of the lack of anchorages, this was a long day. We made it all the way to the mouth of the Alligator river, where we anchored in deep twilight. Luckily, there was NO wind, so we kind of drifted around the anchor all night, and we up before dawn the next day to keep heading south.

The second day out of Norfolk was up the Alligator River and down the Pungo River-Alligator River canal, which was not exciting, but again quite pretty with fall colors. We tried to find some fresh shrimp for dinner at one spot that had a number of fishing boats and was noted to have fish, but none were available. We think it may have had something to do with being the day before Thanksgiving. We also got to do some nice sailing down the Pungo River, which was a change from constant motoring. Calypso drooled but less.

The third day was a bit shorter than the first two, because we really pushed the first two days (82 miles each day). We wanted to get to Moorhead City early in the afternoon, and we were successful, arriving about noon. We tied up at the town docks in Beaufort NC, which is right across the inlet, and it is quite a charming place. A very nice “Main Street” with lots of interesting shops (all closed on T-day), restaurants (for a nice seafood lunch today), and nicely maintained old houses. Many of the houses seem to be for sale (prices from $400K to $1.5MM). They even have free Wifi available along the docks. We had T-day dinner at the Backstreet Pub, where the town threw a party for the cruisers, with turkey, ham, desserts, and all the fixins (except for liquor). Because the wind was a bit strong, we took take a lay-day to finish up some projects and rest.

We hoped to go off-shore (25-50 miles) for the next leg, down to Charleston. We wanted to leave in the early AM, getting in on Sunday mid-day. The plan was to stay in the City Marina there for a few days before continuing down the ICW to Savannah. jlm wanted to see one of her contractors who was supposed be at Fort Pulaski in Savannah, and we should have been able to make this all work, if the weather cooperated. But it was not to be...

Backstory - Part 2

2008-01-16T16:35:00.000-05:00

So, lets start in Baltimore, where the boat was berthed for over a year. After getting the house packed and sent off to France in August, and then getting it sold right away to a colleague and her husband, we went off to France to meet the containers. Unfortunately, the containers were hung up in Baltimore by Customs, probably because we put the pickup truck into one of the the containers at the last minute. They took nearly 2 weeks to figure out what to do about it - xray the container, open it, or what. In the end, it seems that they did open it, because we found a cut security bolt inside when it wass delivered.

We had hoped to have the containers delivered in mid-late September, but because of the US Customs, we missed 3 sailings, and then when they did get to France, the French customs people took some time to decide what to do. They also focused on the truck, and eventually decided that it was a commercial vehicle(!), and they charged us nearly 2000 euros of import tax. This delayed delivery till mid October, and while we were waiting, jlm's mother passed away in NY. What to do?!?

jlm decided that there was not much she could do for her mother by rushing back to NY, so she decided to stay to help with the containers. They arrived, and with the tremendous help of our neighbors, were unloaded and shifted into the house&barn. We then went back to the US, buried jlm's mother and cleaned out her apt, and traveled to Pittsburgh to pick up the cats, at rxc's mother's house. Then we all stuffed the car full and went back to Baltimore, where our last residence in the US was located. We somehow managed to stuff all of the "stuff" into the boat, and spent 2 weeks installing an SSB and some other major equipment, before we left on Nov 18, the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

Luckily for us, we have a complete enclosure for the cockpit, so the trip south was not nearly as cold as it could have been. The first day down the bay started out foggy, but the sun eventually came out, and we were able to do some sailing. The winds were fickle, however, and after dark we had to start the engine and we motored most of the night. It was actually good to have the engine running, because the blower exhausts into the cockpit and helped keep us warm.

We got into Norfolk about 9:30, running down past the naval base to the marina right in downtown Norfolk. We did some essential shopping for groceries and charts, took a nap, and then got ready to enter the ditch.

Backstory - part 1

2008-01-16T10:48:00.001-05:00

Where to start...

In November, when we left Baltimore? In June, when rxc retired? In 1999, when they bought the house in France? In 1987, when they moved to France for the first time? In 1983, when they met at a party thrown by a woman that he was (just casually) dating? In 1972, when he joined the Navy and developed a taste for boats and travel and food? In the 1950s, when she developed a yen for sailing and textiles and food?

Maybe we will just start in Baltimore, and fill in the holes as we go along.

This trip started on November 18, 2007, out of the Anchorage Marina in Baltimore, where Petillant had been berthed since July 2006. It is (1) a repositioning voyage for the boat to France, where rxc and jlm have a house and intend to retire, (2) a shakedown voyage of the boat in anticipation of the trip across the Atlantic, and then additional voyages around Europe, and (3) a retirement/vacation/adventure trip.

The boat is a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 43DS, 2-cabin version, sailboat. The name is french for "sparkling", and is also a wine term used to describe bubbly wine, usually with less carbonation than sparkling wine that is made like champagne.

The cats are Maine Coons, known for the gregarious nature, large size, and their fur, which is abundant. Zabelle is the #1 old lady. She was born in Amsterdam in 1990, and then lived in Paris, Washington, DC, and Harpers Ferry before she moved on board. Her daughter Siren is 14, was born in DC, and has followed her mother everywhere, in spite of Zabelle's efforts to be rid of her.

Dante and Calypso were born in Indiana in August 2006, and have lived with rxc and jlm in HF. They are bundles of energy and affection, and it was thought that they would take to sailing quite well. Unfortunately, Calypso gets quite seasick (more on that in later posts), and Dante insists on staying up in the cockpit when the boat is at sea. As a result, their participation in future long sea voyages is an open question.

The house in HF was sold in September, and all of the household goods were moved to France, where they are currently in storage in the barn and in the upstairs loft in the house. The house-sitters are still there, working on getting their new house complete and ready to move into, so the house is a bit crowded right now. Until then, rxc and jlm will be living on Petillant, crusing the Carribbean and getting ready for a transatlantic voyage.

More to come in part 2

Welcome aboard

2008-01-16T10:38:00.000-05:00

These are the voyages of the sailing vessel Petillant. Her eight-month mission: to get to France and thru the French douane some time before September 2008.

Along with her crew of two(currently) humans and four Maine Coon Cats, she has successfully made the trip down the ICW to Stuart Florida, where the humans are now recharging, and the cats are getting used to life on board. This blog will discuss the trip so far, and in the future, as all involved grapple with their new lives. Stay tuned for more info...