Breeze On

At noon today we arrived in Southport, NC after traveling 496 nautical miles in 57 hours. Our average speed was 8.7 knots. The Gulf Stream gave us quite a boost—our average speed yesterday was 10.1 knots! We were able to sail for just 3 1/2 of those 57 hours but that is more than we expected. Now we are ready for some rest.                     Last night’s sunset.  The sun was a bright red color.                     Dredging in the Cape Fear River. The bucket on the crane is dumping the spoils onto a barge.                     The view from our slip. You can see the dredging operation in the distance. 

Planning this trip from the Bahamas to the US has seemed especially challenging. Of course it is entirely possible we have forgotten how much we agonized over the timing of other trips. We delayed our departure until today in order to avoid squalls in the Gulf Stream. Even so the forecasts suggested that we still may encounter occasional squalls here and there. George spent the past few days running weather routing models for numerous times of day. What if we left at noon instead of 9AM? How about 1PM? 6AM? 5AM? 4AM? 3AM? Abandon leaving today altogether? In the end we chose leaving the marina at 2:30AM and so far, so good. We expected to pass close to squalls off coast of Fort Pierce, FL and that is exactly what happened. Delaying our departure until today meant we have had very little wind do we may be motoring all the way. We expect to arrive in Georgetown, SC but may change those plans, depending on the weather.                    ...

We are still running weather models and talking to Chris Parker (our weather forecaster) trying to determine when we are leaving Lucaya and what our destination will be. Right now it looks as if we will be leaving Lucaya on Monday morning and going to either North Carolina or South Carolina. We have had to delay our departure in order to avoid the thunderstorms that are forecast to be in the Gulf Stream. Unfortunately, the delay means we will have to motor most of the way.  While we are waiting George has worked on a few boat projects and I did laundry in the marina’s laundry facility. We walked 1.5 miles to the grocery store and what a nice store it was! We ate at the restaurant here on the property and plan to try another restaurant that we passed while walking to the store. Tomorrow I will be preparing the food we will eat while we are offshore.  This is a screenshot from a Predict Wind weather routing run. On the right you can see the forecast models from which you can cho...

We had another great sail yesterday from Great Harbour to Lucaya, Grand Bahama, averaging 7.7 knots over 62 nautical miles. Breeze On is now safely tucked into a slip at Grand Bahama Yacht Club, the first time she has been in a slip since November. This is our last stop in the Bahamas this winter. We will leave here to sail to somewhere in the US, but have been grappling with the decision of when to leave and how far to go. Because we have a long distance between here and home our preference is to go as far as possible when we have an opportunity. We have the right wind and seas to go as soon as this afternoon all the way to Beaufort, NC. However, one of our trusted forecast models is predicting thunderstorms off the coasts of the Carolinas Sunday evening through Tuesday. We would not only want to avoid the lightning of a thunderstorm but also the strong winds and high seas that could come with it. So, we will delay our departure. The downside is if we wait we will also lose the favora...

We left Meek’s Patch, outside of Spanish Wells, at 5 am yesterday morning and sailed 75 nm to Great Harbour Cay. The conditions were great for sailing and we were once again grateful to be able to use our mainsail. Along the way we passed one of the several cruise ship ports which had two ships in port and a great deal of construction happening on a nearby island. We have spent today preparing for our next trip to Grand Bahama, planned for tomorrow morning, but did take some time it for a brief hike.                                                                                  Full moon reflected on the water as we were leaving our anchorage yesterday.                                      ...

We left Harbour Island early yesterday morning at the end of a parade of boats—one ship and four large motor yachts. The wind was light and seas were calm which made for a good passage through the Devil’s Backbone. As we rounded Gun Point, just before arriving at the entrance to Spanish Wells, we noticed other boats anchored in the Gun Point anchorage and it seemed well protected from the then moderate S wind. We decided to give that anchorage a try. It remained calm throughout the day and only became a little rolly before sunrise this morning. Yesterday afternoon we took a dinghy ride into town to dump garbage, eat lunch at Budda’s Snack Shack, and buy some vegetables at the Food Fair grocery store.  This morning we left Gun Point and motored through town to anchor on the W side of Meek’s Patch. George ran the water maker and I did laundry and made seed crackers in the solar oven.  George driving the boat through the narrow part of the Devil‘s Backbone. The beach is closer th...