Breeze On

After 47 hours of mostly motoring—with a few peaceful hours of sailing—we completed the last leg of our trip home. The water was so calm along the outer banks of North Carolina that it seemed like glass.  Now Breeze On is safely tucked into her slip and we have started to unload our clothes and leftover food.  We are tired and quickly ran out of steam this afternoon after a few trips of unloading. Fortunately, we have plenty of time in the coming days to complete the chores required to get Breeze On cleaned and organized. 

After 49 hours of motoring and motor-sailing we pulled into Homer Smith Docks in Beaufort, NC for diesel this afternoon and are now on our way N again. We love Beaufort and Homer Smith’s and would have loved to stay a few days, but do not want to pass up this weather window to round Cape Hatteras.  We have seen quite a few dolphins—some stayed with us for over 30 minutes.  George cleaned the salt off of the dodger windows to improve the visibility. Of course, there are already salty again from the waves we encountered exiting the Beaufort Channel. 

The jib sheet is replaced and we have left Brunswick again. George spent the afternoon yesterday threading a messenger line under the deck cover using a tape measure and wire. This morning he went up the mast to thread a messenger line through one hole in the mast and out another. The wind made the job challenging but he managed to get it done using the high-tech, expensive tool shown in the photo below.  Next he attached an old main halyard to the messenger lines and pulled the line through the mast, a block, and under the deck cover. The old halyard had chafed at one end but was long enough as a jib sheet with the chafed end removed. The other end of the line was threaded through blocks and attached to the jib. I was quite impressed that George was able to figure out how to replace the jib sheet since it is rather complicated. Replacing a jib sheet on our last boat involved untying a line, pulling it through a block, then putting the new line through a block and retying it. The job i

After 12 days in Brunswick we left the Brunswick Landing Marina at 8:00 am this morning to head further N. We set a course for Winyah Bay, SC but planned to stop sooner, or continue on farther, depending on how we felt. I took a photo looking down the river at 7:00 am this morning hoping to catch how dark it was—blasted Daylight Saving Time—but my iPhone outsmarted me and took the photo with an extended exposure.  We passed under the Sidney Lanier bridge shortly after we left.  The wind is blowing 20 knots from the NW and the seas were quite lumpy.  We were sailing with a single-reefed main and had just put another reef in the main so we could also unfurl the jib. We thought that sail plan might be faster, but also more comfortable. As we were unfurling the jib, the sheet (lines that controls the jib) parted (broke) with a loud bang. It startled both of us.  We furled the jib and George donned a PFD to go out on deck to tie up the other end of the jib sheet that was flapping in the win

We had another visit yesterday, this time from my brother, Dave. He drove 3 1/2 hours from Ocala, FL. We had a lovely time catching up in the cockpit, then walked the short distance into town for lunch at Reid’s Apothecary. After lunch we walked around town a bit more and stopped to take a selfie in front of one of Brunswick’s squares.  Once we returned to the marina we hopped in Dave’s truck and he drove us to Publix, a few miles away. I had hoped to buy the ingredients I needed to make a new recipe for granola but Publix didn’t carry oat bran. When we returned to the truck Dave had the idea to search for health food stores on his GPS. We found one that had the oat bran and I made the granola later in the evening. I singed it a bit so no photos for this batch—have I mentioned how hard it is to control the oven temperature? We had a great visit with Dave and so appreciated the effort he made to come see us.  There are a lot of birds in Brunswick and several seem to enjoy hanging out on

Since our first trip to the Bahamas in 2016 George has used PredictWind software for weather routing. PredictWind takes the weather forecast from several sources and plans a route for the best conditions given the forecast. It includes information on wind, seas, and currents. It will also consider the speed of your boat, given the information you enter into the program. In addition, it has parameters for warnings for wind speed, wave height, storms and even wind chill.  George initially ran the models on his laptop while connected to a marina’s WiFi. While we were offshore he could also run the weather routing models using the Iridium Go satellite phone on either the laptop or iPad with the Predict Wind Offshore app.  We recently watched a “Getting the Most Out of PredictWind” webinar. From that we learned that we could also get information on amount of roll we would experience on a trip if we upgraded the app. If you have been reading this blog for a while you know we very much dislik

It can be frustrating waiting for weather windows. It looks like we will be waiting in Brunswick at least another week, maybe longer. The silver lining, though, is the people who have come to visit. Today we were visited by my long-time friend, Joan. She remembers meeting me just before first grade and we remained classmates and friends through college at Florida State. My brother is scheduled to come see us in a few days. These visits from friends and family are making our time here truly special. 

The weather continues to be unsettled and the weather window we thought we had for next week seems to be evaporating. Nevertheless, we are enjoying our time in Brunswick. Yesterday and today we were visited by our friends, Dan and Jan, who drove out from Tallahassee to see us. Jan and I have been friends since elementary school. We were roommates in Tallahassee while Dan and George were grad school roommates, also in Tallahassee. George and I had a wonderful time visiting with them, walking through Brunswick, and sharing dinner at Indigo Coastal Shanty. We don’t see each other often but when we do it seems we just pick up where we left off.  After dinner Dan and Jan kindly drove us to the grocery store. We spent a few hours together again this morning before they returned home. We are so glad they made the last-minute decision to reach out to us here.  Yesterday morning I participated in a yoga class, held here at the marina. This morning, after the fog cleared,  we visited the nearby

Brunswick is a relatively busy port but we have never seen it as busy as it was when we arrived in the dark on Tuesday night. We encountered three dredging ships along with various other ships as we made our way up the channel. Finally, at 1 am, we dropped the anchor in a shallow area at a wide spot in the river and went to bed. The next morning we raised the anchor and traveled the rest of the way to Brunswick Landing Marina. Unfortunately, the S wind made our arrival quite challenging. The S wind comes all the way up the river.   Last year—when we had similar conditions—I put a long scratch in the side of the boat when I was either pulling into or leaving the fuel dock. This time I was really dreading docking at the fuel dock and our slip. All went well at the fuel dock—no scratches. I thought all was going well as I was pulling into our slip, but the wind pushed me too far over and I had to abort. I was trying to maneuver back into position to enter the slip but ended up in a positi

We left Grand Bahama Yacht Club yesterday morning about 30 minutes before sunrise.  One boat left ahead of us and several other boats were behind us, although we were the only boat traveling N. We motored and motor sailed for the first 27 hours of the trip then—when the wind filled in—turned the engine off to sail in the Gulf Stream, usually moving at 10 knots.  After hearing Chris Parker’s forecast for the Charleston area covering today and tomorrow, we decided to go to Brunswick, GA instead of Charleston. Neither one of us was in the mood winds up to 30 knots and seven foot seas.  The highlight of our trip was watching a pod of dolphins interact with us for quite a while today. The seas were too rough to go on deck to take photos so we weren’t able to catch most of their jumps. We were both delighted to see a group of three jump just ahead of our bow.  We expect to enter the channel at Brunswick around 11 pm this evening, then stop at an anchorage a few hours later. Tomorrow we will

When we last visited Charleston by boat in the fall of 2017 we swore that were would never bring the boat back to Charleston. The strong current (although we did time our arrival and departure to coincide with slack tide) and inconvenience of the only marina available to us made it just not worth it. Well…here we are six and a half years later planning a return trip to Charleston. We have a weather window of two and a half days and—if we travel in the Gulf Steam—Charleston is the appropriate distance from here to fit that window. We plan to leave Lucaya early tomorrow morning and arrive at the Charleston City Marina at slack tide—5 pm—on Wednesday. Of course, if we don’t travel the speed we expect, or don’t want to travel in the Gulf Stream due to poor conditions, we have a Plan B as well as a Plan C. Below is our route.  We have spent the past two days relaxing and preparing for the next leg of our trip home. George plotted our route to maximize the boost from the Gulf Stream and I en

Hoo boy! What a day we have had already. After raising the anchor at 3 pm yesterday afternoon and pointing the boat toward Lucaya, we arrived just after 7 am this morning. We first stopped at the fuel dock at Grand Bahama Yacht Club then motored the short distance up the creek to Scarboro Dock where we had a reservation. Some people we met last fall had highly recommended Scarboro Dock. We expected to be placed on the 180’ long dock—but since there were already three other boats on that dock—we were motioned into a 20’ long, 25’ wide slip. Because the dinghy was on the back we had to go bow in first. There was absolutely no way we could make the boat secure in that short slip. We can make a short slip work at home because we have TideSlides in a very narrow slip, enabling us to tie the boat up tight. Also, we take the dinghy off and back into the slip at home. In this slip we were twisting and turning, nearly hitting the boat next to us. And the strong wind we are expecting hasn’t even

This morning we dropped our mooring lines and left the Spanish Wells harbor to sail seven miles west to Royal Island. We opted to drop our anchor at the west end of the Royal Island rather than the  inner harbor  we visited last fall.  Since we don’t plan to leave this area until tomorrow afternoon, our motivation to leave Spanish Wells was mostly a desire for different scenery. We did appreciate the ease of going ashore while we were on the mooring ball. Yesterday we walked across the island to the beach on the N side. Since it was low tide the sandbar extended for quite a long distance. If you zoom way in you can see kite boarders in the distance.  We enjoyed looking at the colorfully painted buildings in town.  Today’s walk took us past the Spanish Wells Yacht Haven where we saw a sailboat crammed in next to a large motor yacht. The only time I would appreciate being next to a boat that big was if we needed it as a windbreak.  When we leave here tomorrow afternoon we plan to sail ov

The small mooring field in Spanish Wells is such a well protected area that there is sometimes not enough wind to keep all of the boats pointed in the same direction. We were stern-to-stern with our neighbor several times yesterday. When George went up into the cockpit in the morning yesterday he saw that our dinghy was up against our neighbors Startink. Later in the day our boats came close to touching before they moved apart again.  We were actually wishing for more wind, which is something that rarely happens when we aren’t sailing. The tall trees that are very close to us tend to keep the wind down.  It was much windier in other less protected areas. A front came through last night and we now have sufficient wind to keep all of the boats pointed in the same direction. 

The last two days have been quite busy on Breeze On. Yesterday morning we raised the anchor at Man Island and motored three miles S to an anchorage adjacent to Dunmore Town on Harbour Island. We dinghied ashore and to wash two loads of laundry at Super Carl’s Laundromat. The place isn’t fancy but it is certainly efficient. In the afternoon we went ashore again to eat lunch at Briland Wave. Our first choice had been Angela’s Starfish Restaurant but that place appeared to be closed. The food at Briland Wave was quite good, but two wraps—with small salads and chips—cost almost $70, and that was without the beverages. Yikes. After lunch we went next door to the Pigly Wigly and scored a lot of produce! I was quite excited about that.  Once we returned to Breeze On we raised the anchor again and motored 2 1/2 miles further S to the Cistern Bay anchorage. Shortly after we dropped the anchor a ship with a cargo of large trees came by. I wonder where it was headed.  Although we like the Cistern