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