Breeze On

We decided to leave Beaufort late Friday morning—two days ago—and arrived home at 11 am this morning. Although we expected the trip might have some potentially uncomfortable sections, it turned out to be not bad at all. The wind at Cape Hatteras never went over 20 knots, the squalls forecast to come off the coast of North Carolina ended up as just two light rain showers, and the N wind off of the coast of Virginia remained very light and didn’t last more than a few hours and the dense fog in Cambridge was not that dense. We were even able to sail more than expected. We would normally choose to anchor overnight somewhere on the Chesapeake before continuing home but the air temperature dropped to 45° last night and the water temperature was only 49°. Our little electric heater can be used only when we are plugged into shore power so we chose to sail overnight on the Chesapeake and spend tonight in our nice, warm condo. The challenge of sailing at night on the Chesapeake is dealing with a...

It is that time again. We are running weather route after weather route—planning the next leg of our trip home. For the past few days we had our eyes on a weather window that had us leaving tomorrow afternoon and arriving home on Sunday. That window is now looking less than ideal. In actuality we won’t know if we are leaving tomorrow until tomorrow arrives. I had planned to do the passage meal prep in the morning but we are now considering leaving at 11am. In order to get a head start on the meal prep we decided to do some of it prep today. But since today is my birthday George is doing most of the work. Thanks, George! I will finish the rest of the meal prep in the morning.  We are celebrating my birthday tonight by going out to eat at Aqua, a very nice restaurant here in Beaufort.  View of our dock before sunrise.  Looking east. I used the Cleanup tool on George’s newer iPhone to remove pvc pipes that were in the foreground.  George making the apple and cabbage sla...

The front arrived yesterday and brought plenty of wind and rain. Early in the morning, before the rain arrived, we did two loads of laundry in Homer Smith’s modern and free machines. What a treat! We also took a brief walk into town, then stayed on board the rest of the day. Since we are plugged into shore power, our little electric heater kept us warm throughout the night as the temperature dropped. This morning it was 39° outside and 60° inside. After baking cookies in the propane oven the temperature inside the cabin went even higher. It looks as if our first weather window to go further N will be this weekend. Fortunately, we don’t mind waiting in Beaufort and the Homer Smith Marina.  Our little electric heater. 

Our overnight trip from Southport to Beaufort was uneventful. We arrived at Homer Smiths Docks and Marina at 9:30 yesterday morning after motoring 16 hours. Once again, the wind was too light and too far behind us to keep the sails filled. After getting settled in our slip we walked to the office to check in and then to a coffee shop down the road. That took all the energy we had so we stayed on board the rest of the day and we each had a long nap.  Today we borrowed Homer Smith’s courtesy car and ran a few errands. One of the errands was buying a small Swiss Army knife to replace the one George lost months ago somewhere on the boat. It may turn up someday…or not.  After taking nice, long, hot showers in Homer Smith’s beautiful facilities we walked into town for a late lunch/early dinner. We got back to the boat right after it started to rain and now it is really coming down. We are expecting rain and wind the rest of today and all of tomorrow.        ...

We have had a nice visit in Southport, NC and are now preparing to leave on the next leg of our trip home. When we left Lucaya on Monday the weather forecast said we would have relatively mild temperatures with one cold snap and winds that would allow us to get home relatively quickly. That has all changed. Now the forecast calls for several days of cold weather and several days of winds from the N. We could choose to ignore any weather windows that come our way and avoid going any further N until the weather is consistently warmer, but that doesn’t fit our natures. We both hate to pass up weather windows. So, we plan to leave Southport this evening and sail overnight to Beaufort, NC, waiting there for the next weather window.  Last night the outside temperature dropped to 40° but we stayed warm under our blankets with the help of our little portable electric heater. When we woke up this morning the temperature in the cabin was 63°. Not too bad. The low tonight is forecast to be 48...

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...