Sailing Arcas

Annapolis Race Season has Started!

We kicked off the PHRF racing season on Saturday. The day started off warm and sunny, but clouds started covering the sky around 11am and we had a few sprinkles throughout the day. More relevant to our sailing was the lack of wind. At less than 5 knots, it was a sharp contrast to the previous week's practice in 20+ knot winds.

Once we got out to the starting line, we waited, apparently for the race organizers to determine if there would be enough wind to race, and if so, the optimal way to layout the race course. This gave us plenty of time to check out the other boats. There were two other boats in our class - a J29 and a Farr 30. There were also several other groups of boats that looked bigger and fancier than ours, many of them Navy boats sailed by cadets from the Naval academy (one of which had its mainsail flaked on the boom with prefectly exacting precision). A crowd favorite was the boat Airmail, due to its clever paint job.

The racing finally kicked off after noon. Our class was the last to start. We had a great start followed by a good upwind leg. The J29 took the lead (not unexpected as it is a faster boat than Arcas) with us close behind. We rounded the mark and then set the spinnaker. After we rounded the mark, I looked back to see that the Farr 30 had missed the mark and had lost speed trying to get around it. Unfortunately, my glee was short-lived as we quickly realized that we had set the spinnaker incorrectly and the top of the spinnaker was wrapped around the jib. We had to lower it, untangle it, and reset it, none of which resulted in speedy progress down the racecourse.

When we got to the downward mark, we learned that the organizers had shortened the racecourse so that we wouldn't be circling the marks twice. The race was over! It was, shall we say, unsatisfying. We spent the next few hours practicing setting the spinnaker in preparation for next week. Hill tried to focus on the positive aspects of the race with the team, but they weren't buying it. We're a bunch of professional over-achievers who seek perfection. But there's always next time!

Still Sailing Arcas, now in the USA

I went back to our blog this evening to see where we were on this day last year. Since the beginning of the year, I've often thought about where we were at this time last year - sometimes to remind myself that a bad day at work is nothing compared to being blown against a lee shore at 2am or developing a leak in the boat while three hours from the nearest harbor, and sometimes to relive all of the amazing experiences we had during our adventure.

Our last entry left folks hanging - we did make it to Norfolk in time to meet my mother, and we left the boat there for a few months while we got resettled on land. We relocated to DC, found jobs, and got married. Arcas is now making her home in Annapolis - Chesapeake Bay is perfect for her size and characteristics. She's on the hard now, but we'll be putting her back in the water soon. In fact, earlier this evening, Hill and I made a list of all of the work she needs before we put her back in the water. Boat maintenance is never over.

We can't wait to get back on the water. In fact, we drove to Annapolis two weekends ago so that Hill could go frostbiting. Unfortunately, the thin sheet of ice on the harbor killed his plan, and the two feet of snow we've gotten since then hasn't helped. But it will be spring soon. We'll post some updates from our cruising and racing life in Annapolis once it gets going.

Carolina Beach - Mile 295

My hands smell like sea mud. When I pulled up the anchor this morning, it was coated in black goo, and by the time I put it away, so was I. Mmm.

We are still on the countdown to Mile 0. My mother arrives in Portsmouth, VA on June 24, and we want to be there on the 23rd. We are about 15 miles behind schedule. Yesterday was our slowest day on the ICW. We had to wait almost an hour for a bridge opening and later in the day had to wait again for a tugboat doing construction to move out of the way. We were also traveling slower than normal and our prop was vibrating a little bit. Hill dove on the boat after we anchored and it turned out that we had a plastic bag wrapped around the prop.

However, we crossed into North Carolina yesterday. One more state to go! From Myrtle Beach on, the ICW has been more populated. In South Carolina between Charleston and Myrtle Beach, we moved through a beautiful stretch of river and spent the night in a completely isolated spot - we didn't even have cell phone access. Now we are mostly moving through beach towns and there are a lot of other boaters on the water. Most of them are friendly and polite, but I'm about ready to start using the jet skiers for target practice.

Today we are hoping to make it to Swansboro, NC, just south of Beaufort.

McClellanville - Mile 430

Apologies for not updating the blog. Hill and I are making our transition back to the "real world" and our non-sailing time is becoming occupied with other, not nearly as fun tasks.

We are over halfway through the ICW. We made two stops in Georgia - Cumberland Island and Jekyll Island. They were both places that I really wanted to visit. Cumberland Island is a National Park and we spent two days there hiking around the island. It is beautiful and very southern. The interior of the island is covered with huge live oak trees dripping with spanish moss that provide canopy for palmetto bushes. They also provide canopy for about a billion mosquitos. Even coated in Deep Woods Off, if Hill and I stopped moving for more than 30 seconds we would get dive bombed. But it was so beautiful that we didn't mind (too much).

The edges of the island are salt marsh and beach and they are filled with birds and other wildlife. The only access to the island is by boat so once visitors leave on the afternoon ferry, the only people left are park rangers, a few campers, and the other cruisers anchored off the island like us. It was cool.

After Cumberland we stopped at Jekyll Island for a night. Jekyll Island was home to an exclusive club at the turn of the last century and the former club is now a hotel. We were able to borrow a car from the marina to drive around the island and check out the club and old mansions, but the real attraction of the island turned out to be the swimming pool at the marina. It has been 90+ degrees for the last week and Hill and I are dying without air conditioning. The pool was a welcome refreshment.

From Jekyll, Hill and I did an overnight leg to Charleston, SC. I would like to say it was enjoyable but...well...let's just say that offshore overnights are not for me. Some thunderstorms popped up overnight and we had to heave-to for an hour or so to avoid them, which we did. Our XM weather data FINALLY came in handy as the real-time satellite, storm cell, and lightning data allowed us to successfully reroute around all of the storms. But it did not make me long for another offshore leg, and our plan to do another overnight from Charleston to Cape Fear or Beaufort, NC was shelved. The weather forecast for the next few days calls for more scattered thunderstorms, so we are going to stay in the ICW as we continue up. The ICW has its own challenges (I am starting to lose count of how many times we've touched the bottom), but it is protected from the weather.

However, if we hadn't done our offshore leg, we would not have sailed into Charleston harbor, which was fantastic. I've visited Charleston several times, and coming in by sea is far more lovely than by land. In front of us were the old mansions lining the battery, and to our right was the impressive Cooper River Bridge. We stayed in a marina as there aren't good anchorages close to town. Actually, on our second night we left the boat at the marina and got a hotel room to escape the heat. We spent the hottest part of the afternoon in air-conditioned comfort and then went out in the evening to walk around the city and eat some "low country" food. Shrimp and grits - mmmmmm.

We are meeting my mother in Norfolk, VA, aka Mile 0, in 10 days. That's 50 miles per day. We can make it!

Cape Canaveral - ICW Mile 885

Hill and I are anchored just west of the Kennedy Space Center. We were hoping to view a shuttle launch, but the next one is over a week away. Bummer! We are on day three of motoring up the ICW - we decided to be cautious and take the ICW instead of immediately jumping into offshore sailing.

So far, much of the ICW is quite pretty. On our first night, we anchored off of a national wildlife refuge, and hiked over to the beach for a walk along the ocean. Last night we picked up a mooring in the attractive town of Vero Beach. Along the way we've seen lots of birds; I wish we had a book for identifying them. We've seen tons of pelicans and some herons along with several other species. We've also seen dolphins and manatees in the water.

Today we decided to push past our original planned stopping point, and we did 65 miles (about 9 1/2 hours). We have three more days in Florida before crossing into Georgia. In Georgia we plan to take a break for a few days in the "Golden Isles" - Cumberland, Jeckyll, and St. Simon Islands.

 

We're Baaack

And we're back on the boat! We spent most of our break in Austin and Dallas, visiting my family, with a stop in Lawrence, KS over Memorial Day weekend to attend the wedding of Hill's cousin.

We put Arcas the water this afternoon and returned our rental car a few hours later. However, we are still tied up at the dock at the boat yard. We originally planned to leave tomorrow morning, but as usual all of our boat preparations took longer than planned, so we are going to stay here one more day to finish. We had an epic shopping trip at Wal-Mart this morning, buying provisions to last about six weeks plus other odds and ends that we've been waiting to buy once we came back to the U.S. We put most of the food away but still have quite a bit of organizing to do tomorrow. Hill also needs to do a few things to the boat to make it Coast Guard-legal. And, we need to review our charts and figure out where to go!

The immediate question for our journey is whether to stay in the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) or go outside into the Atlantic. Staying in the ICW means that we will be protected from winds and weather, but we will have to motor rather than sail. The ICW is also both narrow and crowded, more like a road, so we will have to hand steer most of the time, which requires more concentration. We will also have to stop each evening as motoring on the ICW at night is not recommended. And there are numerous bridges along the way that have to be raised to let boats through. Let's just say it's not the fast route.

On the other hand, going out into the Atlantic means that we are at the mercy of the weather - and Florida has had daily thunderstorms with lighting and strong gusts for the past 2-3 weeks. There are also a limited number of inlets into anchorages, so once we are out there, we are committed to reaching our next destination unless we turn back.

We've talked to other boaters and gotten lots of different advice. A lot of the recommendations are to go outside and sail straight to Charleston, SC or Beaufort, NC, which would take several days. I'm not ready for or excited about 4-5 days of offshore sailing. On the other hand, it's bloody hot and humid here, so after a few more days of sweating I may reconsider.

But I'm excited about sailing up the coast and seeing the U.S from a different viewpoint. I'll have to make sure to keep my head out of my laptop - I purchased a Verizon connect card so I'll have internet anywhere we have cell phone access. And I'll have cell phone access! It's going to be a little different than the Bahamas.

Pictures!

I was finally able to upload our photos from the last few months - check out the links on the right under "Photo Albums." Enjoy!

Back in the US of A

We have arrived in Florida! Including our two-day layover in Warderick Wells, we traveled from George Town to Florida in seven days. Pretty impressive! We have certainly come a long way (literally and figuratively) from our first painful few weeks in the Abacos.

After an eventful layover in Warderick Wells, we sailed to Nassau (11 hours). The next day we sailed to Chub Cay in the Berrys (7 hours). The following day we decided to sail directly to West Palm Beach (23 hours). We had tossed around several options, including sailing to Bimini and then West Palm, or to Bimini and then Fort Lauderdale and then West Palm. However, it would have been an all-day sail to Bimini (75 miles) and given that the weather has been so settled (10 knots or less from the east), it just seemed easier to get it all over with in one long leg.

We left Chub Cay at noon. We did three hour watches until 6:00pm, when we switched to four hour watches. I did 10-2 and Hill did 2-6. On our night sail to George Town, we did two hour watches and we both ended up wiped out because we didn’t have enough time to sleep. By doing four hour watches overnight, the person off watch actually had the chance to get a decent chunk of sleep. We were still tired when we arrived in West Palm, but not completely exhausted. The night sailing was quite beautiful – the moon was almost full and the sea was almost calm. The only downside was that with the light winds, and our course taking us almost dead downwind, we had the motor on most of the way.

I was on watch when the skyline of West Palm came into view a little before 8:00am. I refrained from yelling out “Land Ho!” since Hill was asleep, but I did manage a little happy dance in the cockpit. We dropped anchor around 11:30 am. Tomorrow we will move to a marina and rent a car and try to restrain ourselves from binging on American culture (Hill has already rediscovered the iPhone). On Monday we will pull the boat out of the water and take a break from sailing until the end of the month, when we will begin making our way up the east coast.

More About George Town

I wanted to add a little more about our stay in George Town. George Town is a well-known cruising destination, and hundreds of boats anchor there during the winter months. Our cruising guide referenced all sorts of scheduled activities, like yoga and volleyball, set up by the boaters.

Our first night in George Town, I looked out at the sea of anchor lights surrounding us, and realized we hadn’t been anywhere this full of boats anywhere else in the Bahamas. The VHF was a constant chatter of boaters hailing each other to make plans or talk. Our favorites were the two or three boats with children on board who would hail each other to make plans to go to the beach and play after they finished their homeschooling. They were so cute!

Still, George Town was not one of our top destinations in the Bahamas. If we had not visited during the Family Regatta, I think we would have found it quite boring. It was not as lively as we expected. One of our friends told us that there were 1/3 the number of boats there from his previous visit – yet another indication of the effects of the US recession that we’ve seen reflected in many other ways in the Bahamas.

But I’m not sure that we would have liked it better with more boaters. Our favorite destinations on our trip have been those with spectacular natural beauty – the places where we could go hiking or snorkeling or diving. The water in George Town’s Elizabeth Harbour wasn’t as clear as in other parts of the Bahamas, and the 20+ knot winds we endured during our stay made it difficult to do water activities (unless getting soaked in the dinghy counts).

George Town was also where we had to part ways with our friends on Lizard and Moondance, who are continuing on to the Dominican Republic. We wish them well!

George Town to Warderick Wells

We are back in the Exuma Park HQ at Warderick Wells. We sailed here directly from  George Town - covering the route that previously took us three weeks in one day.

We are finally blessed with light winds and an army (navy?) of boats is heading back to Florida from George Town. Hill and I ducked out of the crowd to fulfill our promise to ourselves to volunteer for a day at Exuma Park. Yesterday we helped disassemble a salvaged motorboat, install some donated cabinets, and clean and re-organize a storage room. At the end, we were tired! I guess that's what happens after skipping a few months of "real" work.

This island is our favorite spot of our journey and we decided that we couldn't leave without spending at least one more day here snorkeling and admiring the spectacular views. We are heading over to a new snorkel spot in about an hour, at slack tide. Tomorrow we will leave before sunrise for Nassau. It's only 50 miles, but we have to cross the "Yellow Bank," an area of coral heads, and we need good visibility for that section of the journey, thus we will leave early so we can reach the Yellow Bank around 1pm.

If the forecast holds up we should be able to continue straight to Chub Cay, then Bimini, then Florida before the end of the week. But as we've learned, we can't be too strict in making plans. We are looking forward to the U.S. though, swine flu and all. I can't wait to hit a real grocery store.

P.S. Hill and I have tons of photos waiting to be posted to the site. However, Internet connections in the Exumas just aren't up to the task of uploading and downloading large amounts of data. We will get them up once we are back the U.S.