When I first read about the Caribbean 1500, I was a little confused by the name, for if you look at a chart, Tortola is about 1270 nautical miles away from Hampton, VA. Folks that are wiser then I on these topics, particularly those that have done a lot of ocean crossings like my friend Sean Bercaw, were quick to point out that sometimes to get from point A to point B meant something other then a straight line. In this voyage, it’s customary to head more east of the ‘rhumb’ (or direct) line so that you can be in a position to pick up the prevailing easterly trade winds that begin to form south of Bermuda. If you ‘rhumb line it’, you risk being stuck with an upwind battle several days before arriving, just at a time when you can nearly smell the palm trees and the savory rum. However, the seasonal weather patterns were a little off this Fall, as were advised at a weather briefing conducted by visiting Nashua New Hampshirian Ken Campbell from Commanders Weather Inc. This, of course, steered the troops into a bevy of discussions — should we listen to this fellow from New Hampshire, who said to get your southing in early or should we follow tradition and favor east. Some in the ‘southing’ crowd were even talking about hugging the coast down to Cape Hatteras, NC area and then shooting across the Gulf Stream at the point because it was supposed more narrow. At the cocktail gathering that night, I pushed the question to as many people as I could and got as many different answers. A lot of this back-and-forth discussion was a good place to put the nervous energy I think most people felt on the night before leaving. So, heck, we were going to enter ourselves in the ‘easting’ group and see how it went. It seemed like Ray, Karen and I all agreed, and it just felt right to go with tradition when this was our first ocean crossing.
So, on Wednesday morning, Nov 8th, we motored out into the heavy fog, as I mentioned previously, and began our journey to Tortola with nearly everyone revving their engines at the start line! I kept a daily log of notable events and conditions and I thought I would share with you this log so that you can understand what it is like to sail to Tortola, one day at a time.
Day 1, Nov 8: We start out in thick fog and enjoy identifying boats that we had only heard of through name tags or radio call-ins. We, like most everyone else, motored through the start line and out toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. This is a curious engineering marvel, whereby they built a low lying bridge out from the shore, then, when it reaches the shipping channel, the road dives under the bay in a tunnel to the other side, where it becomes another low lying bridge that reaches to Maryland and Delaware. It’s their solution to handling tall ship traffic without having to build an extremely tall and expensive span bridge, and there’s no limit on how tall the ships can be.
We ended up motoring for 4-5 hours, which was a bit nerve racking as we had 9-12 days ahead of us and we might really need that fuel. But psychologically, we really needed to put some distant between us and the coast line.
One of the items they warned us about ahead of time was to make sure that the people on the late night watch get some rest the first afternoon. It is typical that everyone is awake, excited that the rally is underway, and all chatty. But then, exhaustion sets in quickly as they try to stand the first night watch. This would then be followed by the second day of crossing the Gulf Stream. Not a good scenario. So, to my delight, Karen encouraged me to go take a nap. What joy to rack out in the middle of the afternoon — I hadn’t done this since the kids were newborns!
Karen served up her famous Sigma Kappa chicken for dinner. This house favorite consisted of chicken dipped in a spicy mustard, mayo and crushed corn flakes batter, then oven roasted. It was quite a treat for our first dinner together underway.
We did our first radio check in on the SSB in the evening. This would be the plan every 7pm and 7am. We report our latitude and longitude as of an hour earlier, the wind direction and strength and any emergencies or assistance needed.
To my surprise, both the handheld spotlight and the radar had decided to give up the ghost as I was testing them before nightfall. We would have to do the first night watches without these important tools. The night watch was to be as follows: Karen from 8pm – 12am, Ray from 12am – 3am and me from 3am – 6am. Then, during the day time we would move to a four hour watch and get the kids to help midday too. When I awoke at 3am to take over for Ray, it was obvious to both of us that the excitement had worn down and we were now needing to get down to business. We were able to do some sailing early on, but the wind then died late at night. This was often the case along the coast as the heating and cooling of the land during the day often drives the wind direction and strength.
Day 2, Nov 9: We can see quite a few boats around us as we all proceed towards the Gulf Stream. The wind came up in the mid-morning hours and we are able to start sailing again. We start recording the temperatures every hour or so in order to help us identify when we have entered the Gulf Stream. The temperatures are supposed to rise sharply, and we are told that the wave pattern will be distinctly different, and that we might see sargasso weed that has been swept up from the tropics. I’m sure we all looked liked kids on our first day at our summer job — been given a lot of information and we are a bit foggy about what exactly to do, but we sure are going to try our hardest!
By late morning, the winds have steadily increased from the northeast. We are one of the few boats that are reporting northeast winds and a lot of boats are taking the south route along the coast and are getting northwest winds. Not a big deal, but we just didn’t expect so many boats to go that way.
Sure enough, after recording the temperatures religiously, even during on and off rain squalls, around 9:30am we know we have entered the Gulf Stream. The water temperature has jumped up noticeably to about 74 degrees from 64 degrees just 2 hours ago. The waves have increased in height too. We had been warned that the worst wind direction to have in the stream is a strong northeast wind, which was exactly what we were in! With wind direction contrary to the current direction, the waves develop steeper peaks and become more erratic. In these conditions, it becomes very hard to hold a straight course and we opt to hand steer instead of putting the autopilot through this challenge. The best we can do for steering is to keep the heading in a 30 degree range on the compass, in this case 120-150 degrees. The waves push the stern around too much to try to steer any tighter of a course. I estimate that the waves are between 12-15 feet high and the winds are now at 25 knots and gusting to 30. This causes all sorts of challenging effects on the boat. When she sinks down in the trough of the waves, the boat slows down since much of the sail is being blanketed by the waves. Then, as we climb up the next wave, we got a burst of wind on the sails and surf down the backside of the wave! The boat is handling the waves well, though. We take some occasional spray back in the cockpit, but overall, she is doing well. It is very intimidating looking aft and seeing the large waves grow closer and closer, some of them breaking right behind you, others seeming like they will land in the cockpit due to their size, but instead roll somewhat gradually under the boat. These are the largest seas I have been in, and I find myself trying to embed these images in my mind so that I won’t be crazy enough to get the family into these conditions again! I knew ahead of time that this ocean crossing would be the hardest, most demanding aspect of the trip, and everyone told us that the Gulf Stream is the most technical of the voyage. Once we were beyond this point, we might have high winds, but not the combination of wind, waves, and current that the Gulf Stream presents.
At around noon, I ask Zack to take the helm. He does very well holding the boat on a reasonable course and he really gets excited about trying to tame this wild beast on a wild ocean!
By 3:30pm, the waves have settled into a more defined swell pattern and we conclude that we have exited the main part of the stream. Phew! What a relief! The winds are still 25kts from the NE, but we are able to steer a more stable course. Ray has been down in his berth most of the morning and around mid-day apologizes that he is not feeling well and can’t stand his afternoon watch. Karen and I talk about how to work out the night watches. We plan to stick to the original plan of having Karen stand watch until midnight, then I’ll take over and see if I can go until about 6am, then I’ll do the call-in at 7am and go to bed. I try to reach Miles, our fleet doctor, at the 7pm call-in this evening to discuss Ray’s condition, but he has SSB issues and has to go off the air abruptly. Ray looks very fatigued. He tells me that he thinks there’s a complication with the seasickness medicine he is taking and other meds he is on.
Day 3, Nov 10: Karen does reasonably well standing watch until midnight and I take over for her. Under these conditions, you waste no time to find your way to your berth, and she is down and out promptly. The winds have subsided just a bit, to about 20 knots and still out of the NE. During my watch to 6am, I see Ray get up a few times to go to the head, but otherwise, he is down and out. In the morning, when I come off watch, I check again on him. He’s not able to take much water, nor food, and Karen and I both become quite concerned about his condition. He tells me he thinks he should be in the hospital. Looking at the chart, we are about 2-3 days away from Bermuda and slightly more then that back to the mainland, and we’d have the Gulf Stream to contend with again. At the 7am check-in, I discuss Ray’s condition with Rick, one of the rally organizers. After the check-in is over, Karen and I rethink the situation and decide we really need to do something immediately. I get back on the SSB frequency, but everyone is off the air. I next try to call Miles’ boat, Karina, on the VHF. When he does not answer, I ask for any 1500 boat in the area if they can hear Karina and could do a relay for me, telling them that I have an urgent medical issue onboard. No one can reach Karina by VHF, but within short order I have at least two offers from boats within VHF range to use their sat phones. One is Sled, a boat on delivery to St. Thomas, and the other is Sophisticated Lady, another Jeanneau in the rally. Through various exchanges with other boats in the area, we dig up Miles’ sat phone number. But hold on, neither Sled or Sophisticated Lady (SL) can get a sat phone signal… I thought these things worked around the world! Then, SL gets a signal, but Miles is not answering. We are in constant communication with neighboring boats via VHF, and one boat offers a medical kit, but I’d like to get ahold of Miles first to determine the best course of action. About 30 minutes later, SL gets through to Karina. They had turned off all radios and phones for a ceremony and scattering of ashes of a fellow friend of theirs. SL gets Miles to come up on the SSB frequency and I explain Ray’s conditions. He tells me we need to get him off the boat immediately, that his situation is very severe. He considers it a Mayday situation and tells me to start contacting the USCG via radio, while he calls from his sat phone. I start with the first of six distress and emergency SSB frequencies. Depending on the radio wave propagation, time of day, and distance away, one of these frequencies are supposed to get through to the USCG. I issue my first Mayday call, giving our position, our boat name, and that I am seeking a medical evacuation for a crew member. I receive no response from the first frequency, so I go down the list of each of the other frequencies, but as I standby on each frequency for awhile, I still do not get a reply. I also try a Mayday on VHF channel 16, knowing that it has a limited range that extends roughly to the horizon, but figure I should try all options. Never had I imagined giving out so many Maydays and not getting a response! Zack was standing next to me through most of these Maydays, and he became increasingly worried. He kept asking me if Ray was going to die, and if no one is answering our Maydays, were we ever going to get someone to help us. While giving one of the Maydays, I realize I’m giving the latitude and longitude of where my cursor is pointing on the chartplotter screen, at least 100 miles away from our current position! I panic because this is also the position I gave to Miles! Sophisticated Lady jumps in and helps out by calling Miles and giving him our corrected position. SL is also in contact via phone with the USCG now. After some confusion, where the USCG thought the evacuation was on Karina’s boat, then on the false lat/lon I had given, they are finally straightened out with our current position. The last thing I wanted to have happen is send a rescue helicopter to some empty part of the ocean — I know what kinds of fines these guys levy for false alarms or erroneous rescue attempts!
We now had the machinery of the USCG at work and things were moving along. I was in constant communication via the VHF and SSB as people were calling us, asking for more information, or relaying information from Miles and the USCG. At about 9am, we were told that the helicopter was about to take off from North Carolina, they would also have a surgeon onboard, and it would take about 90 minutes to arrive. I had been up since midnight, and Karen, bless her soul, told me to get some food and hit the rack. She had been at the helm during this whole process and now took over the VHF communications. In these emergencies, you can really benefit from one person dedicated full time to handling the radios. Between boats that are helping, and boats that are offering help or advice, it is a full-time post.
I ask the kids to listen for calls on the SSB, as Karen can’t hear it from up in the cockpit. While I am dozing off to sleep, Zack says someone was trying to call us. I respond back and find that it is a ship that is bound for Bermuda, had heard our mayday, and was diverting to our position at full steam — yikes! I thank him for his response, but tell him that the USCG has an evacuation underway presently. He is in touch with something called the Emergency Response Center in Miami, and they have several questions they want him to relay to me. They also ask if I have a sat phone onboard. It seems like this is the preferred method for emergencies nowadays!
I don’t get much sleep, as I wonder how long it will be until they arrive. At about 10:30am, I hear Karen talking to a USCG C130 plane on it’s way to our position. They are asking for details on our type of boat, how much space there is on the deck, and so forth. They are debating between a water rescue, using a swimmer, or dropping the litter right on the deck. Since we don’t have a dodger and with our bimini folded back, there’s a lot of open space on the deck, they opt for a direct drop on the deck. The C130 walks Karen through each step of the process and Karen does a great job responding back, asking for clarification as needed, and telling them exactly what our boat looks like. Moments later we see the C130 coming toward us and they start a wide circling pattern over our position. Nearby is Sled, who’s captain was part of the Coast Guard at one point and is giving us moral support. He offered to transfer someone onboard to help with the rescue, but we turn down the kind offer for fear of injury to another person in the process. After all, even though the waves are moderate and the winds are only 10 knots, this is the high seas and anything can happen!
We had been sailing along at a slow pace, but now that the C130 is on scene, we start furling our sails. They have given us a precise heading and speed to follow, which puts us directly into the wind at 4 knots. Karen starts the engine and sets the autopilot on course. While we are doing this, Zack spots the helicopter on the horizon. It is coming at us with amazing speed, like the speed you would expect from a plane! They slow down and settle into a position just downwind from our stern, on our starboard quarter. We had been warned to expect gale force winds from the propeller wash, so we tied down or stow below anything that might blow away. The bimini is folded back and tied off. We don’t want another Castine experience! They also told us that it will be very hard to hear on the VHF radio and therefore communicate with the helicopter pilot, so Karen holds the remote mic tight against her ear and Zack gets the handheld VHF ready. To be safe, we have the kids stay under the companionway hatch, but since it is plexiglass, they can still watch everything going on. Karen had been told that the first step will be to lower a weighted bag on a light line. We are to let this bag touch the boat first, then grab it. The litter will be lowered down next and the light line is to be used to bring it towards the deck. We are specifically told to not secure anything to the boat, the light line or the litter. The helicopter pilot begins moving sideways in careful steps from his position behind us. The sound is getting intense now. We see them lowering the weighted bag. Despite the moderate winds and seas, we are still pitching and rolling as we motor into the waves. The weighted line is swinging around in an arc and I’m beginning to wonder how this is all going to work out. The bag is hanging down just at about the mast height, nowhere near the deck level yet, and the pilot moves sideways forward far enough that the bag hits the mast about 5 feet from the top and begins to wrap itself 3 times around the masthead! I can almost hear the swear words from the pilot and crew, as I wonder what damage will be caused to our masthead instruments and antenna! Through some miracle of wave motion, the bag does a complete unwind and works it way free from the entanglement — now we are no longer secured to the helicopter! He backs way off, and gradually works his way sideways again to our stern. This time, I stand on the swim platform holding out my hand with a towel wrapped around it for a target. I’m not sure it helps because we get sprayed with a bunch of propeller wash. They have the weighted line still at least 15 feet above me and it’s going either way off to starboard or to port, but nowhere close to us. He backs way off again and I’m hoping they are not giving up. Now I can understand why these guys run out of their time window for fuel as the actual rescue can take quite a lot of time. On the fourth attempt, he comes in to our stern with the line nearly at the water level. Now we are talking! The line bounces off a few parts of the deck and settles down. I grab the line and they start feeding out a bunch more of it. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, but Karen relays a message from the VHF that I’m to bring in all of the slack. I start to see the litter leaving the side of the helicopter bay. OK, things are moving along now. The helicopter is holding a position that is just off our starboard quarter, a helpful strategy as it keeps the wash down but the noise is still intense. The litter lands in the water a few times and eventually we haul it closer to the boat. I let it hit the side of the hull as they had asked for to release any static electricity. Then, Karen and I hoist it up into the cockpit. Ray is standing by and climbs into this metal cage that is small enough that you need your knees nearly in your face to fit in it. We had prepared a triple ziploc’ed bag of his important papers, identification, money, cell phone, name, and contact information, and this goes in his lap. We give the proverbial whirling finger signal to let them know to hoist away. They take up the tension, and the litter rises up a few inches and then comes abruptly back down on top of the winches. Yikes, sorry Ray, that couldn’t have felt good! On the second attempt, they are a bit more aggressive in the hoist speed, and he rises up above the cockpit coaming, but Karen and I both need to give a big hoist to get him above the lifelines. Once this is accomplished, he is on his way, rising quickly to the helicopter. I feed out the light line and then throw the weighted bag into the air, and they take all of this up and away. We watch closely at the quickness in which he arrives at the top of the winch and is swung inside of the helicopter. No sooner is this done then the pilot starts accelerating on his way to the coast. After wondering if that will be all that we hear from the USCG, the C130 calls on the VHF and tells us we did a good job and that he will be flown to their base in North Carolina.
Phew, now that that was taken care of, we needed some time to collect ourselves! It is a huge relief to have Ray off the boat. While we had enjoyed his company in the short period he was onboard with us, it was a relief that he was in the capable hands of the USCG and would soon be treated by a doctor. Through our relief, we had collectively realized how much of a drain the feelings of anxiety were on all of us. Now it was back to the four of us. What should we do? That was the pressing question now. We were three days into the trip and about smack-dab in the middle between Bermuda, the Bahamas and the mainland. It seemed to far into the trip to give up and go back to the mainland. Going to Bermuda or Bahamas would mean we would miss out on all of the end of rally celebrations and fall out of touch with the other sailors. So we all agreed to press onward and make the trip to Tortola with the four of us. I should tell you that we debated long and hard back in Hampton, when we found out our friends Martin and Nancy could not join us, about whether we could make the trip offshore to Tortola on our own. We settled on the fact that this would be too risky given our limited offshore experience! Well, we were past the Gulf Stream, it was a light 10 knot days out of the NW, there was blue sky all around us and plenty of rally boats visible or within VHF range to keep us company. Our new friends on Heaven Won’t Wait even offered to transfer a crew member to us for a few days, but I again turned the kind offer down for fear of injuring us or them. Sled, the boat on delivery that was standing by, raising an enormous spinnaker and was over the horizon in short order. Given the light winds, we decided to switch to our bigger genoa. While this always helps us in the end, we have not grown accustomed to nor developed any great tricks to folding sails on a pitching, obstacle-ridden deck. Very soon, Karen and I realized exactly how tired we were. Every effort was exhausting. The sun was beating down on us and stealing away more of our energy. As the halyard resisted our efforts to help the sail down and resisted our efforts to raise the genoa, we all became crabby with each other – a sure sign that we were exhausted far beyond our limits. We are lucky no one got hurt in this pitiful effort to change sails. The realization that this is going to be much harder then we had previously thought starts to settle in. With the genoa flying, though, we make a graceful 5-6 knots. We are blessed with a fantastic sunset. We agree to keep trying the 6 on, 6 off watch schedule, with Karen standing first until midnight. At the 7pm check-in, I get a few questions about the evacuation, and the organizers are glad that it went so smoothly.
Day 4, Nov 11: I take over from Karen at midnight. When I wake up at this hour, I’m pretty darn sure my body is telling my brain, “What in God’s name are you doing this to me for!” It feels entirely unnatural to wake a body after a few fitful hours of sleep, which is what I got after trying to decompress from the evacuation. There’s no sense in considering any alternatives, though. Karen looks exhausted, as she should look, and I can’t rightfully wake up the kids. Having them on watch in the middle of the night, even if I’m awake, makes me fearful. Although we are always tethered in, especially at night, and I have lots of man-over-board equipment, if someone were to fall in, it would be very difficult to get back and rescue them. There’s also the real danger of tripping on something on deck or in the cabin in the dark and hurting yourself, especially when you are so tired. After my body gives into the reality that it must be awake, I start to feel a bit revived. I make it until about 3am until my body starts up it’s pitch to the brain that it’s time to get horizontal again. A warm cup-of-soup gives me another hour postponement. I also start downloading grib weather files using the SSB, and this is working surprising well. I am getting faster connection speeds then when I tried it along the coast. A station in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia seems to be coming in the clearest tonight. The grib files show the expected wind and waves for the 24, 48, 72, and 96 hour periods. I’m not sure if it is my growing delirium or not, but I can’t make sense of the daily predictions. The winds have become very light. They are from the NE so we can still use them, but over the next several days they will be light and variable, sometimes out of the SE and perhaps the SW. If we get any SE winds, it will be directly in our face, as that is the rhumb line course to Tortola. I give up trying to figure out a plan based on the weather and return to my station at the helm. We have been trying to hand steer whenever possible to save battery power, but I can’t stay awake anymore, so I put it on autopilot and it does a much better job holding us steady on a course. At about 4:30am, I decide to set my watch to alarm every 15 minutes and I lay down in the cockpit for a nap. I wake up every 15 minutes, sometimes sooner in a panic that I think I forgot to reset my watch. I’m not sure if the naps are helping or not. All I can remember is waking to an alarm or waking up anxious beforehand thinking we are in danger. This is definitely not the sleep my body had in mind!
By about 5:30am, the sky is starting to brighten in the East. Very soon afterwards, the sun rises in and among a series of big, puffy clouds. It is energizing to greet the start of a new day. Back home in Bedford, our home is surrounded by tall pines and we don’t get to experience the sun’s first rays in the morning, or it’s last ones in the evening. These sunrises and sunsets on the ocean are nearly identical to each other. There always seems to be a clutch of puffy, white clouds on the horizon to add dimension and color to the scene.
At the 7am check-in, the weather prognosis is not very encouraging. Steve Black tells the fleet that we can expect light northerlies today, followed by light southeasterlies tomorrow, and light and variables on Monday. Yikes, three days of light winds! We switch to fuel conservation mode and try to determine how much motoring we can safely do. By mid-morning, the winds are too light to sail with, so we begin motoring. It is just as well, as the batteries need a good charge.
This is the first day that we don’t see any boats. We can hear conversation on the VHF, and we talk to a few other boats, but we see no one. We make an attempt to start school work today for the first time during the crossing. It is always hard after a break to get the kids in school mode again, and together with our exhausted state, getting through just part of a day’s curriculum pushes the patience of all of us.
We are able to sail for part of the afternoon, then the wind dies after night fall. We motor again but with hesitation. I don’t know exactly what our fuel burn rate is. We are motoring at 2000 rpm’s, a reduced level than our normal cruise speed of 2400-2500. I know we burn right around a gallon/hr at the normal cruise speed, but I’m hoping it is quite a bit less at 2000 rpm’s as I’m seeing a future of lots of motoring between now and Tortola. The alternative would be to bob around in the middle of the ocean waiting for who knows how long for the wind to come up and from a favorable direction. I hope we don’t have to settle for that.
Day 5, Nov 12: I got a little more restful sleep this time, and when I awake to relieve Karen at midnight, and after a 30-45 minute transition period, I’m actually feeling pretty alive and well. The wind came up part way through Karen’s watch, and I take over as we make a slow but steady progress of about 4-5 knots. I settle into my routine of checking the grib files and sending some emails to friends via the sailmail SSB account. The wind died again and we are back to motoring on a glassy sea. The moon is rising up at about 2am and making for a pleasant glow on the waters. It certainly feels a little less threatening when you are motoring into something other than a pitch black horizon. Around 3am, when I start to fade, the cup-a-soup remedy comes to my rescue. The winds are very shifty and at less then 5 knots. It would be too hard to try to trim sails in the darkness of night with these variable winds, but we’ll have to make do with them by daybreak, as I figure we need to shut down the engine and start conserving fuel for later in the voyage.
At the 7am check-in, the prognosis is again not good. The winds today are supposed to be light from the SE (could there be a worse combination?), then decreasing on Monday. Tuesday is supposed to be much the same, and in the evening there might be some improvement for boats that are further south of us, with light easterlies of 8-13 knots starting to fill it. That is still 3 days away. Tortola is feeling like a long ways from here. We try to make the best of it with the SE wind, tacking East, then Southwest. Tacking upwind with 5 knots of breeze to Tortola is not my idea of fun! I have always felt that one becomes a good sailor in light winds, and now we are experiencing that firsthand. I notice that there is a huge difference between 3 and 5 knots of wind. In 3, Thalia goes no where. In 5, you can actually make some forward movement, albeit slow, but still forward.
I get an email from Ray and he is recovering fine. They discharged him from the station in North Carolina and he had to ride a Greyhound bus back to Washington, D.C. — what a bummer. At least he is feeling better, though.
By the evening, the wind has increased to about 13 knots but it is from the SSE. Right before darkness befalls us, Karen tacks and then calls out in a panic that she thinks the genoa has ripped. With a flashlight’s help, her suspicion is confirmed. We have at least a 12 foot tear along the leech and it must have caught somewhere on the spreader. We all scramble quickly to douse the sail before it rips further, and switch to the small 110% jib. This is a great sail when it is blowing 25 knots, but is a real dog when it is 8-12. We really could use the bigger genoa, but that will have to wait until after visiting a sailmaker in Tortola.
Day 6, Nov 13: We continue to beat into the wind under light southeasterlies. I’m a little behind on our daily plots on the chart, but I can’t imagine we are making much progress towards Tortola under these conditions. The grib files indicate the possibility of easterly trade winds tomorrow and Wednesday, and this is confirmed at the 7am check-in, although it is mostly going to help boats that are further east from us, or further south. There must be a lot of boats that are motoring a lot more then we are, because there’s a large chunk of the fleet south of us. We also have boats within a 100 mile radius of us, but we are starting to feel like we are pulling up the rear!
We do a little motoring in the morning to get a charge up on the battery. I notice that the refrigerator is running nearly nonstop and with the occasional autopilot use and running lights at night, we are going through nearly 200 amp/hrs per day, about twice as much as we experienced in our coastal cruising. Saving enough fuel to run the engine daily to charge the batteries will become very important. I don’t want to run the batteries down to the point that we can’t light our running lights at night or use the radios.
We begin sailing again close-hauled in 5-8 knots of SE winds. Despite the small jib, we are making 5-6 knots of boat speed which is encouraging news. It is at an angle off our rhumb line and with the tacking back and forth or ‘velocity made good’ or VMG to sailors, is only 2-3 knots. If that were to hold for 24 hours, we would be averaging about 60 miles a day. Wow, this will take forever! It is time to forget our mental math skills and just concentrate on sailing! I feel a bit worn down by last night’s emergency sail change, and the midnight to 6am watch is taking it’s toll out of me, but I entertain myself for awhile off watch making some repairs, including looking at the radar. It blows fuses and I think it has something to do with the radome, but I don’t have the energy to lower the unit from the backstay and inspect it.
We get to experience a wonderful sunset this evening. The visual delights are ever present on this voyage.
Day 7, Nov 14: The morning brings us ESE winds at 6 knots. Do I sound like a broken record. Light winds from the direction we need to be headed, again! Steve tells us at the morning check-in that tomorrow should be a good wind day, something in the range of 10-12 knots from the ENE, then weakening again on Thursday and Friday. We learn that at least two boats have decided to divert to Bermuda, presumably because of lack of fuel.
Around noon, the wind has completely died on us. I awake from my morning nap to learn that the sails are being furled and everyone is going for a swim… what a delight! This is good timing, as we haven’t been able to shower since we left Hampton a week ago. To be safe, we let out a floating line off of our stern. Thalia is bobbing up and down on a placid sea, though, and it is hard to imagine doing much but swimming. Zack is the first to blast out of his cabin in swim shorts and over the rail. The water is incredibly warm! We are definitely not in Maine anymore, you can actually swim in these waters, and enjoy it!
Our youngest is dressed in a swimsuit but despite our pleading is intimidated by the fact that the ocean is over 15,000 feet deep here! Oh well, I’m sure we’ll get him in the water once we arrive in the Caribbean.
After this refreshing dip in the deep blue sea, we decide to try the asymmetric spinnaker because there is a bit more east in the wind now. It is the right sail for these light winds, except that the wind is a little too far forward of the beam to make efficient use of the asymmetrical. I try at one point to sail at about 40 degrees apparent to the wind. The asymmetrical is hard to keep filled at this tight angle, but with the only other option being a small jib, it may produce much the same boat speed. Despite the challenges of flying the spinnaker for the first time on this voyage, we decide to douse it at sunset so that we don’t need to trim it in the dark, or risk a night time douse if the wind picks up.
The winds die again after dusk, and Karen begins motoring again. Then later in her watch, the winds pick up nicely out of the NE, as they had been predicted for the next day.
Day 8, Nov 15: I awake at midnight to the nice prospect of sailing at 7 knots and we aren’t close-hauled! Finally, we have broken out of the doldrums and headwinds. With our newfound speed, the ETA in Tortola is starting to show up on the GPS. It reads 88 hours. It is fun to imagine arriving in that time period, but this will surely increase as we won’t be able to sail 6-7 knots on the rhumb line for the remainder of the trip. With the new wind also comes the occasional rain squalls. These only seem to come at night. The moon is rising later and later in my midnight-6am watch, and these squalls are particularly hard to assess under starlight only. They appear as a blob of darkness ahead or to the side of you. They typically take up so much space that you can’t possibly steer to avoid them. If the winds bring them your way, you have to put up with them. They bring rain, sometimes just a light sprinkle, other times a more steady rain fall. And they always change the wind direction, either more wind or less wind, but you never know until you are right under them! It is a bit of guess work and sometimes we try to reef the main and/or jib ahead of time just in case they pack a punch. I look forward to the moon rise when it becomes easier to spot these squalls and see how much rain they have in them.
By daybreak, the wind has died again. I’m really tired now. These night watches are really wearing me down. I know the same is true for Karen’s 6-midnight watch. The problem is that we need to get sleep during the day to offset our 6 hour night watch. The one on watch during the day tries to manage the kids and their school work, meal prep, cleanup and what have you, but inevitably the person off watch gets dragged into some of this. In addition, it is VERY hot down below in the cabins. Because there is enough wave action present, we can’t keep the hatches open for fear that a splash of water will find it’s way down into the cabin and soak school books and bed linen. So instead, our bodies sweat like we are inside some garment factory in Kowloon or Guangzhou. You are so hot and uncomfortable that you can’t sleep more then 15-30 minutes at time before it is time to turn over. With the sun beating down through hatches and portholes as well, it is hard to tell the mind to shut off and go to sleep.
I typically try to hit the rack right after the 7am check-in, but I don’t get more than 3-4 hours of on again/off again sleep. Then, Karen and I share part of the early afternoon together with the kids, and then she goes down for a couple hour sleep until it is time to start thinking about dinner. After dinner, and the evening check-in, I try to get to sleep as soon as the galley is cleaned up. It is dark at this point (the sun goes down very quickly now as we approach the tropics). This is when my body is getting excited for a long night’s sleep, but I interrupt it after about 3-4 hours when midnight arrives.
On this evening, I read a little to the kids after dinner. In the darkness of the salon, we hear a thud followed by lots of flapping around on the floor by the galley. Lo and behold, but we have caught our first fish, a flying fish that is! It flew right through the main hatch and plummeted to the floor! It was flapping around like crazy trying to find a way out. After a few failed attempts, I get him in a bucket and throw him overboard, but in his short struggle on the floor, he’s left behind countless scales and the strong odor of fish flesh — it will take a good floor washing to get rid of the offensive smell!
Day 9, Nov 16: We have a steady breeze from ENE at 8-12 knots. We have some good sailing on our rhumb line course to Tortola. The forecast is for this wind to hold today and tomorrow, then turn to southerlies on Saturday and Sunday. We therefore are in a race to get as far south as possible before the southerlies hit. Hopefully, we’ll have some fuel to motor through part of them. The big party is on Monday night, and I’m hoping we can make it, and possibly make the party on Sunday night! There’s also a party on Saturday night, but that is out of the question. Karen and Zack saw a big sea turtle today. It is still unbelievably hot and humid, especially down below in the cabin. We are all drinking an amazing amount of water. There always is a bottle of water in the cockpit and it gets consumed quite quickly. We have stowed away any alcohol, as it would only dehydrate us further. Everyone is anxious to get to Tortola. We were fighting a 1 knot current for a while, yikes! Water temperature is 84. I think the refrigeration is running continuously as we are having to do a lot of charging today. The sunrises and sunsets have been beautiful, though.
Day 10, Nov 17: The winds lighten up today, earlier then forecasted, and we are making only 4 knots typically. We tried the spinnaker in the afternoon, but the winds are too far forward of the beam to make it manageable. It continues to be very hot and everyone’s tired and cranky. We are trying to get through school work but it is tough. In the afternoon, the winds start coming more around to the ESE. Tomorrow it is supposed to be from the SE. Not sure what to do at that point as we have 175 miles to go, and I’m reluctant to use the engine too much. We poured the 20 gallons of jugged diesel into the main tank a few days back, and we are showing just over half on the fuel gauge, but I know the gauge is little flaky.
Day 11, Nov 18: When I take over at midnight, Karen looks extremely exhausted, more then I’ve ever seen her. There’s barely a breath of wind and it is tough to keep the sails filled. It is real easy to steer off course and backwind the jib, as there’s so little forward motion to steer with. The speeds are in the 2’s consistently. Man, is this painful! Karen said the autopilot was not working well for her. It seems to not like the light winds, or it is just on its way to an untimely death. Suddenly, the wind picked up to 3-5 knots, and I was able to sail along at 4 knots. What a joy! Alas, it is short lived, and 30 minutes later I’m back in the doldrums. At 3am, I’m really have a hard time holding it together. I’m nodding off continuously and I’m not holding anything close to a straight course. I find myself steering mostly in the direction of Puerto Rico. I try the autopilot again and it works most of the time, but occasionally errors out. After setting my watch for a 15 minute snooze, I awake at the end of it, having come out of a nightmarish dream and having absolutely no idea where I am and what I’m doing. It is a good thing that I’m tethered in, as my disorientation could get me in trouble. With my exhaustion now leading me down the road to hallucinations, I decide it is time to regroup. At one point, I realize I am grabbing for something on the side of me that does not exist. I am imagining things around me. At about 5am, I recalculate the fuel situation for the ump-teenth time, and figure we have enough to motor in from where we are, which is 105 miles to go. I don’t see that we have an option and must try as there’s absolutely no wind, just a slight current of .5 – 1.0 knot in our favor. I can’t imagine trying to tack upwind in 5 knots of southeast winds to get to Tortola – that could take days.
I start up the engine and put the autopilot on. Karen and Zack awake immediately and wonder if I have gone mad or something! Why would I be using up fuel now? I explain to them my most recent calculations and it is enough to subdue them back to sleep for awhile.
While down below checking email for a short while, I take a peek upstairs to check the horizon. To my astonishment, I see a freighter that has passed in front of us and is a mile or two to our port! He passed in front of us without me knowing it, yikes! I better keep a closer watch, especially since we are closer to the islands and additional ship traffic.
At the morning check-in, other boats behind us don’t have enough fuel to get in and are thinking of trying to band together to get someone to come out with fuel. It’s difficult to hear this. This is not what we all expected out of a sailing rally, to be held hostage by the size of our fuel tanks!
To recognize what will hopefully be the last breakfast of the voyage, I make pancakes and sausages for everyone.
I worked on the radar and found that the cable that runs to the antenna had abraded through and shorted the wire. I repaired this and now the radar is working fine. We still have a big list of repairs to make once we arrive, but at least this one is out of the way, and especially timely for our planned nightime arrival in Roadtown.
We motor all day and we oscillate between excitement that we are making progress of 6 knots towards Tortola and angst that we might not have enough fuel. Karen is the most concerned about the fuel situation. I don’t think she would be nearly as worried if she wasn’t tired, but our collective exhaustion is making us all react in ways we’d prefer to have the strength to block. The darker side of our mental state is coming through and it isn’t pretty!
But, hey, before we all go mad, what is that on the horizon?! Karen is the first to be able to exclaim “Land, HO!!” at around 4pm. We see a few bumps sticking up on the horizon in and among many clouds. We see land for the first time in 11 days! Here’s a picture of Karen showing our youngest where the landfall is. You can just barely see it in line with the shrouds on the right.
The excitement level raised a good many notches after that one! We had a simple dinner of Top Ramen and made the boat ready for arrival, including putting docklines out, stowing excess gear and getting the cruising guide out. But, as we had experienced when crossing the Bay of Fundy and first spotting the hills of Mt. Desert, it can be a long journey from the sighting of land to the actual arrival, especially since the hills of Tortola seemed to be of a comparable height to those at Mt. Desert. The GPS is saying our arrival at the finish line should be 12:30am. Let’s hope it stays close to that, as Karen and I both have told each other that we don’t think we have another night of watches in us.
After dinner cleanup is done, we make sure that the boys get down to bed promptly with promises to wake them as we approach the harbor. I should be going to sleep as well, but our arrival seems so close at hand, I can’t imagine sleeping. By about 10pm, I wished I had napped! Exhaustion is once again settling in for both of us. We stand plenty far off of Anegada, a reef based island that is only 28 feet high. There are very few lights or buoys as we approach, but the radar is picking up good returns on Scrub Island, our first reference point on the way to the finish.
Day 12, Nov 19: Not that it matters since we are in the cruising class and they don’t keep track of departure and arrival times like the rally class does, but we record our time across the finish at 12:06am. Finally! Now, we just have 8 miles to go, still under motor, to get to Roadtown where the Village Cay Marina is and the location of the end of rally festivities. We had been warned by many to not rely too much on the GPS as there are issues with the reference datum and this can cause errors of several hundred feet. Thankfully, we have the radar to double-check our position. All of the islands except Anegada have a volcanic origin, so their steepness shows up very well on the radar. Despite these tools, we can’t fight off the effects of our sheer exhaustion. Karen and I agree that we should discuss each decision to change course and make sure the other agrees — a way to double-check the other person to make sure we are not making a poor judgement call and also a good way to keep both of us awake. We try to both stay up in the cockpit continuously to keep each other awake, but Karen briefly heads down below to get something from galley. I don’t think she is gone more then a minute or two, but during that time, I hallucinate that someone is approaching me with a bag of chips and I try to reach out and grab them. Then, when Karen comes up the companionway, I say to her something incoherent like, “What? What do you want?” in a demanding tone. I then come to my senses and realize what is fact and what is fiction, that Karen hadn’t said anything to me yet! My mind was going quick! Karen, immediately grabbed the wheel and I took some time standing in the cockpit to get my brain back in order.
We had just a few buoys to identify as we proceeded past Beef Island, Buck Island, and then into the channel for Roadtown, but these buoys prompted a lot of discussion between us. We were trying to be overly redundant in our navigation and confirming what we saw on the water versus the GPS and radar. One of the guides recommended against entering Roadtown at night, but a lot of other rally boats had done this, so we continued on. At the head of the harbor, the GPS showed a narrow break in a jetty. The lights flashing in the area did not match up well with the ones on the chartplotter, but we inched our way in at a crawling pace, watching the depthsounder closely. Suddenly, as we spotted the docks of Village Cay a couple hundred feet away, two dinghies blasted out of the docks at full throttle and up on a plane. One didn’t have lights on either! This was enough to frazzle my nerves to their breaking point. We tried calling the marina on the VHF as we had been told that a rally organizer would be monitoring the radio 7×24 and would direct us to our slip. With no luck on the radio, we tied up to the first open slip we found. We had finally arrived! Zack was awake for this final approach to the docks and he immediately wanted to explore around. We did a short walk through the rest of the docks, having a great time recognizing other boats in the rally. No one seemed to be awake on the docks. There was a bar nearby with very loud music blasting — after all this was Saturday night — but otherwise the marina was very quiet. We turned in and had the most delightful, level, uninterrupted sleep until 7am, when people started milling around on the docks. Zack and I awoke to witness firsthand how massive most of the boats were around these parts. Particularly impressive were the catamarans on charter. These boats were so wide, they would easily take up two slip spaces. They all seemed to have several crew members onboard, some in very swanky looking shirts with their boat name on it. And they had the attitude to go with the boat! I was beginning to see that we weren’t in Kansas anymore! This area of the boating world was a whole new scene.
We celebrated our arrival, after clearing through customs, with a nicely cooked breakfast at the Village Cay restaurant. Here’s a view out of the open air dining area.
And, here’s Thalia, talking a rest after the long voyage!
We are now going to catch up on our sleep, make some repairs, and start enjoying some parties here in paradise!
We’ll try to keep the web updates coming as best we can, but the internet connections here are very touch and go, so you’ll have to be patient with us!