A Beautiful First Passage

We were off the Charleston City Boatyard dock at 6:50am Tuesday and anchor down in Fernandina Beach at 3:45pm for a total passage time of 32 hours 55 mins. We covered 171nm including 150nm inlet-to-inlet. We chose a curving route that took us about 40nm offshore in order to take advantage of forecast northeasterly wind at the beginning of the trip and southeasterlies at the end. We got both, but no more...it was 6 kts or less about half the time. Thus we only sailed a bit over 10 hours, motored 7 hours, and motor sailed the remainder (when boat speed consistently  dropped under 4 kts, we started the engine). 

 

Nevertheless it was beautiful weather: mostly clear, great viz, only a small spritz of rain, with easterly swell mostly around 1m except late Tuesday night when slightly larger quartering swell plus no mainsail up in dead calm wind had us rockin-and-rollin. The nearly full moon made for a gorgeous night. Andy, Lance & I split the night watches at 3 hrs apeice: Andy 10pm-1am, Lance 1am-4am, and me 4am-7am. It was a beautiful sunrise that brought a fresh breeze to hoist all sail and enjoy a lovely beam reach for the 4 hours it lasted.

 

 

Dawn was a bit seasick all day Tues but didn't vomit; she was fine yesterday. Piper was lethargic and slept in the cockpit all of the first day but recovered his usual verve at night. Andy finally got him to pee on his mat after midnight but we never could get him to poop till we got to shore in a Ferd Beach...then he went four times straight! Overall he did really good on the passage that will likely be our longest for a while.

 

The autopilot wasn't doing a good job when we started off down  the Wando River so Lance and I played with a bunch of settings & had it working pretty well shortly after we exited Charleston Inlet. Our nav light CB kept tripping so there's a short somewhere I'll have to find today...we just used the masthead tricolor instead. A fuse in the chartplotter/radar power supply blew the first time we tested out the radar but I was able to track it down & replace it, and everything worked well from there on. I really like the sailing instruments & plotter we got. There's a ton of information, very well presented.

 

At sunset yesterday we caught our first fish from Windbird, a little Bonito that provided the perfect amount of meat for a grilled fish & rice dinner for four. We used a hand line with 80 lb test & a plug/skirt squid lure which is a rig we've used with some success in the BVI. We don't have an offshore rod yet, I want to use the hand line & yoyo and see how that goes before buying more expensive equipment.

 

 

 

There's a lot of damage from Matthew here. There are three sunken boats in the mooring field and a number of others ashore; the Fernandina Beach Municipal Marina suffered severe damage and is mostly closed st present. The moorings are now decommissioned but there was enough room to anchor in between in about 8' MLW.

After anchoring we launched the dinghy from the foredeck and headed to shore so Piper (and Lance!) could do their business. We walked around the very picturesque downtown enjoying the warm sunshine, then stopped at a dog-friendly bar for a celebratory beer. Unfortunately Piper kept barking at strangers and we had to take him out before he got us kicked out. Time to start using that bark collar. Back at the boat we had a nice chili dinner with rum cake for dessert, and at 9pm headed back to shore for a nightcap at The Palace - supposedly the oldest bar in Florida. Cool place.

 

This morning we were up early so Lance & Andy could shower and catch an uber ride to the Jacksonville Airport. Since then Dawn and I have been cleaning up around here and planning our next week or so. We've had a change of plans - instead of ducking into Jacksonville we're going to continue south to Daytona Beach and leave the boat in a marina there when we fly up to Atlanta the 19th-21st. The weather looks great for a 9-hr offshore passage to St. Augustine tomorrow. It would be a 2-day trip on the ICW. We'll spent three nights in St. Augustine before starting down the ICW for Daytona Beach. It feels great to be in Florida at last & headed further south soon.

Here We Go!

Dawn and I have been running full bore 16 hours a day for the last 4 days but everything has come together at the last minute, and we're ready to head out tomorrow morning. Our friends Lance & Andy are here, we're socializing, and we're going to be up early to be off the dock at 6am so this will be a very short post. Yesterday was a long bitterly cold day mostly spent outside doing various rigging projects; today was much more enjoyable with a test sail with the riggers in the morning and a sea trial to commission the autopilot in the afternoon. We paid our boatyard bill (yikes), Dawn picked up Lance & Andy, I ran to top off our propane & get miscellaneous last-minute items, we've checked the weather and picked a tentative route...we're ready to head south. A few nights ago I wrote up a comprehensive list of the total work done on our boat over the last three months but that post will have to wait for the next anchorage where we have good wifi.

 
 

Rigging Friday, Provisioning Saturday

The last two days involved long and arduous hours for Dawn and I, but rewarded us with monstrous progress towards being ready to leave early this week. We've been going from sunup until well after sundown both days...tonight we finished stowing provisions and were shocked to find it was already 11:30pm. We have full days planned for both tomorrow and Monday, but the end of the end is in sight.

Yesterday Dawn and I were up early, anticipating the imminent arrival of the riggers. In fact our breakfast was interrupted by a hard-charging craftsman, but it was Donnie the carpenter, who had come to reassemble the last salon cabinet. He had held off because a fair amount of moisture had leaked in through the deck while the chainplate was off and we used some big fans to dry it out thoroughly. Once he finished, the salon looked great...you couldn't tell the cabinets had ever been disassembled, unless you looked really closely for the joint where he had sawed them with a Japanese fine-blade saw.


While Donnie was working below, Dawn and I started rerigging the boat up top. The previous day we had put on the boom and ran the outhaul and reef clew lines, but hadn't done anything at the mast. We ran into problems immediately as the pilot line for the topping lift was stuck in place. I had somewhat expected and dreaded problems with twisted and caught pilot lines, and already had the bosuns chair out; I tied it to the main halyard and climbed our 55' mast. The problem was immediately apparent: one pilot line was wrapped up in the main halyard sheave and another in the yankee halyard sheave, seizing both. Like an idiot, I had neglected to bring any tools up with me. But in a flash of brilliance I had turned on all the mast lights so I could check them up close while I was up there. It turned out the tricolor and steaming light were both out...we had just replaced the steaming light with an LED so I was pretty sure the polarity was merely reversed. After a quick trip to deck level to equip myself with tools, I switched the steaming light around and it worked. I ascended to the masthead and took the cover off the tricolor/anchor light & tried reseating the tricolor...no dice. I checked the voltage with a multimeter, it checked out, so I had a rare burnt out LED bulb. I had also brought the Garmin Gwind with me; attaching that to its bracket was a 20-second job. That left the wrapped up pilot lines...those were tricky business because, first, I didn't want one severing and leaving me without any decent means of guiding its assigned line down the interior of the mast, and secondly one of them was wrapped around the sheave that was supporting my weight. Our mast has steps and I was able to get my weight off the main halyard enough to get it off the sheave and unwrap the pilot line. Whew.

Once the pilot lines were sorted I just stayed aloft while Dawn sewed the bitter end to each rope and then helped her feed each though its assigned sheave. Our bosun's chair is quite comfortable so it was a peaceful, enjoyable way to pass some time in the warm sunshine. A dolphin was playing quite close to our dock all morning, and it was neat to see him swimming just under the surface of the water before breaching with a gasp of his blowhole. Piper napped on deck and paid the dolphin surprisingly little attention. Once we had the topping lift, yankee halyard and spinnaker pole hoist in place I moved down to the second spreaders where we set up the staysail halyard and dinghy hoist after a false start caused by me incorrectly remembering which went through which sheave (my notes in "The Book of Knowledge" were below). Once those were set I'd had enough time in the chair for one morning so I came down for lunch. Afterwards I applied some sunscreen, put on my cruiser hat, and went back up to run the flag halyards from the first spreaders and tie the lazy jack turning blocks to the second spreaders. Right about the time I finished up the riggers finally showed up. They weren't actually late...they'd been waiting on an overnight Fedex delivery of some parts to finish building new intermediate backrunners, which had been accidentally cut too short. Pete got the new backrunners strung in no time while George finished assembling and pinning the staysail furler, then they set about tuning the rig.

Meanwhile Dawn and I rigged up the dinghy hoist block & tackle and then pulled out our new Doyle mainsail and the stackpack and got each in position on the foredeck. When the riggers were finished George took off for another job but Pete stuck around to help us get the sail bent on. We were racing diminishing daylight but I really wanted to get the sail on while it was calm, as we had a big blow forecast for the next two days with the passage of a major cold front (referred to as "Winter Storm Helena" by the hucksters at the weather channel). We ended up taking the boom off the gooseneck to help get the sail on. It was a bear even with Pete's help, but we eventually got it slid into place and we bid him goodnight. Then in the gathering dark we got the main halyard hooked to the head of the sail and started feeding the slugs onto our new Strongtrack. As soon as we did so, the wind picked up markedly. It was a bad feeling being right in the middle of a big job that depended on calm wind, knowing it wouldn't abate for a good 70 hours. Nevertheless we got the entire sail up...it may have been the only time I've heeled 15 degrees at the dock! We got the lazy jacks attached to the stackpack and attempted to insert the stackpack battens only to discover that the canvas guy has stitched the openings shut!!! We said "screw it," released the mainsheet, dropped the sail, and set about cleaning up. When I went to zip up the stackpack, though, the fabric split in the exact spot it split last July! Ugh. I'm going to try to repair that with backing fabric tomorrow.

At this point it was 8pm, pitch dark, and starting to blow hard. After a hugely productive day our spirits were rather low, we were hungry, and neither felt like cooking dinner. So instead we went to the local sports bar, Gators, and felt much better when we got back. I called my mom, Dawn did some reading, I turned on the radiator-style electric heater, and we tucked into bed.

This morning was cold, windy, and rainy; it got colder yet throughout the day. I took Piper out to go potty and made a detour to the boatyard office for Keurig coffee, and ended up staying over an hour talking airplanes with Bill, one of the boatyard managers who is a Private Pilot who lost his medical. When I got back I reinstalled a speaker that had been removed from the port salon cabinet when it was taken apart; interior music restored, Dawn and I tackled putting away the provisions she had bought Thursday while I was in Boston. She had been out with Isabelle from Epiic and so had limited herself to one cart containing $450 (!) of cans & dry goods; it was a daunting amount of food, but Windbird swallowed it up into two lockers behind the port settee. After lunch we headed out to Dick's Sporting Goods, Kitchen & Company, Ace Hardware, West Marine, and finally Walmart for finishing provisioning. We were nearly able to finish buying cans, dry goods, beverages, soda and beer for 4 months, meat for a month, and produce and dairy for 2 weeks for an extra 2 carts and $550 (!!), then went to Harris Teeter and found the missing pieces before heading home at 8pm. It was a very full truck and I was astonished that we were able to get it down to the boat with only two heavily overloaded dockcarts.

After a late dinner of leftover chili (yum!) we worked together to stow the mountain of provisions in a couple of hours. We remove all extraneous packaging - the better to avoid extra garbage in remote places where its not easily disposed - often transfer the contents to Ziplock bags or Lock-n-Lock containers, add bay leaves to discourage creepy crawlers, and find a good spot in the most appropriate place. All of our food storage is in the freezer, refrigerator, or dry storage space under the galley counter; in the surprisingly-deep cabinets on two sides of the galley; in fruit & veg hammocks hanging from the galley and salon ceiling; under two sections of the port settee; in two lockers behind the port settee; or in the aft cabinets above port and starboard settees. Non-food provisions go in forward and aft heads, except booze and mixers which go below our berth in the aft cabin. We use our labelmaker to make labels for anything that's not instantly identifiable from the outside and also for the outside of all deep storage compartments. I was a little skeptical everything would fit - Dawn was quite nervous about it - but again Windbird just swallowed everything up. The freezer and refrigerator are only maybe 2/3 full each, and two of our designated food cabinets are half-empty. Absolutely amazing. I can see how you could easily provision this boat for any ocean crossing on earth, especially utilizing the V-berth space (which is suddenly getting empty for the first time in months!).

Tomorrow is supposed to be still bitterly cold and somewhat breezy but I have a fairly long list of outside tasks...and inside tasks...and a couple errands to run. So I'm going to sleep quick. We don't have a ton to do Monday except take a quick test sail with the riggers to make some final tweaks to the rig, and pray that the electronics guy shows up to finish the autopilot installation. Assuming that rather crucial detail works itself out, we should be ready to head out Tuesday. The forecast isn't nearly as good for going offshore as before...nothing nasty, just much lighter winds than previously forecast...so I suspect our overnight to Fernadina Beach FL will be one long motorsail. I don't care. I can't wait to get out there.

Back from Boston

Back on Windbird after 4 flights, a long day of travel, and about 2 1/2 hours in Boston with Windbird's last admiral Judy Handley. We had a nice lunch at the historic Warren Tavern, in operation since 1780 making it Boston's oldest watering hole (reportedly a favorite of Paul Revere's - his home isn't far away). We talked about Windbird's new lightning-prompted upgrades, Judy's favorite places cruising, and the YouTube adventures of the Delos crew (Judy wasn't familiar, I think I got her hooked). I got the medical kit I came up for, as well as some miscellaneous hardware, receipts and paperwork. Poignantly, one of the folders Judy gave me had "Bahamas 2015" on it with a gorgeous pic of a typical Exuma anchorage...it contained her research for their last abortive trip on Windbird that they cut short when Mark got the bad test results that prompted the return to MA for his final, ultimately unsuccessful cancer treatment. It's sad they didn't get a final season in the Bahamas together, but I know it makes Judy happy to know that Windbird is headed that way one year later.

 

 

 

While I was gone Dawn had a VERY full day provisioning at several stores, plus doing several loads of laundry and picking up a spare water system pump for me at West Marine. When we got home from the airport she was tuckered out. We're both heading to bed earlyish tonight & will be back at it early tomorrow for the home stretch of getting Windbird ready to go. I'll be getting up at 7 to listen to Chris Parker's weather on the HF. If the final rigging and electronics work goes ok, we should be ready to pull out early Tuesday morning for a 28-hour downwind jaunt offshore to Fernadina Beach.

Off to Boston

I'm currently at Charleston Airport at 5:30am to fly to Boston for the day, via LGA on the way up and ATL on the way back. Judy Handley has their duffel-bag-sized medical kit & some other boat stuff for us, and we're going to lunch across the river in Charlestown. If all goes to plan I'll be back at 8:15pm. Should be one of those fun little daytrips that only make sense if you're an airline employee or have a whole mess of frequent flyer miles. Dawn is staying home to do some major provisioning...she's spent several days making a long list. 

Mike and Alex from CCBY spent yesterday reinstalling the stem iron, anchor rollers, bow pulpit, and associated hardware. It took a lot of cutting and rewelding over the last week & a half to get the stem iron to fit correctly, but it sits right and looks good now. The riggers George & Pete (brothers) showed up mid-afternoon and started tuning the rig. At first they thought the lowers were longer on the starboard side than the port side, but I think the problem was that the boat has a bit of a starboard list...the salon cabinets on the port side aren't completely reinstalled yet and are thus mostly empty while the starboard side has a lot of heavy tools & spare parts in it. There's still a problem with the intermediate backrunners, they appear to be too short. Not sure how that happened, the brothers are bringing the originals today along with some longer toggles and will try to make it work without having to make up a new set of stays.

Yesterday Dawn and I put the boom back on & rerigged the mainsheet, outhaul, reefing clew lines, and boom vang. I started to rerig the Gybe-EZ and realized that the new shroud toggles on the mid chainplates are just a scosh larger than the originals, precluding me from clipping snatch blocks there with D-shackles as Mark did. I'll lash them on with Spectra instead - we definitely want the Gybe-EZ in place if we sail south early next week, as it's looking to be a brisk downwind run. I also hooked up the SSB antenna & tested it out listening to the USCG high seas forecast. Reception seems to be less than optimal, but I didn't shut down much of the equipment in the boat and there may be a fair bit of RF interference in the yard.

We may have some company for our sail to Jacksonville. Lance and Andy, two good friends & fellow airline pilots who are experienced cruising sailors, have the time off and are interested in going offshore with us. Lance has actually sailed on Windbird before, back in September when we took her for an overnight to Southport NC & back. But if we're going to sail Tuesday as I'd like, a lot still has to happen between now & then. We're making progress on our list but not quite so quickly as I'd like. Ideally the brothers would finish rigging today, Jeff from Tidal Marine would finish the autopilot install & we'd do commissioning/sea trials on Friday, Dawn and I would finish with the running rigging & bend the sails on over the weekend, & the riggers would do a final sea-trial tweak on Monday while giving the rig a bit of a workout in forecast 25-kt northeasterlies. That's a lot of ideals and very little of this refit has gone ideally, so we'll just see what happens.

 

 

 

Liferaft & Stem Iron

Last night at 3am we had a pretty good squall line blow though...because as any cruiser will tell you, they always blow though at 3am! At least being tied securely to a dock I was spared the fire drill this time, but I didn't get a ton of sleep listening to the wind whip though the rigging and feeling the boat hobby-horse in the wind waves...my alarm came prettty early this morning and I may have hit snooze once or twice.

Nevertheless we were at Air-Sea Safety & Survival in downtown Charleston shortly after they opened at 9am to pick up our Switlik 6-man life raft. They've had it for nearly two months as they had several replacement parts on backorder. We were on the fence about keeping it...it's an old raft (1996) but it has held up remarkably well, inflating immediately and retaining its air thereafter. The repacking/refurbishment came to $1800, over half the cost of a new raft of a cheaper brand. Our decision was made when the repacker, having seen the condition it was in, remarked "frankly, I'd rather be at sea in this 20-year-old Switlik than that 2-year-old Viking over there." 

After we got back to the boatyard we hoisted the heavy raft into its cradle and started to reinstall the hydrostatic release when another line of heavy rain chased us inside. There we repacked the ditch bag and finished the mast wiring plus a couple small projects before the rain let up enough to finish with the raft. We had lunch and then drove to Ace Hardware, West Marine, Petco, and Bed Bath & Beyond for a long list of items we need before heading south. We were remarkably productive as we found almost everything we needed, except for a spare water system pump (I used the spare to replace the original in August)...West Marine will have that in tomorrow.

We got back just as all the boatyard workers were heading home but were happy to see that the stem iron had been delivered and put on the boat (temporarily, with two carriage bolts). So full installation, finishing the standing rigging, and starting the running rigging should commence tomorrow.

The rainy day became a fairly pleasant evening and we grilled salmon and asparagus outside on our stern grill. During one of the lulls today we installed our enclosure curtains so our cockpit will now stay fairly warm and dry. This weekend we're supposed to have three days with highs in the 30s/40s and lows in the 20s. Brrr. I know I've been saying it a lot lately...but time to get this jalopy headed south!

Liveaboards

I just wrapped up a long work stint - 11 out of 12 days - with a long New Years Eve layover on the island of St. Martin. I've been there once before, a few years ago, when I raced in the Heineken Regatta with a number of friends (winning "Fastest Bareboat Around the Island" in the process). Windbird has been there twice with her previous owners, and will visit again during our Caribbean itinerary. But it's also a special place because of the airport's role as a sort of mecca for airliner spotters and other airplane geeks (like yours truly). The approach and landing over Maho Beach makes for some of modern aviation's most iconic photos. As an airplane-besotted tween I drooled over online pics of Air France and KLM 747s landing at SXM, and would then recreate the act on Microsoft Flight Simulator. So it was pretty cool - and a little surreal - to be landing a Boeing 757 there myself some twenty years later.

While I was ordering a painkiller at Sunset Bar and waiting for the Air France A340 to land, Dawn was moving us out of our temporary beach apartment and onto Windbird. Yes, we are liveaboards at last! The boat still isn't quite done, as noted in my last post (supposedly the stem iron goes back on tomorrow), but at least it's in the water and back together enough for us to settle in. Dawn did a lot of work cleaning and organizing while I was working, and I gotta say the boat looks pretty darn good.

Dawn hosted an impromptu New Years party on Windbird - Dan and Isabelle from Epiic and Jon and Sarah from Polox joined her aboard for appetizers and drinks. Kinda funny that we have three young newbie cruising couples all headed the same way, all trying to get off the dock and head south. I was kinda bummed I missed the party...though it was hard to be too bummed in St. Martin! Jon and Sarah left yesterday before I got back to Charleston, but I'm sure we'll run into them again down the line. They're spending tonight at anchor in Charleston Harbor and will head offshore tomorrow.

I got into CHS late last night and slept in today. I spent much of the day setting up and playing with our new electronics. I really like our new Garmin 7607 chartplotter. It's pretty intuitive and integrates really nicely with the radar, autopilot, AIS, and our iPads/iPhones. I downloaded the manual to our Icom M422 VHF and played with the DSC functions a bit only to discover that the old MMSI is still programmed in and cannot be reprogrammed without taking it to a dealer. The Tidal Marine Electronics guys are coming by tomorrow to finish the autopilot install so I'll see if they know the trick to reprogramming it before actually taking it out of the boat.

This afternoon Dawn gave me a haircut & tonight we went grocery shopping. We're still getting our provisioning list together and will do a major provisioning run for non-perishable goods before heading south. It's easier to do it while we have a car than waiting until we get to Florida. We really have a lot to do in the next week before heading south and I was rather lazy today but will hopefully get a jumpstart on the list tomorrow. A lot will depend on whether the stem iron job finally gets done - then the riggers can finish their job, and then we can rerig the boat, and so on....