Cruising Season 2.0 Has Begun!

Hooray - at last, we've started moving south again! Dawn, Piper and I kicked the new season off with a six day, 452 NM trip from Deale, MD down to Little River, SC. The weather made it more challenging than the reverse trip, which we did nonstop offshore around Hatteras in light weather in late June. This time we did a large portion of the trip, Norfolk to Beaufort NC, via the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), which is a similar distance but considerably slower than going offshore since you don't continue moving 24/7. I'm continuing to fly through mid-November and had a 6-day trip reporting yesterday (10/28), and for a while it looked like we wouldn't make it to Little River in time - plan B was to dock in Beaufort and commute out of New Bern. But thanks to a couple of early morning starts we were able to put in serious miles and get it done. Our itenerary was as follows:

Sat, Oct 21. I landed at DCA at 5pm following a 7-day international trip, during which I had a 48-hour layover in Paris on which Dawn accompanied me (thanks John & Trina for dogsitting Piper!). We rented a car and spent most of our time in Normandy touring the D-Day beaches, landing zones and battle sites. I had been considering getting off the dock immediately after getting in, but that only made sense if we were exiting the Chesapeake and going offshore. A big low pressure system and associated cold front forecast for Tuesday made that inadvisable, and there was no sense leaving early if we were going via the ICW because it's roughly 24 hours from Deale to Norfolk meaning we'd arrive there around sunset. So instead we went to Happy Harbour dockside restaurant for a farewell dinner with John & Trina and dockmates Gus and Michelle.

Sun, Oct 22. Up at 4am and off the dock by 5. It was, of course, pitch dark, but we're quite familiar with Shipwright's Harbor and Herring Bay by now so navigation was quite easy. The main danger is crab traps; to keep from fouling one, Dawn stood on the bow with the spotlight until we were out of Herring Bay. This providing an exciting moment when the spotlight's lanyard somehow came loose and Dawn accidentally dropped it in the water! It was good MOB (man overboard) practice anyways, since our spotlight floats. I just dropped a waypoint immediately, slowed the boat, turned around, and inched back towards where we dropped the light. Dawn found it using a headlamp, I stopped the boat alongside and used a boat hook to shepherd it towards the lifeline gate, Dawn leaned wayyy down (with me holding tightly to her legs!) and fished it out of the water. Sweet - those things are like $75!

The rest of the day down the Bay was uneventful, with light air motoring and later motorsailing in light southeasterlies. After sunset the wind picked up a bit and backed, and we got in a couple hours of actual sailing on a close reach during the night.

Mon, Oct 23. We entered the always-busy Hampton Roads inlet just after 3am; it took several hours to navigate the huge Norfolk naval base & dockyards, downtown wharf, and lower Elizabeth River to the start of the ICW. There's a bascule bridge near mile marker 6 (MM6; all distances on the ICW are in Statute Miles, not NM) that doesn't open between 6:30am and 8:30am, we were trying to beat that. We were a few minutes late but the bridge tender let us and another boat through anyways after a 20-minute delay, since the adjacent railroad bridge was down and preventing transit since several minutes before 6:30. While we waited for the bridge we enjoyed the sunrise & admired the other boat (S/V Arun). Our delay at the bridge had a bit of a cascade effect: we missed the 8am lockthrough at Great Bridge Lock (MM12), which delayed us an hour till the 9am lockthrough, which meant a greater portion of the day was spent fighting against increasing southerly winds, which meant we didn't make it to our preferred anchorage at MM65 (Broad Creek), instead tucking in behind Buck Island near MM60. It turned out to be a good choice because we had perfect protection from the south while the winds howled all night. I saw a high of 30 knots when I got up at 2am to make sure we hadn't dragged at all. Later we heard that south of Albemarle Sound boats reported over 50 knots of wind in some wild prefrontal storms.

Tues, Oct 24: The wind had abated considerably in our anchorage by sunrise, and PredictWind's PWG model showed much less wind for the morning than previously predicted (though the GFS remained elevated). I was originally planning to just reposition to Broad Creek but in light of the possible easing I decided to check out conditions on Albemarle Sound and cross if it looked ok. Oof, I needn't have bothered. Once we were on the sound itself, wind was right on the nose at 20 knots gusting 23. We were pounding into big short, square waves and making less than 2 knots headway, and turned around after a mile to flee for the protection of the calm anchorage. The rest of the day quite a few boats joined us there, looking to position themselves to cross the next day.

Wed, Oct 25. We had anchored just outside Broad Creek itself in preparation for a nighttime escape, which we made good at 2:45am. The ICW offers few open-water opportunities for safe nighttime movement, but this is one of them. The front had passed during the night and the wind was now 270 at 12-15, making for a beautiful, reasonably comfortable upwind leg across the Albemarle. I'd been expecting to motorsail but was able to sail much of the way across, handsteering by the stars while Dawn slept below. The only slightly tricky part was going around Long Shoal to enter the Alligator River, but most of the buoys for this area are lit. Our goal was to arrive at the Alligator River Swing Bridge at dawn, which worked perfectly. It was a nice motorsail down the Alligator River until the wind died completely, then we motored into the long, straight Alligator-Pungo Canal. We emerged into the Pungo River shortly before 3pm, making a record-fast stop at Dowry Creek Marina to top off our port & starboard fuel tanks. By now the wind had kicked up again out of the NW, and after the river turned south at Belhaven we had a spectacular broad reach for the last hour down to our anchorage at MM140. We had covered 75 statute miles and put ourselves in a great position to make Beaufort by Thursday night, and still had a good hour to enjoy sundowners before sunset.

Thurs, Oct 26. Another predawn start from a protected but easy-exit anchorage, this time at 5am. The Pamlico River isn't quite as wide as the Albemarle Sound, and I wanted to arrive at the other side and start up Goose Creek at dawn. The cold front had stalled and it was considerably windier than forecast (NW @ 24 kts) making for a wet and wild nighttime motorsail across the Pamlico. Once in protected Goose Creek, it immediately eased to near-calm. We reemerged into Bay River at 8:30am and turned into the Neuse River near Maw Point Shoal at 9:30am. It was windy as hell out there and we started our first leg, a beam-to-close reach on a starboard tack, under double-reefed main and staysail. I was expecting a hell of a beat because the Neuse turns progressively to the right but the wind veered and eased, and we were able to lay our course the whole way 'round. It ended up being a fast and enormously enjoyable 3-hour upwind sail, though at times Dawn and Piper weren't quite so enthused.

So the anticipated slow part of the day ended up being fast, but the expected fast part of the day (Adams Creek & the Core Creek Canal) was excruciatingly slow thanks to a 1.3 knot foul current. Had I done my homework better, I would have read that westerly winds set up lowered water levels in the Neuse and northerly current in Core Creek Canal. Nevertheless we arrived at the Beaufort-Morehead City Highway Bridge (MM204) at exactly our planned time of 4pm, with a welcoming committee of dolphins! Piper, as always, went wild & looked like he was going to jump in to swim with them. From there it was only a short jaunt out of Beaufort Inlet to begin our offshore overnight to Little River. Unfortunately the wind eased rather rapidly & we didn't get to sail-sail any of it. But there was still enough wind to make the first 50 or 60 miles a fast, enjoyable main-and-Yankee motorsail under reduced power. The sunset was gorgeous; it felt great to be on the open ocean again. Our friends Erin and Kara on S/V Vela were just ahead of us, as they had been since Adams Creek. We talked on the VHF sporadically, but found that we lost contact after only 5 or 6 miles separation (our handheld could still receive at this range). This confirmed our suspicions about our VHF reception, which has been an ongoing issue since leaving Charleston in January - we originally suspected our radio and then a particular PL259 connector, which I had replaced. I hooked up our SWR meter in line with the antenna and the high reading confirmed we still have an antenna problem. Once in Little River, I climbed our mast and took off the VHF whip. It appears to be in very poor condition, with one partially-melted wire that looks like it may have been a product of last year's lightning strike (so maybe a direct strike after all?). A new one has been ordered, hopefully this finally solves that issue. Now if only I can figure out why our new HF autotuner still won't tune.

Fri, Oct 27. An uneventful night with little traffic and little wind, followed by an incredible sunrise over glassy seas. Considering the light conditions we took a little bit of a shortcut across 25-foot soundings at the tip of the Frying Pan Shoals south of Cape Fear. The light breeze continued clocking NE and then E, keeping our mainsail full as we turned ENE for Little River Inlet. The fair current we'd experienced all night continued to favor us and we got to the Inlet at 2:30pm, and on the dock in Little River before 4pm. During the day we'd made a lengthy and rather daunting list of everything we need to do before taking off for the Bahamas in mid-November, and we launched into it immediately after docking and early the next morning before I headed to the airport.

I'll be working trips until Nov 13, meaning every second of my free time has to be spent getting us and the boat ready to go. That's ok, it's a price worth paying for what promises to be an incredible cruising season. In my next post I'll give a preview of where we'll be going and what we'll be doing, and how Hurricanes Irma and Maria have affected those places and our plans.

Solar Project is DONE!

Dawn and I did end up missing the SSCA gam due to a couple of unforseen events. First, our local welder wunderkind Caleb had the long-awaited solar panel frames all ready to install on our solar/davit arch, needed my help to do so, and wanted to get it done this weekend. Secondly, Dawn's childhood friend Cindie decided to make a last-minute trip to the boat. So sadly, we missed the gam. Erin & Kara on Vela say it was a good time. Hopefully we'll still make a couple days of the Annapolis Boat Show.

I did some work on our teak decks over the weekend (replacing/rebedding screws & bungs, epoxying splits) and I should finish that up in the morning, but completing the solar panel project was the main objective. And as of tonight, it's 100% done. We now have 520 watts of solar power: 200 watts in 4 PV panels on the Bimini top and two 160-watt panels in the gleaming new frames on the arch. Together with our wind gen this should meet our daily electrical needs a good 90%+ of the time.

We did manage to get Windbird off the dock yesterday for a nice easy, slow upwind sail across the bay. I had no idea Windbird would go upwind in 5-6 knots of true wind, but she does albeit at a stately 2.5-3.5 knots. We didn't even care, it was beautiful out and the apparent breeze was just enough to cool down a hot day. We anchored at Lowes Wharf just after 5:30pm and took the dogs to land (we're dogsitting Leo for our friends John & Trina on S/V Next Place). Turned out the popular beach bar there is closed on Mondays but they were ok with us walking the dogs there. We had a beautiful, quiet night on the hook, and were anchor up early today to get Cindie to DCA to fly back to Minnesota. We sailed for a bit and motorsailed at reduced power for the rest, wing-on-wing dead downwind to Deale. Once again backing into the slip went very smoothly. We're finally getting the hang of that (he said just before trying it in real wind & current!).

We spent a lot of time today doing planning for our next season. Obviously many of the places we planned on visiting have been devastated by hurricanes Irma and Marie, including the Turks & Caicos, Puerto Rico, Spanish Virgin Islands, USVI, BVI, and St. Maarten. We're still planning on going but our focus will be much different as we're going to try to volunteer as much as we can in the rebuilding effort (particularly in the BVI, which got absolutely destroyed by a direct hit from Cat 5, 185-mph Irma). I'll post more about that later. Tomorrow I'm heading out on a seven-day international trip that will take me to both London and Paris, among other places. 

The Rest of the Story

Well, the transmission install went considerably smoother than taking it out. That's partially due to being more familiar with it this time, partially because we eliminated the unnecessary pillow block under the engine that made the driveshaft such a bear to take out & put in, but mostly because I had Dave Laux there to help. Actually, I wouldn't say he helped - in fact, he did the lion's share of the work, and I helped him. He's an older guy and is mostly retired from wrenching on boats these days, but obviously still has a great talent for it. We were fortunate to have the contact with him through the Handleys.

The installation took place on Wednesday, not Tuesday as originally planned, because the ordered shift and throttle cables didn't show up at Dave's on Monday. Instead on Tuesday I cleaned the bilge and engine compartment, repacked the stuffing box, and a few other boat chores. Our friends Erin and Kara on S/V Vela, who we met in Annapolis last year, came down from New York and docked right behind us on Tuesday morning. It was really nice to spend some time with them; we had happy hour on Vela, went to downtown Cape May for dinner, and then had a nightcap on Windbird.

Dave pulled up at 10:45am on Wednesday, fresh off the Lewes-Cape May ferry, with the shiny new transmission and other assorted bits and bobs in the right seat of his pickup truck. He had a machine shop straighten and polish our driveshaft which I had beat up a bit while trying to get the rusty couplings off. Our first order of business was to insert it below the engine and get it in position for transmission installation. Next we removed the old dampener plate from the flywheel of the engine and bolted in a new one. Then I installed the old adapter plate and isolator flange on the new transmission, as well as a new oil cooler. That left the really tricky part: maneuvering the heavy transmission into an impossibly tight spot between the engine and the front of the engine room, slipping it over the driveshaft, lining up the input shaft splines with the dampener plate, sliding it aft against the engine, and getting a bolt started before it slipped away again. It was a two-man job with only room for one person to actually do it. It only took five minutes but seemed a lot longer. At that point we realized that the aft drive shaft coupling was actually behind the prop shaft coupling, and mating them required somehow moving it forward - preferably without taking the transmission back off the engine! It took a while, but we got it, then took a lunch break for Dawn's excellent taco salad and a craft beer.

At this point we seemed 90% done, but we weren't really. We still had to bolt the aft couplings together, install the front split coupling, bolt it to the isolator flange, attach and clamp the raw water input and output hoses to the oil cooler, add oil to the transmission, run the new shift cable through the steering pedestal into the engine room, attach the linkage, then do the same for the new throttle cable (which we were replacing as a preventative measure). The last three tasks took the most time. We got some early payoff by starting the engine and testing the transmission without the linkage attached, at which point we realized the new transmission came with its shifting arm installed up rather than down. Not a big deal to change, but getting the linkage into place and adjusted just right took some doing. The throttle cable went considerably better. And just like that, we had a boat with a brand new, easy-shifting, beautifully working transmission!

We enjoyed a post-project beer and then Dave had to rush off to catch the 6pm ferry home. I reassembled the steering pedestal and binnacle, reinstalled the engine air box, and cleaned up the new cable routing with zip ties. After cleaning up my tools and project supplies, Dawn and I grilled steaks for dinner and then invited Erin & Kara over for a celebratory drink. It felt very, very good to have that installation behind us. And given Hurricane Jose's latest forecasts it felt good to be ready to head back to the Chesapeake.

We and Vela were off the dock at 7am the next morning and steaming out Cape May Inlet shortly thereafter. We were initially motorsailing into a 10 knot breeze, but it became a broad reach once we turned northward around the Cape. At first we motorsailed, then decided the wind was strong enough to turn off the engine. We were ok going a little bit slower as we were waiting for the incoming tide to catch up and give us a boost all the way up the bay. It soon did, but the wind also died after 90 minutes of light sailing; it was forecast to be light the rest of the day. Thus it was somewhat surprising to get a 17 kt gust at 1pm. We turned off the engine and roared off on a 7-knot beam reach. We kept waiting for the wind to die, but it never it - it stayed between 13 and 17 knots for four hours, making for a quick and really beautiful sail all the way up Delaware Bay. Finally it almost completely died at 5pm and we motored the last 45 minutes to the C&D canal.

We reached the C&D while it was still slack water in the canal, but we soon got a boost that pushed us along its 18 miles rather quickly; we exited into the Chesapeake right around 8pm. Erin and Kara stopped at an anchorage just east of the canal, while we continued on in the night. We kept our customary watch schedule: Dawn 7pm-10pm, me 10pm-1am, her 1am-4am, me 4am-7am. On her first watch she woke me for one boat that was crowding the channel a bit, but otherwise it was uneventful. On my first watch the fair current dwindled and then turned foul; the only traffic was a single tug pushing a barge. Dawn saw zero traffic on the dog watch, and neither did I on the sunrise watch until we were approaching Herring Bay at daybreak. It got light just in time for us to ready the lines and fenders and head straight into our marina. This time backing into our slip went very well...it turns out that it's a ton easier when you have a transmission that readily and consistently slips into forward gear for the occasional steering blast over the rudder! In all our 139-nm passage took 24 hours and 5 minutes. Only 5.5 hours of that were pure sailing, but it was very nice sailing and most of the time motoring was very nice motoring (read: completely calm, not beating into waves like when we exited Cape May Inlet).

I was originally supposed to fly a 6-day international trip on the 14th but couldn't make it due to the delayed installation; I had to burn my once-a-year "get out of jail free" card to drop the trip. In its place I picked up two domestic trips, a two-day and a four-day, starting at 7am on the 16th. So after we arrived at 7am on the 15th, I slept a while, putzed around, talked to John and Trina from Next Place for a while (John had an absolutely insane story to tell - while we were gone he crewed on a delivery, in a catamaran that turned out to be not very seaworthy, with the owners from hell on board), and then packed for my trip. At 4:30 Dawn drove me to DCA, and despite heavy traffic we arrived in time for me to take an earlier than planned flight. I stayed overnight in Atlanta and started my 2-day domestic yesterday morning. I finished today and start the 4-day tomorrow. I'll be back on Windbird on Thursday night.

So Dawn and I are planning on attending the Seven Seas Cruising Association's Annapolis gam next weekend, and we were going to take Windbird there (it's at Camp Letts on the Rhode River, just north of Deale). However, the guy fabricating our new solar panel frames thinks they'll be ready for installation then, and that's something we really need to get done. So we may be leaving Windbird in the slip and driving, and I may have to miss one or both days of the gam if Caleb needs me to assist in the installation. Erin and Kara will have Vela at the gam and a few other friends may attend also, but getting the boat ready to go kinda takes precedence right now.

Brokedown Palace

Our trip started on a high note. The two projects that I mentioned in my previous post, replacing the HF radio tuner and installing the Garmin Gwind wired pack, both went well. I wasn't able to reach Chris Parker on the HF radio but I was able to call a friend at considerably closer distance, which narrows the potential culprits - and now our wind instrumentation works perfectly. Stringing its cable down the mast went surprisingly well, with Dawn's help.

So we got out of Deale on Wednesday, Aug 30th, and had a delightful motorsail in light winds to Annapolis, MD. We took a mooring in the inner harbor, and it was so good to be off the dock and cruising again. The next day involved a long motor in completely calm winds to Chesapeake City MD, and then early the next morning we transited the C&D Canal on a favorable current. A cold front had passed during the night, and as soon as we got out into Delaware Bay on Friday Sept 1st we were able to unfurl the sails and turn off the engine for a fantastic beam-to-broad reach to the S/SE, the delight of sailors everywhere. A squally warm front was pressing in from the south, but the forecast was just right for us to run up to New York Harbor before things got too crappy.

And then, just as we were exiting Delaware Bay, the wind died, we started up our engine, and then our transmission started acting up in rather dramatic fashion - refusing to stay in gear, particularly above 60% power. I had to laugh despite myself - this was exactly where Judy & Mark Handley experienced transmission trouble with Windbird in 2005, just as they set off to sail around the world. Then, they ducked into Delaware Bay and met a boat-mechanic genius that convinced them to repower their boat with a new Yanmar and the ZF transmission that was now, after 8400 hours of faithful service, giving up the ghost. Unfortunately I hadn't read that portion of Judy's blog in about a year and, failing to recall that the genius lived in Lewes, DE, took a left turn into Cape May, NJ.

Yeah, no, I'm not that sorry. Cape May has turned out to be a really cool place to be stranded for over a week. It's a funky old resort town turned artist commune, with a bunch of really great restaurants, art galleries, breweries, wineries, distilleries, and a cool naval air museum. We spent the first two days in a rather snooty high-end marina crowded with expensive sport-fishing boats and nearly no humans, then decamped to the much more sociable Two Mile Marina just past the Two-Mile Drawbridge. We've met some great people here who've provided great moral support as I've torn out the transmission and assorted hardware - a considerable task.

Judy Handley, bless her heart, emailed her Delawarian engine guru the moment she heard we were having trouble, and he called early the next morning. David Laux has been an absolute godsend. He gave me valuable guidance throughout the tear-out process. He called his old friends at Mack Boring for us, and hearing they no longer did transmission overhauls, called several other shops. They said ZF transmissions with this many hours on them generally aren't very economical to overhaul, so Dave found a new one in Florida for considerably cheaper than retail. They sent it our way before the Hurricane Irma evacuations got started in earnest. Dave came across to Cape May on the ferry today to make sure everything was ready for the install. He expects to receive the transmission on Monday, and he'll come back across on Tuesday to help me put it in the boat.

We drove up to New York City early Tuesday morning, checked into a hotel in Chelsea, and showed Dawn's mom all around town on a whirlwind, all-day tour ending with a broadway show. It was her first time in NYC and seemed to really enjoy herself, considering that it was a pretty exhausting day. On Wednesday we got her to Kennedy Airport for her rescheduled flight home (she was originally planning to fly out of Boston on Friday) and headed back to South Jersey.

We've been keeping a very close eye on Hurricane Irma as she's worked her way across the Atlantic (she was the Invest 93L I mentioned in my last post). For a while we were worried that she might make her way up here, where we're powerless to relocate to a less exposed spot. Instead she made an absolutely direct bullseye hit on Barbuda, St. Maarten, the British Virgin Islands, and the USVI. The devastation in the BVI is particularly painful, as we've spent so much time there on charters over the last five years. All of our favorite spots are gone, the charter boat fleet is mostly wrecked, and the people we got to know there are largely homeless. We still plan to go to that part of the Caribbean this coming season, but our focus will be drastically changed. Now we'll be loading Windbird up with supplies and volunteering to do relief work.

Tomorrow Irma will be making landfall in Florida; we're keeping our fingers crossed that she weakens and drifts further west, as she had done during much of the last 36 hours. And then we'll be keeping an eye on Jose, which the most recent models suggest may not be headed out to sea quite as soon as we thought. Ugh, this hurricane season is kinda stressful. I just want to get our transmission back in and operational, just in case we need to move our boat somewhere better. Should be there in another couple of days.

Back on the Boat

As you probably guessed by the dearth of blogging, Dawn and I have been off Windbird for the last month visiting family in Minnesota and the Dakotas, in addition to me flying several long international trips. We're back on the boat now, though, and preparing to head north to NYC and Long Island Sound on a 2-week minicruise. Our departure has been delayed by weather, namely Post-Potential Tropical Cyclone Ten that Would've Been Named Irma churning up the eastern seaboard. The rain stopped tonight and the north winds should die in the morning, so we're planning to leave Deale tomorrow afternoon or Thursday morning.

Dawn's mom Marg drove back from SD with her, and will be accompanying us on our cruise. She's flying out of Boston in about a week and a half, though we can change her flight if we get delayed much further. It's her first time seeing Windbird, and we're excited to share a little of our cruising life with her. Yesterday (Monday) we showed her around Washington DC, and today we went up to Annapolis.

While we were gone, I had our HF radio tuner tested at Burghardt Radio in Watertown, SD. It turned out to be the apparent culprit to our HF not transmitting, with damage consistent with last year's lightning near-strike. So we ordered a new autotuner, I installed it yesterday, and then today I called into the Chris Parker show...and got no response. So disappointing, but possibly just RF interference here in the marina. We'll see.

I went around with Garmin a bit on finding a solution to our malfunctioning GWind wireless transducer and finally asked to just have it replaced with the wired version, and they agreed. A Gwind wired pack was waiting when we got back to the boat on Sunday. I planned on installing it today (Tuesday) but it was pretty rainy so I'll work on it tomorrow before we take off. It'd be nice to have working wind instrumentation. It should be a fairly easy install as we already have a GND-10 networked into our N2k network; all I have to do is fish the Nexus cable down the mast (we have a pilot line) and through our cabin ceiling.

Our neighbors John and Trina on Next Place (a 2007 Valiant 50) are possibly coming with us up to NYC. I'll be fun to buddy boat with someone again. If everything goes right - a big if - we'll make it all the way to Windbird's old home of Quissett Harbor in Woods Hole, Mass. It's a gorgeous area and Judy Handley lives a few miles away in Falmouth. Even if we don't make it that far, I'd like to make it to Newport, RI. Judy could meet us there, Dawn's mom would be able to get to Boston to fly out, and it's the "other" U.S. sailing capitol besides Annapolis. But as with so much else, it all depends on the weather. After a slow start the hurricane season really got going in dramatic fashion this week; we're keeping a particularly close eye on Invest 93L.

Home Sweet Summer Home

The morning after my last post, the coolant pump for our engine finally arrived and I spent the day putting the engine back together. It now runs perfectly, leak-free, and quite a bit cooler than it ever did in the past - no more than 170° F, under load on a hot day. It was a really great feeling to fix it myself and gain a much better understanding of our engine's cooling system in the process. My other projects came together nicely, too, and I finished my ambitious to-do list only an hour before I left for my work trip to Lagos, Nigeria on June 24th. It had been an extremely busy, productive four days off work.

Dawn did a wonderful job of provisioning and readying the boat for departure while I was gone (and driving our Xterra north to MD!), and we were ready to leave as soon as I got back into town on Tuesday, June 27th. We said our goodbyes, did our final checks, and cast off the lines at 2pm. We had been in Georgetown, SC for a month and two days, and had come to really enjoy the town. It felt great to be finally moving on, though - the itinerant cruiser lifestyle agrees with us both, it seems. We left on an strong ebb tide and were steaming out into the Atlantic only two hours after departure. We had a benign weather window for rounding infamous Cape Hatteras offshore, sparing us from days of droning up the Intracoastal Waterway, but it wasn't a great sailing forecast for the first few days: no wind Tuesday, light to moderate northeasterlies Wednesday.

We put up the mainsail and in fact there was just enough northwest wind to keep us steady in the swells as we motored east through the night. During my 10pm-1am shift the engine began faltering; I shut it down, rolled out the headsail, and called Dawn up to take the helm while I changed a rather filthy Racor filter, a quick ten minute job. Our first offshore leg in a month had obviously churned up some sludge in the tanks. In the morning, shortly after we passed Cape Fear, the predicted headwinds filled in, right on the nose with a short ugly chop that slowed our progress below three knots. It was only predicted to stay NE for twelve hours and shift SE as we neared Cape Lookout, so we just tacked back and forth and kept the sail driving us through the chop. Unfortunately, the wind didn't shift as forecast, and we were continuing to beat as night fell. It finally shifted, suddenly and decisively, just after midnight, but it also quickly faded so we kept the engine going at a reduced power until 10am Thursday, when the wind finally filled in enough to sail after 44 hours of motoring and motorsailing. We rounded Cape Hatteras in the early afternoon with a big course change from NE to NNW, and we ran with the wind for a while. Sure was nice to have the downwind pole back! The wind faded at sunset; it still would have been strong enough to keep us moving under spinnaker, but we didn't feel comfortable flying the kite at night (with solo watches to boot) so we started the engine again.

Friday morning found us with land in sight again as we passed Virginia Beach, crossed the Chesapeake shipping approaches, rounded Cape Henry, and finally passed over the northern gap of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The wind picked up enough to sail into the Chesapeake, abruptly died, and then filled again rather strongly first from the east and then shifting south. We enjoyed a fast, rollicking downwind sail the rest of the day, alternating between a broad reach and wing-on-wing, surfing down short steep waves that took us astern. By 5pm we were getting a bit overpowered and the autopilot was having real difficulty keeping up; for a while I hand-steered, and then we rounded up to drop the mainsail. As we did, the clew came loose and the sail whipped viciously until we could get it down. At first I thought we had ripped the clew out of the sail; closer inspection showed merely that the pin securing the clew to the outhaul car had somehow come out. No worries. We continued northward under yankee alone, which resulting in a fairly rolly ride but a much better steering job by the autopilot. Late that night the wind shifted more SSW, and I called Dawn up a bit early for her 1am-4am shift so we could gybe - a slightly lengthy process when the downwind pole must be gybed as well.

While we were offshore there had been absolutely no traffic for the first 36 hours - I actually thought our AIS was broken - and then a few ships that passed no closer than four miles and a single sailing catamaran that overtook us just off Hatteras, passed within a mile, and hailed us on the VHF for a friendly conversation somewhat shortened by our horrible reception (I had just replaced a faulty PL-259 connector on our antenna coax, but it clearly hadn't fixed the problem). Now, in the Chesapeake, there was a steady procession of large cargo ships, both north and southbound. We quickly learned to stay just outside of the shipping channel. At least they all had AIS. During Dawn's shift on Saturday morning we started to cross the channel, and right on cue a big white oiler appeared coming up our stern at 20 knots. Dawn wisely woke me from my morning nap (she seldom rousts me on her watches, but has proven smart about when to do so), and I hailed him without result - maybe our faulty VHF, maybe he wasn't listening to 16. Just to be sure we turned 30 degrees to port and scooted out of the channel. The oiler was still several miles away, but the extreme disparity in speed means our changes have to be early and decisive to make a difference.

I napped for another hour and then it was time to roll up the Yankee, start the engine, and head into Herring Bay. It was 10am on Saturday, July 1st, the start of a four-day holiday weekend, and there was already a steady stream of boats coming out the entrance channel for Herrington Harbor Marina and Shipwright Harbor Marina, the latter of which is our new home for the summer. We had covered 477nm, a new record for us, which took us 92 hours for an average of 5.2 knots. I hadn't realized that our fixed-dock slip has a very short finger pier, making it necessary to back in. I tried a few times but the westerly wind was making it very difficult to back into our west-facing slip, so we ignominiously retreated to a nearby T-head for the night and relocated to our slip the following morning when it was calm.

I was originally supposed to work July 1st-4th, but was somehow able to trade for a trip on the 7th-11th, so we had a few days to settle in and get more boat work done. The morning that we arrived we spent a few hours washing the boat and putting her together from the passage, and then explored the marina and environs. Shipwright Harbor consists of five docks arrayed around a point of land that divides two rivers; the much larger and fancier Herrington Harbor North Marina is arrayed along an opposite bank. Sailboats outnumber powerboats at both marinas - a big change from South Carolina - and both feature nice amenities, regular events, and lively communities of liveaboards and cruisers. There are a number of smaller marinas around plus several lively dockside restaurants, a large West Marine at Herrington Harbor, and a decent hardware store in Deale; otherwise the small town offers very little. Groceries and most other things are in larger towns 5 to 15 miles away, but the drive through the beautiful green wooded hills west of the Bay is quite pleasant. Washington DC is only 30 miles away (making DCA very convenient for my commute to ATL), but you'd never know it. Annapolis is 20 miles north. Those who warned us about the summer heat and humidity of the area weren't exaggerating; we're very thankful that Windbird has working air conditioning. Our slip is extremely sheltered, which will be a good thing if any hurricanes head our way, but it doesn't get much breeze.

Our good friends Dan and Isabelle on Epiic beat us north by a few days; their boat was already on the hard at Herrington Harbor. They had decided to come back to the US to sell Epiic and upgrade to a catamaran, but on arrival CBP decided their three months in the Bahamas didn't count as a "meaningful exit" and they're being banished back to Canada until this winter. We had two last nights with them, though. On Saturday we all went up to Annapolis, showed Dan & Isabelle around town, and then met up with our friends Roy and Christina on Moor Passages, whom we had met and buddyboated with in the Exumas and narrowly missed in the Abacos (we sailed into Marsh Harbor as they were pulling up anchor for the passage to Annapolis). They were departing for Maine the next day, but we had a wonderful time catching up. And then Dan & Isabelle came over to Windbird for sundowners on Sunday night, which ended up lasting wayyy after sundown...I felt bad the next morning as they had to be up early to drive to Ottawa! We'll miss those two and hope they'll come sail with us while they're between boats.

A whole new project list sprouted once we arrived in Deale, and we made pretty good progress on it this week even though we basically took the 3rd and 4th off. I found out it was our VHF radio that was the problem, not the antenna; a replacement is on its way. I rebuilt our Racor and replaced fuel hoses, clamps, and the low-pressure aux pump in our engine room; we'll be getting our tanks cleaned & fuel polished later this summer. I troubleshot our faulty wind instrument (which was dead all passage, thank God for our new bimini window so we could at least see the masthead fly) and tracked it down to a faulty wireless reception box, which Garmin is replacing. I've tweaked our bimini solar system and will be installing digital monitors for our solar controllers next week. Our new Solarland fixed-frame solar panels (160W each) for the davit arch have been ordered, and once they arrive a local welder will be modifying our stainless angle brackets to accept them.  Our fairly new VSM-422 electrical system monitor died due to water ingress (an adjacent hose that came loose) and I am in the process of replacing it with a Victron VE.net battery controller and Blue Power Panel, which will also serve as the remote switch for our new Victron charger/inverter. I even designed a new custom Blue Seas Systems circuit breaker panel, though the $1700 price tag and abundance of other projects will probably dissuade me from ordering it this summer.

I'm trying to get these projects done fairly quickly because we're planning on spending the bulk of August with family in Minnesota & the Dakotas. And then at the end of August and beginning of September, we're now planning to take a two-week trip through the C&D canal, down Delaware Bay, up to New York, and down Long Island Sound to visit Judy Handley and Windbird's old haunt of Falmouth, MA at the base of Cape Cod. We had toyed with doing the trip before but it's now been rendered necessary by the discovery that Maryland imposes a 5% use tax on any vessel that spends more than 90 days in a calendar year in the state. Dawn's mom is actually going to come out and do the northbound cruise with us, which is really exciting. But this definitely means we have to get our projects done sooner rather than later, and it might limit the amount of cruising we actually do in the Chesapeake this summer. That's ok; our real focus is on getting the boat completely ready to go for the Bahamas and Caribbean this winter. We're really getting excited for that.

When It Rains, It Pours

Still in Georgetown, and not headed north until June 27th at the very earliest - probably later. We've had a bit of a deluge of boat problems and projects, and I've been spending every waking moment working on the boat, except when I'm at work, which has been quite a bit lately. I actually picked up an extra 4-day trip starting late this week because we've been shelling out money at an insane rate lately. Here's the rundown:

Boat Canvas Project: The whole reason we're in Georgetown is to have our canvas replaced at Sharp's Custom Canvas (~$8000). I'm happy to report that our new dodger, bimini, connector and enclosure curtains are all complete and on the boat, and they look spectacular. We ended up having them more-or-less copy the existing canvas, except that we added a zip-open skylight to the bimini, added a zipper to the bottom of the connector, and added canvas strips with velcro to the bimini for securing our new solar panels. Sharp's did really nice work and the project was completed almost on-time despite incessant rain showers and thunderstorms that made patterning and fitting a bit challenging.

Batteries: Our five new Firefly Carbon-Foam AGMs ($2400) finally arrived during the second week of June, and I had two days off between trips to install them. I actually got the project done in a single day; it ended up being pretty easy. Hauling the three existing 140-lb Rolls batteries out of the boat was a bit of a bear but Dawn was able to help get them up the companionway ladder. I positioned the new Fireflies under our aft berth, installed chocks and straps to keep them from going anywhere, and connected them in parallel with beefy 2/0 AWG battery cables to create a single 550AHr bank. The new batteries look great; here's hoping their performance lives up to the hype.

Charger/Inverter: We shipped our faulty Xantrex Freedom SW2000 out to a service center in Bradenton, Florida, and they confirmed that we have a shot FET board and main logic board. Repair would cost $1100, or a new unit would be $2000 through them (I found it for $1600 elsewhere). This was only a 4-year old unit, and the Handleys had gone through another Xantrex as well; they simply don't have a very good reputation. I decided to switch brands and ordered a Victron MultiPlus 3000W inverter/120A charger ($1100) through eMarine in Ft. Lauderdale. It arrived on Monday and I installed it yesterday. As of right now I haven't decided what remote panel I want to get for it, so to switch the inverter on we have to remove a cover under our companionway ladder. But that aside, it seems to work great...and now that we can use shore power to charge our batteries, we have refrigeration again! And air conditioning, which has come in very useful as the rain has made it necessary to keep the boat closed up most of the time.

Solar Project: I originally ordered three 50-watt semi-flexible panels and one 100-watt panel for the bimini but the fit ended up being very problematic, so I returned the 100-watt panel and ordered another 50. Meanwhile I took our current solar controller out from behind our circuit breaker panel and relocated it to the locker behind our nav seat, just below the air conditioning equipment. We now have three solar controllers there, two Victron 75/15s for the bimini panels and one Victron 100/30 for the davit arch. We still have our old Siemens 85s mounted there but will replace them later this summer, and this bigger Victron controller will handle 320 watts just fine. I have all three controllers wired in parallel via a Blue Seas Systems bus bar / fuse panel and then via a very short run to the positive battery bus which starts under the nav seat. The PV wires run through a waterproof gland I installed on the cockpit combing, through the salon ceiling, and down into the air con/solar controller locker. I'm still working on wiring the PV wires from the panels through the bimini. I originally used the short stock lead wires and hooked up the PV wires via MC4 connectors right on the bimini, but it looked absolutely terrible. So instead I am splicing in longer leads that will hide the MC4 connectors in a zipped-up pocket where the bimini attaches to its frame. I worked on that tonight and should have it done tomorrow by noon, I think.

Leaky Water Pump: This seemed like such a minor project that I don't think I've even mentioned it until now. Our coolant circulation pump was leaking and it seemed to be coming from the cylinder return O-ring. So I ordered a new o-ring and two new gaskets online, but they took forever to get here. When I put them in last week and got the engine back together, it was still leaking. Closer inspection revealed that it was really leaking from a weep hole in the pump itself, which is indicative of an internal seal failure. So I ordered a new water pump from A&M Marine, a local repair shop, and on a bit of a whim decided to have them install it since I was leaving on a trip and we wanted to get headed north by June 20th. Can do, they said - since your cooling system will be apart, would you like us to go through your heat exchanger too? It was on my list for this summer but I figured yeah, as long as the system is apart, let's do it and be done with it. Fast forward to two days later when I got a phone call in London: two of the heat exchanger cover bolts were corroded frozen and snapped, so now I was looking at $3500 for a new water pump, heat exchanger and exhaust manifold, plus labor. They already had 7 hours into it at $125/hr and were estimating 8-15 more. I told them to order the parts but I'd put them in myself.

This morning we got the heat exchanger, exhaust manifold and associated parts, but not the water pump. That should be here tomorrow, hopefully. In the meantime I washed down the engine and replaced a few hoses that looked dodgy as well as all the hose clamps that my Skandvik ABA jihad hadn't reached yet, and then installed the exhaust manifold and heat exchanger. Hopefully by tomorrow night or Friday morning we'll have a running Yanmar again. But jeeze, those were a couple of expensive bolts. I don't fault A&M, persay - they tried everything they could to get the bolts loose without snapping them, including soaking them in penetrating oil overnight. But I think I would've been more patient, and if I had still broken them at least my labor would've been free. And in any case I'm learning a lot more about the cooling system by doing the installation myself. Eventually I'm going to get it through my thick skull that the only person that should really be working on the boat is me.

So yeah, that's what's going on. I'll have another few full days of working on the boat and then I'm off to lovely Lagos, Nigeria to pay for some of this! It could be worse. We're sharing the dock with one sailboat that just turned a bearing and is looking at a repower, a big cat that just took major damage from a lightning strike (I feel your pain, brother), and a new cruising family with a new-to-them, 17-year-old Beneteau that has absolutely everything going wrong. We're shelling out money, yes, but it's mostly on stuff that will make Windbird a better, more reliable cruising platform.