Blue Velvet of Sark goes transatlantic again

With the uncertainty and restrictions in traveling to countries that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought, we decided that the best course of action for us would be to return home to Guernsey, wait out the longer-term pandemic effects, and then set off cruising again as soon as we can in the future.  Our plan had been to set off transatlantic as soon as we could after leaving the Honduran Bay Islands.  However, the weather in the Atlantic has proved to be completely disrupted this year and not following normal patterns to the extent that the conditions were just not favourable for a traditional May transit from west to east across the ocean.  Instead we moved north up the USA east coast to Beaufort in North Carolina to wait for better weather patterns to establish themselves.

It now looks like the unsettled weather is starting to ease and that we will be able to set off towards Guernsey on Friday 29 May.  There will be a cold front to our north so it will be brisk sailing initially and potentially quite lively a few days out.  But if we don’t take this opportunity it’s likely that we would still be in Beaufort for another 5-6 days until the next possible favourable start time.

So, we are now on our last day and making final preparations.  The weather forecast has been ordered, we are doing the laundry, pre-departure checks on the main engine and generator, shopping for some final fresh food stocks, topping up the propane tank we are using, and cooking up a stew to make dinners easy for the first few days.  It’s a busy day!

The blog will not be updated until we finish our passage but you can track our progress at these links:

Our InReach satellite tracker will send in our position every hour and you can see that at this link:  https://eur-share.inreach.garmin.com/BlueVelvetOfSark

I’ve also signed us up to be tracked by PredictWind.com (same Garmin satellite transmitter data but different internet representation).  PredictWind will show our position at this link which might be of particular interest because it shows the weather systems that we will be dealing with:  https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/BlueVelvetofSark

Our transatlantic route plan starting at Beaufort, North Carolina, USA