End of Day 4 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSBradio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

1800 (AST, GMT-4) 26 Apr 2019

Dear All,

Approaches to Charleston.  The bright white light is one of the leading marks; some of the brightest we have ever seen

Well our attempt at going slowly so as to arrive at the entrance to Charleston on the flood tide failed.  The wind got up to the 14-20 knot bracket from around 2am and so BV just romped along.  I furled away the genoa and we sailed all but the last couple of hours just under mainsail but the miles still clicked down too quickly and we were at the narrow entrance to Charleston at maximum ebb tide.  We had over 3 knots of tide against us but, at that stage, we unfurled half the genoa and, with a 20knot wind blowing, the adverse current was not an issue.  Being very early, however, looked like it might be.  We were almost at the marina just as the office opened at 7am and so Nicky gave them a call.

Top right:  Arthur Ravenal Bridge over the Cooper River.  Bottom: Fort Sumter where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired

Top: Charleston houses out to our left on James Island.  Bottom: The city of Charleston out to our right with the cruise ship we had followed in already on the cruise ship dock

A ‘welcome to Charleston’ flypast by Pelicans and a swim past by dolphins

They did acknowledge that we had a reservation (tick) but the current incumbent had until midday to vacate it (cross).  So, we made our way to a nearby anchorage and had just set the anchor when the marina called us up and told us that they had done some juggling and that we now had a berth available.

BV in the Ashley River anchorage along with several others.
It has a great view over the harbour of Charleston city

Some of the smaller Charleston mansions on our right
as we made our way towards the marina

That was good news because the wind was due to get even stronger later in the day which might make mooring difficult. We raised the anchor, spent a while cleaning off the mud and then carefully worked our way up the inside of the 'Mega Dock'.  With the wind blowing us off, it was a relief to get 2 lines secured after which we shuffled BV backwards and forwards to bring her alongside properly without any risk of embarrassment.  We were all tied up and the engine switched off at 0820hrs.  In hindsight I think that we did very well because a yacht that arrived after us took 3 attempts to get lines ashore and she was equipped with a powerful bowthruster.

And, of course, being on the downwind side of the 'Mega Dock' life is much more comfortable.  On the other side, now that the wind has gone back up to 20kts+, the boats have crushed fenders and the tide whistling past. Nicky's early reservation call has paid dividends.

BV moored up on the ‘Mega Dock’ with yellow Q-flag flying whilst we waited for the CBP officers to visit for their inspection and paperwork check

Having checked in with the marina office, our next priority was a phone call to Customs and Border Protection to let them know that we had arrived.  On the basis of their response to that call, we were confined to BV until they could send some officers down to inspect the boat and complete the paperwork but only once they had finished dealing with the cruise ship that had arrived just before us.  Fortunately, the cruise ship passengers were mostly American citizens so they were able to process the paperwork there quickly and we only had to wait an hour for our turn.

The 2 CBP officers were very pleasant and polite and dealt with the paperwork and boat inspection quickly and with the minimum of hassle so we now have the right stamps in our passports and permission to stay in the USA.

All in all, a top result and we are safely in Charleston before the next weather front messes things up.  The next priority is to buy a USA SIM card to facilitate communications and to do something about our meagre wine stocks (run down in case CBP objected to a full wine cellar and because of the crazy price of wine in the Bahamas) so that we can celebrate our return to the USA.  Officialdom and bureaucracy has all been completed today and so the touristy fun stuff can start immediately!

Love

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:
Position at midday 26 April: Charleston USA
Position at 2359 26 April: N/A
Midday to midday distance: N/A
Midnight to Midnight distance: N/A
Total miles covered:  412 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go: Zero nautical miles – Hurrah!

End of Day 4 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

End of Day 3 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSBradio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2359 (AST, GMT-4) 25 Apr 2019

Dear All,

Nicky was on watch in the early hours and, with a consistent 10kts of wind, switched off the engine at 0200hrs. After nearly 28 hours of running under power it was blissfully quiet.  We spent the next 10hrs or so sailing along at about 5.5 knots, not so very fast but at least we were sailing.  We also started to pick up a little help from the Gulf Stream. Initially, a bit less than a knot but by midday it looked   like we were in the main part of the current flow with a helpful 3-3.5 knots pushing us northeast; a very definite boost, particularly when the chartplotter said that the VMG (velocity made good) towards Charleston was 8.3kts!

By 1800 we had left the Gulf Stream behind and had started to pick up the many AIS paints of commercial shipping routing up and down the US coast.  The wind dropped and went more southerly so, at the start of her watch, Nicky hoisted the spinnaker pole and poled out the genoa to port but we still only made 4.5kts over the ground with 37nm to run to our waypoint off Charleston. At midnight our speed had dropped to just 3.5 knots but we'll continue at that crawl for the next 20 miles because of the tidal flow around Charleston.  The tide is ebbing out of Charleston harbour until about 0900hrs and waiting now will ensure that we aren't fighting against that.  Despite the slow progress now, we should still be in Charleston and tucked up securely before the next front comes through, so, overall, it looks like we should be able to consider this a success.

Other than the excitements of sailing and looking at ships on the chartplotter, today has mostly been about blog writing and dealing with food.  I baked another loaf, though the gas blew out in the oven shortly after it had been put in and reached its max rise, so it collapsed rather and now has something of a muffin top.  We also vacuum packed the dorado to make it last that bit longer.  The swordfish lasted 3 weeks after being vacuum packed but I'm not sure the dorado (being smaller) will have the chance to last that long.  I hope that Ollie and Sheena like fish though, as there are 4 steaks earmarked for our time with them!

Oh! I almost forgot to say, today's big excitement came at 1953 when the log clicked over to read 50,666.8nm, which means that we have sailed a recorded 40,000nm in BV.  I say 'recorded' because we have actually done a bit more than that as, at times, the log impeller has been jammed with weed whilst we've been underway but, give or take, we've sailed 40,000nm in BV.  Something to celebrate when we get ashore.

Love

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:
Position at midday 25 April: N31 07 W79 14
Position at 2359 25 April: N32 18 W79 34
Midday to midday distance: 148.4 nautical miles
Midnight to Midnight distance: 128 nautical miles
Total miles covered:  371 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go: 32 nautical miles

End of Day 3 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

End of Day 2 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSBradio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2359 (AST, GMT-4) 24 Apr 2019

Dear All,

Our gentle sail of yesterday finally ended at 2100hrs when the wind dropped off completely.  Since then, despite a couple of attempts to sail, it has mostly been lots and lots of motoring.  The miles are ticking down, so we are making progress, but it would be much nicer to be sailing.

No wind and lots of motoring!

The lack of wind in this area is not much of a surprise for us, although we had anticipated that we would have sailed for a little longer before having to motor.  There's a large area of high pressure that we have to cross and then tomorrow the system changes and we should start to get more wind.  But if we hadn't set off when we did, we would have ended up beating into strong northerlies at this stage of the passage and would have been late for meeting up with Ollie and Sheena.

On the plus side, this easy motoring along is allowing much work to be done on writing blog entries.  We are miles behind but if we keep going as we are we should have a lot of entries ready to post when we get to Charleston. We might even get as far as the beginning of March and the end of our time in Cuba!

The major excitement of the afternoon was at 1300hrs when we caught a 3ft long dorado, or dolphin fish. Dorados have beautiful green colouring and the meat tastes really good. So Nicky, who is on the chef watch duties today, cooked up fish and chips for dinner (with home-made tartar sauce and chips made from yams).  Delicious.

Just before sunset we were passed by a pod of pilot whales

We have made some calculations and put in an offset to our track to take into account the effect of the Gulf Stream which is about 60 miles wide and is sitting about 150 miles off the American coast. The light wind had swung around to the southwest by late this afternoon and when it builds and we start sailing again we don't want to be swept past Charleston by the stream (depending on which chart you read the Gulf Stream parallels the coast running at either about 1.5kts or as much as 2-4kts), hence the offset now.

As I sign this off, the wind has built to 9 knots from the SW and so we should be able to start sailing again soon - hurrah!

Love

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:
Position at midday 24 April: N28 50 W78 07
Position at 2359 24 April: N29 51 W78 44
Midday to midday distance: 145 nautical miles
Midnight to Midnight distance: 154 nautical miles
Total miles covered:  234 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go: 185 nautical miles

End of Day 2 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

End of Day 1 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA

These Blog entries are edited versions of the messages we sent back as we completed the passage. They were sent by radio using a laptop that controls a modem and the HF/SSBradio, using the SailMail system. We sent the messages daily to Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2359 (AST, GMT-4) 23 Apr 2019

Dear All,

Well we are off again on another long (ish) passage.  This one should take us somewhere around 3-4 days depending on the wind which is looking rather variable and the effect of the Gulf Stream.  We will cover something in the region of 400 nautical miles getting from the Bahamas to Charleston in the USA.

Leaving the Abacos

We left Great Guana Cay in  the Abacos at the top end of the Bahamas at 1000hrs, sailed through Whale Cut and then set ourselves up sailing as close to the wind as we could on starboard tack.  That had us heading more towards Jacksonville FL than Charleston SC (which is about 160nm northeast of Jacksonville) but, after a day of calm tomorrow, on Thursday the wind is supposed to go around to the southwest which, provided it is strong enough, will blow us up to Charleston nicely. So, we may end up sailing a somewhat banana shaped course, but we should end up where we want to check into the USA.

By our reading of the regulations we did not need to check out of the Bahamas, so we have just set off from a remote anchorage on Great Guana Cay.  We'll see what happens when we try to check in to the USA but hopefully we have properly understood what needs (and doesn't need) to be done. Charleston is a big port of entry so it should be easy to fulfil our Customs and Border Protection (CBP) requirements there.  Nicky visited Charleston with work and has always wanted to go back to show the place to me, so we are quite excited about getting there.  It should be a great stop.  Plus, we will be able to meet up with Ollie and Sheena, friends from the UK, who are going to be holidaying at Myrtle Beach a couple of hours' drive north of Charleston.

Dolphins, lots of them!

Our departure from the Bahamas was marked by a visit by a large school of dolphins (bottlenose and Atlantic spotted). They seemed to like that we were sailing at over 7 knots and they played in our bow wave for about 20 minutes before disappearing off.  Since then we have not made such good progress; the wind has dropped as low as 6 knots which doesn't really get BV moving, even close-hauled.  In addition, we had about a knot and a half of current against us for the first few hours. We checked where the Gulf Stream was sitting before we set off and that will help us north when we get much closer to the American coastline but between here and there we saw that there are couple of swirls of current against us.  We clearly found one of those!

Last look at the Abacos

We did not do a shopping trip before we set off as we still have plenty of supplies on board from stocking up prior to visiting the Turks and Caicos, Cuba and the Bahamas.  We even have some tins of stew left over from our Atlantic crossing, so it's definitely time to try to eat into the stores and try to lighten BV's load somewhat!  Fresh bread, therefore, is a DIY job and part of my afternoon activity (in addition to molly-coddling Georgina along, who didn't like the light winds) was baking a loaf so that we have some for breakfast.  Nicky also made some yoghurt, so we are all set to start day 2 well fed.

Love

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:
Position at midday 23 April: N26 48 W77 17
Position at 2359 23 April: N27 41 W77 43
Midday to midday distance: n/a nautical miles
Midnight to Midnight distance: n/a nautical miles
Total miles covered:  80 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go: 326 nautical miles

End of Day 1 - Great Guana Cay Bahamas to Charleston USA