End of Day 1 Beaufort NC USA towards Guernsey

This Blog entry is an edited version of the message we sent back whilst we were on the passage.  The original, without pictures, was sent by radio with a laptop that controls a modem connected to the HF/SSB radio.  With that set up we can contact one of the SailMail stations to send the daily text message to my daughter Charlotte in Guernsey who then forwards it on to a list of family members.

2359hrs (EDT, GMT -4) Fri 29 May 2020

Dear All,

So we're off!  It was a very early start for us for 2 reasons.  Firstly, a very large thunderstorm decided to pass close by us in the anchorage at Beaufort at 0430hrs which disrupted our sleep and saw us checking around on deck that all was well.  Secondly, we needed to get going to catch the last of the ebb tide out of Beaufort.  So the anchor came up at 0830hrs and we moved onto one of the town docks to refuel and take on water.  Whilst we were doing that, the crew of Sandpiper, Stephanie and Martin, came over for chat.  They have a USA cruising permit that lasts until October and had, like us, wanted to sail north to Canada but with Canada still closed to cruising yachts and with no foreseeable change, they were in a bit of a quandary.  We gave them the details of the yard we have used in Deltaville, in case that should help.  It would have been lovely to have stayed to talk for longer but we needed to get going and they too had jobs to do.

Our last glimpse of America (Cape Lookout) on a rather overcast and grey day

We actually got going properly at 0915, catching the very last of the ebb down the channel away from Beaufort.  It was very grey as we left and remained that way as we passed Cape Lookout and its shoals.  

Cape Lookout lighthouse just visible in the mirk

We had a glimpse of the low-lying land around Cape Lookout Bight but found it hard to see the lighthouse.  For the whole day the wind has been lighter than expected, but it is likely to be quite strong over the next 3 days, and there's nothing wrong with a fairly sedate start to find your sea legs.  

I was off watch in the afternoon and we entered the Gulf Stream just as I got up to come back on watch at 1800.  As I write this, in between keeping a close eye on some thunderstorms that are brewing off the warmth of the Gulf Stream, we're getting a nice 3.5knot push from the current.  The thunderstorms are all around though, so I'm sure that we'll have plenty of work to do tonight trying to dodge the close ones. 

Thunderstorms all around us depicted in yellow on the radar screen

Nicky writes:  well, it's now 0330 on 30 May and this hasn't yet been sent.  Reg spent his watch mostly in torrential downpours, watching the march of the yellow thundery blobs across our radar screen and wondering how best to avoid them, if it was at all possible.  For the most part, it wasn't and the wind went up and down (from virtually nothing to 30kts) and all around in direction as the storm cells approached (fast), dumped a load of rain on us and departed (slowly).  I had to get out of the bunk at one point to provide additional manpower for some sail handling but for the most part I got to stay down below, inspecting my eyelids, nice and dry. By the time my watch started we were almost clear of the last of the storms, which made for a far more relaxed watch, though I did take in the second reef in the mainsail towards the end.  So we're now pootling along, fairly gently (at around 5.5kt).  I could unroll a little genoa but we've had plenty of excitement tonight - let's save that for daylight!

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 29 May: N34 31 W76 34

Position at midnight 29 May: N34 10 W75 112

0915hrs to midday distance: 15 nautical miles (average 4.6 knots)

0915hrs to midnight distance: 86.9 nautical miles (average 5.9 knots)

Total miles covered:  86.9 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 3644 nautical miles

End of Day 1 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey

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

Beaufort NC USA

We arrived in the Taylor Creek anchorage at Beaufort NC shortly before sunset at 1830 on Saturday 23 May.  It was the end of the first day of the Memorial Day holiday weekend (the official start of summer in America) and the anchorage was pretty crowded but we managed to find ourselves a space, tucked inshore between the main line of anchored yachts and the Shackleford Bank Island.  It took us a couple of attempts to get the anchor set in the right place and we needed to use Bill Strickland’s ‘drop the anchor, have a cup of tea to give it time to sink into the soft mud and then dig it in’ technique to get it to set properly.  Unfortunately, the anchor windlass really didn’t want to play ball and was very sluggish so the whole anchor then re-anchor process was more stressful than it should have been as we were horribly aware that recovering the anchor by hand, should the windlass die entirely, would be a hard job.  

Anchor windlass removed from the deck, upended and with the electric motor removed

When in place, the cogs visible in this picture (which we
cleaned and greased before putting everything back
 together) are covered by the roughly oval-shaped
 casing in the right-hand picture below…

So, job number 1 on Sunday 24 May was to sort out the problem with the windlass.  The anchor windlass is a critical piece of kit for us but it has a hard life and lives in a very exposed [Ed: read ‘wet’] position on the bow of the boat, with the electric motor below the deck but in the salt-laden, humid (and, in the tropics, warm) environment of the anchor locker.  The perfect location for rapid salt-water corrosion.  The first part of the job entailed disconnecting all the electrical connections to the windlass motor, a job that is done half in and half out of the anchor locker, with your weight taken mostly on your back on the rim of the hatch into the locker.  Never fun.  And, as ever, the anchor locker was a foetid fug of warm, salty, seaweedy air. A perfect Bank Holiday ambiance.  Electrics dealt with, removing the windlass from the deck was relatively easy as was then removing the gear housing, complete with attached electric motor.  Getting the electric motor off the gear case, however, was much less easy and required a fair amount of percussion engineering with a chisel and a large hammer.  But the iron grip of saltwater corrosion was eventually broken and, having briefly surveyed the motor, I elected to go with the easy option of binning it and replacing it with a spare new motor we had on board.  Even the financial director agreed!

Left: new electric motor.  Right: gear housing.  Note the saltwater corrosion on the rim of the housing and this is only about a year old.  The electric motor sits underneath the housing and, whilst it is covered in a rubber boot to reduce damage to it by chain impact, it has very little protection from salt water damage.  Perhaps not the best design in the world!

After that the job was relatively straightforward:  Clean and grease everything, attach the new motor and then rebuild the lower innards of the gear box.  Clean and grease the upper innards of the gearbox that had remained on deck.  Attach gear housing (with motor).  Replace all above in/over hole in deck and secure.  Revisit torture chamber anchor locker to reconnect electrics.  Test.  All satis.  Job complete.  

The start of summer.  Memorial Day weekend at Shackleford Bank Island

We’d started work early on the anchor windlass and by the time we’d finished the Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend was just getting going.  

Loads of people out and about and enjoying the weekend.  It came as a bit of a culture shock to us after so long in places which have been so quiet due to Covid-19

There were people everywhere.  On their own boats, in friends’ boats, on paddleboards, in kayaks.  On day-tripper vessels, on the ferries to the islands, walking the shores in all directions.  People everywhere, socialising, having fun – just as it was last year.

Surprisingly little social distancing and few masks in evidence, which also came as a bit of a surprise

For people who had recently come from places in the grip of formal lockdown and States of Emergency it was all a bit of a culture shock.

We adjusted to normal life by continuing with the jobs list.  Next up:  re-stencilling the numbers on dinghy, to keep us under the radar and ‘legit’ in those states that expect all vessels to be registered with someone, somewhere.  We don’t need to have a number on the side of our dinghy because BV is a British registered yacht but we didn’t want to have to go to an American court to prove that, as some friends of ours needed to, after an ill-informed local policeman had written them a ‘ticket’ for not having the registration number of their dinghy displayed on the side of it. 

Top: at anchor in a new and improved location with a new view

Part way through that job, a space opened up in the main line of the anchorage so we upped anchor sharpish and moved across so that we had better spacing on the boats around us and on the island shore.  In the process, we discovered that I had rewired the anchor windlass in incorrectly.  Pressing the ‘up’ button resulted in the anchor going down and vice versa – doh!.  Cue more time in the torture chamber when we were settled in our new space.

Looking forwards in our new anchored position in Taylor Creek

Meanwhile, Nicky played with the leadline to confirm the calibration of our depth gauge.  The anchorage seemed remarkably shallow compared to when we had visited previously, most recently in Nov 2019, and when we had moved positions in the anchorage, Nicky had seen the gauge read 1.9m yet BV was clearly not aground.  [Ed:  BV draws 2.0m and we have previously set the depth gauge offset such that the gauge reads 2.0m when the keel touches bottom.  A reading of 1.9m should mean that BV isn’t going anywhere fast!].  It turned out that the offset needed to be adjusted by 0.3m to provide a depth gauge reading that matched the leadline reading.  We were rather surprised by this and can only assume that it is related to my changing some of the instruments in Fort Lauderdale.  

Dolphins in Taylor Creek

Monday 25 May dawned much greyer than the previous day and, unlike a Bank Holiday Monday in the UK, turned out to be a much quieter day altogether.  But, to make up for the reduced people-watching opportunities, we had a spot of dolphin watching after a small pod swam in to visit the creek.

Taylor Creek from Shackleford Bank Island

By the afternoon the day had cheered up considerably so we dinghied ashore to walk around Shackleford Bank Island.

Some of the hundreds and thousands of Fiddler crabs

The Fiddler crabs, with one claw much larger than the other, were out in force but we only saw one wild horse, albeit we didn’t need to go searching for it.  

A beautiful day on the creek…..

From the Taylor Creek side of the island we walked across to the ocean side…..

…..and a beautiful day on the beach

……where there is a huge expanse of beautiful white sand beach, particularly at low water.  

This picture was taken on the holiday Monday, which was a much quieter day than the Sunday when this beach must have been madly busy

We walked for miles along this beach.  On our previous visits (always out of season), this beach has been almost entirely deserted.  This time, at the end close to the entrance channel to Beaufort it was incredibly busy with small motorboats and day-visitors who had come over on one of the many ferry services.  We have never visited in the height of the season and the crowds came as something of a surprise to us, though I guess that’s rather naïve.  We joined the holiday atmosphere by returning to BV the General Store in Beaufort, where we donned masks, bought delicious ice-creams and ate them in social isolation on the boardwalk alongside the Town Docks Marina.

A new neighbour…. parked a little too close for comfort

Returning to BV, we waved to a yacht that had just arrived which was cruising the anchorage, looking for a space to anchor……and which happened to be flying an OCC burgee.  Suddenly, we realised that it was Rob and Baudine Kuijper on Bojangles and, at about the same time, they recognised BV.  (We had previously met them, only briefly, here in Beaufort in November 2019.  We had talked Cuba with them and Nicky had sent them an email trail with information about the country in it.)  We chatted briefly; they had just arrived in from Sint Maarten/St Martin and were planning to head up to Deltaville when they had completed the check-in formalities.  But they needed to find a spot for the night, and Taylor Creek was clearly full, so they disappeared off to Town Creek in the hope of finding a spot there. 
But clearly some people didn’t think Taylor Creek too full at all as, an hour later, and with our dinghy lifted for the night, our evening was disturbed by the arrival of an American registered Beneteau, Journey, which anchored almost right on top of us.  It was so close that, as the tide turned, the 2 boats ended up less than a boat length away from each other for a period.  With quite different keel shapes, the Beneteau swung at a very different rate to BV and, consequently, I spent the night concerned that we would touch as the tide changed again and did not sleep well, getting up at frequent intervals to check that all was well. 

We were up promptly on the morning of Tuesday 26 May as, the previous evening Lionel and Elsie on Ruby Tuesday had invited us to join them and Dianne Tetreault, the OCC’s excellent Port Officer for Beaufort, for breakfast at one of the town’s cafes.  Happily, the crew of Journey were up and about as we headed ashore and, with the anchorage emptying of yachts, we suggested that they might want to move to a larger space.  They seemed a little surprised that we should feel this necessary but agreed to do so.

Breakfast with the Ruby Tuesdays and Dianne was great fun.  Dianne was on good form and clearly enjoying life in her new [Ed: now not quite so new to her] apartment in Moorhead City.  She told us of a number of OCC yachts in the vicinity and said that she would be taking Rob and Baudine (Bojangles) to see CBP and then to go shopping for food straight after breakfast.  She also brought us up to speed on changes at the Maritime Museum, on events in Beaufort during the Covid-19 pandemic, and offered to take us food shopping as and when we needed.  Most important for us, she reiterated how happy she was to accept incoming packages for OCC members – an absolute godsend for us.  Meanwhile, Lionel and Elsie told us of their plans.  They had been one of the large contingent of yachties that had been told to leave Cuba when the Covid-19 pandemic really began to bite there.  They had decamped to Key West (other friends went to Tampa, and others headed for Bermuda then the Azores and home to Plymouth) and gradually worked their way up the coast to Beaufort.  Their US Cruising Licence, issued in Puerto Rico, was due to expire in July, when they had hoped to be in Canada but, with no sign of the Canadian border opening to non-citizens, they had had a bit of a re-think as to how to manage the situation.  In the end they had decided to have Ruby Tuesday hauled in Annapolis and then to do some travel inland before their immigration stamps expire.  Their immediate plan, having done some food shopping, was to return to the anchorage at Cape Lookout Bight and take the next available weather window north around Cape Hatteras.

It was lovely to see Lionel and Elsie and also Dianne and we could have stayed and talked all day, but Dianne had an appointment with Bojangles and Lionel and Elsie needed to leave the marina they had stopped in overnight, so we said our farewells and split up.  We knew we would see Dianne again; we just hope we see Lionel and Elsie again somewhere, sometime.

We returned to BV and spent the rest of the day doing chores on board.  Nicky had some long overdue ‘home’ admin to work on, followed by some proofreading for the OCC’s magazine, Flying Fish.  I checked on the order that I had placed with Defender for new instruments to replace the rest of the aging ones fitted to BV (they’re 20 years old and showing it now).  Plus, we had to do some work on charts, waypoints and routing for our journey home, and also downloading contact information for other yachts headed the same way as us at about the same time.  That and emailing friends and family and other yacht crews made the day pretty much evaporate.

First thing on Wednesday 27 May we checked the weather again.  We thought that it looked suitable for a departure on Friday and emailed Chris Parker to let him know our thoughts – would he please send us a 10-day outlook and routing advice?  So, with that decision made we needed to get moving with final, final chores.  First up a walk to the ACE hardware store and the Piggly Wiggly [Ed:  great name!] supermarket for last minute maintenance items and fresh food.  Laden down, we returned with AAA batteries (for head-torches), fruit, veg, bread, milk and beer and spent the afternoon stowing everything.  We also had a further flurry of messages with Johan and Maria on Samantha, with whom we’d spent Christmas in St Martin.  They were a few miles away in Oriental and were planning to depart for the Azores and then Sweden in the middle of the next week.  It would have been fun to have met up with them again but the timeline was just not going to permit it.

The Fishtowne Brew House, Beaufort NC

Fewer tables than normal all 6ft apart

In the late afternoon we decided to treat ourselves to a visit to the Fishtowne Brew House.  It’s a really good microbrewery which we have tried to visit each time we’ve been in Beaufort.  Their Flounder EyePA is excellent but, unfortunately, they didn’t have any on tap.  That just meant we had to take a pot-luck pick of some of their other beers ….. and both were excellent too.  It was a rather bittersweet visit.  With our time in the US, and on the west of the Atlantic, coming rapidly to a close, and rather sooner than we would have wanted, we reflected on the fun we have had, the friends we have made and the places we have visited.  We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time exploring this part of the world and will sorely miss all the fabulous people we have met and whom we are so pleased to be able to call our friends.  We’re going home for now but we certainly will be back again.

Thursday 28 May was our final full day in America for some time and the weather gods decided not to smile on us, chucking buckets of water down on us from the heavens.  We arranged to meet Dianne for a pizza lunch so Nicky headed off early to the laundry, whilst I got going with final levels checks on the engine and generator, cleared all the stopcock strainers of any seaweed, and generally ran through a gamut of final, final pre-long-distance passage checks.  The pizzas at the Black Sheep were excellent and we had a lot of fun chatting to Dianne who, as ever, had numerous things on the go.  The rain continued to hammer down so she kindly took us to get our propane tank topped up and to Piggly Wiggly to pick up a few items we had forgotten the previous day.  Then she was off to help out one of her many other cruisers.  Such a star – thank you Dianne!  

Passage food all ready to make the first few days easy

Back aboard BV we cooked up a passage stew to get us through the first few dinners and a soup for poor-weather lunch.  Defender and UPS between them came up trumps and the new instruments were delivered to Dianne’s apartment block in the afternoon.  But Dianne, again, was the real star, negotiating with the concierge who, technically had left for the day, to collect the boxes and bring them down to us so that we had them on the Thursday rather than having to wait until late on Friday morning to receive them – she knew that we wanted to catch the tide and the weather.  Thank you again!!  And, having the instruments that afternoon gave me time to fit another new one in the cockpit, though to complete the job will need to do some more significant wiring; a job to do when we next stop.  Consequently, we still have a couple of legacy instrument over the companionway but 3 of the 4 that were starting to fail have now been replaced which is good given that we will be using them non-stop for the next month.

So, the only things left to do before we point BV’s bows east across the North Atlantic are to top up with diesel and fresh water, both jobs we plan to do first thing in the morning just before we leave Beaufort.

Beaufort, North Carolina, USA

Fort Lauderdale towards Beaufort NC End of Day 4

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/SSB radio, using the SailMail system.  We sent the messages daily to my daughter Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

1800hrs (EDT, GMT -4) 23 May 2020

Dear All,

Lightning and clouds bubbling off on our starboard side but a good long way away, thank goodness

After midnight the wind built nicely from the southwest and we had a fast downwind sail which was great after all of the motoring we have done.  There were still a few distractions: my 5am logbook entry read, "Lightning in our 3 o'clock, 1 o'clock 5 o'clock and 9 o'clock!!!".

It looked much nicer when the sun came up (R) but there was still a thunderstorm off to our left (L) coming towards us

We got a quick answer back from Chris Parker about our question of whether or not to set off immediately towards Guernsey. He wrote, "OK, actually not a difficult answer. I think there's a possibility a Tropical Low forms about a week from now, near Bermuda, and its most likely track is N or NE, which would potentially be in your path if you were sailing across the Atlantic.

I really have never seen this bad a weather pattern for heading E across the Atlantic in all my years doing this. I don't know if the pattern is going to change in the next few weeks, but it just looks ugly now, with no big persistent RIDGE - except N of area, which means you're going to tend to have more E winds than W winds. It's just bizarre.

If you can hold off a bit and wait in Beaufort NC, I would...Chris".  So, Beaufort NC as our immediate destination it is then!

Lovely sailing on the final leg in towards Beaufort NC

However, and on a brighter note, we finished the passage to Beaufort NC with a glorious sail.  Bright sunny skies, 10-15 knots of wind on the beam or aft, and BV romping along at up to 7 ½ knots.

Race on!  Lots of yachts heading for Beaufort NC

It was also a bit of a racing finish with a total of 6 yachts showing on the AIS all seemingly rushing towards the entrance to the harbour.  Actually, most of them changed course and went off to the anchorage at Cape Lookout which was a good thing for us because we got one of the last few spaces in the anchorage in Taylor's Creek.

Nicky dolphin-gazing

We were welcomed to the approaches of Beaufort by a pod of dolphins, including a baby one.  Nicky got a good look at them but they swam off as soon as I appeared on the foredeck with my camera.

Getting into Beaufort was not difficult but it’s a long channel to motor up and we were constantly being overtaken by sports fishing boats rushing into port like a scene from the cartoon ‘Wacky Racers’.

Working our way into Taylor Creek, Beaufort NC

Lots of holiday weekend boat traffic in Taylor’s Creek

It's a big holiday weekend here in the USA (Memorial Day) so Beaufort is madly busy on the water and seems to be so ashore too.

Anchored in Taylor Creek

In terms of our passage, the ship's log measures the distance run through the water and it clocked 519 nautical miles.  Our planned passage distance on the GPS between Fort Lauderdale and Beaufort NC was 573 nm so, allowing for an extra 15nm sailed because of our dodging thunderstorms, it seems that the Gulf Stream gave us a boost of around 70 miles.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 23 May: N34 15 W76 53

Position at 1800hrs 23 May: N34 43 W76 40

Midday to midday distance: 158 nautical miles (average 6.6 knots)

Midnight to 1800hrs distance: 115.7 nautical miles (average 6.4 knots)

Total miles covered:  519 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Beaufort NC): zero nautical miles

End of Day 4 Fort Lauderdale towards Beaufort North Carolina, USA

Fort Lauderdale towards Beaufort NC End of Day 3

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/SSB radio, using the SailMail system.  We sent the messages daily to my daughter Charlotte and she then forwarded them on to a list of family members.

2359hrs (EDT, GMT -4) 22 May 2020

Dear All,

Nicky had another difficult night watch dodging thunderstorms overnight Thursday 22 to Friday 23 May.  We had been warned by Chris Parker's evening HF/SSB weather briefing that there would be some thunderstorms coming off the Florida coastline during the evening which would track northeast.  In fact, his description of the mass of thunderstorms building over Florida was "it's like a bomb's gone off".  Sure enough, whilst enjoying sundowners we could see a particularly large dark cloud brewing a hundred miles out to our west.  By the time I went off watch we could see the lightning, not just sheet lightning but lightning bolts striking the sea (happily, still a long way off).  By this stage we had already come well off heading for a couple of hours (about 30 degrees right of our desired heading) to try to avoid being hit by the storm.  Whilst I slept blissfully below, Nicky brought us even more off heading so that we were tracking 90 degrees right of our desired course and quite a long way south of east; not good for making progress towards Beaufort NC or, indeed, to intercept the Gulf Stream. 

Avoiding the thunderstorm.  The stars and suns are plots Nicky made of parts of the thunder cell when the storm was close enough to be picked up by our radar (it only got to within 20-24nm of us and that felt quite close enough, thank you!).  Friends of ours who were a little closer inshore that evening, near to Cape Canaveral, later told us that they were hit by multiple squall of around 40knots and one sustained squall of 54knots – and they have photographic evidence of the latter to prove it!  Very nasty.  We think that they were caught by the storm we managed to avoid, so we’re even more pleased that our avoiding action was successful

When I came back on watch 4 hours later, I found the sails reduced to just a triple-reefed mainsail, Nicky in full oilskins (admittedly in tropical weather format with the oilskins trousers rolled up to her knees; I should have got a photo) and the chartplotter showing that we had been on a 30 mile diversion; but in doing so we had managed to stay away from the lightning and heavy rain.  With the thunderstorm now ahead of us and moving away, my job was to get us sailing roughly towards Beaufort NC and to get some more sail up to help increase our motorsailing speed.  The diversion means that we are unlikely to intercept and benefit as much as we hoped to from the Gulf Stream, so the passage will be a bit longer but better that we think than risking being hit by lightning.

And in the morning, all was beautiful again

All morning the engine chugged and the sails slatted.  For brief periods we got some extra help from the sails but then the light and variable wind would veer, back or died off to nothing, so foresails were furled again and the mainsail was back to slatting.  But we were making progress directly towards Beaufort NC.  The big change was just before midday when we had enough of a northeasterly wind to sail and the engine was finally switched off; peace and quiet which was a lovely change even if we couldn't quite sail directly towards our destination.  We had a good bit of help from the edge of the Gulf Stream though.

A nice boost from the Gulf Stream (28.2 degrees sea temp) giving us a speed over the ground of 9.4 knots

And so, onto the question of our destination.  The forecast at the moment does not show a good window for setting off from Beaufort transatlantic for 7-10 days, assuming we stay a few days.  On the limited information that we have, however, if we turned east now we might be able to get across to a favourable wind pattern. Turning now, however, would mean setting off transatlantic a bit light on fuel for comfort. So, we appear to have the choice of diverting for fuel and setting off, continuing on to Beaufort NC to get fuel and immediately set off transatlantic, or waiting in Beaufort for a better weather window.  To make the best choice from those 3 options we really need to see a bit more forecast detail than we currently have so we have fired the question to Chris Parker to see what he, as a professional weather forecaster, recommends.

Gentle progression goose-winged.  What a difference from the previous evening

Early evening saw us sailing again and we are now gently progressing towards Beaufort with the genoa poled out to starboard.

And a pretty sunset too

It was a bit of a disappointing fishing day today.  This afternoon I hooked up a 6ft Wahoo which, somewhat disgruntled, promptly tore off at great speed.  It then leapt out of the water and managed to shake the hook free before I had set it properly; so, sadly, another tale of 'a big one that got away'.  However, it was a very good day in the galley because I didn't set fire to any teabags.  Yesterday evening I dropped a teabag onto the cooker and it promptly caught fire.  In my rush to grab the teabag and put out the flames I managed to scatter tea leaves into every nook and cranny on the cooker and seemingly across most of the galley too.  It was a monster of a clean-up job.  So in comparison, today was a very good day in the galley.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 22 May: N31 51 W78 27

Position at midnight 22 May: N33 02 W77 31

Midday to midday distance: 164.4 nautical miles (average 6.85 knots)

Midnight to midnight distance: 159 nautical miles (average 6.6 knots)

Total miles covered: 403 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Beaufort NC): 112 nautical miles

End of Day 3 Fort Lauderdale towards Beaufort North Carolina, USA