Well, the first leg is done. What a fantastic trip --the fastest and easiest trip to Virginia of the four I've made. Ron Gaudet and I are sitting in the Newport News airport waiting for our return flight to Boston. When more time has passed and hindsight gets clearer, we'll have more right-brain comments to add. For now, here are the left-brain stats:
Two days, two hours, 40 minutes (50.66 hrs) from the Marion mooring to the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnel entrance to Chesapeake Bay, plus another 2:10 to get to the docks in Hampton. Of those 50.66 hrs, the engine was on for 28.2 hrs, so 55% motoring/motor-sailing, so 45% pure sailing. The motoring was at a leisurely 7.5 to 8.0 knots, 1700-2000 rpm, and measured under 1.4 gph of fuel consumption. (Heron typically cruises under power at 2250 rpm, 8.1 knots, consuming 1.65 to 2.0 gph depending on sea state.) We covered 393 nm on the electronic log, which matches very closely with a route distance of 396 nm.... for an average speed of 7.76 knots.
We left at 9:20 on Sunday and got to the bridge at 12:00 on Tuesday. Holy smokes! By Tuesday evening we were in Virginia looking at each other wondering what had just happened. Our typical trip involves stops in places like Oyster Bay, Sandy Hook, Cape May Harbor, Sassafrass River, Solomons Island, Deltaville, etc. So when day-sailing, it is a long--but interesting trip. This time we had unusually nice weather so we didn't stop. We lost sight of land near Montauk Point Long Island on Sunday evening, and didn't see it again until we approached the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula on Tuesday morning. What a much shorter trip this was!
We didn't push it. When the boat speed dropped below 6 knots, usually when the wind speed was below 7 or 8 knots, we turned on the engine and motor-sailed. By maintaining a minimum speed, we were able to get in during the daylight hours. With all the navy ship traffic in Hampton Roads, daylight is a good thing to have!
Don Cody's Hylas 54 "Freestyle" was never more than 5 miles away. We used the AIS (Automatic Identification System) to continuously monitor where each other was, how fast we were going, and where we were headed. So we simply matched our speeds and kept each other company all the way down. Nice. Occasionally we would harass each other on the VHF radio, just to keep the party alive.
The sailing from Sunday at 5pm to Monday at 2pm was awesome. For the first 9 hours, the wind was between 9 and 12 knots TWS (True Wind Speed) at 30 degrees TWA (True Wind Angle), from the WNW, in completely flat seas. The wind went lighter and clocked around to the N, then NNE, so we hoisted the spinnaker for 5 hours. It was fantastic sailing in flat seas, not a cloud in the sky. The water temp was 65F and the air temp was in the 70s. After 2pm on Monday, the wind died and the engine came on for the rest of the trip. Ugh.
The dolphins were escorting us on and off from Montauk to Hampton. They would burst up the sides of the boat in groups of two or more, leaping out of the water off of the bow. When they broke the surface, they'd make a breathing sound that sounded like pshhhhhhht. At night, you'd know to look for them when you heard that sound. With the full moon, bright Venus and cloudless sky, you could easily see them. You could almost read in the cockpit. The light haze in the bright moonlight obscured most stars, so it seemed more like daytime than night.
Off the coast of New Jersy, roughly 30 nm distant, 4 to 6 small birds would visit us on and off. We're guessing sparrows, but they had yellow backs, so we don't know. They had no fear of humans and sat on us, our hats, flew below decks, hopped around us and ate flies that also landed to rest aboard. Don reported a dozen birds at one time, two of which died overnight--we're guessing from exhaustion. They ate some lettuce we gave them but wouldn't touch crackers. They mostly snacked on flies--both the ones that we smacked and the ones that they picked out of mid-flight. This was amazing to watch.
We had three people aboard: Jay (me), Ron Gaudet, and Christoph Hoffman--all BYC folks who had made this trip on Heron together before. We stood a watch system of 3 hours on, 3 hours on standby in the cockpt (so there were always two people in the cockpit at any time), and 3 hours off watch (trying to sleep in a bunk below). The first night was fine. By the second night, it was tough to stay awake. The autopilot drove 95% of the time. It worked great folllowing a heading, or following an apparent wind angle when the wind was clocking. The autopilot was our fourth and most busy crew member.
The first night we ate chicken pot pie and salad. The second night we had quiche and salad. For lunches we had sandwiches. For breakfast we had yogurt and granola. I forgot I was toasting some rolls in the oven until smoke started pouring out. (Mindy says that I cook with a smoke alarm.) Anway, when sailing offshore, we don't eat very much and we don't have much energy to do more than heat something up. If we had a cook aboard, we might feel otherwise....
We one minor equipment issue. The Racor fuel filter selector lever was in the wrong position, causing the engine to stop twice unexpectedly. The issue went away when the lever was corrected. We used the SPOT communicator for the first time, and we made Globalstar satellite calls on a regular basis. The folks ashore seemed to get a kick out of following the bread-crumb track on the web. Cool! This was my first trip with AIS aboard (a Vesper Watchmate 850). It's fantastic. We can identify unknown lights by their AIS information: range, bearing, name, speed, course, what they are (freighter, tug, etc.), and where they are going. As we approached the Chesapeake, there were 104 AIS targets on the list. It is a huge safety improvement over using radar (MARPA tracking).
That's it for now. Good weather, good trip. Bad weather, bad trip. We had VERY good weather. We will never forget the moonlight on the flat sea as we beat down the coast in 12 knots of warm breeze. Next stop--St. John USVI.
Jay
