Perspectives on Leg 2: Hampton to St. John

I’m back. It’s Thanksgiving and I’m finally getting back to updating the blog. I was gone for only two weeks, but this transitional period gives me a nice shifted perspective on the familiar. There is a heavy frost on the grass and except for the oaks, the trees are amazingly bare and motionless. Winter gray and crisp 30F temperatures are a shocking contrast to the 85F and lush hilly surroundings I just left behind at Great Cruz Bay St. John. All the intersections are backed up with traffic here in the Boston suburbs. Cars and their drivers seem so fancy and "done up", and their driving seems so aggressive and hurried. Julia seems to have grown another inch. I'm hit with momentary nauseating waves of "land sickness" when I showered and sat in the dentist's chair. The shifted perspectives at the coming are as interesting as those at the going. They are within the personal scale of this adventure; Heron and any of the hundreds of other boats in the snowbird fleets ain't on no shtinkin’ Ernest Shackleton voyage. But Chris H., who last year did this trip for the first time on his boat last winter was wise to say that he learned a lot about himself from doing this trip --and that I should expect to as well. Time will tell. To me, it’s not about silly fiberglass vessels, or emulating eighteenth century caricatures pulling on lines, or adolescents drinking at beach bars or salty dogs puffing dock-talk bravado; it's definitely about being amazed with the present and nature—in the company of interesting friends. That’s pretty harsh, but the Jimmy Buffett icon never made my boat float. Geez Jay, just tell me about the trip! Sorry--I just had to put that context out there.

BTW my personal rule for the blog is that I will not deliberate or polish. It’s not a book. So you’ll have to suffer with colloquial stream-of-thought outbursts that can be written in under an hour without drafts or revisions. I force myself to not think ahead about what I’ll write. I try not to limit it to being a pure narrative. I’m trying on one hand to record and to share, and on the other hand to avoid dragging the actual physical experience back into the virtual intellectual notion from which it came.

It’s a vast ocean. That’s the first thing that hit me. I’ve sailed to or from Bermuda thirteen times, but this was two Bermuda trips. I knew that beforehand. Now I feel what that means. Day after day of sailing in the same wind on the same seas. Two gybes and one tack in seven days. Nothing to see except blue sky on blue water. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, and on and on. It forced a mental shift on our perspective of time and distance. We were tiny and insignificant flotsam on an ocean dessert.

It’s spectacularly gorgeous. That’s the second thing that hit me. I was sick of hearing myself say “wow”. When there is nothing to obscure all 360 degrees of horizon--the moonrises and sets, the sunrises and sets, the meteors, the satellites, the crests of big waves in the distance, the prominence of the Milky Way, the brightness of the planets, the lines of tropical clouds along the horizon, the blue and green colors of the mahi mahi and the seven foot black marlin—were all things that took my words away. We were immersed in grand majesty, experiencing an elemental beauty.

It’s stressful. The gods were gracious to allow our quick passage through a domain that is not our natural place to be. We were visiting aliens, surviving only by virtue of our strange craft. We huddle virtually through radio nets with the fleet. We look over our shoulder continually as we monitor weather forecasts and sea state. We watch the equipment for signs of problems, and jump to repair things like leaking engine vent loops, and chaffing reef lines. We monitor fuel, water, food and battery consumption. We stand 4-on, 6-off watches with military fervor. We deal with seasickness (me), constant motion, constant noise, constant 10-20 degree heeling, cold, steamy heat, constant drinking (water), loss of appetite (some of us), constant spray on closed hatches, periodic bangs of the bow dropping onto the back side of large waves, two showers in a week, the closeness of five adults living for two weeks within about thirty feet of each other, the boredom and exhaustion of standing watch, etc.

We had a great crew:  Peter Burch, Ray Cullum, Ron Gaudet, David Risch and Jay P-A.  Imagine putting five adults together for two weeks in stressful conditions in a small space... and not getting pissy to one-another.  Imagine that depth of experience (more details later)... and not having a "multiple captain" issue, and everyone contributing in many ways.  Imagine having total confidence in all watch combinations, and a totally positive experience as we  shared some crazy funny and some amazing moments.  That's what we were very fortunate to experience. 

It’s exciting. I really can’t describe the thrill I felt when Pete called “Land Ho”, and we saw the mountain peaks of St. Thomas and St. John above the horizon. It was really something. It was all new to me. Later, when we were safely in a slip in Crown Bay Marina, just seeing Heron sitting in this strange place was just amazing. I flew the Anderson plaid burgee from the mainsheet. It was torn during a full gale coming back from Nova Scotia in 1983 and is only flown on very special occasions. It infused the boat with the spirit of my dad (OBM), Angus Anderson, who surely got a huge kick out of our adventure.

Synopsis for Heron trip from Hampton to St. John... Strong NW winds on the west side of TS Sean provided a blistering fast day-one departure from the Chesapeake as Heron gybed down the rhumb line in large steep seas. Subsiding conditions as a large stationary high built across the rhumb line led to two days of motoring in glassy calm conditions. ENE, E, ESE, E14-24 winds filled in as we exited S of the high, allowing four days of idyllic reaching conditions at 40-60 apparent wind angle under double-reefed main and 100% jib (rolled in and out to change gears). Seven days, nine hours, from Old Point Comfort to Middle Passage, roughly 1300 nm. Never more than 20 nm from the rhumb line.  48 hours of motoring, using 75 gallons of fuel.  No hard driving—just cruising. No injuries. No damage. No shortages. More details  and lots of pictures to follow.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Jay

St. John Ahoy!

Once again, as gathered and/or told to Mindy:

I spoke to a somewhat queasy Jay yesterday - no doubt the victim of some rather lumpy seas.  But, all of that will end soon, as today is the last full day of sailing.  My highly unscientific estimate says that they will be in between 8pm and midnight today.  In general, they've had decent weather, with doses of both sailing and motoring.  Indeed, a full week of adventure on the high seas, with I'm sure, stories to share.  Stay tuned, the next blog entry will be from Jay.

Day 5: We're back in summer clothes!

Information reported to Mindy via sat phone.  The sat phone data link is currently not working.

Heron and crew are enjoying their ride south!  Day 1 started with big wind as they blasted out of Hampton.  This was followed by a day or so of light air - light enough to require some engine time.  By midday today (Tuesday the 15th), they are roughly at the latitude of the Florida Keys and the Bahamas Vero Beach Florida.  I spoke to Peter today on the sat phone (before the communication evaporated into the ether) and he reported the change of clothing to summer garb.  So, at about the half-way mark, all is well on the high seas.

Day 1 at Sea: Finally!

Hi from Heron,

We’ve had a fantastic first day.  As you can see from the track, we left the docks at 10am, and now at 6pm, we have already sailed 70 nautical miles (log distance), for an average boat speed of 8.8 knots.  That’s crankin!  We are gybing downwind toward our intended entry point to the Gulf Stream  Our ETA at the GS is around 2 am.  We’d hoped to get there at dawn, but we are going too fast.  No problem.  The wind has already eased down from NW23-28 gusting 30, to a pretty steady 22 knots from 305M.  Our average SOG in the last 10 minutes is 8.6 knots.  We are sailing on a deep reach with single reefed main and #3 jib (100%). 

Ray is heating up the shepard’s pie in the oven, which we’ll have for dinner shortly.  Ron is at the wheel, smiling ear-to-ear.  David is off watch, asleep in his bunk. Pete is on standby, cat napping in the cockpit.  I’m getting ready for a radio net to begin, where all the boats check in and hear weather updates.  Freestyle is 4 nm behind us, in constant contact on the AIS and the VHF.  All is well aboard both boats.

We turned the heat on and now the cabin is cozy.  The motion is very comfortable in stern seas that are now in the 4 foot range, down from maybe 8 feet.   We hit 14.5 knots SOG on one wave.  It was fantastic, tracking like a train on rails.

We have made the transition from dock zombies to sailors, and we are very happy.  Talk to you later.

do you have intrnet srvis.

Greetings elementary school kids at the Summit Montessori in Framingham MA.  Miss Jean (my sister) sent me your great questions.  Thank you.  I'll try to answer some of them for you.  But first, here is an update:  The nasty tropical storm named Sean that is passing up the coast still might become a baby hurricane, but it is way out to sea and won't affect us (hopefully) after tomorrow.  So we are finally leaving the docks tomorrow morning in the company of 85 to 100 boats.  Yay!!  Even more awesome, the boats that we know that were in it have made it to where things are getting better for them.


*  do you have intrnet srvis.  (Bella, 1st grade)
Only when we are close to land and can receive the cell phone (3G and 4G) signals.  After that we depend on satellites and radios that can send and receive very short emails--but that are way too slow to surf the web.  More than 30 years ago, before your time when internet technology was very new, people used modems attached to their phones to connect.  That's similar to what I have on the boat now --9600 bits per second.  That's maybe 1000 times slower than what you have at home today!!


*   Are there pirates in the Bermuda Triangle? Have you seen the ghost of John? Do water cannons on your boat? Have you eve sunken a ship?  (Zane, 3rd grade)
*  Have you ever seen a pirate ship at sea and if you did did you sale away. Have you seen the goust of John. (Nik, 3rd grade)
Arrrrgh.  Shiver me timbers.  We can watch the pirate movies on the computer, but no, there are no pirates where we are going.  Sometimes we fire water balloons at my brother's boat (for fun).  There are far off places in the world where pirates (without parrots and eye patches) steal a boat and ransom the crew.  But we are staying far far away from those places.  Isn't Johnny Depp just the coolest movie dude?!  Now days, sailors report all incidents (like burglary and theft) to a website so that other sailors can know where it is safe to go, and so the police in those places will try harder to make those places safe.  Check it out:
http://www.safetyandsecuritynet.com/

*  What if you run out of gas and there is no wind. How long did it take to get to Virginia. (Nik, 3rd grade)
If we run out of fuel and there is no wind, we read books and wait.  But we carry enough fuel to motor for four or more days.  We will probably use most of it, since we don't have too much time to wait and since the forecast has a few days of light winds.  It took us 2 days and 2 hours to get from Massachusetts to Virginia.   We did not stop at night but kept going the entire time.

*  Why are boats called her  (Elijah, 3^rd grade)
Good question.  That would be a good question to research on the web and report back.  Heron (our boat) is definitely a female.  Maybe it's because the sailors who called their boats "her" were men.  Maybe they missed their wives after spending so long at sea.  I do too.

*      Do you get sea sick? Waer do you get the big blocks of ice?  (Zinna)
Sometimes I do get sea sick.   It takes a while to get used to the motion of a boat.  Sometimes I take medication (transderm scopalomine or ginger or Relief Bands).  But sometimes I just feel like I want to throw up for a few hours.  We can buy big bags of ice cubes from the dock.  But we have a small freezer and a refrigerator that runs off of the engine or the generator.   It keeps our food nice and cold.

*  Is it true that the Bermuda Triangle is dangers? Do you know the storm’s name? Sincerely, Kevin. (3^rd grade)
The Bermuda Triangle can be dangerous when big storms form.  Sean, the tropical storm that is moving out of our way, is an example of how the warm water can quickly energize weak storms into big storms.  Ask Miss Jean to tell you about the Gulf Stream.  That's like a river of water in the ocean.  When strong winds blow against that river, the waves get very very big and steep.  I'd rather meet an alien from a UFO than one of those walls of water.  Seriously, I don't worry about UFOs.

*  Have you seen dolphins? How big are ice brgs. If you run out of food do you go fishing? What happins if you run out of gas? Is the Bermuda Triangle scarry? Have you seen a World Pool what do you do if a stom comes in. how long is yore bote Love Hannah (2^nd grade)
Wow, Hannah.  You are really thinking of some good questions.  We have seen many dolphins.  They are beautiful and love to play with the boat.  Maybe we can post some pictures soon.  We have never seen icebergs.  They don't come this far south since the water is so warm, they would melt before they get this far south.   We are carrying a fishing line for the very first time.  We'll try to catch a big fish and eat sushi!  The Bermuda Triangle is really only scary on those scary television shows.  I've never seen a whorlpool.  We've seen a water spout on the way to Bermuda, so we went in the opposite directions.  Our boat is 53 feet long--about the same length as one of the big trucks on the highway.

*  How does it look inside Heron? Where do you store your food?? Does Heron have electric or ordinary engine? ( Bence, 2^nd grade)
Such good questions!  I'll post some pictures of the inside.  It's much smaller than your living room.  We store food in cabinets that are everywhere in the boat.  Five people eat a huge amount of food in a week or two.  Heron has an ordinary diesel engine.  Someday more boats will have electric engines with big banks of batteries and photovoltaic panels to charge them.

*  How many places have you sailed to around the world? How many years have you been sailing????? (Nate, 3^rd grade)

I have been sailing all my life.  You can tell that I like it very much.  I have not sailed around the world, but I have sailed in many places from Canada to the British Virgin Islands.  Check out Tortola on Google Earth.  It's awesome.  The two people on the boat next to us in the marina are headed there too.  They have a beautiful new boat, which they bought because they were looking for a new adventure after having raised horses in Montana.  Sailing is full of very interesting people and that is a big reason why I like it.

*  How are you fealling? And how is the wether?  (Elwyn, 1^st grade)
Thank you for asking.  I am feeling much better now that we have a good forecast to go to sea.  I am very excited because this is the very first time that I've done such a trip, the boat is in ready to go, and the people I am with are totally awesome.  So although the weather right now is cold and windy and it might rain, tomorrow we will have good weather and we will all be very very happy.

So thank you for your questions and for watching our progress.
Jay

Weather Along the Way

Once we finally can get going (probably Thursday late morning), we won't have internet.  So we'll be calling Mindy to give us forecasts and observations from the wind and sea state at NOAA buoys along the way.  (We'll also have SSB and VHF radios for voice and FAX and NAVTEX forecasts.) 


Here are the buoys.  This is real stuff, so this content might be inappropriate for queasy stomachs.  For example, right now SE of Bermuda, the wind is NE27 gusting 33 (not bad), with 16 foot seas with a period of only 7.6 seconds (barf city).  It was worse last night.

Virginia Beach:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=44014

SE of Bermuda:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41048

NE Bahamas:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41047

Atlantic South, way out to the S of Bermuda.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41049

E Bahamas:

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41046

SW Atlantic, just N of the Virgin Islands

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41043

Here are the forecasts we'll be looking at:

Passage Weather:

http://www.passageweather.com/index.htm?http%3A//www.passageweather.com/maps/bermuda/mappage.htm

http://www.passageweather.com/maps/westindies/wind/000.png

NWS Text forecasts:

Graphical Zone forecast: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/zone/wrdoffmz.htm

http://forecast.weather.gov/shmrn.php?mz=anz086&syn=anz089

http://forecast.weather.gov/shmrn.php?mz=amz080&syn=amz088

Bermuda Harbor Radio:

http://www.weather.bm/forecastmarineextended.asp

http://www.weather.bm/charts.asp

National Hurricane Center:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml

Graphical forecast for Hatteras:

http://graphical.weather.gov/sectors/mhxMarineWeek.php?page=2&element=WindSpdMarine

Enjoy.

SEAN

That's all we need to say. 

It became a named Tropical Storm (TS) overnight.  We're anxiously thinking about the boats that are approaching it.  We hope they are heading W toward Charleston or Jacksonville.

Our best hope is to leave on Thursday in NW winds.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the inmates are getting restless.  What a gang.  More on that coming up...

Standing By To Stand By

Heron will be staying on the dock today, Monday Nov 7.  We are delaying our planned departure from Hampton to St. John. The low sitting on our rhumb line (RL) is being watched to see if will "go tropical". Last night the NHC put a 20% probability on it. Not good. This morning they put a 30% prob. on it --a "moderate" liklihood. Even less good. They are now seeing some thunderstorm development in it. The GFC model looks fine. But it isn't prudent to head into that kind of risk, to encounter a possible TD or TS three days out to sea.

The C1500 has just this morning delayed their start until Wednesday noon. Some of the Salty Dogs are waiting. Some of them are already out there.

The forecasters are saying that we "certainly do not recommend leaving today given the uncertainty of the low becoming tropical. There is much more to report what we've heard that would mitigate concern: it would only have some tropical characteristics, it would take a few days to develop, it wouldn't be very severe (maybe 30-40 kn).

Meanwhile, we'll do laundry, visit the Maritime Museum and calm down.

T-? Days (sigh)

Heron and Freestyle are side-by-side at the Bluewater Marina docks in Hampton, all provisioned to the gills, all crew aboard, and all chomping at the bit to depart.  We are tentatively going at noon tomorrow (Monday).  But I have whiplash from the past many days of weather updates.

Roughly 120 boats here in Hampton are going through the same angst:  Sixty-five boats from the Caribbean 1500 rally are scheduled to go tomorrow (Monday).  Ten boats from the Salty Dog group left this afternoon and another 10-20 are waiting for a day or two.  Those boats have already waited an entire week here for a good weather window.  You can see it in their faces.  Grrrrr.  The "Canadian Navy" is a flotilla of cruisers who are here too.  Several "independents", including Heron and Freestyle are also processing weather from multiple sources.  So there you have it.  Total chaos.

I'd have to write a book to describe how the weather forecasts have evolved.  Here is a taste:  We arrived Friday night to Hampton by plane in 30+ knots of freezing cold wind.  The barometer screamed upwards to a crazy high of 1030mb, peaking at noon today, now in a clear warm(er) breeze.  We are now on the southern edge of a massive high (lying generally E/W at the lattitude of Delaware Bay) that is thankfully extending farther south than the models had forecast just a few days ago.  It has a steep pressure gradient descending SE along our RL to a low pressure system that is stalled at sea about 400nm east of the Bahamas.  That low is the problem.  It has been blocked from zipping up the coast by the massive high and it's pissed.  It's been sitting out there cranking day-after-day of very strong NE winds against the notorious NE-flowing Gulf Stream (GS).  The seas are observed to be over 20 feet in one region SE of the stream (29N, 72.5W).  The NOAA buoy off of Diamond Shoals is "not reporting".

We need to spend 6-10 hours busting across a very messy GS (ENE20-30, seas 10-14 ft) starting about 18 hours after departing this nice comfy dock.  Not fun. Then what happens?  It depends.  If the low continues to weeken and drifts back W towards the coast, we'd be in fat city by Thursday.  That's what was predicted before noon today, after having improved every day for the past three days. But suddenly... as of this evening... the NHC is now saying that there is a 20% chance of the low developing into a tropical somethingorother.  You can imagine the bar talk at the restaurant here at the marina.  Sheeeeit.  To quote one seasoned veteran, "I'm going to wait and see.  I don't like it when my forecaster (Parker) starts talking about favorable and unfavorable quadrants."

So there you have it.  At 0600 we talk to our weather service.  At 1000 we check in to a SSB net that will include reports from the ten boats who left and will then be in the Gulf Stream.  At noon the C1500 fleet will depart (theoretically).  At noon we'll either take wing with the flock, or become tourists in Hampton until the next day.  Not analysis paralysis, just whiplash paralysis.

Jay