Delivery report

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Bill Kinney

The delivery of an Amel 54 across the Atlantic has been completed without incident. The boat has performed well, only minor issues. Weather was very cooperative. That makes be my first TransAtlantic trip.

We did pause at an open ocean weather buoy anchored in 13,000 feet of water to catch a tuna on a hand line for dinner. There were a lot of fish at the buoy, we could have filled a freezer if we wanted.

We arrived in Ponta Delgada, Azores after 16 days underway from Martinique. The town and island are beautiful, and well worth stopping for in their own right.

We spent two nights there to pick up fuel and fresh provisions, and were back back underway for about a week to our final destination of Vigo, Spain.

The rugged coastline of São Miguel, Azores.
Ponta Delgata, São Miguel, Azores

And the Finish

From Sao Miguel to Vigo, Spain was another 6 days. Winds were contrary, but light. We spent about 2.5 days motoring in the final approach to the coast.

Overall the trip was straightforward. We had no nasty weather, and no serious boat mechanical issues. We left Martinique on April 19, and arrived in Vigo on May 13, with a two day break in the Azores. That’s 22 days, a very fast trip.

Right now I am on my way back to Martinique, in what seems like a painfully long series of flights and layovers. 26 hours instead of 22 days!

And Next

While I have been off traveling for a month on other people’s boats Karen has been holding down the fort on Harmonie back in Le Marin. There have been a number of projects large and small she has been managing with the local shops. It looks like they will all be done either before I get back or within a few days of my return.

We are actually having crew join us in Martinique for our sail north. Kevan has sailed with us before, and we meant it when we said he’d always be welcome back. Our plan is to head to the Bahamas. Where we will explore some of our favorite spots, and then head further north.

A Super Maramu in waiting for me in New York to install a new C-drive that was damaged in a collision with floating debris. Hopefully we can get that done in a week, and then, again, be on our way for the rest of the summer.

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Where is Bill Now?

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Bill Kinney

The past couple weeks have been a travel scramble as various customer projects have moved up to their place on the schedule.

Travels in the last month, and upcoming. Red paths complete.

A C-drive Install

After dashing south from Brunswick, GA, USA to Le Marin, Martinique, I quickly hopped on a plane back to the states. My destination was Annapolis, Maryland where I supervised the installation of a new C-drive into an Amel 55.

This was a large and complex project that took about a week. Several unexpected issues were encountered, but all were resolved, and the boat has been launched and test run successfully.

Trans Atlantic Delivery

As soon as I return to Karen and Harmonie back in Martinique, it’s time to jump on an Amel 54, and begin a delivery to Virgo, Spain. This is a long trip, about 25 days. We are just into our second 24 hours, and passing north of Guadeloupe.

Any voyage crossing the North Atlantic is a serious undertaking requiring the boat to be autonomous for about three weeks. This boat is well found, and the owner has done an excellent job chasing down issues.

Unusually, this delivery is being done with a total crew of four. A watch schedule of 4 on / 12 off seems a positive luxury.

The Home Front

Karen is on Harmonie in Marina du Marin organizing the projects we have running with the local mechanics. Almost as soon as I get back, we will need to be underway northbound away from the approaching summer hurricanes.

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Sailing from Bermuda to Martinique: An Easy Passage.

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Bill Kinney

Last night we dropped anchor off Sainte Anne in Martinique after a long, but relatively uneventful trip. No gales, no pounding close hauled sailing. In 7 1/2 days we covered 1158 nautical miles at an average speed of 6.5 knots.

Coming down from Bermuda the prevailing winds allow the trip to be done pretty much all on a close reach. Once you get a bit south out of Bermuda, the chances of a cold front dropping down low enough to affect the trip get pretty small. What we expected, was exactly what we found. Right out of Bermuda, we had a period of light wind which had us motoring for a bit, but the rest of the trip was entirely on port tack, with winds that were fresh, and kept us moving at a good speed. Once we got further south into warmer water, we did run into a few tradewind squalls, but nothing too serious.

In my last post I complained about the amount of sargasum weed that was making normal trolling for fish impossible. That continued for the whole trip, and in fact got progressively worse as we moved south. By the time we got the east coast of Martinique, I’d estimate that about 2% of the ocean’s surface was covered with weed. I hinted in the previous post that I had a plan to catch some fish despite this.

As you can see, my plan was a success. The larger fish is a young yellowfin tuna (ahi), the smaller one is a blackfin tuna. So, how did I catch these fish when I could not troll a lure behind the boat? The key is finding where the fish are. Anything floating in the open ocean attracts fish. These fish were caught courtesy of the NOAA Weather Buoy 41049 which is anchored in 16,000 feet of water (!) pretty much right on the rhumb line track from Bermuda to the eastern Caribbean. As we approached the buoy, we dropped lines behind the boat, and as the lures came up to the mark, we had fish on two of the three lines. We lost a large mahi-mahi when he jumped and threw the hook, but were really happy with the addition of high quality tuna sushi to the freezer.

The Ahi in particular was an extremely fatty fish. There was actually a layer of white fat under the skin, which I have never seen before. If you are at all familiar with sushi, you know this is a highly valued trait. I can report that this was an amazingly yummy fish. Melt in your mouth buttery and smooth.

But Not All is Roses.

This was a good sail. We did not break much. Only one thing.

While dealing with one of those squalls, the wind climbed into the mid 20’s. As we released the main sheet to reef the sail, the piece that the French call a “saddle” that attaches the main sheet blocks to the boom ripped out of the boom. If I had seen this failure on any other boat I would have assumed it was due to an accidental gybe. We are going to turn this problem over to the Amel staff here in Martinique to fix.

Overall, it was a great trip. We caught fish. The boat performed well. We did not add to the injuries we ourselves suffered on the passage to Bermuda. Other than the few miles departing from and arriving at the islands, the entire trip was one long port tack reach.

Lessons Learned

The primary lesson I took away from this whole experience is: If you are leaving from the east coast of the USA for the eastern Caribbean, just suck it up and go to Bermuda. Yes, it can add two or three days to the underway passage time, but it ends up being a MUCH better trip. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is exactly spot one. Add to the fact that Bermuda is a delightful place, and you have a no-brainer.

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This is Better

Posted on March 23, 2025 by Bill Kinney

It has been about 24 hours since anchor up in St George, Bermuda. We are making good progress in light winds, certainly a much more pleasant experience than we had last week!

One of the things I forgot about this trip, it is essentially crossing the Sargasso Sea. So floating weed is very common. Not an issue for the boat, but it is for fishing. Any lures trolled behind the boat quickly become fouled. Without a mate dedicated full time to keeping the lines clear, it is an extremely frustrating experience. So, for now, we’ll defer. But, we have a plan…

The weather forecast for the trip is quite benign, and we hope it stays that way.

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Why Bermuda?

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Bill Kinney

So why exactly did we end up in Bermuda? It is certainly a nice place, but wasn’t on our sailing plan.

The Gulden Leeuw, a top-sail schooner gets under way.
You don’t see post boxes ike this every day.

The sum of the story is that the weather forecasts were off just far enough to force us to change our plans. For days the forecast kept saying that the wind was going to clock from the southeast, to the south and then the west. But that just never happened. Combined with winds stronger than expected, we just could not get either south or east. And we were getting beat up. Bermuda was two days out of our way, and it was an easy decision to head in there and take a few days to put things on the boat back to proper shape.

Ah, Sailing! So quiet and peaceful!

Why were the forecasts off? Well, a couple reasons. First, they were not THAT far off, but enough that it had a large impact. So Lesson #1 is if small changes between the forecast and reality can make a big difference, be sure to be aware of that, and have alternate plans. Also, the weather systems were extremely complex. There were multiple low pressure systems that were predicted to combine into one large storm in the Eastern Atlantic. That’s what happened, so the grand picture was right, but the details were less precise than usual.

By the time we got to the island with the lovely pastel colored buildings, we had a number of things on the boat that needed attention.

Some stripped threads meant our rudder packing was leaking. Not anything near enough to sink the boat, but it was sure making a mess even with regular mopping up. A bit of fiberglass work to build up new threads and we should be off and leak free for the foreseeable future.

We had our wind instrument break and fall off the top of the mast, probably at one of the pounding impacts the boat took when it fell off a wave. When 18 tons of boat fall several feet down onto the water, the g-forces are large, and at the top of the mast they must be enormous. Even so, this kind of force should be expected and designed for. We have contacted the maker and gave them the details. We’ll see what they can do. Fortunately, we had a spare in stock, so a trip up the mast put us back in business.

As the worst of the weather past us, Karen was looking to the back of the boat, and said, “I’m sure you have already noticed, but…”

Actually, I had not looked that way, so it was news to me that one of our solar planelss had gone walkabout. I guess having 40+ knots of wind hit it from the bottom when we were heeled over was more than the frame of the panel could take. That repair will have to wait a bit. At least the frame I built is still there, it was the panel itself that failed.

We have a good weather window tomorrow to get back underway, hopefully we can get the boat picked up and put back in shape in time. to catch that. Next stop, Martinique!

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Enough of that…

Posted on March 18, 2025 by Bill Kinney

The forecast had the wind clocking to the South, and then Southwest. Didn’t happen. Left us close hauled in winds of 20 to 25 knots, and building. Boat and us getting beat up pretty hard.

So a consensus decision was reached, and we peeled off and are now head for Bermuda, which is now about 175 miles to the northeast.

Once the weather settles and we recover a bit we’ll be off again. Probably 2 or three days.

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Making Easting

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Bill Kinney

The route we are on is frequently called “Route-65” because you head east from the cost of the US and then when you get to 65W longitude, you turn south. On average, that puts you on a comfortable track. There are a couple of caveats to that.

It only Route-65 only works if you are far enough north to avoid the tradewinds in the first part of your voyage. If you try leaving from Florida, or the Bahamas there is no on ramp to Route-65. The other catch is that it assumes that weather will be “average”. One thing pretty much everybody knows is that weather is not often exactly average.

With modern weather forecasting tools we can pretty easily get details about what to expect for the next few days. Our forecasts are telling us that Tuesday morning we can expect a strong front to overtake us, which will pull the wind around to the Northwest as it goes by. At that point we will only be at Longitude 68W or so, about 180 miles east of the expected turn. But it makes little sense to blindly follow the “rule” when we will have a straight downwind shot toward our destination for several hundred miles.

The good news is that we will have winds from a favorable direction. The bad news is we will probably have two days of more wind and bigger waves than we might like, making for a “sporty” sail, albeit almost straight downwind.

We start our turn south here.
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Miles under the keel…

Posted on March 14, 2025 by Bill Kinney

It hasn’t been fast sailing, but mostly quite steady. In 32 hours we have covered 212 miles. Only about 1350 miles and 12 days to go!

The weather was pretty much as predicted, except for before dawn this morning when I had to dodge through a cluster of thunderstorms. Most of today was motoring in light, contrary winds, late afternoon brought winds from a good direction, but still light. Right now we are sailing at 4.5 knots in 6.5 knots of wind. It’s calm and quiet, with a full moon.

Our original sail plan continues. We will be making our way east first, and then head south once we hit the tradewinds, that should be in six or seven days. We are currently in a steady southerly flow. In three or four days a front is due to catch up to us, which will strengthen the winds, and switch them to the northwest.

It’s been pretty uneventful. If conditions hold like this, we’ll probably start serious trolling for fish tomorrow.

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Sailing from Brunswick to Martinique: Our Next Adventure Begins

Posted on March 13, 2025 by Bill Kinney

We are in the final few minutes of policing the boat to make sure she is ready for our next adventure, and will be dropping lines within a few hours. We will be leaving from Brunswick, GA and making one long jump to Martinique in the eastern Caribbean. That is a straight line trip of about 1500 nautical miles as the seagull flies, and is expected to take about 13 or 14 days.

As is common with sailboats, the straight line trip is not the one we will be taking. The issue with heading straight to the Eastern Caribbean from the US East Coast is that you are straight into the teeth of the prevailing winds. Few things are LESS fun than beating into the wind for weeks, and we do this for fun, after all is said and done.

So instead of a course like this:

We’ll be going more like this:

It is an extra 300 miles and a day or two of sailing, but much more comfortable. If you are following us on our SailLogger page https://saillogger.com/svharmonie do not be surprised if we even head north a bit at the beginning. We are NOT lost, just looking for the fastest trip available in the existing winds that is matched with our comfort!

One of the things about a trip of this length is that the weather forecast becomes more and more of a work of fiction as you move out into the future, so the exact details of our course we can not plot with certainty but we will alter on the fly as the forecasts are updated.

We do have a couple commitments once we get to Martinique. One is actually back in the US where I am helping a client install a new C-drive in his Amel 55, and then about April 15 I’ll be sailing away from Martinique on a delivery of an Amel 54, Destination: Portugal. By the time I get back to Martinique in mid May it will be time for Harmonie to start moving north again.

A busy time!

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A Short Detour…

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Bill Kinney

Continuing on our delivery voyage, we cut in off our planned route to anchor in Boqueron Bay on the west side of Puerto Rico to handle a minor repair that wasn’t easily done under way.

That’s been handled, we grabbed some shuteye, and we are back off again.

Between the short delay, and updated weather forecasts our best predicted route has changed. We are now going to head straight up through the Bahamas, pretty much on a rhumb line course for Brunswick, GA.

It’s about 11AM here, and we are motoring away from the PR coast. Once we get clear of the wind shadows of the island, we expect good winds for the rest of the trip. We will be racing a cold front as we approach the Georgia coast. With a bit of luck we’ll get there first!

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