fetchinketch

Time 1315 local
Lat N 29° 41.1′
Lon W 77° 49.7′
Nautical miles from Fishing Bay, Deltaville, Virginia : 477.1 Nautical miles to Port Everglades Entrance : 246.4

We continue sailing straight downwind to our destination pushed along by the northeast trade winds. Sailing in the trade winds anywhere in the world means that rain squalls will be around. Usually small and compact areas of rain and wind, during the day they are easily visible on the horizon. At night our radar picks them up. Today we are seeing a few small and relatively weak squalls around. Sometime we can dodge out of their way, other time we just go for the ride and are thankful for the freshwater to rinse some of the salt off the boat.

Up ahead about 150 miles is our only real navigation hazard on the route, Little Bahama Bank, a shallow area of sand and coral extending to the north and west of Grand Bahama Island. Once we leave that to our port side, we again cross the Gulf Stream, and then sail south close along the Florida coast west of the Gulf Stream to Port Everglades Inlet. It looks like we’ll be getting in there at a reasonable hour on Sunday morning.

Time 0845 local
Lat N 32° 00.5′
Lon W 76° 24.6′
Nautical miles from Fishing Bay, Deltaville, Virginia : 331.9 Nautical miles to Port Everglades Entrance : 403.7

Now that we are at the latitude of Savannah, Georgia, about 200 miles offshore, I think we can officially claim that we have moved “south.” Sometime this afternoon we’ll cross the halfway mark for this trip. Models forecast our arrival at Port Everglades Inlet for Sunday mid-day.

Speaking of Savannah, we both were a bit disappointed that we are too far offshore to pick up the Savannah Ship Pilots radio traffic. From passing by last year we remember a woman who staffs their radio room who has the voice of an angel. I’m sure there are dozens of sailors who frequent those waters who are in love with that voice.

For the past 12 hours or so we have been sailing with our “tradewind rig” of twin poled out headsails. When we are sailing greater than 150° off the wind this is an easy and reasonably efficient way to sail. If the weather forecasts hold up, we be under this rig almost all the way to Port Everglades. Current weather is about 78°, partly cloudy and wind of 15 knots from the Northeast.

Time 0915 local
Lat N 33° 45.9′
Lon W 74° 48.7′
Nautical miles from Fishing Bay, Deltaville, Virginia : 238.3 Nautical miles to Port Everglades Entrance : 535.6

After motoring last night, and most of yesterday afternoon as well, we are back to sailing in a slowly building comfortable breeze. We are now on the east side of the Gulf Stream, it is warm and sunny, and it looks like from here we are pretty much on a straight run to Florida.

When we motor, we don’t use the lights on top of the mast, rather lights down at deck level. After the moon set, and it was well and truly dark, I was at the bow of the boat. Here, our red and green light shine out.where the light hit the water, I noticed a distinct difference. In the glow of the green lamp, the phosphorescent plankton was lit up and twinkling, on the red side of the boat, nothing. Cover the green lamp with my hand, and the plankton also immediately turned off. Uncover, right back on came the bio lights.

Now you know: Plankton can “see” green light and turn on their own little green lights in response.

Time 1015 local
Lat N 35° 18.8′
Lon W 75° 06.5′
Nautical miles from Fishing Bay, Deltaville, Virginia : 146.1 Nautical miles to Port Everglades Entrance : 609.7

Beautiful, sunny, and clear skies, calm seas. The wind has gotten a bit light and fluky in the past hour, and the forecast says we’ll have to put up with that for much of the daylight hours today before it stabilizes and strengthens again.

We have no cause to complain after covering almost 150 miles in the 24hours since we weighed anchor. For now we are still going in the direction we want to go and enjoying moderate temperatures and bright sunshine. Life is good!

• Time 1835 local
• Lat: 36º 45.4′ N
• Long 75º 50.5′ W
• Miles from Fishing Bay, Deltaville, VA: 52.6
• Miles to Port Everglades Inlet: 675.3

We had a fast trip down and out of the Chesapeake today, and now as the sun sets it is clear, we are sailing fast on a fairly calm ocean on a beam reach.  All is good. Well, almost all!  The weather is reminding us why exactly it is we are sailing south… it is COLD. Even as far south as Florida is having a cold night tonight, but fortunately it is supposed to be warmer by the time we get there.

Highlight of today’s departure from the Bay was a large pod of dolphin that greeted us upon our return to the ocean. They obviously missed us as much as we missed them.

One thing about weather forecasts, they change.

 SUN  S to SE winds 20 to 30 kt, increasing to 35 to 45 kt.  Seas 6 to 10 ft, building to 10 to 17 ft.

That’s from the National Weather Service for the part of the ocean we had planned to be in on Sunday… YUCK!  We are NOT going there!  It wouldn’t threaten the safety of the boat, but it certainly would not be anything I’d call remotely related to “fun.”

We are tucked into a quiet anchorage in the lower Chesapeake Bay that we are familiar with from our past explorations.  We will wait here for a few days until this mess blows away.  The anchorage is actually rather full of boats who are likely in the same situation: waiting for a comfortable weather window to head south.

A few extra days will give us a chance to do a few more boat projects.  I can have fun changing belts on the engine!

Time 1835 local
Lat: 38º 09.6′ N
Long 76º 16.8′ W
Miles from Annapolis: 49.2
Miles to Port Everglades Inlet: 749.1

We are just passing one of the more interestingly named places in the Chesapeake Bay, “Point No Point”.  We are sailing on a broad reach, at between 5 and 6 knots, not fast for us, but reasonable in the lightish winds.

We got underway this morning with a gentle breeze from the northwest, as forecast.  We sailed almost dead downwind all morning and most of the afternoon with our jib and ballooner sails poled out.  The wind never really blew hard, (4 to 10 knots) but we kept up a boat speed of between 2 and 5 knots.  There was a large flotilla of sailboats headed in the same direction out of Annapolis.  Of the dozen boats, only one other was sailing–everybody else was motoring.

One challenge this afternoon was dealing with the shipping traffic.  Our AIS reported a 770 foot cargo ship coming up behind us, but for some reason no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t pick him out.  There was a little haze and mirage effect, but still… this is a BIG boat!  After searching for a while, and moving further away from the main channel just to be sure, I finally convince myself that there is no such ship.  Rather, one of the sailboats is broadcasting completely incorrect information on his AIS.  Everything is wrong, the boat size, the name, the destination, type of boat, status, everything!  When he finally motors up alongside and I can read his actual name (“Cygnus”) I hail him on the radio and ask him is he is aware of the issue.  “Yeah…  I can’t figure out how to program the thing.  But it’s OK my position is right.”  Sigh.  I am hoping he sails down the bay close to the navy base where I am guessing one of the patrol boats will explain the problem to him in ways I can not.

As the sun sets, our weather is looking good, and the boat is doing well.  The routing program is predicting a 5 to 6 day trip.  As we come around Cape Hatteras, we’ll have our first big routing decision to make:  Do we follow the coast south, staying west of the Gulf Stream?  Or head east and then go south outside the main current flow?  Right now the weather models are split about which will be more efficient.  Hopefully they will give us more consistent guidance as we get closer.

As the weather blew through last night, sometime shortly after midnight Karen asks, “What’s that noise?” As I started to get back up out of bed (which I had just gotten into) I said, “That’s the anchor alarm.”

I have a program on my phone that keeps track of where the boat is relative to where we set the anchor.  If the boat moves more than it should, it makes “that noise.”  I was pretty sure that it was a false alarm.  I hadn’t set the position of the anchor terribly carefully, so I thought the strengthening wind had just stretched the anchor chain a bit further.  That turned out to be wishful thinking.  It has been over a year since we had a real anchor drag, and there was no question we were now drifting quickly toward a shallow mud bank.

It is pitch black, overcast, and windy. There are almost no lights on shore here for reference points.  We get the instruments booted up, and the engine started.  In a few minutes I have the engine is pushing us back upwind away from the shallows, and Karen was getting the anchor back up on so we could reset it further upwind.  Really the only position reference I have to drive to is the chartplotter screen.  Everything around is just black.

Once we get across to the windward side of the bay, I again lower the anchor and let out about 10:1 chain scope.  On the first try, 30 knots of wind quickly push the boat to the end of the chain, and we immediately come to a jerking stop, and head up into the wind.  After a minute of two of nervous watching, it is clear that, at least for now, the anchor has taken a good hold on the bottom.  We get the snubber rigged, and settle in to see what happens.

We keep an anchor watch for several hours, until the wind eases up a bit. The boat sits exactly in the same spot. Eventually, we get back to sleep.

Today was a beautiful, sunny, clear, crisp, early fall day.  The wind has continued from the south, and is still forecast to shift to the northwest late tonight.  First thing in the morning we will be on our way down the Chesapeake Bay.  About 24 hours later, we will be getting down close to the ocean, and we will make our final decision about heading south to Florida based on the weather guess-casts available at that time.

We are waiting here in a delightfully protected little cove off of Harris Creek in Maryland for the passage of a weather front.  Just north of the town of Avalon, if anybody is keeping track.

In the past few hours the wind has picked up out of the south, and the weather radar is showing heavy rain approaching, all as expected. Once the front passes, the wind will clock to the northwest, and we will be off for points south. All of the weather models predict a reasonably fast run down the coast.  There is just one little issue…

Yes, our buddies at the National Hurricane Center just could not leave well enough alone.  After over a week without any activity at all, they posted this annoying update today.  Interestingly, none of the models I see show any development of this system at all, but the guys who know better than I do say it is worth watching. The frustrating part is that it is likely to be a least few days before the status of this system clarifies for the forecasters.

So…  here is our plan.  We will head down the Chesapeake On Wednesday morning with the favorable winds.  If there is still enough risk associated with “Disturbance #1” as we approach the ocean, we will pull into Norfolk, or Hampton Roads, and sit tight until we know more.