fetchinketch

Time 1842 local
Lat N 28° 43.3′
Lon W 71° 18.6′
Nautical miles from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI: 714
Nautical miles to Sandy Hook, NJ: 717

Today, at almost exactly our halfway point on this passage, we transitioned completely from the Northeast Tradewinds of the tropics to the Southwest winds that prevail along the southeast coast of the US. We made that transition with a day of slow but steady sailing. Lots of sail changes, and sail trim to accommodate the changing winds.

From here on weather becomes more variable. We are entering that part of the world, where I am sure most of you live, where weather changes all the time as a result of the constant give and take of air masses between the Arctic and the Tropics. Right now as I look ahead of us there is a solid wall of dark clouds which promises steady rain overnight. No major storm, according to the weather models, just a rainy warm front.

As we were leaving the marina in the Virgin Islands, a Swan 48 in the slip next to us was getting ready for their own jump to the northeast USA. They were making a stop in Bermuda, which is pretty much on the straightest course to New York or points north. As part of their preparations they were loading on many jugs of extra fuel because the weather service they subscribe to warned them about the light winds along their chosen route. With a little understanding of what the weather patterns are we have managed basically the same route and–so far–have burned exactly zero gallons of diesel.

Our weather strategy from here is to sail more or less straight toward Cape Hatteras until we pick up the Gulf Stream, and then use that river in the ocean to gain an extra 3 or 4 knots of speed going north.

Time 0140 local
Lat N 27° 30.0′
Lon W 71° 09.9′
Nautical miles from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI: 648
Nautical miles to Sandy Hook, NJ: 791

The wind might drive Harmonie across the ocean, but electricity makes her work. Of course electricity is used for things you find on most modern boats, like refrigeration, but is also used for a lot of the heavy lifting in sail handling, the auto pilot, and for the watermaker. So a lot of time and thought goes into generating, storing and using electrical power.

A bank of 12 Group 37 batteries stores the power. Unusually for a boat of her size, the main D.C. power distribution is 24 volts, not 12. But of course batteries don’t make power, they only store it. Power on Harmonie is generated in two ways.

First is a six kilowatt Onan diesel generator. In the original factory design, this was the only source of power on the boat. The second system is a 615 watt bank of solar panels we installed last year.

A day in Harmonie’s power cycle looks like this: First thing in the morning I start the generator and run it for about an hour to replace the bulk of the power drawn out of the batteries overnight. If we need to make water, that happens at this point since the generator can make more power than the batteries can accept. An hour’s run time uses about a pint of diesel fuel.

Once the batteries are mostly charged, the solar panels take over. They supply all the power we need during the day, with enough left over to bring the batteries up to full charge. On a typical day the panel will generate 2.5 to 3.0 kW-hrs depending on weather and our usage.

Speaking of usage, when we are anchored our biggest consumer by far is refrigeration. Second is the watermaker. Third… well that almost doesn’t matter!

Our sailing day today was probably what people imagine when they talk about sailing being peaceful and quiet. Winds a bit lighter, speeds a bit slower, but we’re moving in the right direction, it is beautiful, and a comfortable ride.

Time 2005 local
Lat N 25° 12.8′
Lon W 70° 44.3′
Nautical miles from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI: 525
Nautical miles to Sandy Hook, NJ: 930

We are, of course, surrounded by undrinkable water, yet we have all the fresh water we need. There are two reason for this.

First, is the huge freshwater tank onboard Harmonie. In the stub of the keel there is a tank with a capacity of about 330 gallons. To put this in perspective, when we sailed my old boat to Hawaii we had two tanks of 40 gallons each. We did not feel especially “water-poor” on that crossing and arrived after 21 days at sea with almost all of one tank untouched. If we were really careful, I figure we could make a full tank of water on Harmonie last for almost 3 months with no input.

In addition to a huge storage tank, we also have a reverse-osmosis unit that uses a high pressure pump run by electricity to make about 10 gallons an hour of freshwater from seawater. Pretty much every day we are in clean ocean water we run the ‘RO’ unit for 30 to 60 minutes while we run the generator. If we are in murky or potentially polluted water we wait. The watermaker has been our only source of water since we left Florida almost 6 months ago, and I don’t think we have ever had less than 150 gallons of water in the tank.

Nothing exciting to report in our sailing today. Winds are a bit lighter, but we continue to make good progress. The winds have begun to clock around from east, to south, and will eventually turn to south west as we circle the Bermuda High. Right now it looks like a landfall on June 8 is most likely, although there is a lot of weather yet to negotiate between here and there.

Time 1810 local
Lat N 23° 22.0′
Lon W 68° 58.0′
Nautical miles from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI: 378
Nautical miles to Sandy Hook, NJ: 1058

Our progress northward and west ward continue under clear skies with steady, comfortable winds. The wind is from the east-southeast at 15 knots, and we are on a deep broad reach moving at 6.5 knots in nearly flat seas. We are watching the weather models daily to try to pick out the best possible course through the calm spots.

The different models are suggesting different courses–some shorter in distance, but through lighter, and more variable winds. Since making finely scaled predictions is not really something the models are good at, I tend to discount any recommendation based on picking a course through small scale changes in weather forecast several days ahead in favor of a course that might have a bit more distance to it, but more reliable winds that are part of larger scale weather features.

Out here in this part of the open ocean our wildlife count drops dramatically. A few flying fish, and a graceful tropic bird are about our total for the day.

Time 1720 local
Lat N 21° 11.7′
Lon W 67° 31.1′
Nautical miles from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI: 227
Nautical miles to Sandy Hook, NJ: 1203

Today’s sailing varied from exhilaratingly fast, to annoyingly slow. Although any day we cover more than 150 miles, there can be no complaining about!

Last night we were treated to a beautiful light show in the distance as thunderstorm built up over the mountains of Puerto Rico.

We had a couple of typical tradewind squalls go over us this afternoon. They followed they typical pattern, ahead of the squall the winds are reenforced, and blow harder, while behind them the winds are light and fluky. Right now the skies have cleared, and the wind has stabilized again, so we are back on track. Not the 8.5 knots we were doing earlier, but a steady 6.

The weather routing software has us continuing to move west to avoid the very light airs that are over the straight line course. We’ll probably need to get as far north as central Florida before we make a final turn north.

Time 18:15 local
Lat N 19° 09.3′
Lon W 65° 35.7′
Nautical miles from Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI: 64.3
Nautical miles to Sandy Hook, NJ: 1350

We are off to a fast start, putting miles under the keel faster than predicted. This is tradewind sailing at its best. We are heading Northwest on a fast and comfortable beam reach. Boat speed is running at almost 8 knots in 14 to 17 knots of wind with a gentle sea. It looks like there are some rain clouds coming up behind us, but nothing serious in the forecast. If the weather model are to be trusted, we should see stable conditions like this for several days.

We are now sailing over the Puerto Rico trench, one of the deepest spots in the ocean. According to our chart there are five miles of water under us right now. We passed a large school of tuna feeding, made apparent by the sudden crowd of birds that appeared out of nowhere. Unfortunately they were to windward of us and we weren’t able to get close enough to put some fresh sushi in the boat.

Close to the islands there is so much saragossum weed in the water, fishing trolled lines is an exercise in frustration. It has thinned out enough now, I expect to have lines in the water tomorrow.

Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke, BVI

All that is left is to stow the dinghy, droop the mooring line, and we are off.  We checked out of the British Virgin Islands yesterday afternoon, and paid the customs officer our $10 departure tax.  In a great example of the “logic” of bureaucracies everywhere, we start at the Customs desk.  Pay our money, and get a form stamped–in triplicate.  Whenever you deal with Customs in smaller countries there is always LOTS of stamping!  Peter Sellers could have made a great comedy scene in a Customs office with the proper stamp.

We are told we have to take our paperwork to Immigration to finish.  Where is Immigration?  The next desk over, of course. What does Immigration do?  He takes the form Customs just stamped, and wishes us a nice day. That’s it. I am sure this makes sense to someone, but in a country with virtually no unemployment it can’t be justified by a make-work rationale.

A last minute check of the weather, shows a great forecast. No significant issues predicted all the way north.  The only decision we have to make is how far west of the straight line course between here and New Jersey do we sail.  Directly between us and our destination is the “Bermuda High” a semi-permenent fixture of the weather in this part of the Atlantic in the summer.  A large area of dry, clear, weather with bright sunny skies, and  NO wind. Many people chose to just point the boat into the middle of it and use the engine if they stop moving.  We’d prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, and sail around it.  If we enjoyed motoring, we would have bought a motorboat!

The further west we sail, the more likely we are to keep favorable winds, but at the cost of a longer route.  This is a decision we will be reevaluating pretty much every day as we get updated weather information.

First thing you have to understand: For cruising sailors the word “rushing” means something a bit different than it means to most people with “real” lives.  With that said, we are “rushing” to get everything put together for our next stage.  We have a few things to stow, and then we will be out of the marina here in the morning.  We have a stop in Jost Van Dyke, the next island to the north for tomorrow night.

While in Great Harbor at Jost Van Dyke, we will “clear out” of the British Virgin Islands, completing the process of formally telling the local Customs Service here that we are leaving, and paying our Departure Tax.  Most countries require that you “check out” when you leave.  Once you complete this process they issue you a “Zarpa”,  a piece of paper which the NEXT country you go to wants to see to be sure that you did not run away from you last port under less than honorable circumstances.

Once we complete the formalities,  then we are off.  We have about a nine or ten day passage from Jost Van Dyke to Sandy Hook Bay Marina in New Jersey.  The further north we go, the less predictable the weather gets.  If I believe the weather models, we will see winds varying from less than 1 knot to between 25 to 30.  Nothing scary or troublesome.  It has been a long time since we have had a passage of this length, and we are very much looking forward to it.

Our guests of the past week have now taken off for the airport back to their “real lives,” and we are getting ready for the next step in our journey.

Our plan from here is to sail directly from the British Virgin Islands to New Jersey, visit there for a week or two, and then move north to New England.  The initial leg of that trip should be a trip of about 10 to 12 days.  Right now the weather looks pretty stable, so I am not expecting our departure date to be set much by weather conditions.

For this trip at this time of year, the winds are typically very favorable. The models predict the fastest route to be a simple rumb line course, running or reaching almost all the way.  We can hope!

We have a few last minute things we want to pick up that we can not get in the USA that we want to get to make life easier and better, make sure our food stores are ready for two weeks, and we will be off.

A few legal and logistical things to do before we leave.  We have to clear out of customs here in the British Virgin Islands, and pay our departure tax.  We also need to file a “float plan” with the USA customs office so we can take advantage of the (hopefully) quick and easy phone check in when we arrive back in the USA.

We have been around several spots in the British Virgin Islands over the past few days with our guests, Karen’s friends Bill and Cindy.  Bill is an avid diver and has helped me get the mechanics of using our surface supplied air system worked out.   It does take a bit of time to get it all assembled for a morning’s dive, but once together and running, it works great.

Tonight we are in the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor.  It was interesting, they seem to be a constant source of radio chatter from boats looking for a slip for the night, but when we get here, they are mostly empty…

An interesting marina with a boatyard attached to it.  They are in the process of commissioning a 350ton travel lift.  Interesting because they have the travel lift mostly assembled, but the yard to put the big boats in is nowhere near ready. It seems project management is not the local strong suit!

We are headed to Ginger Island tomorrow for more diving.  Then back to Nanny Cay to drop out guests off, and get ready to head north.

Right now our plans are to head directly from here to New Jersey.  We might stop by Bermuda since it is more or less on the way, but that remains to be seen.  In the next day or so I will start tracking the weather to see when it makes sense to head north.