Day 5a – 36 Hour Tropical Storm!

Day 5 – Nov. 3rd, Endured a 36 hour Tropical Storm!

 

Sat Weather Screen, notice the weather around the boat, and the boat speed at 8.1 knots.

 

Just when we thought all was well, and we were only a day and half from St. Augustine’s, Florida, the winds started to pick up. We could see some precipitation on the Sirius Satellite Weather, we thought it was just a little bit of rain. We sailed on, and the closer we got to it, the stronger the winds became. We could now see the depression growing in size, and taking up more area on the screen, it grew to about 200-300 km in diameter. There was no away around it now, plus the cold front we were talking about earlier, was now creeping up behind us. We were getting it from all sides. Through the night the winds increased to 30 knots, gusting to 35 to 40 knots at times. We would estimate the wave height at over 12 feet, however we could not see them in the pitch black of night. At this point we were almost 150 miles or close to 300 km from shore. There was no sign of life out here, at least not the human kind. We did not hear a thing on the radio, or see any ships even on the AIS that has a range of 50 miles. The boat was rocking and rolling, handling the conditions remarkably well. Through out this night and into the next day, we were sailing 8-9 knots, at times reaching 10 knots. Surfing waves 11-13.5 knots.

 

Riding down some swells.

As the the winds increased throughout the night, we kept putting in reefs (shortening the main sail, lowering it bit by bit), fortunately on our boat this can be done completely from the cock pit. Inside the luxury of our full enclosure, we kept warm, dry, and away from the wind and flying rain pellets. I could only image what it would be like sailing out side in the elements in these conditions. I wanted to put in a plug for Island Canvas who built the enclosure, it sustained winds of up to 40 knots, sustained wind at 30 knots for almost 36 hours, and held up perfectly, the windows on the starboard side were getting blown in, but did not lose their shape at all. The enclosure even kept me from falling overboard once.

The boat was almost knocked down a couple of times. A wind gust of close to 40 knots, and climbing a very large wave side ways at the same time, and the boat was tossed by another breaking wave side ways for an instant the boat was almost horizontal, about 60 to 70 degrees of heel. It only lasted a second or less, and she righted immediately like she is suppose to, she carried on her path within a second without losing a beat. Cez was tossed from one berth to the other, air born in the salon, banging his head on the nav table, and bruised his rips on the compression post. I was in the head (bathroom) at the time, won’t go into details about what happened to me, but you can imagine it was not pretty, nothing is really pretty when your pants are down at your angles, but this was ugly to the power of 10. Once I recovered, I noticed water was gushing in the side of the ship. Great, now we are taking on water and are going to sink I thought. Where was the water coming from. I noticed the sink was full, and it was coming from the drain hole of the sink. This has never happened before. Even with the boat heeled to the drain hole, which is normally well above the water line, this should not happen. With the boat speeding at close to 10 knots at times, and the water smashing against the hull at who knows what speed, water was being pushed right through the drain hole at such force, that it pushed through all the plumbing and up into the sink. The force filled the sink and was now overflowing. I acted quickly and found the thru hull drain valve, and closed it. This prevented any more water from coming in. Turned out to be nothing serious, but you can imagine the force of the water to have this happen.

I went up to the cock pit to tell Paul who was helming what happened, and ask him about the near knock down. He said, not to worry, par for the course, the boat is handling as she is suppose to, even better then he thought it would. I looked at the Sirius Satellite Weather, I noticed about 10 miles ahead, winds were registering at 60 knots. I told Paul about what I saw, his face went into a little state of worry. He said, “Your kidding me right?” then he said, “Lets take down the main completely”. Both Peter and Cez, came up from bed, and volunteered for the task. I asked Cez to do it, since he has sailed with Black Diamond longer, and knows the configuration of the boat, and would have an easier time at it. We harnessed him into the boat, and sent him out the front dodger window. This was far safer than trying to go out the side. Cez was a trooper, and had the main down and lashed within a few minutes. I asked him how it felt to be out in 80 km winds, with rain pellets pounding your face, trying to balance on the roof, holding on to the boom for dear life. He said, “Just don’t ask me to do that again”.

 

 

Blue Led Spreader lights on for the photo.

We were now surfing under 110% jib only, and still making similar speeds. Unbelievable! When we got back to the dock the next morning, the only damages we found was a bolt missing from the Furlex furler system that held the jib on. I think the force of the wind, and one too many accidental gybes on the fore sail caused us to lose the bolt. It appeared not to have been life threatening, we would not have lost the head stay, which actually holds the whole mast up.  We may have potentially just lost the ability to furl the sail. As for the main sail, we always had a preventer on it to prevent accidental gybes of the main sail (Preventing the main sail and boom from smashing from one side to the other).

 

Notice the speed and volume of the spray on the side of the ship.

 

We were in pitch darkness, all we could see was the spray and foam coming out from the side of the hull. I remember saying it looked and felt like we were in a space capsule re-entering the atmosphere from space. 

 

The back of the boat looks like we have a 300 horse out board.

 

I checked the weather station again, and found the 60 knot storm ahead was down graded to 22 knots. Thank God! I guess my prayer in the cabin paid off!

Day 3 – Warship Operations!

Day 3 – Saturday Nov. 1st, Chesapeake & Delaware Bay area

War Ship operations! - Actual photo by Ed Radonic.

Consulting the Sirius Satellite weather and saw that a cold front was moving in from the north, which would bring 35 to 40 knot winds (about 80kms/h), it was expected to hit the area and move south by Monday night or Tuesday morning. These are exactly the conditions you don’t want to be caught in, around Cape Hattaras. We were well south of it now, so we had no worries. We decided against pulling into Beaufort because it would have wasted too much time. It would have taken us approximately 12 hours to make it into shore, plus the time to navigate the channel into port, and then back out again the next day. In addition, we would have been caught in the cold front, which would have forced us to spend another 2-3 days waiting it out. Instead, we decided to head right for St. Augustine, Florida. Roxanne the kids and I, spent some time in St. Augustine’s when I was at an ad agency conference, a few years ago. A very cute town, I think it’s the oldest town in America, dating back over 300 years, Ponce de Lyon an early explorer landed on the shore here and found the “Fountain of Youth”. In St. Augustine there are cobble stone streets, forts, castles, with an old world feel. Our ETA to this port would be 56 hours, putting us into port Monday evening. Basically we decided to stay ahead of the cold front and try to out run it the rest of our trip. Cool : ) !!!

Our usual view in our 5 day voyage.

Today was a very calm day, the wind was non-existent all day. Perfect for power boats. We passed a fleet of 20 or more pleasure boat fishermen fairly far offshore. At this point we were the closest to shore that we had been on the entire trip, about 30 nautical miles. So, when in Rome we do as the Romans, we ran our motors for the next 24 hours. Even though we ran the motor for a total of about 50 hours, including running time and battery charging, we still had gas in the tank when we arrived in Florida. The total size of the gas tank is about 130 litres or less than 35 gallons. I love telling power boaters that we sailed down from New York to Florida consuming less than 30 gallons of fuel, this absolutely amazes them. Depending on the power boat, they can only go out for a couple of hours using this much fuel. Sailboats in general are very wallet efficient, and the most environmentally friendly way to travel. Just think of the impact on the environment when going to Florida by any of these methods; Planes, Trains, Automobiles or Buses.

Enjoying the beautiful calm weather...

Encountering US Navy War Ships at Sea!

Later that day we heard traffic on the VHF radio. It was a US Navy War ship, and US Navy Helicopters. Apparently they were conducting military training exercises with live explosives, bombs and other ammunitions. Our charts listed dangerous unexploded mines, explosives and other hazards in the area. The charts showed that it was safe to pass, but not to attempt to anchor or fish in the area. The choppers were patrolling the area, and clearing it of commercial and civilian ship traffic. Contacting boats, and telling them to alter their course to avoid the area. The radio traffic went something like this: “This is War Ship 1, hailing fishing vessel at approximate coordinates, 74 degrees 34 minutes N, 31 degrees 23 minutes W” They would repeat this a few times, before the fishing vessel would figure out they were talking to them, if they did not respond, then they would send a military chopper to buzz over their heads to get their attention. They would then instruct them, “Alter course to 240 degrees North for about 2 miles, then continue south, in order to clear the secure military zone”. The fishing vessel would respond in agreement. Then the a final message would be heard: “If you fail to alter course, you will be proceeding at your own risk in a military exercise zone”. Later we would continue to listen to various war ships and helicopters discussing their plans: “War ship 1 proceed to rendezvous with War ship 2 at secured point, and at 1300 hours we will proceed with operation evolution.”

Shortly thereafter they were hailing a sailing vessel with various coordinates. I checked our location on the GPS and we were well out of that area already, so I was not worried. Peter thought they were talking about us, and he got all excited, “I guess that means we got to get the heck out of here before 1300 hours, or we’ll be blown to bits”

For the remainder of the day, the radio was busy with similar traffic. The war ships started moving about, and it seemed like they were playing war games with all the boat traffic in the area. After their exercises, I guess they were headed back to port, but they seemed to be trying to run down other boats, and scare them away. They would hail the boats in a threatening voice proclaiming, they are a War ship, and that you better not cross their bow, or you better move out of their way, because they were headed right for you, and they were not going to alter course. After a while they started to sound pretty immature, like a bunch of 20 year old navy grads playing with billion dollar toys. Actually, sounds like something I wouldn’t mind doing.

Day 2 – October 31st Halloween Cape Fear & Cape Hattaras!

Day 2 – October 31st Our Halloween Approach of Cape Fear & Cape Hattaras!    

 

Ed enjoying some ocean sailing.

The winds died down to a beautiful calm and a sunny day. We kind of forgot what day it was, so I turned on the Satellite Radio just to relax a little and listen to some music. The radio announcer mentioned that it was Halloween, and they played a lot of holiday themed music most of the day.

We all thought how appropriate, we will be rounding the most feared cape in North America at about Midnight on this Halloween night. Later that evening we would also pass Cape Fear. So why all the fear surrounding this cape? If you check our live GPS tracking and zoom in on satellite picture mode you will see the east coast landscape jetting out a couple hundred miles into the Atlantic. If you zoom in you’ll see what looks like a man made break wall, it is actually shallow waters, shoals, rocks and islands. Then you have the Gulf stream flowing up the east coast of the US from the Gulf, it rounds the bottom of Florida, and tracks up the coast about 100+ miles offshore. This current flows at about 1-2 knots, but near the top as it collides with the cape, and gets pushed out to sea, the speed increases to about 4 knots. Imagine a strong current like this in the ocean, it actually slowed our boat down to about 2 knots. Now if you have a strong north wind blowing south at the same time against the current, it produces very rough seas, and very large swells and breaking waves. Depending on the wind speed, and in storm conditions, it is very torturous and dangerous. There are many ship wrecks large and small in this area. Many slow moving vessels such as sail boats, will not even attempt rounding this cape in the best of weather. We were fortunate to round this cape in the calmest seas, however it still took almost 24 hours. If a heavy north winds crept in, or a storm caught us by surprise, we could have easily been caught in it. Due to this fear, most pleasure boats will go inland just north of the cape in to Norfolk, Virginia and use the inland inter-coastal waterways (ICW), and come out the bottom of the cape at Beaufort. This detour through the inter-coastal waterway would have added 3 days to our trip.

 

Paul catching up on some sleep.

Our boat is equipped with Sirius Satellite Live Global Weather, I would recommend having this, it was the most important tool on this journey. We also made good use of it in Lake Ontario. It tells us everything you could possibly want to know, Low/Hi pressure, wind speed and direction, water temperatures, current flow, precipitation, storm tracking direction and speed, hurricane tracker, tropical weather feeds, weather watches & warnings, plus a whole lot more. This data is not just for our area, but global, so we can see ahead before we get right into the thick of it. We never used the VHF radio weather reports, they were out of date anyways compared to our feed, plus 75 miles offshore and your VHF is out of range anyways. The water temperatures allowed us to see exactly where the gulf stream was since these are warmer waters. 

We used this information to decide that it would be safe to round the cape, and make it to Florida before a tropical depression arrived. Had we went inside the cape, we would have lost 3 days, and had to wait another 3 days for the storm to pass. This same day we were hailed on the VHF radio by another sailboat about 3 miles ahead of us. We had a nice 20 minute conversation with this other boat, a 37 foot Island Packet named Navy Blue, crewed by a 70 year old man and his wife. They were headed down to the Bahamas, Central America and the Panama Canal. They asked us about rounding the cape, we gave them the weather report and told them we were going for it. Their response was, “You guys are young brave souls, and maybe with your faster boat you’ll make it around in time, but we are going on the inside.” Within about 12 hours they were out of radio range.

 

Peter could not be happier, just him and Stella ; )

The winds were so calm, that we had to run the motor for about 5 hours, making 6 knots. This gave us an opportunity to charge our batteries. I installed an upgraded 110 amp alternator on the boat, almost 3 times the power output of the standard units. It virtually turns our motor into a 40HP diesel generator.  I did not want to install an actual generator, mostly due to the extra weight (200lbs, after all its still a racer/cruiser), wasted precious storage space, and of course the price tag of about $8,000. However, that would have allowed us to run the air conditioner and heater offshore, and charge batteries without running the motor. We have 1 engine battery, 5 house batteries for operating everything else on the boat, and 1 Canadian Tire special reserve battery for boosting in case of emergencies. We also have a 2000 watt inverter, which gives us 110 amp house type outlets on the boat, allowing us to run what ever we want, including the microwave and kettle. Just don’t try to use the heater, microwave and kettle at the same time. We did that on shore, along with the TV, DVD, lights and a whole bunch of other gadgets. We fried the marinas electrical extension cord to a crisp. No damage to the boat’s electrical system.

Ed posing with the full black Spinnaker.

The winds did not pick up for the entire day, so after the batteries were charged, we decided to turn off the motor and fly the spinnaker chute. We have an asymmetric spinnaker, with a bow sprit at the bow that sticks out about 2 feet, allowing the sail to clear the anchor and bow pulpit. The clews are connect to the aft pulley eyelets of the boat, and the sail can be controlled from the cock pit. We found that once raised the spinnaker can be sailed single handed in lighter air. We could not believe how light the wind was 2-3 knots, but with the 1,200 square foot spinnaker and almost 500 square foot main, total sail area of about 1,700 sqft, we were still able to keep the boat moving at about 3-4 knots, in gusts we could hit 5 knots.

 

Under Spinnaker in Lake Ontario during the LO300 race.

We decided to pull the spinnaker down just before dark, just in case the wind suddenly picked up, we did not want to risk rounding the cape under spinnaker in the dark. So after a very nice BBQ steak dinner in the cock pit over flat calm seas, we turned on the motor and ended up running it for about 24 hours until the next morning when the wind finally picked up, but we were well past the cape by now, and about half of the way down the Chesapeake Bay area. 

 

Paul & Peter enjoy a BBQ Steak!

 

Cez & Ed, so excited about the BBQ Steak they could kiss each other.

 

Sun Set that same evening right after our BBQ.