Tuesday, December 4, 2018

November 2018

In which we return to Ruby after six months in the U.K. and prepare to sail off for the Winter.

We arrived back in Oriental on the 9th November. Two months earlier, the town had taken a direct hit from hurricane Florence. We had been informed that Ruby had suffered no damage but were anxious to check for ourselves. We had an initial panic – she was not where we had left her but soon spotted her on the other side of the boatyard. A quick walk round showed no scrapes or bangs and the inside was clean and dry – phew!

Ruby in slings, ready for launching.


We had a list of jobs to be completed before departure: the mast to go back up and electronics checked; wind steering lower mounting to be reinforced; servicing of main, outboard and generator engines and several smaller items. Our first disappointment was the decision by the rigger that the mast could not be safely installed while we were on the hard. The second was rain: the work on the wind steering had to be done on land and in dry weather. This meant that we did not get launched and mast installed until Monday 19th. By this time we had discovered other pressing matters: bilge pump not working; missing part for steering gear; outboard beyond repair etc. and I didn’t manage to connect the mast electrics until Wednesday 21st. I then discovered that the radar was not working. Thursday was Thanksgiving (as big as Christmas in the States) so nothing could be done until Monday. We had managed a myriad of other jobs, including installing a new toilet and Elsie had battled her way through the technology of our Iridium GO satellite device so we spent the weekend tidying, cleaning and even having a trial with our new, bigger outboard. This is when we had our next disappointment: our dinghy, though old and scarred, had always kept the air in and the water out. After six months of being rolled up in the locker, it seemed to do neither. Only slow seeps but it was really time for a new one. This would take time to order and we wanted to be away so decided to cross our fingers that it would last until we could find a replacement. Monday morning brought a radar technician who could find no obvious fault so, again, we crossed our fingers ( we had barely used it in the last 2 years) and finally, at 12:10 on Monday 26th, we let go and motored down Adams Creek back to Fort Macon and anchored for the night. On Tuesday, we went out for a day sail, to Lookout Bight and back, to check the rigging (too loose), the wind steering (working) but mostly ourselves. We had had six months off and needed to be reassured that we still knew how to do it. We came back in to Homer Smith’s marina to make final preparations. One last disappointment awaited us as we discovered that our main radio was not receiving and we resolved to fix this the following day.


Re-fitting the mast.

Our plan for the winter has been to head to Antigua, drift west with the trade winds through the Leeward Islands. Virgins. Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba and then make a decision in the spring whether to re-cross the Atlantic to Europe. The way the weather systems work, the natural route from the east coast of the United States to Antigua takes one within about 100 miles of Bermuda so we planned to use this as a staging post, breaking the journey down to manageable sizes of about 600 and 900 miles. This sounded fine while we were sitting in the U.K. but now we were faced with the reality: these were long ocean passages and we were six months out of practice. The alternative was to coast-hop down to Florida and cross to the Bahamas, as we had last year. This would have been a lot more comfortable but we would then have been trapped by the trade winds. Sailing east in this area is known as ‘the Thorny Path’, beating hundreds of miles into the winds or taking advantage of short term conditions to make small, mostly night, hops, relying on the weather for your destiny.

Our ‘shake down’ day sail had gone well and a weather window for the leg to Bermuda had opened up for Thursday morning. We decided to take it. The radio seemed to have fixed itself, so it was a case of tuning the rigging, doing laundry, topping up on fuel, water, food and beer and checking out with customs. All this was achieved in time for us to meet up with 3 other Offshore Cruising Club members and the Port Officer for a great meal of local shrimps, snacks and drinks. All 4 of us were planning to leave the following morning, each with different plans: Blue Velvet was heading direct to Antigua; Coolchange for Charleston and Enjoy going South on the ICW. To say we slept well that night would be stretching things. Elsie admitted to terror; I did the manly thing and showed a calm exterior. Intellectually, we knew that we, and Ruby, were capable but the voyage ahead was daunting.


Flags hoisted, ready to sail.


A few minor tweaks on Thursday morning and we were off, just before 10 AM. As ever, we had to battle the tide leaving Morehead and then had light winds sailing for the first 24 hours, which gave us time to get our sea legs back. The next 24 built to a Force 5 W’ly giving us a great broad reach and a little practice in reefing. We were checking the weather every 12 hours. We can get 4 models and each gave us a slightly different ideal route and ETA. Our philosophy is ‘Hope for the best; plan for the worst’, so we weight each model, avoiding anything that looks nasty and modifying our route to try and achieve best speed while keeping the wind behind the beam when possible.

Monthly stats

Log               277

Over ground  276

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