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
Monthly stats
Log 277
Over ground 276
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