Position Update: 12/12/08

Self Portrait - coming inside the reef at Caicos


Seaside Graveyard on Provos


Bills Boat Prana in the slip at Turtle Cove Marina


Our rental car "mexico'


GW and Bill at "de Conch Shack"


This blog post was written over the course of several days, so it may ramble. I’m not sure where I’ll be posting this to my blog from, but I suspect it will be posted from Provenciales on the largest island in The Turks and Caicos. “Provo” is our currently planned landfall and at this moment it is 200 miles SSE of where I sit in the cockpit on the 4am watch.

This is the beginning of day 4 of our voyage to the U.S. Virgin Islands. I’m helping my buddy Bill deliver his new boat to where he will live for half the year – (the non-hurricane half) November-ish through May-ish.

Gene, a nice and capable retired fellow who currently lives on the Outer Banks is additional crew and has been on board with Bill since Wrightsville Beach. Gene was originally going to help Bill bring the boat to FL where I would help Bill take the boat the rest of the way. The wonderful flexibility that retirement provides has allowed Gene to stay onboard for the remainder of the voyage. This is good news – it makes the overnight watches so much nicer to have 6 hours off and 3 hours on versus 3 off and 3 on. Also, Gene really likes to cook. Now THAT’s a real bonus.

Day 1
After a full day of provisioning and getting all the parts we think we may need for the boat from the numerous trips to West Marine, we leave the dock at 4pm – mainly because we have to clear up the slip for another boat that is coming back into port after being out for a week. We’re not quite ready to leave yet and we actually want to leave Port Everglades inlet (Fort Lauderdale) around 10pm anyway to time our arrival on the shallow bank north of Bimini with enough daylight that we can navigate any surprises by sight.

We motor the boat to a ‘cove’ about ¼ mile south of the dock and put out the anchor in 18 feet of water. The wind is light NE around 5-8. With the 2 hours of light remaining we lower the dingy from it’s davits on the back of the boat where it can ride safely for most conditions (but maybe not the worst conditions) and hoist the 15hp engine from it and onto a special mount on the back of the boat. This is where the engine will ride out the trip. The dingy itself will ride the 1000+ mile trip on deck up toward the bow. We hoist it up with the spinnaker halyard and situate it in it’s place – upside down and then lash it securely to the deck. No matter how dire the ride gets (and we don’t expect any dire ride) the dingy should be just fine here.

As the sun sets, we make our final ‘first stage’ plans that will encompass the first 2 days of the trip. When planning such a voyage, we have made an overview of the planned route, but because weather is such a factor in sailing, we know that any part of that plan is subject to change. We can most likely plan on the passage that will take place during the current ‘weather window’, but anything past that is a tentative plan. Our current weather window appears to be about 2 days. We feel pretty good that we’re going to have winds of the East/NE variety over that period and the forecast is for them to be around 10 knots. That generally pretty good. Perfect winds for sailing are about 15 knots and generally you’d like them to be coming from 90-120 degrees or so (the side – rear side) of the boat. That gives you a good stable ride and pushes the boat along pretty well without heeling over a long ways. The current forecast will certainly not allow for that tonight, but maybe when we turn SE as we enter the banks on the far side of the gulfstream in the morning, we may have favorable sailing wind.

At a little before 9, we weigh the anchor (that means pull it up) and get underway. Just getting out of Ft. Lauderdale itself takes over 2 hours because of bad timing with the 2 bridges that we must wait on to lift before we can go through. We miss each one by just minutes and have to wait almost a half hour at each one for it to make it’s next opening. As we come through the turning basin inside the inlet, we head E to go out the inlet. I’m at the helm and I head slightly more N inside this wide waterway so that Bill and Gene can put ‘up’ the mainsail before we get out into the ocean. There’s a problem getting it ‘up’ (which is actually getting it ‘out’ because this boat has ‘in-mast’ furling which is where the main sail rolls up in side the mast when it’s not being used.) This method of stowing and ‘raising’ the sail has many advantages, with just a couple of disadvantages. This will be the first boat that I’ve spent any real time on with this mainsail set-up, so I’ll be able to form a real opinion on this system before the voyage is over.

The ‘outhaul car’ which allows the clew of the sail to be pulled out along the boom has lost a couple of ball bearings (we discover later) and it makes getting the sail out quite a task because of all the extra friction. There’s a large ship coming in the inlet and we’re going to need more time to get the sail out than we’d planned on, so we do a 180 and head deeper into the turning basin inside the inlet. We’ve lots of room now, so again I head into the wind while Bill and Gene work on getting the sail out. It comes out fine with some extra finesse and soon we are on our way back out of the inlet, but now a large tugboat has gotten in front of us and is moving out – toward the mouth of the inlet. Oddly enough (remember this is nighttime), the tugboat is awash in yellow lights, but I can’t see any navigational lights (the green and red ones on the bow and the white one on the stern) that indicate which way is the front of the boat and which is the rear. Still, there’s no doubt it’s moving out the inlet as we are. I stay slightly off it’s port (left) side and behind it. I start to notice that I think it is now moving toward us. I point this out to Bill and in no time, we realize that it’s not only moving toward us – it’s moving quickly toward us, so we take evasive action away from it and we get around it and more toward the entrance of the inlet – so now there’s nothing between us and the open ocean except the rest of the inlet.

In no time- I look back and the demented tug is once again bearing down on us at a pretty rapid rate. While in the inlet, you don’t have a whole lot of choices of where to go. The tug passes us and moves around and meets the incoming ship to help guide it into harbor. It was a pretty ‘high adrenaline’ way to get our voyage underway and we were very happy to get out into the open ocean where it was much safer.

Our passage across the gulfstream was uneventful. The gulfstream flows at a brisk 3 knots toward the north – between Florida and the Bahamas. It flows actually from the Gulf of Mexico to England – but the Florida Straits is the only area we’re interested in at this time. It’s well know among mariners that you don’t cross the gulfstream in strong northerly conditions unless you want to get your ass kicked and have a very uncomfortable ride. The strong winds against the strong current creates steep waves which make the ride very very bumpy. The stronger the northerly wind (NW all the way through NE) the steeper and larger the waves. We’ve been waiting out a bit of a NE blow to avoid these waves and our passage across the gulfstream is specifically timed to have a comfortable (enough) ride. As we start into the open ocean, the wind is just north of east and at a comfortable 10 knots. Because of the northerly moving current, we have to point the boat a little bit south to keep it moving east – otherwise we would drift with the current and end up north of our intended destination with is a waypoint we have put in at a rocky area on the very near side of the Bahamas Bank called ‘Hens and Chickens’. Because we are pointed slightly SE and the wind is a light NE, we are able to use the mainsail as a stabilizing force – to keep us from rolling so much in the waves as we motor across the gulfstream.

We work out a 3 hour watch system which has Gene taking the 11 – 2am watch, me on the 2-5am watch and Bill on the 5-8am. I head to my cabin – the master cabin in the front of the boat – also known as the Vberth around 11:30 to get a little sleep before my watch. Bill has insisted on my utilizing this cabin and him sleeping in the settee table in the main salon. Bill’s nice that way. Gene is occupying the quarter berth at the rear of the boat. There’s 2 heads. The forward one is in my cabin – the aft one has a door to the main salon as well as to Gene’s quarter berth. I don’t really get much sleep because it the first day out and I’m not yet ‘relaxed’ enough to go with the rolling and pitching of the boat. No one really gets much sleep this night, but the excitement of being at sea will sustain us well into the next day.

During my watch, the winds pick up from the NE to about 15 – with gusts to 18 knots. It’s gotten a bit rollier, but not the gulfstream of legend by any means. After my watch, I am a bit sleepier and able to get about 2 ½ hours sleep in the increasingly agitated sea state.

While in my deep sleep, I become aware that the engine has throttled back to idle – something that wakes you up nearly instantly. I hear the clicking of a sheet winch as the head sail is being brought out. I rush up to the cockpit to find that we have made our waypoint at ‘hens and chickens’ and have turned SE to head across the bank. This puts on a beam reach and we are able to sail at 7+ knots for the next 4 hours or so. Things are amazingly beautiful in the shallow water that that make up the great Bahamas Bank. We average less than 20 feet deep (after crossing the 2000+ of the gulfstream). This is what we came here for. Beautiful surroundings – with Issac Light off to our port quarter – and perfect sailing conditions. We (mostly Gene) make coffee and breakfast. Life is good.

Our goal for the day is to make it across the Great Bahamas Bank and through the NW channel before dark. The NW channel has a reputation for boats getting into trouble due to very shallow water that comes to a point here and only about a 300 ft. wide place to pass into the NW channel. In the U.S. this would not be a problem because it would be well marked – the Bahamas on the other hand has a reputation for missing/ unlit/ non-existant channel markers. We decide that we need to stay a schedule that will have us passing through this channel while there is still enough light to read the water and see any other hazards to navigation. To do this, we need to average 6 knots along our path. At some point, the wind backs off enough that we have to start the engine and motorsail to maintain 6 knots.

We arrive at the NW channel marker on time and it turns out to be no real concern and we now feel we could do this in the dark without a problem. There is a single marker and we know how far to keep it to starboard.

Our next goal is to make it across the NW channel – another 2000 foot deep passage – during the night and to be off of the E end of Nassau by daylight where we will begin our last bank passage. This passage has a number of zigzags through small cays and we feel it needs to be done in the daylight. We motorsail at a metered pace of 4 knots so that we will arrive around 6am. Gene again takes the first watch, myself the second and Bill the third. We all find it harder to stay awake on these watches and are happy to pass off to the next person. I’m sleeping well at sunrise when I again hear the engine slow down. We’ve arrived at our destination and it’s just getting light out. We hold off the passage entrance near Porgee rocks until we get some more light, then snake our way through the shallows and the cays until we’re off the eastern point of Nassau. We make a southern jog to avoid the coral heads at yellow bank, then head ESE to the Highbourne Cut – where we will transit out into Exuma Sound and deep water again.

Somewhere around midday – we transit the Highbourne Cut which has some of the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen on it’s western (shallow) side. We then set our course off to the SSE down the middle of Exuma sound and further southward along the chain of islands on the way to the Greater Antilles.

For the next 2+ days we keep the same general course that takes us out of Exuma Sound and south of San Salvador, Rum Cay, Myaguana and toward the Turks and Caicos. Along the way we get weather updates via Sirius Satellite weather and it looks like we’re heading toward increasing winds and seas on Tuesday. We do some chart work and figure that stopping in Turks and Caicos is a good plan to wait out the weather and top off with fuel and water.

As we pass south of Myaguana the winds and waves increase to 20+ knots just off the port bow with 6ft+ seas. Nothing dangerous, but just not as comfortable going as with a beam wind. During this passage, we range from 5 – 8 knots depending on how much the wind clocks around from the bow to the beam. Around 10 am, we see the island of Provo – the largest island in the Caicos. We plan to go into Turtle Cove on the north shore and wait out the weather there.

The entrance through the reef is quite tricky – since the bouys have been lost in a storm and so the marina sends out a pilot boat to bring us through the reef and to guide us through the 9 turns that is the channel into the marina harbour.

We get in a little after noon and wait about 45 minutes for customs and immigration to come by and clear us and the boat into Turks And Caicos. After that, we’re allowed to get off the boat and we fuel up the main tank as well as the 8 diesel jerry cans.
*****
We just spent 4 days enjoying the island – sampling lots of food and drink. The weather forcast has just changed and looks like we’re going to be getting out of the Turks and Caicos this morning (Friday). I’m posting this quickly as we ready the boat. We have to wait for Customs to come and clear us out of the country, top off with water, return the rental car – then we’re ready to cast off and head out the reef. It’ll take at least 2 days before we see any land again – and that should be the north east coast of Dominican Republic. I’ll update at the next place I can.