Feb. 22, 2010

It's hard to imagine that it's nearly the end of Feb already. I haven't done an update since I left Norfolk back in Nov., 2009. I seem to have been pretty busy so I'll try to catch you all up on what I've been doing. Grab a cold one, sit back and relax for a while. I left Norfolk on Tuesday, Nov. 3 with my new set of Quantum Offshore sails. The weather report was good for the next couple of days calling for NE winds in the 10-15 K range starting in the afternoon of the 3rd. I motor-sailed out past the Bay Bridge-Tunnel in calm conditions on a beautiful day. Part of that good weather forecast was a warning to be across the Gulf Stream by Thursday afternoon because the winds were going to pick up and would be opposing the Gulf Stream Current. I had always heard that you don't want to be in the Gulf Stream when the wind is against the current. The seas build and get very steep with lots of breaking waves. I had plenty of time to get across by then with the nice wind on the aft quarter so it seems like a good time to go. I kept waiting for the wind to pick as I motorsailed south past Virginia Beach heading for Cape Hatteras. By evening the wind had not picked up so I resigned myself to motorsailing thru the night and all the way across the stream if necessary. It turned out that it was almost necessary as the wind picked up in the early morning, still from the NE. This left it with a few hours to blow before I got to the stream so the seas would have time to build up. I got to the GS a little sooner than I had expected but it was very obvious when I got into it. The seas must have doubled in height and were indeed very steep. It was not a pleasant ride. Fortunately, the fastest part of the GS is along the north wall and as I headed across it seas dropped off pretty quickly. It still amazes me how quick the water temperature changes. Even the water in my tanks was significantly warmer within an hour of entering the GS. I motorsailed across most of the GS mainly just to get across quicker. There's not a lot to take pictures of while at sea but I'll throw in a couple. The big blue ship is a car carrier that is heading for the Chesapeake, probably Baltimore. The Navy ship looks like a small aircraft carrier but i'm not sure. It passed me as I was leaving Norfolk and one of the support vessels came up to me and made me turn away from the ship.

After crossing the GS pretty close to Hatteras, probably 80 miles out, I turned east and headed for a point about one hundred miles south of Bermuda. The winds stayed from the NE for the next 5 days and I was able to stay pretty much on course until it was time to turn south toward the VI. They varied in intensity a lot with occasional periods of gale force winds for several days. I had a triple reef in the main and the headsail furled to match for most of the trip east. The winds were so variable that I wasn't comfortable having more sail out although at time it was well under powered. I used the Aries to steer all the way from where I turned east, by Hatteras, until I go south of Bermuda. The wind direction held pretty steady so the wind vane worked very well.

About the time I was ready to turn south, the winds shifted around to the south. I was listening to Herb, the weather router guy from Canada, and he said that there would be SW winds for two days and then they would shift to the SE. That didn't sound too bad so I tacked to the SE for two days, getting about 105 KM off course, and was ready for the winds to go to the SE so I could tack back to the SW and get back on course. Well, the shift never came. The winds moderated a bunch but there were a lot of squalls out there. Herb said that I should be west of 65 degrees to miss the squalls and I was at about 63.5 degrees, about 100 miles east, in light winds. I had used so much fuel getting across the GS that I really couldn't afford to motor very much so I tacked back to the west as well as I could. This continued for about a week with me making a total of about 300 miles toward St John. Eventually the winds came around to the ESE so I could tack and make a little more progress south. The last few days were very nice with the trade winds picking up and I was able to sail south, still slow but at least the right direction. I finally got to St John early, about 1:30 AM, on Nov 22. It was pretty much totally dark when I got here. With the binoculars, I could see four boats on the moorings in Greater Lameshur Bay. I had the locations of the moorings in my chart plotter so I stayed out of the mooring field until I got close to the mooring I wanted to use and then turned into the mooring field. I turned on a flashlight to look for the mooring ball and found a boat there on the ball I wanted. I could not see it with the binoculars but sure could with the light. I quickly turned off toward the next mooring and was able to pick up the mooring on the second try. It's a little harder trying to find them in the dark.

It had taken me 18.5 days from Norfolk. At least I had no sail problems this trip. This was the first trip where I did no have to do any sewing on the sails. The new sails are nice. I had few problems with anything, except the weather, for most of the trip. I did lose my anchor to a big wave along with the top to my anchor chain locker and the handle to my windlass. I switched to my backup anchor, actually the 2nd backup since the 1st backup won't stow on my bow roller. I'm using the #6 Farford than came with the boat and so far it has worked well in the sand down here. I'll have to wait and see how it works in the Chesapeake mud.

Since I got in here about a week before Thanksgiving, I thought I would get a good Thanksgiving dinner. Well, the manager, Jamie, had his family down and they had Thanksgiving dinner early since they were heading home so I missed it two years in a row.

Things at VIERS are about the same. There was a long list of things to do and my number one item was to rework all the beds. Most of them were 2 inches longer than desired so I have to take them apart, shorten each side rail by two inches and put them back together. Some on them, about 25, needed to be widened since they had bought a bunch of twin mattresses to replace some on the singles. I am actually still working on that first item with the count standing at 9 more to go as of today; four to be shortened and one new queen size frame. That task has been interrupted a few times for some more pressing items. I installed a new AC unit in the lab office to replace the one that burned out. There were three researchers here, one from Sweden, one from Italy and one from Ohio who needed the climate control for their equipment. They were studying some very small organism and were able to identify over forty species of it including two new ones.

I also got to reassemble the outboard engine from the VIERS inflatable dinghy. The motor mounts had broken last spring and I had disassembled it then to determine the problem and we finally got most of the parts needed to fix it. I got it back together and fired it up a few days ago. I use the VIERS dinghy while I am down here instead of my folding dinghy so I have a little more motivation to get it fixed. My little 3.3 hp outboard doesn't push it too well compared to the 15 hp it should have. I should have that usable this week.

I had a relatively problem free trip down here but since I got here lots of stuff has broken. My little 1 Kw Honda generator that I use to charge the boat batteries while moored quit. Not only did it fail but it took out my shore power battery charger with it. I bought a new Honda 2 Kw generator and was able to get it shipped directly here so that is OK now. It has twice the output but is lighter, quieter and more economical than the 17 year old one. I had a backup charger/inverter so I have been using it to charge the batteries. It works well since it will charge at 50 amps instead of using my little portable charger that only puts out 20 amps. That makes a big difference in how long I need to run it.

I also broke my new underwater camera that I bought last spring. I took it snorkeling one day and forgot to close one of the doors. I soon filled up with salt water and that is not good for them. I bought another one just like it, an Olympus Tough 8000, since it worked quite well. It is waterproof to about 30 feet so it doesn't need a special underwater case. I got the new one and took it snorkeling and it flooded in a few minutes. One of the two doors was bad and didn't seal properly. I sent it back to Olympus and they replaced it under warranty. I have been using it quite a bit but noticed last week that it had some salt water in it. I haven't called Olympus yet but it looks like it needs to be replaced also. It's a nice camera with 12 mega pixels and all the normal digital camera functions plus being waterproof.

Along with the camera problems, my Dell PC quit. I'm not sure what the problem is but it won't power up anymore. It was pretty old so I decided to buy a new one. After a lot of time searching the Internet I ordered an HP Pavilion. They wouldn't ship it here so I had to have it shipped to my place in KY. I was going to have my daughter Christy ship it on down here but it turned out that Steve Applegate was coming down for a sailing trip so he agreed to carry it down with him. I was concerned about shipping it here in case there was some shipping damage. With two carriers involved it could have been tough getting a problem resolved. It was one of few that I was able to find that had all the connections I needed. I've had it for a couple of weeks and have almost everything working now. I got a 64 bit unit with Windows 7 because I can run Windows XP on it also. That allows me to run my old programs that ran on my XP machine. I've gotten nearly everything working now and am using it do this web site update.

Steve was coming into St Thomas so I went over there to pick him up. I wasn't too crazy about sailing without my chartplotter which runs on my PC. I had a good track to St Thomas on my GPS so getting over there wasn't a problem but going anywhere else could have been. Well, it turns out that Steve has the same model of PC as my old one. We were able to put the hard-drive from my PC, which had all my navigation stuff on it, into his and use it just like my old one. It worked well and we made it St Croix and back. Steve got interested in a little spherical geometry problem dealing with how to orientate out solar collectors for the kitchen hot water. We stayed here for a couple of days and hiked, snorkeled, etc. while he also worked on that problem.

I've been to St Thomas a few times other than when Steve was here. The first was for some reprovisioning when Randy was heading home. St Thomas hasn't changed a lot since my last trip last year. We did the normal VIERS shopping and then went to Victor's Hideaway on the hill overlooking Crown Bay. I had been up there before but never eaten there. It was pretty good but has a great view over Crown Bay and Water Island. The Oasis of the Sea was in port at the Crown Bay cruise ship dock. That is currently the largest cruise ship in the world and it was on its maiden voyage with only about 3,000 guests aboard. It can carry over 6,000 guests plus crew. Needless to say, it is a BIG boat. There are two rock climbing walls near the stern that are about 7 or 8 stories tall. I think there were about 15 stories above the water and about 3 below. I also saw it go by St John than night with all its lights on.

The other trips were not anything special. One of them was to bring back the VIERS boat which just had a new engine installed. We brought it back on a trailer that has seen a lot of days and very little maintenance. On the way up the hill out of Cruz Bay, one of the springs collapsed and the frame basically was sitting on the frame. The spring had rusted until there was not enough steel left to support the boat. We stopped along the road, jacked up the trailer and shoved a piece of 2x4 in on top of the spring. That held it in place until we could get to Coral Bay near the east end of the island. We launched it then and took it around Ram's Head and back to Lameshur Bay. Normally that would be a nice little trip, about 7 miles, but with the new engine we had to go slow to break it in properly. It took a while but we made it back with no problems.

The number of guests at VIERS is up a little from last year. Bob, The Trail Bandit (www.trailbandit.org), and his friend Mary were here for a month. I did a couple of hikes with them, the best being from Coral Bay to Waterlemon Cay and back. This was about 5 or 6 miles and there are a couple of beautiful ruins along the Johnny Horn trail. One of them is on top of a hill and beautiful views of the BVI, the northwest part of St John and St Thomas. It was lived in until relatively recently, I think in the 1940's, when it was destroyed by a hurricane. The other ruin is overlooking Waterlemon Cay and there is still a nice arch remaining that gives a great view of the bay. The spirit of cooperation between Bob and the Park Service that had been growing has disappeared completely and Bob was prevented from doing hardly any work on the trails. It's too bad the Park Service can't see a way to let Bob help since they don't have either the will or the means to do the work and the trails are suffering as a result. One of the VIERS volunteers was going to lead a hike on one of the local trails but when she checked it out a few days before the hike she found it so overgrown that she couldn't use it. Bob and Mary are great people and very interesting but it doesn't sound like they will be back.

One other very interesting guest was Ziggy Livnat. He is an underwater videographer and was here trying to shoot some scenes for a video he is doing for NOAA. He is from Israel and did one film called "Learning to Sea" that compares the sea life of the Caribbean Sea and the Red Sea. It is a great video and has won several awards around the world. His company is For The Sea and anyone interested can see some of his videos at his web site www.ForTheSea.com. Unfortunately the conditions here were not good and he was not able to get any usable takes.