Still motorsailing south in to a southerly wind with only the main up. I would like to get the Genoa up but I need a much larger angle to the wind in order to keep it filled that I don't raise it. About 11:00 a front moves through with squalls and thunder storms and the wind shift rapidly to the NW. I was expecting the gale force winds to kick in at this point but that didn't happen. The winds continued mild and I was motor sailing still.

At midday I was about 110 NM east of Georgetown, SC.

Nov 2, 2006

The high winds held off until this morning. About 6:00 the winds started to pick up significantly. I reefed the main, 1st reef, and continued on. The winds contiued to build and around 9:00 I was putting in the third reef in the main and at 11:00 I had dropped the sails and was running under "bare poles." With no sails up I was still doing over 5 knots. This higher wind did not last long and I was soon running the engine just a little above idle to stabilize the speed so the autopilot could steer better. Going from no sails to the triple reefed main is difficult since I need to bring the boat up into the wind to get the main up. That is not easy to do when the wind is over 20 knots with large seas. Changing from one reef to another, either larger or smaller, I can do while sailing so I like to keep some sail up.

By midday, I was about 100 NM east of Savannah, GA.

Nov 3, 2006

The high winds from the north continued and by 4:00 I was back to running under bare poles again. I had never done this before and it surprisied me how controllable the boat is with no sails up. I continued this way but with the engine slowly running to stabilize the autopilot control. At about 20:45, I raised the main with 3 reefs in and with the engine off had good control at the helm.

By midday, I was about 230 NM east of Jacksonville, FL.

Nov 4, 2006

The winds were about 20 knots from the N still today. I had the staysail up with two reefs in the main and was moving pretty good. As long as I ran with the wind, the boat was pretty well balanced but if I tried to go east much at all, the helm was too heavy for the autopilot to handle. I took the third reef in the main and reefed the staysail (It is a small sail to start with and only has one reefing point.) and this was much more comfortable. My speed dropped about half a knot but was much better balanced.

At midday, I was about 165 NM east of Titusville, FL.

Nov 5, 2006

More of the same with N winds at about 20 K. I was trying to get east a ways so I was steering most of the time. I was about a day away from the Whale Cay Passage where I wanted to go into the Sea of Abaco. I had two problems. First I wasn't sure that I could get to the channel before dark and I didn't want to go in at night. Second I wasn't sure that I could get through the channel at all if the seas were still at the levels they are now. There are about 8 passages from the Atlantic Ocean into the Sea of Abaco. I have used three of them including Whale Cay and Man O War. All get pretty rough when the seas are up, especially from NW through NE.

By midday, I was about 150 NM east of Fort Pierce, FL.

Nov 6, 2006

During the night, I saw that I wasn't going to make the channel before dark so I slowed down some so it would be closer to daylight when I got there. Since I was down as small as I could go on sails there wasn't too much more I could do. I could also tell that the seas were going to be too rough for the Whale Cay Passage so I changed course for the Man O War Passage. This passage is about 11 miles further east and is a short straight shot through. The Whale Cay Passage is long and you have to make a 90 degree turn in the middle that would leave you going broadside to todays waves for a ways before you got behind the protection of the reefs. The waves at Man O War Passage would be almost straight into the passage, a good thing in my mind. I got to the passage about 2:00 and hove to for the rest of the night. Heaving to is setting the boat up so it moves slowly sideways and forward. It is a good way to control you speed if you just want to sit and it also provides some relief from the waves although I found out that it doesn't help to much when they are 12 to 15 foot waves. With the winds as high as they were, still around 20 knots, it also drifted sideways a lot faster than I had wanted and I had gone back NW about 7 miles before I got underway for the Man O War passage.

I got to the passage about 10:30 and got all lined up to go through. On the screen capture from my navigation system, the blue line is my track of where I went and the red line is the planned route. Detailed charts are not available for this system for the Bahamas so the position of the land and background features have to be ignored. But you can still put in routes and use them for navigation. The data just has to be entered manually. At the top, you can see where I turned NE into the wind and dropped sails. Then I started in and close to the top red square, the outer waypoint for the passage, I looked up and saw a good size ship coming out of the channel. The channel is about 1500 feet wide and I was not going to share it with anybody and since it was at least 20 times as big as me, I turned around and went back out. It wasn't until I was heading into the waves that I realized exactly how big they were. At the passage, the water goes from over over 500 feet deep to about 45 feet over a distance of several hundred yards. This is basically a wave amplifier that makes them taller and steeper. I considered going on down to the next passage which is about 18 miles further south and enters to the west but I wasn't sure that it would be any better. So I went back out to the deep water, got lined up with my waypoints again and headed in. My theory about a nice straight shot into the passage with wave breaking on both sides of me wasn't exactly right. When waves hit you from the back, they upset the balance of forces on the boat and it can spin rapidly, sometimes up to 90 degrees and will put the downwind rail in the water. Getting it back on course is a lot slower and you need about a boat lenght of channel width to do it in. Generally, the next wave will come along before you get back on course and turns you to the side again. Today, the really big waves rarely came in groups so you had a few smaller one before you got hit again. Needless to say, this is not a good thing when you're in a narrow channel. This was absolutely the most difficult, and dangerous, sailing I have ever done. Bella Vita handled it well and even though the starboard rail was over a foot deep at times, I was able to get through the channel with no more than 0.01 NM error from the plotted course, that's 60 feet by the way. Even when I was well into the "protected" portion of the channel, the waves were still around 10 feet and very steep. Those didn't bother me too much after what I just gone through. I did have one wave brake of the back of the boat and over me. My foul weather gear kept me remarkably dry with just a little getting down the front of my jacket at my neck. It's strange that when I took it off, it was almost as wet inside as out. I went on through the channel with no problem and when I looked back to see the wave breaking behind me, it was hard to belive that I went through that. I certainly wouldn't recommend it anyone and I will not attempt a passage like that in those conditions again. I would have had to hove to for at least a day while waiting for the winds seas to drop.

I set the autopilot to take me to Marsh Harbor and started straightening up the boat, bagging the sails, collecting lines, putting up the quarenteen flag, etc. I then went in an cleaned me up. I wasn't sure they would let me through customs as dirty and smelly as I was. As I was going into the harbor, it looked like there was something seriously wrong. There were almost no boats there. When I came north, the harbor was so crowded that I had a difficult time finding a place to anchor. Today there were only about 6 boats anchored and a few more on moorings at the far end of the harbor. So I dropped the anchor and got the dinghy together to go ashore for customs. At customs, they told me that I would have to bring the boat to the dock so they could see it. I wasn't too happy about it but there was nothing to do but to do it so I went back to the boat, got the anchor up and motored over to the dock. This was the biggest dock I had ever tied up to. It was at least 5 feet above the dock and had earth mover tires for bumpers. The wind kept me away from the dock although I had to climb up the tires to get ashore. After going through the customs and immigration proceedures, I was ready to leave and nobody had looked at the boat. The customs guy walked out to the boat looked inside and that was it, other than leaving greasy footprints on my decks. So it was back to anchor again with my Bahamas courtesy flag replacing the quarentine flag.

It was getting pretty late by then but I went ashore to make my checkin calls home and get a few groceries. My calling card I bought about a year ago still worked and had enough time left on it for one call and it was too late to buy another today. Then it was back to the boat to continue the cleanup. Stuff that was stored when I got the boat had been thrown to the floor and it was a mess. I guess it will still be there tomorrow.

It does feel nice to be at anchor again and not be bouncing off the walls.

Nov 7, 2006

The coffee pot stayed on the stove through the entire perking process this morning! Nothing has fallen, of course that may be because most of my stuff is still on the floor. It's raining today with winds at times about 15 knots but still calm in the harbor. I'm going to try to get this uploaded today and find Dennis from Annapolis to see if he still wants to do the delivery on his boat tomorrow. He may not be coming in until today since there was no answer on his Bahamas phone yesterday. The weather may not cooperate since it sounded like tomorrow was going to be rather rough also. To get here, we may have to go through the Whale Cay Passage. The Whale Cay Passage is like a Y. One leg goes to the ocean and the other two are a route around the Whale Cay Bar but you are exposed to the ocean conditions while going through it. There is a sand bar that goes from behind Whale Cay to the Abaco mainland that I can't get past but his boat my be shallow enough draft that he could get through.

Other than that, all I have to do is laundry, some provisioning and a couple little boat projects for the next week. Looking forward to it. After that passage, I'm ready for a rest. Not much damage on the passage. One lifeline broke and I do have some damage to the genoa that I will need to fix but that's all.

Nov 11, 2006

It's been pretty quiet here. A few more boats have come in but the harbor is still pretty empty. Hope it stays that way until I leave.

When I was in Annapolis, I was talking to a man at the boat supply store who spends winters here in Marsh Harbor. They stay on a boat that he puts ashore for hurricane season over on Green Turtle Cay and asked if I would give him a hand rigging it and bringing it back to Marsh Harbor. It sounded like an nice way to spend a couple of days so I agreed. They have been coming here for many years and seem to know everyone on the island. We drove to the ferry landing by Treasure Cay and took the ferry over to Green Turtle Cay. I had not been there for several years and it has been developing. The areas around New Plymouth are pretty much the same but lots of new building away from town.

We started getting the boat ready when we discovered that the new shrouds he had made in Annapoolis weren't going to work. So after pondering the situation some, he decided to go ahead and launch and take it back without the mast and sails. That meant a lot less work to do and by dinner time, it was almost ready to go. We went into town for dinner and back to the boat for a good night's sleep. The boatyard launched us in the morning and we were soon on our way to a brief stop in White Sound to check a friends boat and they off to Marsh Harbor. It was a beautiful day on the Sea of Abaco with a very light breeze and lots of sun. We saw doplhins and lots of star fish and had a really nice trip. The boat motors at about 4.5 knots so it was about a 5 hour trip. He dropped me off at the landing and I took my dinghy back home. Nice little side trip.

When we pulled in to the harbor I saw a dinghy motoring around my boat. we turned over toward it and they saw us coming toward them and left. I was a little concerned but when I got to the boat, all was well. The next morning someone knocked on the boat and when I went out, it was the same two guys. One of them had lost an anchor a few days before and as it turned out, I was anchored right over it. We used my windless to pull it up an get it into the dinghy. It was a stainless steel version of a Danforth that he had custom built, about $1,200, so he was glad to get it back. Unfortunately, his other ancor drug and he ended up on the shore. The boat was healed over far enough that it was taking sea water into the engine and he said that his engine was ruined.

I did get the lifeline fixed and am still cleaning up the inside of the boat. I didn't have things well stowed when I left NC. Hearing stuff rolling around inside bothered me more than anything else about the rough seas. I will have my gear better stowed for the rest of the trip. The genoa has a couple of tears in it that I don't think I can fix on board. It needs to be stretched out and patched so I think I will wait until I get to St. John before attempting that. I have a second genoa that I need to pull out of the bag and check over. I had done that once before I left last year but want to check it again. I may have to dig out the spinnaker and fly it some.

I fly out of here in a few days for a few weeks back in the states over Thanksgiving and then on southward.