Nov 3, 2007

I'm still sitting here in Chissman Creek. Tomorrow will be a week that I have been here. Noel has come and gone without causing me any real problems. The winds have been pretty high, about 25 K with gusts to 50 K acording to the forecast, but Bella Vita sat herre quite well. I did put out a second anchor before Noel went by. I don't know if I really needed it or not but I felt more secure with it out. I pulled it in tonight and have it put away so I can get going easier and I plan on leaving here very early tomorrow morning, hopefully by 1:00am. Sunday, tomorrow, and Monday are forecast to be nice days but there is a cold front forecast to move off the coast late Mon or early Tue. The winds will be sort of high, about 25 K, so I don't want to be caught in the Gulf Stream when it catches up to me. If I leave early, I should be well clear of the Gulf Stream Monday afternoon. Also, the Caribbean 1,500 is leaving Norfolk sometime tomorrow and I would like to be past the mouth of the Chesapeake before they catch me. The C 1,500 is a cruiser's "race" from Norfolk to the BVI. I talked to a couple of boats who are in it and they expected around 100 boats but I heard on the radio today that there will be "hundreds" of boats leaving for the Bahamas and the Caribbean. The vast majority of them will be faster than me so I expect to have traffic close to me for a good portion of the trip.

Not sure when I'll get any of this uploaded, probably not until I get to St John.

Nov 5, 2007

I did leave on Sunday and had the mainsail up and the anchor stowed by 12:20 am. I motored out ot the Poquoson River and found 1 to 20 knot winds. I was able to sail across the bay almost to the Chesapeake Bay Bridg Tunnel. I wanted to have the engine going as I went under the bridge plus the wind pretty much died as I approached the bridge. This is quite an engineering feat. There are three bridges and two tunnels all connected. In crossing, you take a bridge, a tunnel, another bridge, another tunnel and another bridge. The two tunnels are deep enough that the large ships can go over the tunnels and the bridges don't have to be tall enough to allow them to pass. Only the northern most bridge is high enough for me to get under it with 75 feet of clearance. I didn't want to go over one of the tunnels because that would put me in one of the busiest shipping areas in the world. By taking the north channel bridge, I could avoid the shipping channels until I got offshore aways.

I had never been through this bridge and it was a little tricky at night. There are two bridges, one northbound and one southbound, that are seperated a few hundred feet. They are differnt desgns and the piers are on different spacing. As I approached, all I could see were a maze of red ights and four green lights. Normally, bridges will have one green light in the middle of the span where you are to go and a red light to either side of that span showing where the end of the clear span is. Not only was the spacing of the piers different, but one bridge had the red lights at the water level and the other had them at the top. I couldn't tell if the ones at the water were reflections of the others or not. Adding to the confusion, my chart sort of showed three bridges. I could only see two but as I approached, it looked like there was a third span basically at the water level so you couldn't get through anyhow. I slowed down and went and got my paper charts of the Chesapeake to try and make some sence out it all. It did say that there was 75 feet of vertical clearance and 300 feet of horizontal clearance so it sounded like they really did want you to go through. I was still about 1/2 mile from the bridges so I assumed it would be clear when I got there. I slowly approached and it actuall did make sense. I was approaching them from off the side of the channel and wasn't lineup correctly. What they have is four green lights, one on each side of each bridge. When you are lined up correctly, all the green lights line up and you just go right on through. What I thought was a low level bridge was just the reflection of the bridge lights off the water. I cleared the bridge at about 6:30 am and just as I went under, I could see some sunlight starting to come over the horizon.

Unfortunately, the nice winds I had across the bay never did come back on Sunday and I ended up motorsailing all day. It was a pretty nice day although rather cold. I had on my foul weather gear and was still a bit cold. As I was passing the end of the regulated shipping channels, an aircraft carrier came out of Hampton Roads. Those things are BIG. It was about 6 miles away from me and it still looked huge. It went on out into the ocean and I was watching it go over the horizon. It never did completly disappear and pretty soon it started looking bigger again. They had gone out several miles and turned north into the wind for takeoff and landing practice. There were jets all over and they were coming and going off the carrier. I got within about 1.5 miles away from them as they went by so I had a good seat to watch the practice. It is amazing how fast they stop when they land. They have a hook hanging from the tail of the plane that catches on a cable across the ship. It just sort of slams the rest of the plane down and stops it in what looked like a couple hundred feet. I was watching them come in and I saw one that did not have it tail hook deployed. I though he had forgotten it but they were practicing touch and go landing. I also saw a couple take off. That is almost as impressive as the landings with the steam catapult that accelerates the planes to flying speed in about half the lenght of the ship There appear to be seperate "runways" for takeoffs and landings. It looked like a pretty exciting way to make a living.

I entered the Gulf Stream about midnight. It was pretty obvious when I got into it because my track took a sharp turn to the east. Also, it got noticeably warmer with in a hour or so. I guess it was just from the warm water of the Gulf Stream. It took until about 1:00 Monday afternoon to get across it. The south wall of the stream is not as sharply defined as the north and I couldn't tell when I left it.

I turned toward St John today. The weather forecast calls for winds mostly from the north so there is not need to go anywhere near Bermuda. It will save me a couple hundred miles and I only have about 1,100 NM to go.

Nov 9, 2007

I am back in the land, or at least the ocean, of beautiful deeeep blue water. If you stand at the edge of the boat with the sun behind you, you can watch your shadow down in the water. It dosen't seem to be on the surface but down in the water somewhere. There are sun rays radiating out from it for a very unusual effect. I'm pretty sure it's not showing up on the bottom since it's about 17,000 feet deep here.

I am about 275 miles south-west of Bermuda. That will be about as close as I plan on going and am pretty much on a rhumb line for the Virgin Islands now with about 750 NMs to go. I have been averaging about 110 miles a day so far with my best day when I motorsailing across the Gulf Stream and did 133 NM. Today will certainly be the shortest so far. A cold front crossed over today and left extremely light winds behind it. I motorsailed until the batteries were fully charged and then turn off the engine and am sailing about 2 to 3 knots now. The seas calmed quickly and it's great out here right now, as long as you're not in a hurry. This is the first day that its been warm enough to get out of the blue jeans. I guess I'll go work on my tan for a while.

I have been using the Aries windvane to steer when I'm not motorsailing. That unit is pretty amazing. I always thought they would work better in the high winds since here is more force on the vane and since your speed is higher, the servo oar would have more power also. Today I was sailing along in about 5 knots of wind and going about 2.5 knots and it sitll worked rally well. It is quiet, uses no power and is more accurate than the autopilot. Of course it maintains a course relative to the wind direction so if the wind shifts, your course changes also.

Nov 18, 2007

I got to St John about 10:30 Friday morning, Nov. 16. The wind finally switched around to it's more normal direction more from the east so I had it on the nose for the last day. I tacked a couple of times and saw that it was going to be a couple of days to cover the last 70 miles if I kept that up so I dumped a jerry can of diesel in the tank and motored the last 70 or so miles. The trip was 1,476 NM and took 12 days and 10 hours. My best day was 137 miles, all under sail and no power, and only one day under 100 miles. It was faster than I expected to make it with fairly strong northerly winds for most of the trip. There was no really bad weather although I did get into a line of squalls one afternoon. They started about 3:00 in the afternoon with winds about 25 knots. I had listened to Herb the weather guy and he said there shouldn't be winds above about 20 knots so I left the full sails up. I ended up with too much sail and it was too much for the autopilot so I was had steering. The squalls normally will pass through in a few hours so had steering wouldn't be too bad. As it was getting dark, there was no end to the squall line that I could see on radar (24 miles out), so I decided to setup the wind vane to steer. As I was gettting it ready, one of the lines broke. To fix it, I would have to hang off the back of the boat and retie the line to the servo oar down about at the water line. I didn't want to do that in the dark in high winds and about 10 foot seas so I kept steering. I ended up steering until about 9:00 the next morning. The winds dropped enough by then that I could heave too and make the repair. I got that fixed and under way with the Aries in control again by about 9:30. I was pretty tired by then and really enjoyed my 15 minute nap.

As I was coming into Cruz Bay, I called customs to report in and was told that I would have to come in so they could see me. They said that I could tie up at their dock for clearance although very few boats did that. When I got to their dock I could see why it wasn't used much. It was pretty rough and is used by the ferry coming from the BVI. I went back out in the harbor and found a place where I could tuck in and anchor. I hate crowded anchorages. This one had a mixture of moorings and boats at anchor but I got anchored OK. I would not wanted to spend the night there but for the half hour I needed to get to customs and clear in, it would do. I put the dinghy together and headed for the dinghy dock. No problems getting to customs and the first thing they asked was where I was coming from and I told them the Chesapeake. When I told them I didn't stop anywhere in between, he gave me back my passport and said they didn't need to see me since I was still in the US. I sure wish he would have told me that on phone.

Anyway, since I was there, I got a Frequent Boater card. This allows me to clear in over the phone if I go to the BVI. I'll probably be going over to the BVI some so it was worth the few minutes. Then it was back to the dinghy. On the way, I passed a little sidewalk stand that smelled so good that I stopped and bought lunch. For $10 I got brocoli, baked mac and cheese, a yellow thing (a plantain I think), some hot potatoe salad, a huge scoop of rice and three pieces of curried chicken. It was really good although there was so much I couldn't eat it all.

It was only about 5.5 NM to Lameshur Bay where I was going and it was into the wind so I motored on over. I went right along the coast so I got a great view of the houses on the sides of the mountains. There are some huge places being built. There was one three story house that looked nearly done last winter but they were still working on it this trip. I got into Lameshur Bay an picked up a mooring about 1:30. It was nice to be stopped and pretty stable again. I took a nap and went ashore for dinner. There were no customers there and only about 5 volunteers. The place looked about the same except for being so green. This is the middle of the wet season so things are really plush. The grapefruit tree is loaded and the mangoe tree has a few coming out so we should have some fresh fruit.