We may go out for the Mitchell Regatta on Columbus Day weekend is the weather is decent.
Here she is in Cuttyhunk. Looking pretty good in her 10th season!
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Fifth Season in Newport
Well, the fifth season for Devante's Dream in Newport RI is drawing to a close. Jane and I spent a little time on her this year, several days in Block Island (with Elizabeth too) and Eric stayed on board for Block Island Race Week, and then later a few days at Cuttyhunk.
We may go out for the Mitchell Regatta on Columbus Day weekend is the weather is decent.
Here she is in Cuttyhunk. Looking pretty good in her 10th season!
We may go out for the Mitchell Regatta on Columbus Day weekend is the weather is decent.
Here she is in Cuttyhunk. Looking pretty good in her 10th season!
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Fourth Season in Newport
Hard to believe this is Devante's Dream's fourth season in Newport. We have enjoyed every moment of it, especially since she has been in the incredible care of Brian Blank with Bareboat Sailing Charters. Connect with Brian to book a great bareboat sailing experience.
Now
I've been a little lax (understatement) with the blog the last few years. Here's a quick recap:
2011
Eric Sr. is fully recovered from moving Devante's Dream back from Bermuda. Eric's mother and daughter were onboard for the 4th of July. We had a great front row seat for the fireworks from our mooring in Brenton Cove.
2012
The America's Cup. For sailors you don't need to say much more. It was an incredible experience watching the races from onboard Devante's Dream literally a few feet from the ridiculously fast 40 catamarans. We also had our long time good friends Jack and Joyce Clark onboard for a great trip to Martha's Vineyard as well as my brother Scott and his dad Joe.
2013
For most of 2013 Eric and Jane were in Salem MA sailing locally with friends. Eric and Jane got onboard for a couple of weeks in September. First sail completely around Conanicut Island (Jamestown). A few days of bumpy weather brought us into the dock at Newport Yaching Center, very cool but pricey! My brother Scott and his Dad, Joe, visited again.
September is a great time of year to be in Newport, cool weather, nice breezes, the first hints of foliage...it was hard to leave to go back to Atlanta GA.
September is a great time of year to be in Newport, cool weather, nice breezes, the first hints of foliage...it was hard to leave to go back to Atlanta GA.
Now
But...now we don't need to leave anymore. Eric and Jane moved to Newport in April of 2014.
We have already been busy getting Devante's Dream ready for her 4th season in Newport. Jane varnished all the brightwork (it needs it and now looks awesome) and Eric disassembled, cleaned and greased all of the winches. Other than that just a good cleaning and she is ready to go!
We have already been busy getting Devante's Dream ready for her 4th season in Newport. Jane varnished all the brightwork (it needs it and now looks awesome) and Eric disassembled, cleaned and greased all of the winches. Other than that just a good cleaning and she is ready to go!
See you out there!
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Devante's Dream is still in Newport
Devante's Dream is still in Newport RI and will be for the 2012 summer season. One of the main reasons is the excellent care and feeding that she is receiving at the hands of Brian Blank of Bareboat Sailing Charters.
This year the America's Cup World Series will be held in Newport. Wow are we excited!
Friday, June 24, 2011
Devante's Dream to Newport RI
Devante's Dream is bound for Newport RI!
We're excited to spend some time in the "Sailing capital of the world", earned during her days hosting the America's Cup. Now it's just all about sailing, and pubs, and mansions, and art, and festivals...
 |
| Bowen's Wharf |
We're excited to spend some time in the "Sailing capital of the world", earned during her days hosting the America's Cup. Now it's just all about sailing, and pubs, and mansions, and art, and festivals...
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Bermuda to New England - June 2011
Bermuda to New England June 2011 has been successfully completed. Here's are the passage notes:
On Tuesday May 31, 2011 Eric arrived in Bermuda and meet one of the crew members, David Ritchey, at the Bermuda Yacht Services office. Devante's Dream has been in Bermuda for the winter having arrived in October 2010 from Marblehead Massachusetts.
My intention was to visit her over the winter and spend some time in Bermuda where the temperatures are moderate, mid 60's and sometimes warmer. However, every time I looked at the weather there was always a gale, sometimes blowing up to 69 knots. Not exactly cruising weather.
So here I am in May and the weather is much better. I found David on the Cruisers Forum message board. It's a great resource of knowledge and communication about sailboats and cruising in general. Last year I got crew from the same site.
David is a recent Naval Academy graduate and has the benefit of Newport to Bermuda experience. We've got a few days to get the boat ready before the second crew member, Chris Arias, comes in on Friday. So, time to get to it!
I can't say enough good things about Bermuda Yacht Services, Sandra, Mark and Frances. They watched over Devante's Dream for the winter and are extremely helpful. Sandra gave us a ride to their shop on the other side of the harbor where the dinghy was stored.
Frances shows us where the motor is and the dinghy is still tied to the tree where I left it rolled up tight last October. David and I untie it from the tree and carry is down to the beach. It's actually quite warm and the water is very inviting. I am already thinking about a swim.
We unroll the dinghy on the beach. It's dirty and also a cockroach hotel. David doesn't like them. I don't blame him. We install some new valve covers and get the new foot pump out and start inflating. It doesn't take long and the new pump is MUCH better than the old broken one that required you to remove the nozzle after EVERY pump to get more air in the chamber. David did all the pumping. Thanks David.The inflatable dinghy is nice and hard. We even have the keel inflated, thanks to the new valves, which hasn't worked for years.
Now it's time for a dinghy bath. It's in good shape for six years old, just a little dirty. The cockroaches don't like the bath and go off in all directions. We flip is over a few times to get them and the sand all out. When down she looks presentable.
We tie up to a boat on the quay and head over to get the engine after getting that swim in. I forgot how big the engine is. It's an 8HP but more importantly it is a four stroke so it's huge. Huge but strong and very fuel efficient and simple to work, no mixing gas and oil, which is nice.
This will be the moment of truth. The engine has been sitting for eight months. It's hard to believe it has been that long. When I left in October I ran all of the gas out so is should be okay, but you never know with outboard motors.
Frances checks the gas and pronounces it fine so we carry to motor down to the beach and get it all hooked up. A few pumps to the primer ball, pull the choke all the way out and pull twice. It starts right up.
We are cooking with gas! High fives all around.
We have a lot of gear and it all won't fit in the dinghy so we leave it at the shop and buzz over to Devante's Dream. She is moored on a BYS mooring ball in a protected harbor about a mile from the beach we are on.
We tie up the dinghy to the stern of Devante's Dream and hop on board. She's a little moldy on the inside and quite dirty on the outside but all in all she is in good shape. I crank up the engine and then David and I remove the massive mooring chain and extra mooring lines and head over to the St. Georges anchorage.
In the fall of 2010 Devante's Dream was the first boat in the harbor, except for Milo on Magic but he was there for most of the summer, he even went through a hurricane on board. This spring there are 20 to 30 boats in the harbor and Sandra said that the week before there were twice as many. Bermuda is really the crossroads of passage sailing in the North Atlantic. Even so we are able to anchor near the town dinghy dock. We run in for a bit at Somers Market buffet and get our things over at the BYS shed.
David was an incredible help for the first three days of preparation, cleaning and installing all of the gear. Thank you David! I had forgotten that the spinnaker halyard had come out of the mast and needed to be rerun. David gladly went up the mast, four times in all, to finally get it rerun. If we get a lot of downwind sailing we'll need the spin to keep the boat moving. Plus it's a blast to sail.
Uptown, my local Bermuda friend from the last trip, came by the boat on Thursday night to say hello and say he would be by later with Swizzle. Yahoo! He makes awesome Swizzle. We bought some wahoo off of a fishing boat at the dock and Uptown prepared us an amazing dinner with whatever spices and veggies we had on board. Scrumptious.
The third crew member, Chris Arias, arrived Friday afternoon. Chris is an audio engineer and music producer. He looks the part with long hair and a goatee. Since David and I have done all of the prep work we anoint Chris as cook. He says he loves to cook so great.
We get his stuff on board and take the boat out in to the main harbor for a trial sail. Everything went fine and the crew got a feel for the boat. We were ready to go. However, the weather was not cooperating. Nothing but N-NW winds forecast for the next 3 days, no fun there bashing to weather.
We could get the Internet, which we jokingly called the Interweb, from the sail loft while in the anchorage. It was spotty but it worked. We all checked the weather constantly. No changes. It is a persistent pattern. But we can't wait forever so we all decided to head out on Saturday and just deal with the head wind.
This means checking out of Bermuda with customs which I do Saturday morning but it becomes a major hassle when I don't have the "yellow" copy of the boat coming into Bermuda. Sandra comes over with here file portfolio but doesn't have it either. Eventually they relent and grant the exit papers without the "yellow" copy. But it was a hassle.
We finally motor out of the harbor and through Town Cut. Just as we get to the outer marker the engine starts squealing and smoking. Something is very wrong. We turn back in. Of course it is Saturday and I can tell you from experience that Bermudians do NOT work on the week-ends. I called a few mechanics and even spoke with one. "I can be there first thing Monday morning." Great, we are stuck until Monday.
It's not really that bad though. The wind is contrary and Uptown has invited us over to his boat, Mujan, for dinner on Sunday. So we motored over to his boat and picked up a mooring ball from one of his friends. For a 32' boat it held the five of us, including Milo who was rafted up, comfortably, even when it started to rain and we had to use the cabin.
Uptown made lamb chops with pasta and a bean salad. Yummy. Plus we had Swizzle. Chris had his first Dark and Stormy, the well known Bermudian rum drink. We listened to music and talked about boats and sailing for four hours.
Eventually we all got hungry again so we dinghy'd over to Devante's Dream and cooked up burgers and pasta, talking more about boats and sailing until sunset. What a great day and great friend to have in Bermuda. Thanks Uptown.
On Monday morning the 6th of June I met Mark with Bermuda Yacht Services in Somers Market and we talked about the engine problem. He suggested tightening the alternator belt. I did that and the problem was solved. Time to go!
A quick trip to the customs office to check, again, and we were on our way. The winds were still forecast to be from the N-NW but now there is a forecasted shift to the W on Thursday. We need to get up there to take advantage of it. We motor out of Town Cut again and headed north, into the wind, motor sailing or smotering as well call it, as best we could.
About 12 hours into the passage the engine starts sounding a little off, you can easily pick up subtle sound changes after a while, and then stalls. Not good. I restarted it with some difficulty and it stalled again. That is a very sinking feeling. No engine with 500 miles to go into a head wind. We could do it but it might take a month instead of five days.
We sailed for another half an hour and then I made the decision to turn back to Bermuda. The sail back was actually delightful, going downwind with following sea and no motor, very peaceful, except that we have to make landfall and get inside Town Cut, which is very narrow. We covered the same distance back in just 9 hours.
I had a feeling (don't ask me how) that the engine would start and that we would be able to motor in. We did but I kept the RPM's very low. Once we got into port we considered the possible causes, the most likely culprit was the fuel filter. Getting to it was difficult and it had to be removed from the bulk-head and turn sideways.
Opening the drain caused a cereal bowls full of water to come out and then some. Opening the filter was ugly with mucous looking growth all over the filter. It was a wonder that the engine ran at all. I took the filter to the gas station and washed it out with diesel fuel, reinstalled and we were running smoothly. Only one hiccup, David checked his email and was being recalled from liberty and would have to fly back to Annapolis immediately.
Interestingly though that this did not bother me in the least. Chris is a capable sailor and had a chance to get used to the boat. We can double hand the passage, I am sure of it. David books a 3:00 PM flight. We get him cleared off the boat through customs, which is now very busy with a lot of boats leaving for the Azores, one guy singlehanded, and we got a new departure clearance since they can't find our original one and we headed out to sea again at 11:22 on Tuesday June 7th.
It was a rough first 24 hours. We had to motor sail into a full head wind close hauled as tight to the wind as we can get. We're heading North, which is okay since that is where the counter current for the Gulf Stream is. Eventually though we'll need to make some westing. We burned 3/4 of a tank of fuel in one day. It was very disheartening to know that we still had 500 miles to go with at least another day of bashing and almost half of our fuel already used. We would have to be very cautious on our RPM's for here on out.
Day 2 saw more NW wind and more due north motor sailing, yet we had a favorable current most of those two days, even though we could not make any headway NW. At one point we had 30 knots of breeze close hauled.
I have used the word "bashing" to describe the type of sailing we are doing. It literally is just that, bashing. On the bigger waves the entire front of the hull comes out of the water. I can just picture the front of the keel exposed to the air during these launches off of a wave. On the other side the flat part of the hull hits the water and causes a huge shudder in the entire boat and a slamming sound. You grit your teeth when it happens, which is about every 30 - 60 seconds. I am dreaming of being home with my wife during this stretch and wonder why I love ocean passages so much...
On Day 3 finally the wind came more from the west and we were able to take a break from bashing, making good speed without getting beat to death. Still all to the North though.
On Thursday afternoon I called Jane on the sat phone. Oops, I forgot to call her on our Anniversary. I didn't feel like talking in that sea. I now owe her one. I think I owe her one anyway...
She gave me the weather report straight from passageweather.com. Good news. The winds is forecast to swing to the north and then east. This is perfect. We are about 200 nautical miles from Marblehead and with pretty stiff wind from the NW still.
We heave-to, which is back winding the head sail so that the boat rests quietly on the water. It's a nice way to take a break from bashing and cook some dinner, which I do. Speaking of cooking, Chris was a trooper. It is his first passage and his constitution took some time to adjust to the constant pitching and rolling and slamming of the boat. His first day out was rough be he got better. Going below though and looking down into the reefer (refridge) or cooking was pretty much out of the question, so I cooked most of the meals and tonight I had a treat planned.
I took everything we had and made a nice 7 layer dip that we ate with the nice thick panini bread we had. Here's the recipe by layer; cream cheese, chili beans, skillet fried hamburger, skillet fried onions, squash and zucchini, cheddar cheese, chili beans, hamburger, shredded cheese. Bake for 30 minutes. Yes, it was cool enough out now to run the oven!
We ate that for dinner while the boat slowly slipped in the seas. It was very filling and we had lots left over for tomorrow. After dinner Chris went to bed and I took the watch. We ran 3 hour shifts which worked out perfectly in my mind. The overnights were the biggies, sometime we alternated between my taking the 12-3 and Chris taking the 3-6 depending on how the day went. We always announced who was on watch. In hindsight we really didn't need David. It allowed for more room on deck and in the cabin with less food prep. Double-handing is fine in my mind.
So I have the evening watch. It is light very late, with nautical twilight where you can see pretty good all the way until after 9:00 PM. I let off the jib which put Devante's Dream on port tack. We were basically heading for Delaware. Not where we want to go but the wind is forecast to go north and clock to the east. No reason to stay on port tack and get driven further east, we need to start making some westing.
The evening was magic. I watched as wave after wave of 10 degree wind shifts in fairly light are rolled across the horizon in front of me. After each shift I adjusted the auto-helm (affectionately know as Otto) to bring us closer and closer to our needed NW course. After just a few hours we were on course. Amazing. Good call Jane.
At the end of my shift I roused Chris and told him we were on course. The wind is still predicted to go further east so we need to stay on our present heading and adjust our sails to suit. We're on the last run home. Yahoo! We had sailed three days on port tack barely deviating more than a few degrees straight north from Bermuda.
Chris did a pretty good job keeping the sails setup properly. The wind did clock around and we were now broad reaching for Marblehead. Put up the spinnaker? No, I am too tired for that and with the wind going ENE-E it will probably be raining soon.
Later it is comfortable in the cabin even though it is cold and raw outside with temps in the 50's. We expect landfall in Marblehead Sunday afternoon.
The wind has picked up in the afternoon. Now we were running into the Great South Channel off Cape Cod often making 9 knots over the ground with a following sea. Sweet!
We pop our head out of the cabin occasionally to check for traffic that does not show up on the AIS system, which shows all of the commercial traffic, heading, speed and closest point of approach. There is really no one out here, especially with the weather. There are a few commercial fishing boats running along the shelf but otherwise we have the sea to ourselves.
Sunday June 13th, we have arrived in Marblehead and are getting our mooring in Salem harbor. It is 11:22, almost exactly five days out of Bermuda (if you don't count the wasted second attempt to leave!)
We're excited and Chris gets his first opportunity to grab a mooring ball. It takes a few times but we eventually get hooked up. It's a tough mooring to pickup as the hawser is heavy and has several shackles on it that make it hard to pick up. Then we are on. Time for a ceremonial Dark and Stormy~
~Eric
On Tuesday May 31, 2011 Eric arrived in Bermuda and meet one of the crew members, David Ritchey, at the Bermuda Yacht Services office. Devante's Dream has been in Bermuda for the winter having arrived in October 2010 from Marblehead Massachusetts.
My intention was to visit her over the winter and spend some time in Bermuda where the temperatures are moderate, mid 60's and sometimes warmer. However, every time I looked at the weather there was always a gale, sometimes blowing up to 69 knots. Not exactly cruising weather.
So here I am in May and the weather is much better. I found David on the Cruisers Forum message board. It's a great resource of knowledge and communication about sailboats and cruising in general. Last year I got crew from the same site.
David is a recent Naval Academy graduate and has the benefit of Newport to Bermuda experience. We've got a few days to get the boat ready before the second crew member, Chris Arias, comes in on Friday. So, time to get to it!
I can't say enough good things about Bermuda Yacht Services, Sandra, Mark and Frances. They watched over Devante's Dream for the winter and are extremely helpful. Sandra gave us a ride to their shop on the other side of the harbor where the dinghy was stored.
Frances shows us where the motor is and the dinghy is still tied to the tree where I left it rolled up tight last October. David and I untie it from the tree and carry is down to the beach. It's actually quite warm and the water is very inviting. I am already thinking about a swim.
We unroll the dinghy on the beach. It's dirty and also a cockroach hotel. David doesn't like them. I don't blame him. We install some new valve covers and get the new foot pump out and start inflating. It doesn't take long and the new pump is MUCH better than the old broken one that required you to remove the nozzle after EVERY pump to get more air in the chamber. David did all the pumping. Thanks David.The inflatable dinghy is nice and hard. We even have the keel inflated, thanks to the new valves, which hasn't worked for years.
Now it's time for a dinghy bath. It's in good shape for six years old, just a little dirty. The cockroaches don't like the bath and go off in all directions. We flip is over a few times to get them and the sand all out. When down she looks presentable.
We tie up to a boat on the quay and head over to get the engine after getting that swim in. I forgot how big the engine is. It's an 8HP but more importantly it is a four stroke so it's huge. Huge but strong and very fuel efficient and simple to work, no mixing gas and oil, which is nice.
This will be the moment of truth. The engine has been sitting for eight months. It's hard to believe it has been that long. When I left in October I ran all of the gas out so is should be okay, but you never know with outboard motors.
Frances checks the gas and pronounces it fine so we carry to motor down to the beach and get it all hooked up. A few pumps to the primer ball, pull the choke all the way out and pull twice. It starts right up.
We are cooking with gas! High fives all around.
We have a lot of gear and it all won't fit in the dinghy so we leave it at the shop and buzz over to Devante's Dream. She is moored on a BYS mooring ball in a protected harbor about a mile from the beach we are on.
We tie up the dinghy to the stern of Devante's Dream and hop on board. She's a little moldy on the inside and quite dirty on the outside but all in all she is in good shape. I crank up the engine and then David and I remove the massive mooring chain and extra mooring lines and head over to the St. Georges anchorage.
In the fall of 2010 Devante's Dream was the first boat in the harbor, except for Milo on Magic but he was there for most of the summer, he even went through a hurricane on board. This spring there are 20 to 30 boats in the harbor and Sandra said that the week before there were twice as many. Bermuda is really the crossroads of passage sailing in the North Atlantic. Even so we are able to anchor near the town dinghy dock. We run in for a bit at Somers Market buffet and get our things over at the BYS shed.
David was an incredible help for the first three days of preparation, cleaning and installing all of the gear. Thank you David! I had forgotten that the spinnaker halyard had come out of the mast and needed to be rerun. David gladly went up the mast, four times in all, to finally get it rerun. If we get a lot of downwind sailing we'll need the spin to keep the boat moving. Plus it's a blast to sail.
Uptown, my local Bermuda friend from the last trip, came by the boat on Thursday night to say hello and say he would be by later with Swizzle. Yahoo! He makes awesome Swizzle. We bought some wahoo off of a fishing boat at the dock and Uptown prepared us an amazing dinner with whatever spices and veggies we had on board. Scrumptious.
The third crew member, Chris Arias, arrived Friday afternoon. Chris is an audio engineer and music producer. He looks the part with long hair and a goatee. Since David and I have done all of the prep work we anoint Chris as cook. He says he loves to cook so great.
We get his stuff on board and take the boat out in to the main harbor for a trial sail. Everything went fine and the crew got a feel for the boat. We were ready to go. However, the weather was not cooperating. Nothing but N-NW winds forecast for the next 3 days, no fun there bashing to weather.
We could get the Internet, which we jokingly called the Interweb, from the sail loft while in the anchorage. It was spotty but it worked. We all checked the weather constantly. No changes. It is a persistent pattern. But we can't wait forever so we all decided to head out on Saturday and just deal with the head wind.
This means checking out of Bermuda with customs which I do Saturday morning but it becomes a major hassle when I don't have the "yellow" copy of the boat coming into Bermuda. Sandra comes over with here file portfolio but doesn't have it either. Eventually they relent and grant the exit papers without the "yellow" copy. But it was a hassle.
We finally motor out of the harbor and through Town Cut. Just as we get to the outer marker the engine starts squealing and smoking. Something is very wrong. We turn back in. Of course it is Saturday and I can tell you from experience that Bermudians do NOT work on the week-ends. I called a few mechanics and even spoke with one. "I can be there first thing Monday morning." Great, we are stuck until Monday.
It's not really that bad though. The wind is contrary and Uptown has invited us over to his boat, Mujan, for dinner on Sunday. So we motored over to his boat and picked up a mooring ball from one of his friends. For a 32' boat it held the five of us, including Milo who was rafted up, comfortably, even when it started to rain and we had to use the cabin.
Uptown made lamb chops with pasta and a bean salad. Yummy. Plus we had Swizzle. Chris had his first Dark and Stormy, the well known Bermudian rum drink. We listened to music and talked about boats and sailing for four hours.
Eventually we all got hungry again so we dinghy'd over to Devante's Dream and cooked up burgers and pasta, talking more about boats and sailing until sunset. What a great day and great friend to have in Bermuda. Thanks Uptown.
On Monday morning the 6th of June I met Mark with Bermuda Yacht Services in Somers Market and we talked about the engine problem. He suggested tightening the alternator belt. I did that and the problem was solved. Time to go!
A quick trip to the customs office to check, again, and we were on our way. The winds were still forecast to be from the N-NW but now there is a forecasted shift to the W on Thursday. We need to get up there to take advantage of it. We motor out of Town Cut again and headed north, into the wind, motor sailing or smotering as well call it, as best we could.
About 12 hours into the passage the engine starts sounding a little off, you can easily pick up subtle sound changes after a while, and then stalls. Not good. I restarted it with some difficulty and it stalled again. That is a very sinking feeling. No engine with 500 miles to go into a head wind. We could do it but it might take a month instead of five days.
We sailed for another half an hour and then I made the decision to turn back to Bermuda. The sail back was actually delightful, going downwind with following sea and no motor, very peaceful, except that we have to make landfall and get inside Town Cut, which is very narrow. We covered the same distance back in just 9 hours.
I had a feeling (don't ask me how) that the engine would start and that we would be able to motor in. We did but I kept the RPM's very low. Once we got into port we considered the possible causes, the most likely culprit was the fuel filter. Getting to it was difficult and it had to be removed from the bulk-head and turn sideways.
Opening the drain caused a cereal bowls full of water to come out and then some. Opening the filter was ugly with mucous looking growth all over the filter. It was a wonder that the engine ran at all. I took the filter to the gas station and washed it out with diesel fuel, reinstalled and we were running smoothly. Only one hiccup, David checked his email and was being recalled from liberty and would have to fly back to Annapolis immediately.
Interestingly though that this did not bother me in the least. Chris is a capable sailor and had a chance to get used to the boat. We can double hand the passage, I am sure of it. David books a 3:00 PM flight. We get him cleared off the boat through customs, which is now very busy with a lot of boats leaving for the Azores, one guy singlehanded, and we got a new departure clearance since they can't find our original one and we headed out to sea again at 11:22 on Tuesday June 7th.
It was a rough first 24 hours. We had to motor sail into a full head wind close hauled as tight to the wind as we can get. We're heading North, which is okay since that is where the counter current for the Gulf Stream is. Eventually though we'll need to make some westing. We burned 3/4 of a tank of fuel in one day. It was very disheartening to know that we still had 500 miles to go with at least another day of bashing and almost half of our fuel already used. We would have to be very cautious on our RPM's for here on out.
Day 2 saw more NW wind and more due north motor sailing, yet we had a favorable current most of those two days, even though we could not make any headway NW. At one point we had 30 knots of breeze close hauled.
I have used the word "bashing" to describe the type of sailing we are doing. It literally is just that, bashing. On the bigger waves the entire front of the hull comes out of the water. I can just picture the front of the keel exposed to the air during these launches off of a wave. On the other side the flat part of the hull hits the water and causes a huge shudder in the entire boat and a slamming sound. You grit your teeth when it happens, which is about every 30 - 60 seconds. I am dreaming of being home with my wife during this stretch and wonder why I love ocean passages so much...
On Day 3 finally the wind came more from the west and we were able to take a break from bashing, making good speed without getting beat to death. Still all to the North though.
On Thursday afternoon I called Jane on the sat phone. Oops, I forgot to call her on our Anniversary. I didn't feel like talking in that sea. I now owe her one. I think I owe her one anyway...
She gave me the weather report straight from passageweather.com. Good news. The winds is forecast to swing to the north and then east. This is perfect. We are about 200 nautical miles from Marblehead and with pretty stiff wind from the NW still.
We heave-to, which is back winding the head sail so that the boat rests quietly on the water. It's a nice way to take a break from bashing and cook some dinner, which I do. Speaking of cooking, Chris was a trooper. It is his first passage and his constitution took some time to adjust to the constant pitching and rolling and slamming of the boat. His first day out was rough be he got better. Going below though and looking down into the reefer (refridge) or cooking was pretty much out of the question, so I cooked most of the meals and tonight I had a treat planned.
I took everything we had and made a nice 7 layer dip that we ate with the nice thick panini bread we had. Here's the recipe by layer; cream cheese, chili beans, skillet fried hamburger, skillet fried onions, squash and zucchini, cheddar cheese, chili beans, hamburger, shredded cheese. Bake for 30 minutes. Yes, it was cool enough out now to run the oven!
We ate that for dinner while the boat slowly slipped in the seas. It was very filling and we had lots left over for tomorrow. After dinner Chris went to bed and I took the watch. We ran 3 hour shifts which worked out perfectly in my mind. The overnights were the biggies, sometime we alternated between my taking the 12-3 and Chris taking the 3-6 depending on how the day went. We always announced who was on watch. In hindsight we really didn't need David. It allowed for more room on deck and in the cabin with less food prep. Double-handing is fine in my mind.
So I have the evening watch. It is light very late, with nautical twilight where you can see pretty good all the way until after 9:00 PM. I let off the jib which put Devante's Dream on port tack. We were basically heading for Delaware. Not where we want to go but the wind is forecast to go north and clock to the east. No reason to stay on port tack and get driven further east, we need to start making some westing.
The evening was magic. I watched as wave after wave of 10 degree wind shifts in fairly light are rolled across the horizon in front of me. After each shift I adjusted the auto-helm (affectionately know as Otto) to bring us closer and closer to our needed NW course. After just a few hours we were on course. Amazing. Good call Jane.
At the end of my shift I roused Chris and told him we were on course. The wind is still predicted to go further east so we need to stay on our present heading and adjust our sails to suit. We're on the last run home. Yahoo! We had sailed three days on port tack barely deviating more than a few degrees straight north from Bermuda.
Chris did a pretty good job keeping the sails setup properly. The wind did clock around and we were now broad reaching for Marblehead. Put up the spinnaker? No, I am too tired for that and with the wind going ENE-E it will probably be raining soon.
Later it is comfortable in the cabin even though it is cold and raw outside with temps in the 50's. We expect landfall in Marblehead Sunday afternoon.
The wind has picked up in the afternoon. Now we were running into the Great South Channel off Cape Cod often making 9 knots over the ground with a following sea. Sweet!
We pop our head out of the cabin occasionally to check for traffic that does not show up on the AIS system, which shows all of the commercial traffic, heading, speed and closest point of approach. There is really no one out here, especially with the weather. There are a few commercial fishing boats running along the shelf but otherwise we have the sea to ourselves.
Sunday June 13th, we have arrived in Marblehead and are getting our mooring in Salem harbor. It is 11:22, almost exactly five days out of Bermuda (if you don't count the wasted second attempt to leave!)
We're excited and Chris gets his first opportunity to grab a mooring ball. It takes a few times but we eventually get hooked up. It's a tough mooring to pickup as the hawser is heavy and has several shackles on it that make it hard to pick up. Then we are on. Time for a ceremonial Dark and Stormy~
~Eric
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Bermuda to New England - June 2011
Devante's Dream will be repositioning from Bermuda to New England in June. We're looking forward to having the Gulf Stream work in our favor on the this passage.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)