Gorgeous sunny warm day for a change. :-D
wind was 6-11S. Made docking a bit of a pain as it was pushing us on, and the old main didn't drop easily. Steve and I got it together in the end though and had a great day. I can't wait until we can swap back the newer sails though.
Just the 2 boats out in quite low wind, but we had a great day anyway. Lovely first sail of the year for me. 3 short L2 races. We won the middle one.
Spent morning at DSC checking cruisers (battery 2 on Akimbo not registering? but it does have charge.) , retying after gale winds, and took mainsail off Sun.
Longest delivery yet (1902.31nm according to my Garmin), dodged the biggest storm, got caught by a smaller one. Dealt with snowstorms and ice on the ICW, then squalls and big seas for days south of Bermuda. Had to manage night watches and approaching land with no radar, and flakey AIS, foul water tanks, groundings, and more. It was...an experience. There were dolphins and my first encounter with bioluminescence though.
SO close to 1000nm! Aghh. We even thought about overshooting just a teensy bit and stopping in Guadeloupe first to get our ocean cruising club requirement in. So sad. Just didn't have time to make it happen though and had to get to Antigua right away. Will add a bunch of pics and more detail later.
St. George's Bermuda to first Falmouth harbor to test out our anchor set up, and then English Harbor Antigua. Nelson's Dockyard wasn't ready when we got there, so anchored in the back harbor, got the dinghy ready, then Nelson's radioed (eye roll) and we headed over to do a med mooring.
Hardly saw any other boats out there during the passage, but the first one we did see was a container ship out of Baltimore headed for Indonesia. When we were a few miles apart, suddenly a couple of birds came over to check us out, and then they flew off. I'm sure they must have been hanging out in the cargo ship because of how far out we were.
Winterize the engine on Akimbo. Turned battery to #2 to start engine, closed seacock and started sucking up the antifreeze, but when Sandy saw it coming out the back, the fuel shutoff button didn't work! I started to freak out a bit, opened the seacock, still no water, quickly had Sandy clear out the lazarette to access the side of the engine and jumped down there to cover the air intake and it worked! Then we tried starting again and then the dc panel on, and then the shut off worked normally.
on SD we were able to start the engine with some percussive maintenance on the starter, and took it over to rusty scupper to pump out. Drained the fresh water tank, added anti feeeze everywhere including engine, and took both sails off. I had never taken a furling main off before so that was interesting. The outhaul was badly chafed at the clew, btw. Really glad we got that off when we did.
Slept over in NJ and set out at 5am southward.
Conditions: chilly, though the rain stoped last night, but wind was 20-40kt SW and we felt it. Departed Norwalk 5am, immediately Spencer asked if we were dragging something in the water because boat was sluggish. Couldn't find anything visible though. There was a lot of wind and spray making visibility iffy through the dodger until the sun came out near manhattan. Got some wind break along the buildings, but it really picked up as we got towards the lower end. I was driving at that point and saw 38 true at least, but was pretty focused on the speed ferries (WTH are those things even?! They hardly leave a wake from planing I guess, but Jesus...) and then the massive Staten Island ferry showed up just as our speed dropped into the 3s. Skipper said that was when I started to look a little nervous, haha. We had room to bear away a little and got by before he got too close, but eeesh. My new profile pic for a while will be my selfie with that thing behind me. Wind picked up to 40 at that point and I didn't know where we wanted to duck into, so gratefully I handed off to the skipper. What a day. The diver just came up and said he pulled a balloon string off that was wrapped around the prop and shaft, as well as a bunch of barnacles. I can't wait to see the pics. Staying the night here in Jersey and will start again at daybreak.
Steve, Richard and I made it out to the bridge quickly, (gusting over 20) but had to beat back pretty hard. We did get a couple good long port tacks, but the other way was almost backwards. Wind was 14-22 WSW, low 60s, sunny. A little over 3 hrs
Richard, Robert & I made a bridge run this morning on a J, and got there in 50 minutes! Beam reach pretty much the whole way after dominoes and our SOG topped out at 8.7 kts. Wind was 14-23 W. Very sunny but chilly out there in all the breeze. Did the whole thing in about 3 hrs. Also stopped by Akimbo before leaving to swap the speedo for the plug so I can clean the wheel later and have James do some tech trouble shooting. Bleh. Was very smooth at swooping though, minimal water spouting. :-)