A Tale of Two Chemists: 1285 Nautical Miles, 9.5 days and Little Wind!

1285 Nautical Miles, 9.5 days and Little Wind!

Apologies for the delay getting our first post-passage blog out. To be honest, I have been exhausted and it's taken a couple of days to re-establish some equilibrium. We also have Gloria and Jo aboard and we have been preparing for a week of local cruising in the USVI. I will try and post some blogs and photos over the coming days. I'll post 2 or 3 related to the passage and then start catching up on what we are doing now.

As you probably already know, we made it to the US Virgin Islands. It was bit of a struggle! We left Morehead City, NC with a weather window to get across the Gulf Stream. That worked out well, although residual northerly winds and some squalls made for a bumpy few hours. Once through, we headed south with the intention of staying within the 250 mile offshore mark, as required by our insurance. It soon became apparent that we had some serious challenges ahead. If we kept going as planned, the weather forecasts suggested we would run into 6-8 foot seas directly on the nose. One option was to cut south to Turks and Caicos and wait for an opportunity to island hop the rest of the way. Chris Parker, who provided our weather info, suggested that with the current weather patterns we might wait 4-6 weeks for decent conditions. More seriously, the Turks and Caicos could be in the path of a tropical system that appeared to be developing off Panama. Given these concerns, and putting the safety of the boat and crew first, we opted to bypass our insurance limitation and follow a more traditional route to the south east until we met favorable trade winds. Taking this route involved a lot of light air and motoring. We desperately chased the trade winds, but they always seemed a little ahead of us. At one point we felt we had finally reached favorable winds, only to hit a series of squalls a couple of hours later, that slowed us down. We worked really hard to sail as much as we could and to conserve fuel by motoring slowly when necessary. It wasn’t until the last 24 hours that we finally had some fast beam-reach sailing in solid trade winds. We arrived in the USVI after sunset and sailed around to Christmas Cove, about 5 miles north of Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas. We dropped anchor, had a celebratory beer before catching up on some much needed sleep. We motored into the harbor the following morning, exhausted but happy. Our timing worked out well. Jo (Pete’s wife) had arrived by plane two days earlier and we met up immediately. Gloria flew in later that afternoon, and that connection also went well. Dave made a quick departure because his wife Kathy had been experiencing some medical issues and he was keen to get home. However, he did previously write a blog whilst sailing! Dave's blog is posted below and I I will try and add more details and photos of our passage over the coming days.

Ghosted by the trade winds (Dave Anderson)

We threw a party for the trade winds but they never showed up on the Morehead City- St Thomas passage. Armed with Chris Parker forecasts and Predict Wind models and the knowledge of where the rascals live (in the tropics!, we motored high and low across the southern edge of the Bermuda High, trying to get west to the magical longitude (65) where one can turn to reach south, driven by the trade winds. We had good food and friends but were ghosted by the guest of honor. The rest of the passage looked like it did in 2017- cold along the Atlantic coast with plenty of fish and dolphins and birds (I am having a Great Year!), a grit-your-teeth plunge across the Gulf Stream, endless motoring across the warm and hot low-wind subtropical high with flying fish and rains squalls and the occasional tropic bird. Right now it’s 11/14/2023 14:41 GMT and we are 30 hours out of St. Thomas still looking for the E-ticket ride, and still hopeful that we will find some good 15 knot winds out of the east. Cotinga’s diesel is humming along like a beast and her sails seem to like the forward apparent wind, boosting our speed by a knot as we bear 164M toward St. Thomas. Mike is measuring fuel consumption with a stick and noting consumption per hour and fuel remaining in the log book. We just backed off the RPM’s to 1500 to conserve fuel. (Note: back in the 1960’s Disneyland provided visitors with a coupon book with ride passes A-E, and the booklet usually contained two tickets to the biggest, baddest rides (requiring an E ticket). These were cherished by the younger visitors. Dave