Well, we left Norfolk on Friday the 5th and arrived at St Thomas about 10 and a half days later on Monday the 15th (1500 mile trip). The winds blew strong from the northwest the entire time which made for a quicker trip than expected. I'll say now that the weather was perfect, but the third day may have been an exception. We had been heading south along the coast for the first two days but had to cross the gulf stream (which flows north). The forcast didn't look great for crossing, but continuing down the coast would point us SW so we decided to cross anyways. By the time we were in the stream the winds were 20-25 knots from the NW (bad) and throughout the night they were consistently in the mid 30's (very bad). The highest reading we saw was 45 knots! Needles to say, the waves were really big. We're guessing they got to about 15-18 feet. Sitting at the helm a few times, I kind of got the feeling the boat was being dropped down a cliff (especially at night). We just had a scrap of jib out, but when surfing with the waves there were times when the boatspeed got up to 12 knots. I'll admit, at the time I was a little bit worried, but looking back on it I'm actually glad we got the experience. The rest of the trip felt like a cake walk. Winds were typcally between 15-25 and always behind us. We actually never even used the mainsail. We just used the jib and tried out the spinacker on light wind day. I was expecting to see more boats, but we only saw two big ships the entire crossing. Other than that, a lot of sunsets, and a little bit of sea life. I saw a sea turtle and a shark early on and we've seen plenty of flying fish. I thought these things just jumped out of the water, but they actually fly (often about 100 yards). We've even had a couple land on the deck of the boat and Jim claims he got hit in the face by one on one of his night shifts. My favorite wildlife encounter so far has been the dolphins. A couple times we've had a group of them come and jump alongside the boat and follow us for 5-10 minutes. Pretty cool.
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| In 30 to 40 knots of wind, this is plenty of sail. |
Just to give you an idea of our path
People always ask me what I do all the time on the boat so here goes.
-cooking- oatmeal, oatmeal pancakes, grilled sanwiches, fried veggies, pasta. Nothing to fancy, but I enjoy it since we do have a lot of free time
-reading- a new hobby of mine
-playing ukulele- Jim brought a ukulele and taught me a few songs and chords so I can play some of my guitar songs.
-sleeping- I've been taking dramamine and it seems to make me very tired because I'm always napping. I sleep in many different places (I counted 10) depending on which way we're heeled over and how wavy it is.
-at the helm-I spend a third of my time at the helm. We take three hour shifts which can get pretty long, but it's nice having 6 hours off between shifts. I didn't really like night shifts at the start when it was still cold but once we got south I've started to like it. I usually put my Ipod in and star gaze. I've gotten pretty good with the constellations and seen the international space station a couple times and tons of shooting stars.
The last couple days the wind kinda died so we gave in and started motoring. Not exactly sure where the doldrums start, but we may have hit them. We've got about 45 gallons of diesel on board though so we could afford to motor the last hundred mile leg.
I talked Dave into letting us go for a little swim out at sea. Water temp, just under 90 degrees :P
Volcanic islands are sweet!
I'm not sure how often I'll have internet access down here, but I'll try to get a post up from time to time. As of now, I'm thinking I'll come back just before Christmas but that's still up in the air.
