1:30 AM watch

We are using Her Majesty's watch schedule, courtesy of Martin. It was developed by the Royal Navy, and has been in use for about 300 years. It is the source of the expression "dog watch" which probably derived from the term "dodge watch". Once each day, a few of the crew get a 2 your watch instead of the usual 4 or more hours on, so they "dodged" the watch. The two hour watch allows everyone to get offset enough so that everyone gets a rotation through the good and bad times for a watch.

What this means to me is that I am on watch from 10 PM until 4:00 AM, but I get tomorrow off.

What it means to you is that I am all caught up at the moment, having fixed all that we know is broken, and chose to share this time with you.

It is clear and calm, with light winds out of the west. We saw a sliver of the moon for the first time this trip; it set shortly after the sun. The stars are brilliant. We are motoring at present to cool the icebox and charge the batteries. I hope that we can sail tomorrow, but have my doubts
that there will be enough wind.

We are racing a frontal system to Bermuda, and it carries gale force winds to weak storm. That is a little less menacing than it sounds, as we were sailing in near gale winds the first day and a half, and it was fast, fun and safe. But gale force we would rather avoid.

We set minimum goals for progress for the next two days, sufficient to avoid the gale. Thus far we have managed to put some "in the bank", meaning we are ahead of that schedule. At the present rate, we should achieve our 17:00 goal by 10:00, 7 hours ahead of schedule. If we are lucky, that will give us time for a nice leisurely sail tomorrow, probably under spinnaker.

Talk to you later.

P.S. Dec 20, 2009

On a 6 hour shift, you have some time to blog. We always had two on watch through the night, so it was OK for one to go below and warm up, or make some coffee, tea or soup; or blog.

This post is the first I mentioned that we might have gone to Norfolk, now that it seems clear that we are going to Bermuda. No point in getting the second crew upset for nothing.

Paul and Bruce around sunset, notice that we are warmer already, no hats! Afternoons turned out to be the best times. Everyone would be up by about 14:00, and it was a time of camaraderie and usually the big meal of the day. Then the early morning crew was off to try for some sleep, and the evening watch set to work on the deck inspection.

Deck inspection was one of the really good things we did. Each evening an hour before the sun set, and each sunrise, we went around the boat and inspected the rig, electronics, lifelines, battery condition, etc. etc. etc. I think it saved us from real trouble at least twice. One such time was finding that the pin that held the boom to the main mast was compromised. We could have lost the main sail. That would have made it difficult to make Bermuda before the gale.

Sunset

It got REALLY dark at night

Approachiing Gulf Stream

All is well with the ship and crew.

I don't know if anyone listened to the southbound herb broadcast on the internet but it was a real cliffhanger. Herb was watching 2 low pressure systems and trying to decide which was dominant. If one was dominant, we would be heading to North Carolina for shelter, and if the other was dominant, we could make it to Bermuda if we move along. So for the entire
first day we did not know whether we were headed to Bermuda or North Carolina. When we reached Herb yesterday, we had already made 3 degrees of progress south (about 180 miles) and were not about to go back to New England, because we discovered that it is warmer here.

Herb says the neither has fully established it's dominance, but even if we get a bad break and storms head to Bermuda, we should be able to get there first. We should arrive Sunday Night to Monday morning, and it would arrive Monday evening.

IF it forms, and IF it beats us there it will be bad, but not terrible. Herb says gale force to weak storm. We have been sailing through the night on a "fresh breeze" to "weak gale" which is only a little worse than the gale force to weak storm he is calling for. Still, we won't be stopping for any kiteboarding sessions on the Gulf Stream.

In a few hours we will enter the Gulf Stream. Conditions are very good for this.

Some things we learned so far:

Turns out that if you boil bagged frozen pea soup in a pressure cooker, the bag explodes inside the pressure cooker and makes a mess. Four day old underwear is not as bad as it sounds.

You get a lot more well wishes and congratulations from your google group right after you leave, and it clogs up your ability to send and receive email, even though you are just retrieving the headers It is cold in New England in November. Especially on the water. Even the
Canadians say so.

ttyl

Paul says that the key to successful cruising is knowing how to fix your boat underway

Where do I start...

Last night during deck inspection, I noticed that the side lights were not working. No big deal, we were going to be sailing, so we could use the new masthead tricolor light that I just installed. Turned it on, and ....nothing. No big deal, we just duck taped the dingy sidelights to the mizzen, and were good until we had daylight on our side.

Then we noticed that the dinghy was fretting a little, so we went forward and sweated that down.

On to today. Oh yes, Paul and I were sitting by the companionway, and we heard a clack. What was that? Paul says something hit the deck. "What" I asked, "that sounded like hardware". Paul looked around until we found a little 1/4-20 X 3/4 machine screw. Hardware was falling from the sky. I started going over the rigging of the mizzen in my head and with my eyes,
when I noticed the radar hanging from a single ...you guessed it...1/4-20 X 3/4 machine screw. My bad, I inspected all of the hardware components that hold the rig up, but not this component that is held up by the rig.

Crap! Get the boson's chair, I'll drop the mizzen, Bruce you center the main and get the jib furled. Within 45 seconds the good crew had me on my way to the errant radar.

Well, it turns out that going up the mizzen in 5 foot seas is a little different than in the protection of Quick's Hole in the dark of night turning in slow circles. Neither is ideal, but this was much more physical.

We managed to get one screw from the collection to stabilize it. I decided to take a quick nap because I had been on the sunrise watch and was exhausted. No sooner did I hit the sleeping bag then there was a call for all hands.

Within an hour of the first hardware falling from the sky, a second screw plopped down to the deck. This time it was immediately apparent where it came from. The traveler track, that the main sheet attaches to (which controls the second most important sail on the boat) had just ripped right off of its mounting brackets on the port side. The starboard side held, and due to good thinking on the part of the crew, no further damage was sustained.

This one we could address with a little more thoughtfulness. Alan had just refurbished this part of his Pearson 424 within the last two weeks. With the detailed knowledge of the construction at hand, we knew right away to drill a 4" hole in the bracket so that we could reach in and put in new screws and nuts, rather than the original design that only lasted 30 years.

Things happen in threes, so we were getting pretty nervous, but Alan had the presence of mind to look for other broken or nearly broken things, starting with the most inconsequential. Heck, we could break something if it came to that. Not that it would come to that. It was not long before we found an air horn that squawked in a most ineffective manner, and replaced it with the spare.

Winds are fair, the sky is clear, the sun is out. We are stripping layers off quickly. We are in the stream. The water is 72 degrees. We are making around 10 kts speed over ground toward Bermuda.

Life is good.

I going to take a nap.

P.S. Dec 20 2009:

I had not realized until now our good fortune in having turned back to retreive the mizzen halyard. Had we decided to proceed without it, we would have been helpless to save the radar. We would have had to listen while it beat itself to death uo on the mizzen, and we would have had to worry about who was going to get hurt when it fell. What good luck!

As for going up the mast...Physical! That was an understatement. I took a beating up there. I asked the crew to turn the boat into the waves to stop the side to side, and the boat began beating me sensless with the mizzen mast. i was making deals with God up there; which was a little dramatic, as the radar was not critical gear. But it was expensive, and I did not want to loose it for no reason. By the time I came down, I was a little dizzy and completely exhausted. Trying to lift a radome while wrapped around a mizzen mast with your legs and one arm is a form of strenuous pilates. I wanted nothing but to lie down for a while by the time I came down.

And talk about luck! That traveller ripping out of the deck was lucky in so many ways. if it had happened the night before in heavy conditions, we would have had to deal with an uncontrolled boom in well over 20 knots of wind. Plus, it might have caused collateral damage, like breaking the boom or gooseneck. had we been unluck, it would have happened when someone was on dock and it could have swept them off or struck them in the head and killed them.

But none of that happened. here are some pictures:

Nice Butt!
Probably shaking out a reef (increasing the size of the exposed sail) as the weather improved

Alan!

Bruce looking tired

Walter, probably checking in for weather on the SSB at the Nav Station

First night

It was a pretty eventful first night out. We were not even out of our local cruising area, when we discovered that the mizzen halyard was secured improperly, and had been "skyed". Skyed means that the bitter end of the halyard went up to the top of the mast, and someone has to go up there to retrieve it.

Normally this is not a problem, bet we were out in about 25 Kts, gusting to over 30, and the mizzen mast has no extra halyards to pull someone up to retrieve the first one. So you have to climb up without assistance.

Since we failed to bring our trained lazerette monkey, I had to go. It was good that it happened early in the trip, since we could go back and seek shelter in Quick's hole, in the Elizabeth Islands. When I first started climbing, it became apparent that I did not have the strength to pull myself up, then hold myself with 1 hand and 2 feet while I moved my safety line up with the other. So we ran a safety line over the spreaders, and I was able to climb up that far.

That only left about another 15 feet. Paul rigged up a long pole made of fishing rods and duct tape with a small grapple taped to the end, and I was able to retrieve it. NP.

The night was blustery and even thought the seas were behind us, the going was kind of tough. Without naming names, a couple of the crew fell to Mal de Mare, but Paul and Bruce managed to cover their shifts anyway.

We are making good progress, check out the SPOT transceiver positions on the web site.

P.S. Dec 20 2009:

The next day was much smoother sailing.

I wrote the preceding entry in 8-12 foot seas wedged into a corner of my bunk, so I was brief. Now I can undo the good deed of brevity and describe a bit more.

Preparations started a year in advance, but the actual departure was a last minute affair. We had all of the food and crew gear on board, but still had not lashed the dinghy to the foredeck, move the anchor and anchor chain to the bilge, sealed the dorades, mounted the solar panels, etc. etc.

It was good in a way that the weather had delayed us. Offshore insurance underwriters all required that I have the boat surveyed. I made the mistake of not hiring the surveyor known for "rubber stamping" boats. My surveyor was known to be very thorough, and although he separated those items that were compliance, must do, should do , and nice to do someday, the insurance underwriters insisted that we do ALL of the repairs and upgrades before departure. It was not doable in the time we had left.

My crew worked like mad on the boat, and I negotiated with the insurance people. We finally got struck a deal that would work for both of us, and we cranked through the list.

When the list was completed, we still had some time to start on some of the upgrades. The afternoon before departure, I commissioned a frame to be built to mount the solar panels on the davits, provided that it could be done the next day. Not only was it done the next day, it was done before noon, so we picked up the frame about 6 hours before we departed. While we waited for the winds to diminish a bit, we mounted the frame, finishing minutes before we cast off! Brilliant!

We had not done these things because we did not think that we would be leaving. There was much foul weather out there; really nasty stuff. Our daily ritual included tuning in to Southbound Herb each day to get the weather and advice on when to leave. He would talk to us directly (when atmospheric conditions allowed us to reach him on the SSB) So far he was advising us to head downthe coast to Norfolk so that we could leave from there.

During these sessions, we made our first contacts with Dawn and Lauri on S.V. Cattails, who we would come to know very well. Herb had given them the OK to leave a day or so before we were ready, and they were on the way. Unknowingly breaking the etiquette of the SSB net, we called Cattails to congratulate them on the fine weather window they had chosen. It looked from shore like they would be having a fine trip. They told us no, they were getting their asses kicked. That sobered us up a bit...Cattails had done this trip a few times before, and in conditions that we thought were OK (from shore), Lauri had to stop broadcasting to go puke.

When the day came, Herb told us that we could go, but he could not way where. there were two cyclonic weather systems out there, and he could not say which would dominate. He suggested that I head due south (Bermuda is SSE) and in a day or so, he would tell us whether to head to Bermuda or Norfolk. That's sailing, folks. The crew had a meeting, and I suggested that if he said Norfolk, I would abandon plans for Bermuda and the Caribbean, and head down the coast for the Bahamas. the crew all agreed that they would abandon their pre-paid flights back from Bermuda if this was the case, and stick with me as we headed down the coast. Some of them preferred this possibility, since they cold stay on longer. I did not mention this on the blog, because my second crew did not need to know that their plans might get ruined.

The episode with the halyard began in the frenzy of activity at the dock. We had a number of well wishers and helper show up and set to work with us to get us underway. Another experienced cruiser taped up the water tank fills so there would be no salt water intrusion, seized and stored the extra anchor rodes, mounted some hooks for kite storage etc. Several of the local sailors topped by. In the midst of the crowd on board, I did the unthinkable and fastened a critical piece of gear in a temporary way; that is how the halyard went tot he top of the mast.

People on shore were able to view our progress by watching a web site. We had a SPOT transponder that beamed our position to a constellation of satellites, back to Internet gateways, and to a web site that positioned us on a map. Just like Magellan and Columbus.

Imagine their surprise when about three hours into our big adventure, we turned tail and fled to the lee of a local island, then started making little tiny circles. Some began to wonder if we didn't just chicken out. Others thought that we might have come back to that island to wait out the weather a while longer, maybe even days, but to embarrassed to come back to our own home port for fear of being spotted.

It was incredibly black that night, and though we were within 50 yards of shore, we could not see it at all. I instructed Bruce to pay no mind to what we were doing, it was his job to keep us in calm water, and keep us from running aground. It was a tough job performed well. The frequent and slow refresh of the GPS screen (it was set to course up), the crew working between him and the GPS, the darkness and the strong current in the hole all added up to make for a tense situation.

I think with a lesser crew, mutiny would have been a possibility. Here we were, heading out into some pretty challenging weather, without knowing where we were heading, and we have problems in our first few hours. Bruce, Alan and Paul were great. What could have become the seeds of a negative experience and trip became a bonding experience, where we learned to trust each other to do our jobs without second guessing.

It was an extremely fast first day. We had to head to weather that first night so it was rough cold and windy for a few hours as we bashed into it. Then we could turn away from the wind (still ahead of the beam) so it was ...rough cold and windy; but a little less rough and windy. We made over 180 miles in the 24 hours after we left (the second time).

The crew is toughing it out in foul weather

Here we are on day 5 of the passage (see picture). To our surprise, we can still pirate wi-fi access to the internet from here. We are getting the latest updates from NOAA, NWS, passageweather.com, etc. The internet is everywhere.

There was a bit of a scare when we started to take on water earlier, but I tightened the coupling to the leaking radiator, and it seems to be under control.

Even though it has been bone-chillingly cold on this trip, we have resisted the temptation to light a fire. We figure it is just too risky when on this kind of expedition. Plus we would have to throw out the dried flowers Dana put on the hearth for decoration. So we just turned up the thermostat.

As for keeping our energy levels up to the demands of the adventure, I think we will have the pork tenderloin tonight on a bed of butternut squash. It is Bruce's turn to cook. Hey where is Bruce? Now that I think about it, we haven't seen him since his shift on Sunday...Man overboard!

Um....more later.

We learned some new weather terminology yesterday

Until now, I thought "all hell will break loose" was a figure of speech.

When Southbound Herb ( http://www3.sympatico.ca/hehilgen/vax498.htm ) gave us the lowdown on the weather yesterday, he was quite emphatic about what the sailors south of New England had to do: seek shelter immediately.

No problem for us, we are safely ensconced in a tight little house on shore. Thank God for modern weather products. Take a look at passageweather.com and look at the Newport to Bermuda links and you will see what I mean.

My hope is to get out there as soon after the front goes through as we can stand (it will still be pretty rough and windy) and start making progress. (probably tomorrow morning) Going will be tough at first, but should get better and better over the course of the day, and through the next couple of days. Then the winds go light, and we may have to use the Iron Genny (AKA
"the Diesel") to get to Bermuda. I hope we can minimize that.

Dana went back to work yesterday, and the crew diet reflected that change immediately. Even though she left a pork tenderloin out for us to cook, we ended up having burgers from the CV variety store (much better than they sound) very late. Pork tenderloin tonight.

RE: Watching for the "window"; Great crew

Good luck, Walter. We're thinking of you and wishing you well on your
voyages!

Love,
The Britt-Webbs

-----Original Message-----
From: caribbean-madness@googlegroups.com
[mailto:caribbean-madness@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Walterpiescik
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2008 10:14 PM
To: 'Blog'; 'Caribbean Madness google group'
Subject: Watching for the "window"; Great crew

Bruce arrived Saturday to prepare for the trip. Alan and Paul car pooled
down from Canada and Rochester NY.

We spent the last two days working hard to complete the list of required
upgrades, along with some general preparations that I had not completed, and
some cleanup. These are some fun guys, and I am lucky to have such a
knowledgeable and interesting crew. Alan says he is going to teach us all
celestial navigation before we get to Bermuda. Cool.

Dana cooked us all a nice dinner on Sat night, and Ted, Nina, Greg, Bob and
Sherry all came over to see us before we left.

Now we are waiting for weather. Passageweather.com looked pretty good to us,
with strong winds (20-25kts) behind the beam. Southbound Herb, (a Canadian
retiree who has made a hobby of giving weather and routing advise to sailors
for the last 25 years) says sit tight, wait until about Weds for a window.
We are tempted to go, but Herb says we could hit Gale force winds, possibly
even weak storm force winds before we reached the stream. So we sit tight.
It gives us time to add padeyes to the coach roof for fastening down the RIB
dinghy.

It is all coming together pretty well. Martin sent the procedures all
laminated and ready for duty, as well as the prescription drugs for
seasickness or emergency care. The provisions are all loaded, the
administrative items regarding Bermudan Customs and Immigration are taken
care of. The Engel compressor cooler arrived a couple of days ago, and while
it seems to work well, it is quite noisy. I think I may sell it when I get
down there. Also the solar panels have arrived. I would have liked to have
mounted them here in the New Bedford area, but there are fabricators down
south too.

We are all hoping to get out there soon. There are good strong winds
favorable to our direction, and we hope not to miss them.

More later

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