Day 8 - Back to the Home Port - Just in time

Well, supplies are running low and I think the crew may be going feral.  We have not touched land (or had showers) for 4 days now.  The Steve had cold, leftover lasagna from a plastic bag for lunch. The forward and starboard water tanks went dry so Fast Steve, always looking out for his crew mates, volunteered to drink beer instead of water.  Sean cooked all the remaining eggs and sausage and ate it out of the biggest serving bowl on the boat.

I also am enduring hardships now as there are no more chips so I needed to make by peanut butter, jelly, cheese, and chips sandwich with Cheetos.

The run down the bay today was fast as we had current with us most of the way.  We sailed under the Bay Bridge, past Annapolis and into our home port of Deale.

Sean tuning the sail shape the hard way as we sailed under the Bay Bridge.

Squirrel!

Fast Steve in last day action.

  

Back home.

 

All in all one of our best trips.  481 nautical miles in 7 travel days with and average speed of 5 knots and a top speed of 9.6 knots set by me for a change.  Best of all, we are now sailors with blue water experience.

Day 7 Delaware Bay

So all the other boat crews we talked to were in agreement that the smart way to run the Delaware Bay and the canal is to go up the bay with an incoming tide and to run the canal on ebb tide.  The incoming tide was at 1:00PM so we took our time in the morning with extra sleep, breakfast, boat chores, and fishing.   Sean and I caught a lot  of small croaker and spot.

 

When next we looked around, all the other boats were gone.  So much for the plan.  We waited until close to noon and then headed out.  There are lots of shallow spots in the Delaware bay to watch out for and a fair amount of commercial traffic.  We picked a route up the old channel to have plenty of depth but keep us out of the commercial traffic.

  

Once the tidal current kicked in, we started to fly.  This was the first day of the trip in which we were not fighting the wind but instead were running almost dead down wind.  For a long stretch we went wing-on-wing with the UPS sail and cruised along at a consistent speed over ground of 7-8 knots.

  

Our record speed of the trip, 9.6 knots, was hit as we came around the nuclear power plant.

  

Nice shot of a container ship we passed at sundown. 

 

We got to the C&D canal at exactly the time the tides switched over, perfect for running the canal.  The canal is like driving the boat down a highway.  It is lighted at night and with the exception of a surly tow boat driver or two, is a easy trip with lots to see along the shore.  Here is one of the 5 bridges we went under. 

There was no room in the Chesapeake City basin so we continued on out the other side of the canal and down to the Bohemia River.  There we met up with Healer, Last Mango, and Ariake.  We set the record for people in the cockpit on Healer and enjoyed good music, food, and drinks.  Michael has thousands of songs in his electronic collection and let's you request anything you want.  He will not play it but is happy to take the requests.  Last Mango brought some amazing home cooked appetizers and discovered that Sean will indeed eat any amount of food that you give him.  Tomorrow - home.

Day 5 and 6 - Atlantic leg

The crew was anxious to get going this morning so they drove the boat down to the marina where the skippers meeting was held and picked me up with a cool circle around jump on the boat without stopping maneuver. 

Well, the Rally organizers got it right with the hold for a day.  The weather window for the trip out into the Atlantic and up to Delaware was worth the wait.  It was fairly windy (20+ knots) with lumpy seas on the way out of the mouth of the bay but as the morning went on the wind and waves settled and we had some amazing stretches of 6+ knot sailing through the blue-green water. 

There was lots of military traffic at the mouth of the Chesapeake - cruisers, hovercraft, fast experimental speedboats, and an aircraft carrier. Each broadcasts radio messages of varying levels of harm that will come to you if you get too close. The clear champion of the warning messages was the aircraft carrier which went directly to the deadly force warning.   There was also military ship doing starboard circles around the Chesapeake lighthouse for hours as we went by.  Fast Steve's theory is that someone in the wheel house messed up port and starboard so they got to careful learn what starboard means by going to starboard for a day or so.

There was also a lot of commercial traffic to doge which is only really tricky right at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel passages where everyone funnels together.

The Atlantic sailing was actually fairly easy.  We sailed for the bulk of the first day and night.  The wind was on the nose but strong so we could run long tacks fairly close to the wind.  The waves are bigger than in the bay but further apart so the boat motion was fairly comfortable.  Sean was at the wheel as we crossed into the Atlantic.

We actually cooked some good meals underway with jambalya for dinner and bacon and pancakes for breakfast.  Cooking at the boat rocks around is not easy but Sean and Fast Steve got the hand of it quickly using the gimbaled stove that moves around with the waves.

The gimbaled cantaloupe was not quite as successful.

No one got seasick thought the country music at times had me on the edge of nausea.  Sleeping is tricky - a lee cloth was needed in the center beds to keep you from falling out as the boat heels and bounces around.  After a while though you get used to it and it is kind of a nice way to sleep.  Somewhere between rocking in a hammock and riding a mechanical bull.

We traveled about 20 miles offshore and then gradually got closer to shore as the coast came further East.  The sunset, sunrise, moon, and stars were amazing.  There were several points in the trip where we were completely alone with no land or other ships in sight.  The sailing was surprisingly easy and relaxing.  No traffic, fish nets, crab pots, or shallow spots to worry about.    As we went by Wallops in the middle of the night, there was a small rocket launch and we its contrail just to the west of the boat.  We saw bats around the boat in the middle of the night, pelicans gliding along with the boat, and lots of dolphins all around us.

Morning was a touch cold.

We passed fairly close to Ocean City, Maryland on the second day of the ocean leg. and

We arrived in Lewes, DE at about 8:00 PM along with the ferry.

Day 4 Hold

The weather window for the ocean leg did not look good today.  The wind was the right direction at first but then the wind was supposed to be from variable directions with "confused seas" and storms all night.  So the rally organizers decided to hold for a day in Hampton.  So far, the weather for tomorrow looks good except the wind direction will not be perfect, i.e. it would be hard to choose a worse one.

We went to the Hampton Space Museum which was surprisingly good. Great displays and lots of interactive puzzles, games, lander simulations, etc that we used to turn the place into a big Dave and Busters.

 

In addition to a grocery run we also spent a surprising amount of time here investigating the Hampton mystery building.

Fast Steve was the lead investigator.

Hopefully we will be a go for tomorrow.  I will find out at the 8 am meeting.

Day 2 and 3 - Annapolis to Hampton, VA

Wow.  We had an amazingly good first leg.  Some boats had equipment issues or were particularly hard hit by rain/storms but we had a really nice trip down the bay.  The rally started off with a race start which was fun and put both Steves into race mode.  Here is Steve at the wheel in his typical side steering position. 

 

Here was my race position.  I am a talented enough skipper that I can lead all aspects of boat race operations and eat breakfast at the same time.  Actually with Fast Steve on sail trim and tactics and The Steve on helm, there really isn't much I am allowed to do.  (I know we are working on new Steve names but I have been busy) Serenity really sailed nicely.

 

  

We were one of the first boats across the start line and held our position fairly well in diminishing winds up to Thomas Point.  Here is some of the fleet behind us.

Here are a few of the faster boats getting by us.  They wound up in a light air pocket and we gained some on them but once the wind picked up, they took off.

Past Thomas Point, the wind was fairly light and from the wrong direction so we fired up the engine but after just an hour or so, the wind picked up nicely.  We turned off the engine, put up full sails, and it stayed that way all the way to Hampton.

Here is Sean sailing with his foot / steering line technique which worked well.

Here is Fast Steve sporting our new for 2013 crotch strap augmented life jacket per Rally recommendation.  It is the finest in crotch related accessories available from West Marine for $12.  Also, Fast Steve studying up on a few knots in Chapman Piloting and Seamanship.  Or is he sleeping? You can't tell.  That is the genius of Fast Steve.

The skipper skippering.

Dinner was an awesome chicken lasagna made by Pat while Steve did a pre-trip lawn cutting.  Notice that the plates are staying on the table in 15-20 degrees of heel because Linda was clever enough to stock the kitchen with cool high grip place mats / hot pads.  Also notice that we had the Serenity computer drive the boat while we ate and the "steer to angle of wind" mod worked fantastically.

Here is a non-rally boat that we think was trying to cut in front of a cargo ship and after seven extremely loud horn blasts thought better of it and turned just in time.

The price of sailing the whole way into head winds was an additional 20 miles or so on a 120 nautical mile trip.  The benefit was hours of 6.5 to 7+ knot sailing in some very nice conditions.
  

There were some storms over night and in the southern part of the bay, the waves got larger and were choppy so the sleeping for the off shift crew was tough.  The battle for sleep master is a close call as Fast Steve was able to sleep solidly on his off shifts while Sean took advantage of the "formal shifts only at night" policy to book a 5+ hour block of sleep starting at 8:00 am after his last shift.  Sean and I did get hit by one thunderstorm leading to some wet sailing.  We reefed down a bit but the wind did not really get strong and after an hour or two, we were back to full sail.

In the morning, the wind was straight out of the Hampton tunnel area so we needed to either motor or tack a lot.  The crew decide we were here to sail and that is what we did.  Turned out to be some nice sailing with lots of warships and commercial traffic coming and going to watch.  Got in to Hampton around 12:30, hit the fuel dock, pump out, marina, party, dinner, and crashed.
 

Day 1: Deale to Annapolis

We made the hop today from Herrington Harbour up to Annapolis to join up with the DelMarVa rally.  This year we did not have the dead batteries or mysterious leaking engine fluids to kick off the trip so that was good.  Sean was worried that we might loose the boat's good set of needle nose pliers on the trip so he left them at the dock.  Well, not really at the dock. More sort of next to the dock in a location where they are unlikely to get stolen.

 

The boat settled a few inches into the water as all of the food, water, and beer was loaded aboard.  Several inquisitive slip holders stopped by to see where we were headed (clearly thousands of miles away based on the 6 cart loads of supplies).   

There was not a ton of wind and it was almost on the nose so we motor sailed a good portion of the trip up but we decided that we needed to sail it into Annapolis.  We had a nice run in with our big red,white, and blue gennaker.  There were lots of sailboats coming and going and multiple fleets of kids out in heated race competition as we picked our way into Annapolis.  We executed a beautiful jibe with the gennaker in view of many spectators.  Unfortunately we did not stop with that jibe and tried it again with a bigger audience but much different results.  After we got the rats nest of lines and sail untangled and wrestled the tack back into the vicinity of the bow, we called it a day and got into our nice slip at Annapolis City Marina.

 We have our tracker on the boat so you should be able to see our position now on http://spinsheet.com/delmarva-rally-tracker/ . Then we headed up for our first skippers meeting and a nice kickoff party.  We are in the C group of boats which is clearly the best group because we get to enjoy more time on the water than the other groups for each leg of the trip. 

Tomorrow, we start at 9:00 with race photographers trying to catch a shot of us as we streak by.  Next blog post will be late Monday when we get in and settled in Hampton.

Spring 2013 - Circumnavigation of the Delmarva Peninsula

It’s that time again.  The spring sailing trip is fast approaching and this year it's a big one.  The plan is a counterclockwise cruise around the Delmarva Peninsula.  This will be a step up in terms of distance traveled from previous trips and will include at least two legs where we will sail through the night.  It will also be Serenity’s first trip into the Atlantic Ocean, first time in Delaware waters, and first transit of a canal.  

The crew will again include 2 Steves and new for this year, a Sean.  Last year the Steves were known as The Steve and Fast Steve but I think we will scrub those names and see what superlatives the trip bestows this year.  Sean has volunteered for late night shifts as he is largely nocturnal and will otherwise vie for the title of "best able to fall asleep anytime, anywhere" but he has some stiff competition in this category.  We will be traveling with a larger group, the Sailstice Delmarva Rally and they will have live tracking of our progress here.

On Saturday we will sail up to Annapolis for the start.  On Sunday we will sail through the night to Hampton, VA.  This will be similar to the start of our trip last year to Norfolk.  On Tuesday we will leave through the mouth of the Chesapeake and sail in the Atlantic up to Lewes, just inside the mouth of the Delaware Bay.  On Thursday, the plan is to head up the Delaware Bay and transit the Chesapeake and Delaware canal.  We are not sure yet were we will stay Wednesday night.  Finally we will work our way back to Annapolis in time for the party on Saturday.

The key to the trip is a nice window for the Atlantic leg so now the weather watch begins.