Weather window finally opened today. I'm learning to be patient. We sail on the ebb tide early this afternoon. (doesn't that sound nautical ;-)
talk to you all from St. Martin.
Best regards
Alan and Heather
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It looks like we will be sailing to Sint Maarten on Tuesday. The trip should take around two weeks depending on the NE trade winds. The good part is we shouldn't see any weather near the intensity of our passage from Newport.
So far we've enjoyed Bermuda however we are anxious to be moving south. We stayed alongside at the St. George's Dinghy Club for the first four days and now we are at anchor at Powder Hole tucked in behind Smith's Island in the harbour. Very comfortable, cozy and best of all...free. Well almost. There has not been enough sunshine for the solar panels to keep up with the electrical draw of the fridge. So we have to run the engine about two hours each morning.
We also launched our dinghy to transport us back and forth to town, which is a half mile away. On Friday I rigged the sail and picked Heather up with the laundry. Took a bit to get away from the shore into the wind but it was a pleasant if a little sedate trip back to MM. Heather will tell you it was a little too sedate. She even had to row for a bit while I tended
the sheets and rudder. You see we don't have an outboard, at least not yet. We'll see how long I hold out on this.
But I'm not the only crazy one relying on oars (sail). We met a young guy, Kevin, from Maine who is single-handing. He has a nice 8' Nutshell pram without an outboard.
It looks like several of the smaller remaining NARC boats will be leaving at the same time. Peer's Fancy with Gail, Ann-Louise and Cory will be travelling in consort with us. Some others might as well, including Kamaloha, Teragram and maybe Kevin who I mentioned earlier, aboard the Ruth Avery.
Ah well, time to get some brekky and work on the last few bits of maintenance and repairs. We finished up our last provisioning in Hamilton yesterday and stopped in at the Swizzle Inn for supper. Good food and the rum swizzles are tasty. The highlight for me was stopping in at the Goslings store and buying a litre of Black Seal and a litre of Gold rum for $13 each. The only catch is they are duty free and we pick them up when we clear customs on our departure. Still, it is the best bargain in Bermuda we've had.
All our best
Alan and Heather.
PS. As some of you know we don't carry cell or satellite phones. But we are not totally out of touch. We have our laptop and iPod touch and we have a Skype account. This allows us to call Haley and Colin and Heather's parents occasionally. It is a fairly modest fee per minute. But the good part is when both are online at the same time using Wifi the call is free. The other night we called Colin to let him know we wanted to talk. He then hung up his phone and we carried on the rest of the conversation while he was on his computer. You can even do video calls.
If any of you have Skype accounts let me know and I'll add you to my contact list. My account name is "alanuren"
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Looks good so trip to Sint Maarten will be much better than trip out. Good winds and enjoy the sun and we will follow your blog.
Our best and it keeps mild here but not suntan weather.
HEY COUSIN PHYLIS!
I haven't written anything yet because Alan won't let me play with his toys! OK, that's not the real reason....it's because he works me too hard and never gives me time off! Well, actually, because I worked so well yesterday he said I could take the rest of the day off! It was 3:55pm guess when we were quitting??? Oh it hasn't been all bad, Heather's cooking is way too delicious! When I signed on for this trip I told them I wanted to be fed like a KING, drink like a PIRATE and I also had to lose 20 lbs!!! Well I'm being fed like a king, on the crossing to Bermuda I was too sick to drink anything, never mind "drink like a pirate", BUT I almost lost the 20 lbs because for the first 3 days all I did was THROW UP! Then I slowly started to keep some food down and actually managed 2 days without barfing. It's not a diet I'd recommend. I've since put most of the lost weight back on....RATS!
All is going reasonably well. We sent in the genoa for repairs yesterday and we're supposed to get it back tomorrow. It rained all day today and it has been very humid and uncomfortable. All the cushions have that nice saltwater dampness. I forgot just how "wet" they can feel! I've had to reassure Alan and Heather that it's quite "normal". It looks like there might be a weather window opening for Sunday, according to Herb (the sailor's weather guru). That would actually be perfect. There are about 15 or 20 boats waiting to leave. We're trying to get our own "SLOW BOAT" rally going. There are 3 or 4 of us who would likely travel at the same speed so we're going to give it a try.
It's weird, we've been busy (except today) and we've walked to Georgetown 2 times now and we have yet to see it in DAYLIGHT!!! Al and Heather are on their 3rd nighttime visit!!! We're hoping to go in to Hamilton on Friday to tour the place and do some last minute food and boat shopping. Al had promised us that if we "survived" our ordeal in the 55 kt storm he'd take us out for ribs....so we're going to do that on Friday!!! Yippee!!! He'll have to get a bank loan I'm sure...A hamburger was $14.95US the last time we ate out!!!
Al told me he wanted me on the trip as an "experienced" sailor, boy he's getting a rude awakening! At least I'm showing him what not to do, how to sail a boat while hanging over the side "making offerings to the sea gods", and how to repair all the things I've broken!!! Although this is happening on such a regular basis that I'm now almost 95% sure both Alan and Heather are "setting me up". They make me do jobs where they know I'm bound to screw something up! Well as long as it makes them feel good!
Having said all that we are having a lot of laughs and our learning curve has gone up dramatically. Example......Never sail to Bermuda, take a plane! Never give the captain your passport, he won't let me leave! (He did mention something about being SHANG HI'D...now I have to go and look that up in the dictionary, AND I know it can't be good for me!) Both the "Captain" and the "Admiral" are very well organized and have planned this trip better than anything I've ever done. (Maybe they should consider some sort of career in this vain!) We're all looking forward to our next little jaunt down to St. Marten. Maybe Alan will let me write another piece for the Blog when we get there! (He just doesn't realize how slow I type, although the good news is, I think as fast as I type!!!
I hope all is well with you Phyllis and everyone of you "landlubbers", sailors and wannabe sailors!
Take care everyone,
Lots of Love,
Jim Matthieu
(the EXPENDABLE crew member)
P.S. Never sign on to a ship where the Officers out number the crew by 2 to 1.
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Heather - I expect you to tell me the REAL truth about the crossing.
Take care Brother Al - why am I reminded of you flying a box to the north pole? :) Love to you all - Sister (& cousin) Phyl
Bon Voyage!
There is a challenge with this posting. By now most of you are aware that we hit some really challenging weather coming across from Newport. The thing is, how much detail do we share with you? We were scared, exhilarated, exhausted, but most of all I look back at last week and I have a deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. We are 'fair-weather sailors' no more.
To give you an idea of the extent of the storm we were in: this year's Marion MA to Bermuda yacht race was considered the worst weather in almost 30 years. They hit 40 knots of wind and 20 ft. seas. We hit 55 knots and 30 ft. seas.
Our little ship performed beyond my wildest expectations. She kept us safe, even when it seemed impossible. She handled s0 very well. Our new sails from Michele Stevens Sailloft worked beautifully, especially the deep 3rd reef in the mains'l. Our Single Side Band radio gave us reliable, daily contact with the legendary marine weather reporter, Herb Hilgenberg (a godsend). It has become our second most important piece of equipment onboard after the chartplotter. And Herb is our new best friend.
We have made some new and wonderful friends in a very short period of time. Last night we met at the dock Marcia and Jack Fyfe aboard 'Rights of Man'. They were caught in the same storm as we were however their steering system broke down. They were under tow for two days.
Bermuda is nice, but... frankly the three of us are already getting impatient to be pushing further south. As Jim says, a good sailor has excellent selective short-term memory. We're already remembering the good stuff and the bad stuff is fading.
Good stuff, oh yeah! Like early Sunday morning, 15 miles from Bermuda we were on a beam reach, with the calmest waters we'd since leaving Newport. Moonlight Maid reached 8.5 knots under genoa, main and mizzen sails and only 15 knots of apparent wind. Jim and I were doing high fives and grinning like idiots. This was a new record for us. Our theoretical hull speed is 8.6 knots and the highest we had ever recorded before was 8.2 and that was back in 2004 and I'm not sure I even read the knot log correctly!
I'm going to leave off here for now. There are many more details, but time to get some work done on the boat. We suffered very little damage compared to almost every other boat. We're hoping to leave for Sint Maarten this weekend after some maintenance and minor provisioning.
Stay in touch, and thanks for all your good wishes.
Alan
Moonlight Maid
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This is just a short update for now... I know many of you are waiting to hear how we made out. The trip to Bermuda took 7 days in what was easily the most challenging passage we could ask for. Two gales and a full storm in our first week.
The good news is that we are safe our boat performed wonderfully and we've just finished a great meal with many new friends and acquaintences.
And yes the first thing we did was to jump in the water for a swim.
All the best
Heather, Alan and Jim
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Sister Phyl
Love Kathryn & Les.
Luv Rebecca
At least it wasn't the snow that we had here.
Tim
Love ya
You, perhaps, can have no idea of how worried we were about you after the thrashing we had that made us turn back to Newport. I had lost count of the number of times that I checked your blog and our email hoping for news.
Glory be that you are OK and I sure hope we can hook up somewhere along the way and compare notes and raise a glass or two.
Love,
BT
Well, here we go. We're casting off lines in an hour. The weather is pretty good. At the briefing this morning they said this was the first time in 10 years that they did NOT have a storm of 40 knots of wind to navigate around.
Should be in Bermuda by this weekend.
Cheers,
Heather and Alan
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Sister Phyl
