Salty Dawg 2016 log

After 2 months of prep work, and last minute changes to schedules, things are heating up.
On Oct 28 the weather briefing is for calm air all the way down. People are buying up every jerry can they can find.
Oct 29th, the weather briefing says Wed (2nd) is good day to depart, maybe a front a few days in, but he does not believe it.
Oct 30th, Now the front is strong, 35 gusting 50, 15 foot seas, best to get out in front of it by leaving Tuesday (1st), but then you have no wind...
Oct 31, same strong front story, now more pressure to leave on Tuesday to beat it.
I spend a lot of time the nights of the 29,30 and 31 looking at Passage weather, mapping our course and where we would be by when  if we left Wed vs Tuesday night, and making check lists so I don't forget anything. The days are very busy with seminars and shopping, boat prep and clean up.
On the 31st we agree Mark should move his flight up, so we can leave when Bill and Tom arrive around 6:30 on the 1st.

Tuesday 11/1 update
Mark gets in at 10am and I meet him at the airport and return the rental car. I also pick up a shaving kit for Mark so he can look presentable when he heads to his next vacation spot right after this trip ends.
We work all day and have the boat ready to go when Tom and Bill arrive. There is a lot of last minute items to handle stowing gear, getting the dingy aboard, and generally puttering around,
They get here about 6:30 and we are off the dock at 6:40, leveraging the last bit of light to navigate the winding channel towards the bay bridge tunnel. We then have 20 more miles to the Chesapeake bridge tunnel, and lots of shipping is on this route. We have the radio on and learn we are supposed to not be in the channel, so we vacate it (the not too subtle radio call was "Strider, where are you headed and how much longer do you expect to stay in the shipping channel?"). Much boat traffic in the night, but with Radar and Chart plotter and watchful eyes, we get through it clean.
We motor all through the night of the 1st and into the 2nd at 2,000RMP, getting 6.7 knots and burning 1 gal/hr. The night is cool, but not bad, and it is dry.

11/2 Wednesday update
The morning is pleasant and we unroll the jib for a couple hours adding .5 knot to our boat speed before the wind goes on the nose again. The winds have been generally on the nose, 3 foot seas, light winds (under 10 Knots).
The morning of the 2nd, we have a nice breakfast of Sausage links, French toast and scrambled eggs.
Around noon we do the safety briefing for Bill and Tom, as there was no time to do that before we left (other than the highlights as we motored out). After the safety briefing, we have a round of "pre departure beers" as we hustled everyone off the dock and cast off before we could do a proper hello and welcome aboard. We are a dry boat after this small lapse to formally kick things off.

We should hit the gulf stream wall around 2PM Wednesday. One interesting point is we had a cell signal into midnight so we could learn of the Cubs winning and forcing a game seven for all the marbles Wednesday night. Will need the sat phone to get that result.. The going is easy and the team relaxed.

We hit the Gulf Stream as expected and can tell we are in it because of the water temps and the impact on boat speed. There is not a visible boundary like we have seen in the past. In past years crossings you could almost smell the warmer water and there seemed to be a lot of Saragossa weeds floating around. This year these clues are not present. The light air makes the water fairly calm so no real indication from the wave patterns either.

We power through the gulf stream in light wind and no real weather concerns. I feel Bill and Mark are missing something somehow, as the last two times we came through we saw nice thunderstorms and it was more memorable. They don't seem to mind. We are in the company of a couple of Cat's (El Gato and Trebuchet). We continue to motor through the 6PM weather briefing. I project our course to Friday 6PM and ask Chris if this is far enough south to avoid the weather. He says it is, we will double check that on Thursday. I put 4 jerry jugs of diesel into the port tank using a simple siphon device. It has a simple ball in a pipe at the top, when you push it in the tank, the ball lets fuel in, when you pull back, it bocks the fuel in the line. A few quick pumps of the tube and fuel is flowing out. It worked surprisingly well and really emptied the jugs. Simple and cost effective. Everyone on the crew wanted to get one when they got home :-)

Around 9pm we do a little sailing, but by 11 we have the sails down and are motoring again.

11/3 Thursday
The winds build from 2am to 6am on Thursday and at 6am we hoist sails and are clicking along at 6 plus knots on a beam reach. Motored the first 36 hours, so it is nice to be sailing. At the 7am radio call we learn the Cubs have come back and won the world series in game seven last night. Sounds like a game for the ages. We enjoy smooth sailing all day. We come fairly close to a boat around 9am that we are overtaking, and that is most of the excitement for the day.  Around 1PM we toss in a double reef as we are getting over powered in the puff (15 to 18 knots) and seeing speed of 8.6 or so. The Reef makes things easy going again. Pleasant day so far.  33.41N 72.55W at 1:30pm AST.
The evening weather briefing suggest all the boats want to be around the same spot on Saturday morning. The target is easy for us to hit if we average 6.2knots, which is not hard. The sailing is great all day and night, and we are treated to a very clear sky and tons of stars. We consume one of Cheryl's excellent frozen dinners (lasagna) for dinner and enjoy the night. As the winds build we put a double reef in the main at 11PM.

Friday 11/4
We continue sailing smoothly all day Friday. We  covered 155 NM 6am to 6am Friday, all under sail.  Mark got new nickname: 23 since he does not want to be told he is 24 until his actual birthday on the 19th.
We see steady 7 to 8 knots of boat speed today, beam reaching in 15 to 20 knots of wind. We had motored the first 36 hours then nothing since except to charge the batteries, which need a lot of juice with both fridges (we seem to be using about 400 Amp hours per day)
Chris has told the fleet to get to 30n 70w for Sat morning, we are on track to do that.
I guess about half the boats have not left yet, but will leave Saturday morning.

We enjoyed one of our many wonderful sunsets that evening.

Did decide to check on the head which had been acting up that night. It was fairly flat and so I took the motor apart and it was blocked. Cleaned that out and fixed the issue that was causing the clogs, so the head is now running perfectly. By around 6PM started motoring (covered 161 nm 6pm to 6pm), and basically motored slow all night.
We are expecting a front to come through and then we should have good sailing weather the rest of the way (we shall see...).

Saturday day four (11/5)
We turned the motor off around 10am, and sailed in light air from the North (the front wind shift had come through and now we were seeing light North winds). Put in the last 4 Jerry jugs of fuel and move the gas cans off the deck into the stern locker so the decks are now clear of any fuel jugs in case we have heavy weather later in the trip. With Mark's encouragement we tried the chute twice, but the waves made it collapse, so the Genoa was the faster choice. We were patient with the slow sailing and managed to get about 5 NM down the course each hour until around 1PM when the winds started to build and fill in. At 4PM, we are seeing 18 knts of breeze from the North, we are doing 8 knts and heading around 130 (so getting some easting in). The winds should come around to the NE at some point and we will head for a more rum line course then. Very pretty sailing day now, and overall, we have had incredible weather compared to the last two trips: no rain, 48 hours of great sailing days out of the 4 days.
We put in the last 4 jerry jugs and took the gas off the rail, so the deck is clean if things build.  I estimate we have about 40 gallons in the port tank, and 51 in Starboard, so we have used about 50 gallons in the 56 hours we have motored (about 6 of those were to charge, we are drawing about 19 amps steady state as we head down the course, 10 amps from the fridge units.)
At 4pm we are at  29.20 69.13, not quite half way as the crow flies (582nm from blue water marina and 696 nm to the vi) so 50 miles to the half way point. Should hit that around midnight so at 4 days 6 hr mark.
Wonderful day. Beautiful Sunset.
When the winds came in heavy Saturday night, the seas were very confused and sleeping was difficult and the boat swung violently.  I ended up sleeping on the cabin floor due to this. Not a restful night for anyone and I guess we are past the beautiful sailing, but now have a little sportier conditions but making very good time right on course.

Sunday day five (11/6)
Winds built and by 1am, we were just on the Genoa seeing 20 knots from the NE. Heading rum line. This continued into Sunday day. For a while the winds went to 15 and we hoisted the main, but by 11 am we were back to Genoa alone, and around 1PM we had our first squall. Winds to 35, steady 25, and a shift to the East, then back to NE, Now at 2:40pm, we see NNE winds at 25 to 30 and are sailing the rum line with just a rolled up Genoa. The seas are building and it is fairly pretty outside of the squalls. We have only actually hit one squall. The crew is doing well and handling the weather seamlessly.
This morning I noticed the engine was not charging as it should. Turned out a exciter wire had come off the big alternator and I had to fix that around 8am.

3PM Sunday 11/6 update... we are at 27.07 67.56

Used the sat phone last night to call Diana and Cheryl.

Wind is steady 25 to 30 Sunday as we take the 6pm weather call. Chris Parker says we should be seeing 10-12 foot seas with the occasional 15 footer mixed in. The crew of Strider agrees with that prediction as there are some nice sized rollers.
Sunday night is rough with with the large seas and sleeping is difficult as the boat gets slammed by waves on the stern occasionally causing the boat to veer sharply. In addition, it is quite warm down below as we need to keep most hatches shut for fear of spray. Bill is able to push this to the side and sleeps soundly as a large wave causes all the doors to slam shut and a chunk of gear to spill.

I can not rest with the motion in the aft cabin and spend the night strapped in laying on a cockpit seat using the air mattress for padding.
We cover 155 NM 6am to 6am Monday.


Monday 11/7...
Monday Morning finds the seas down some and the wind at around 20 from the NE.
The forecast calls for winds from 30 degrees and about 25 knts. Tuesday the winds should moderate to 15-20 maybe 10 to 15 still from the NE. Winds come East on Wednesday.
We are about 440 NM from the BVI at 7am Monday. Busy charging the batteries as we draw 20 amps underway, 10 amps from the 2 fridge units which seem to run non stop. and 10 amps from the boat electronics (auto pilot, displays etc..)
We have been doing a very easy 150 nm per day pretty much no matter what the weather has been. We ran last night under just a heavily reefed Genoa. Made for a smooth night.
I have been running the radio net each morning for our group, sort of fun. My radio seems to be very solid, hitting folks 800 nm away no sweat and always able to ping Chris Parker.

So far so good, looking at a Thursday morning early am arrival.
Crew is doing well. In a check of the bilge we notice the aft water tank is leaking. This causes a break in our strict water conservation program and the crew takes a short shower off the stern. I remove and repair the bladder tank (since it was questionable, I had a patch kit handy and a spare tank stowed below.. We will need to wait until we get in to replace it or put back the repaired tank.)

Tuesday 11/8
Very nice sailing day, full main and genny all day broad reaching in 15 to20 knots, right on rum line.
Got solid 3.5 hours sleep Tuesday night. Generally a very nice day. Freezer no longer able to keep  up with the warm temps, so we will eat the last two Cheryl meals tonight and I put the other foods in the little freezer.
As a side note, the SSB is rocking, I am heard well all through the fleet.
Been sailing three straight days in nice conditions except for one squall and the large swell. The weather seems fairly settled and so we put up the bimini and two solar panals on that night. I want to see how they charge underway and also how they handle being up in Ocean conditions, so they get put to a live test. They pass this test just fine and we carry them the remainder of the trip.

Wednesday update 11/9
We find out in the morning radio call that Donald Trump has won the election. Interesting way to get the news.
Went through the trough basically all night and the first part of the morning. Low clouds, winds 15 to 25, we used double reef main and different amounts of genny. Mostly 2/3 rolled up, still getting 7 knots. We did 152 for the day 6am to 6am. We were treated to an interesting Sunrise.
Hot below as there is some spray so we have to keep things closed up. Hard to sleep in the heat and rough motion.
As of 1:30pm, we are closing in, with only about 97 miles to go. Should get there around 6am Thursday for 8days 12 hours trip time.
Very nice afternoon, sunny and warm. Everyone is feeling pretty good.
The winds build and by 5pm we are doing a steady 8 knots or more, by 9PM we are hitting 10 knots on a close reach. Our morning arrival time is now moved up to 2 or 3am, but the ride is too good to slow down. We have been picking on a 53 foot cat and 55 foot Mono hull. We press on :-)

Thursday 11/10

We enter the reef at Virgin Gorda around 2:30am. Take it slow and find a can for the night. We launch the dingy and have a few beers to celebrate the passage down. Roughly 8 days and 9 hours for the 1,370 NM. A smooth trip and a very nice ride down.
We put the engine on and assemble the dingy in the morning. Around 11am we dingy over to customs and immigration and clear into the BVI. It all goes smoothly and we then enjoy a celebration swim, and start enjoying the Islands. This hard work gets us hungry and we head in for some Pizza lunch. The crew can dig into a nice spot for WiFi and gets reconnected with business. We have a nice dinner at Saba Rock and it is a very nice way to cap off our arrival day.

Some notes on the trip down:
We finished the rally with roughly 75 gallons of fuel left, and used about 70 gallons during the trip down.
Total motoring for propulsion was around 54 hours, all but 6 of that was during the first three days.
Logged about 70 engine hours on the way down total. roughly 16 for charging as we were using a steady 20 amps on the way down, so needed to run the engine about 3 or 4 hours a day.
Roughly 1,369 miles covered on the way down per the speedo log.
Ended the rally with 18,265 NM on the good ship Strider.

For details on our cruising in the Virgin Islands, click here.

To go back to the Strider trip home page, click here.