Saturday 17 November: From Cape Hatteras to 34 40’N 72 00’W. Day 2 of passage USA to Bermuda.
Midnight, and I wake up for my second shift for the night. Briefing from Glen before he goes to bed: we are not tracking to the waypoint anymore, wind took us westwards, so we carry on like this and when we get to the right angle to the waypoint we gybe.
He goes to bed and I am gearing up for the cold: second pair of socks on, gloves (not the sailing, but warm fluffy gloves), scarf, wooly hat. Nice and warm. Oh, but what happened? Doesn’t feel as cold anymore. Quick look, and I see water temperature is now 16degC compared to 13C yesterday when we left. And from now on, can only get better!
At 2.30am we gybe and are again heading for the first waypoint, the entry point to the Gulf Stream. But the wind is dropping a bit and the boat starts to roll … and I get sick 🙁 three pills by now and I still got sick. Bugger.
The last yacht that we over took, Stellina, also gybed at the same point and is now on our track too. The race is still on!
After another hour below, Glen comes up and declares he can no longer sleep, so I get to go down and try myself.
At 3am, the water gets dramatically deeper and the sea is now 17degC. Glen goes down to make a cuppa tea and when he emerges 5 minutes later the sea temp has shot up to 23deg! We are in the Gulf Stream …. The sea is a bit lumpy but no where near as bad as we thought. The wind is interesting. One minute only 5-6 kts and the next 15-18kts. Squally conditions with zero clouds. Must be the GS localized effect on the wind.
At 6:30am EST the sun rises through puffy clouds, the kind we saw all day long on the Atlantic crossing. We are clearly into the warmth; the sea temperature is now 26deg and we are going in the right direction at 8kts; and (shhh) everything is working!
After we download an updated weather forecast, which shows wind continues to drop, we go few degrees to port, to point higher into the wind. And we sail very nicely like this till after breakfast.
Speaking of which, wrong tack again, for the milk and yogurt to come out of the day fridge. But after yesterday’s lesson, when everything slid out of fridge the second I opened the door, this time we eased off the mainsail and it was a very slick maneuver of open-the-door-extract-pots-close-door-all-in-three-seconds and nothing else came out. You see, when we go dead downwind I know how to time the fridge door opening with the rolling of Cloudy Bay. But on upwind sailing, there’s no way around it. Well, it would have been smarter to put these items in the box fridge. But power of habit is my excuse:)
Back to sailing… blue sky, clear blue water and white puffy clouds. Wonderful. Except each of these little clouds comes with its own wind. Giving our sails very fickle winds. One moment we are hard on the wind, next moment the wind is behind us, shifting up to 90 deg. One moment we fly down the waves, the next feels like we come to a halt. Entertaining though, as we constantly trim the sails trying to keep the speed. We wouldn’t want our competitor to catch up with us…
We hear some creaking coming from the goose neck. So in-between trimming the sails out comes the Teflon spray and we go to investigate. It’s not from inside the mast, definitely the gooseneck. Few puffs of spray around the goose neck pin and we have peace again. Only the noise of water rushing along the hull. But we love this sound, the faster the better.
24h at sea now and we clocked 190.5nm. Nice, huh?! We are approaching our second waypoint. The sea is still calm and we continue to have a comfortable sailing, except from the occasional flap in the sail. And each time we threaten to put the engine on, a nice gust hits us and the sails fill again.
Just after mid-day the flapping of the sails becomes more frequent than not, and sadly we do switch on the engine. Motor sailing, just in tick-over, propeller in over-drive with the apparent wind between 60-90deg, we are speeding at 8-9kts SOG. We’ll just have to ignore the gusts, no matter how tempting it is to switch off the engine when we see 11kts of wind. We need to charge the batteries anyway.
And we are motoring into the summer. The air gets warmer and warmer, the wind is almost gone, and so are our clothes! From double thermal layers, jacket and wooly hat yesterday, Glen is now in tropical colors shorts and no T-shirt. Suntan cream needs to come out! On this cheerful note he goes down below for a nap, while I have a very uneventful shift. No sails to trim, no boats to keep an eye on.
4 hours of motoring later, just before sunset, wind picks up again. Sails out and we are sailing into the night. Still fickle winds, but we are going fast enough.
But that all ends again in flappy flogging sails 4 hours later and we are resigned to motor sailing the rest of the evening.
Before Glen finishes his shift, he called the yacht Stellina next to us and has a long chat. They are heading to St. Martin and like us were weather bound in Hampton VA for a week. They will decide tomorrow if they stop in Bermuda as they pass it.