Friday 9 November: Norfolk VA, Departure to Bermuda postponed.
Peaceful night, we wake up rested and relaxed. Well, as relaxed as we can be under circumstances, having to make a decision about when is a good time to leave for Bermuda. We are a bit anxious about this.
And on with our usual routine for the last few days, with Chris Parker (on the SSB!) for breakfast. All models on PredictWind show the same now: wind on our nose as we get close to Bermuda. And unless we get there by Monday, in 3 days – meaning we have to do more than 200nm/day which for our boat is impossible – we will have to beat into 20kts or more of wind and Atlantic swell for the last 100nm. Which we don’t want to do. It will be a Gibraltar to Lanzarote relived, except we won’t have a Morocco to run to for shelter.
We also contemplate whether to go further south along USA coast and leave from another point. But in reality, it won’t help us at all. For going straight to Antigua, maybe. We did actually thought of skipping Bermuda and sail straight to Antigua, but we do want to see Bermuda, and we prefer the broad reach in the trade winds from Bermuda to Antigua, rather than going hard on the wind all the way.
As we were tossing between our options, Cris Parker comes with a plan which we missed to consider. Leave tomorrow morning, cross the Gulf Stream in mild conditions, head south and then tack into Bermuda. Hm, interesting. We revert to our weather screens and Glen spends yet more time analyzing data. But he is still tossed. So reverting to Chris Parker with a call this time, Glen discusses this option further. And as we hear “realistically you will be beating into 20-30 knots of wind for 36-48hours”, decision is instantly made: we definitely do not want to do that! 24 hours maybe… 48 nope-nope! With the cutter we don’t point that great into the wind anyaway.
So looks like we are grounded in Norfolk for a while, till next favorable weather window. As of current forecast, there is no clear window before the end of next week. I guess we will be seeing some of Virginia after all, our 16th state in USA. And, given the temperature forecast here, we will be having more cozy evenings in the warmth of our saloon.
On that note, we finally manage to relax. There’s no rush for anything now. So we each revert to the normal tasks.
Glen potters on the decks, rearranging the fenders 100 times (somehow he manages to keep himself quite busy with mooring lines and fenders each time we are docked).
After our sail yesterday, we noticed a small spot on the deck: the bloody vang leaked hydraulic oil yet again. Glen cleans the hydraulic oil off the teak, thinking we are so lucky the deck didn’t get permanently stained in that spot with all these leaks we have been having. We bet Stan in Antigua is looking forward to have our vang back for servicing… yet again! It will the the third time we do this. Glen vows to watch them do it this time – they have to be missing something.
He next attends to the shore power inlet socket putting a new seal in place. This 32Amp inlet was new last year and rated IP65 (= waterproof) haha! The main (foam!) seal literally disintegrated after only 3 months of use.
And then a bit of tailoring on the agenda: cutting a hole in the cockpit tent, through which we will feed the mainsail sheet and/or runner to the winch inside the tent. And this task was nothing less than microsurgery! Glen uses a red torch on laser mode to pinpoint the exact place the sheet need to go through the tent.
For the evening, maintenance activities in the cockpit, as now we have a lamp that gives us light in there! 🙂 For quite some time we were due to change the ignition switch for the Volvo. The key switched off ok, but the spring no longer brought the key back to zero. So we kept forgetting to turn it manually back to the zero position, and the alternator in the engine room was getting hot as it had its field current still on. So now is a good time to tick this job off the list. The steering wheel comes off to have better access in front of the pedestal, then the whole engine control panel comes off. At the same time he also renews the chrome bezels around the instruments which had become corroded – another long outstanding job on the never ending list. When it’s all put back together again it looks like new. And of course, it is not allowed to look like new while other things around it don’t! So the pedestal and the hydraulics panel also get a shining with polish.
Back in the cabin he then decides to charge all our small 12v batteries. One for the SeaDo, one for the kite pump, and one for our emergency grab bag which will power a USB socket to recharge phones, Iridium etc in the life raft. Well, we’d be bored without social media right?
All this time, I am deep deep into video editing, with a determination to catch up to date. That’s a lot of work!
The dock here is wonderful. We get a visit from Gary (OCC port officer) each day to see how we are doing. He is a very experienced sailor having crossed the Atlantic 5 times. So it’s also good to talk to him about routing to Bermuda, how to tackle the Gulf Stream etc. He also generously provides us with the password for his internet. Brilliant, we have a safe dock, electricity, water and WiFi …. on a cruising boat it doesn’t get better than that!
Late to bed again … after one more check on the fenders and separating Oana from her editing PC!