Hey dude, we’re riding the Gulf Stream in a Nor’Easter! Till we lose it.

Thursday 23 May, Passage to USA day 7: From (level with) Jacksonville FL to Goose Creek NC. A record breaking 24hr run, bashing in the waves throughout the night, motoring all day to find the lost Gulf Stream, and peaceful beam reach with Parasailor after sunset.
The new day comes in with us being hit by the tail end of the nor’easter off the northern Florida coast. Winds not quite as high as forecast but still gusting up to 23kts (30 over the deck) while we thunder along in the Gulfstream maintaining a steady 11kts over the ground (SOG). We are heavily reefed, only half the mainsail is along the boom and genoa is on the last reefing dot. Next step would be to furl away the genoa and bring out the cutter, if wind increases over 24kts. But that doesn’t happen.

Unfortunately, Oana is not too good with this boat motion and cannot fully enjoy the splendor of our fast ride north. Anything upwind of the beam (into waves) gets her feeling nauseous. In the early hours she goes off shift with the intention of sleeping on the saloon settee, which being midships has less motion than the aft cabin. The bench settee is rigged with a leecloth to stop the sleeper falling out. However, the thing about leecloths is that you have to secure the straps that hold them up, otherwise they don’t work. Seconds after Oana lays down there is a loud thump, a scream, then severe cursing. I dive below to find her on the floor, jammed in the narrow gap between her settee berth and the table. In her unwell state she had forgotten to secure the leecloth, so the first roll of the boat rolled her clean off the bed… then gravity did the rest! Physically she is perfectly fine and normally we would laugh about such things. But not right now. “I hate this, I hate this” she sobs. That’s what seasickness does – takes you to the depths of your mental limits, and certainly locks away any humor you might otherwise have. To try to get her able to sleep we put the aftdeck sun mattress on the saloon floor and surround it with soft things. Soon she is sound asleep. Poor her.

Back up in the cockpit, I find another damsel in distress. We are taking a lot of green water over the bow, and the side deck scuppers (drains) are sucking hard with the same noise you hear as the last of the water sucks through a bath drain plug. Then the noise suddenly stops. Damn, must be weed again, blocking the scupper. But instead, I find a chunky little flying fish head first in the scupper drain with its tail flapping away as if it can swim itself out of its predicament. I lift it out and throw it overboard. Another lucky fish! Word must be out, that compared to the multiple sports fishing boats around here, Cloudy Bay is not life threatening to visiting fish (Psssss: Mahi Mahi and Tuna excepted!).

As the night wears on, we are gradually sliding west of our intended course and so starting to lose the help of the Gulf Stream current. While we travel around this curve of coastline (northern Florida -> Georgia -> Carolinas) the wind is not lifting us quite as forecast. And now, even sailing hard on the dying wind, we cannot sail back up into the sweet spot of the Gulf Stream, and surprisingly quickly our helpful 3.5kts of current reduces to zero.
We are sailing hard-on into the easterly wind which is now only 7-8kts. Really not enough to make decent headway into the big waves the nor’easter has brought with it. In order to make it around Cape Fear, and to get our SOG back up again, we decide to motor due east, directly into the wind, so we can meet the current again and also to be able to sail passed Cape Fear once the wind does align with the forecast direction.

And looking forward, our next deadline is to pass Hatteras before evening tomorrow, when strong wind will switch to come directly at us and against current. Not a good place to be. So at 9am on comes the engine. It should only be for two hours to get back onto the stream and a perfect time to charge the batteries.
In 30min we reach the +3kts current again and soon after that we are in the full flow of +4kts current. But here the sea state is now wild. Waves are short and very steep and feels like we are on roller coaster gone-wrong.

The wind switches from E to NE again and that also makes us raise an eyebrow. It wasn’t supposed to do that. Our forecast showed easterly going southerly today. Is this just a local effect or is our two day old Predictwind forecast passed its consume-by date? That would be a bit odd. We give it another go to download GRIB files on SSB, which ends in failure. Middle of the day is not best for HF radio propagation.
Meanwhile, the sea gets rougher and rougher. The waves are so steep, it feels like Cloudy Bay is pointing up the heavens as we climb one side of a wave, then she topples over the top and bow steeply down into the next trough, finally ploughing into the next oncoming wave and shedding it backwards over the deck. As much as we like the speed over ground in this strong current, we equally dislike riding in these conditions. It’s not fair to us or Cloudy Bay. We are very confident in our boat, but do we really want to do this to her? Or to us? Definitely not.

Interestingly there are lots of sport fishing boats rolling about out here. And none of them with AIS. We can bet they have multiple 15” screens and other fancy gadgets for their fish finders, so why doesn’t their budget stretch to get a simple AIS too? Maybe, with their massive engines they feel king of the sea and unable to be run down by another boat? Anyway, to put up with this sea state either it must be very good fishing ground or they are all keen fishermen. Likely both, otherwise they wouldn’t be out here, 90 miles from land, bobbing about in these far from comfortable conditions.

As for us, after a couple of hours we’ve had enough of this very rough sea and contemplate to steer westwards for calmer water. We don’t need the full current of the Gulf Stream if it breaks the boat. So after few dramatic waves and jerks in the rigging we divert west and put the sails up, riding somehow parallel to the waves on a beam reach. During the next 20minutes we discuss whether to run into Charleston (65nm) to download an updated weather forecast, or just get out of the current at the west edge of the Gulf Stream and carry on parallel to it.
And the decision is made for us by the sea state. Once we are out of the +4 and then +3 kts current, the waves are more mellow and the boat movement more comfortable. At which point we switch on the engine and set course to Hatteras. Luckily, we still have 2kts of current helping us. But after getting used with seeing 11-12kts SOG over the last day, 8kts now just doesn’t do it for us!

Still weighing on options whether we should wait for this north front to pass or just hope our weather forecast is still good, we have another good look at the chart and the pilot book for places we could stop at. Beaufort is an option. We would like to visit anyway, but Cape Lookout extends 25 miles out to sea from it. Going there would mean 50nm just to get in and out of the port, let alone the diversion to get there. Then we find Ocracoke island, just before Hatteras, where we can safely hide if the going gets rough. Only a few miles to get into there. So decision is we carry on, knowing we now have a bolt hole near potential bad weather conditions.

As we get into the area of only +2kts current the sea is significantly calmer, and we welcome the peace of not having the rig shuddering and green water over the bow and decks.
But then we gradually get into no current helping us, and then annoyingly 1kt against us! How can that be? Well, what we forgot about were the eddies that surround the main Gulf Stream flow. And now that we experience this phenomenon, we can vaguely remember that there are some areas with strong eddies where we wouldn’t want to be. But where exactly are they? Apart from right here, under us? Where should we steer towards to get out of it?

As luck would have it, we still have some maps of the Gulf Stream saved on the computer, from last November. And looking at them indeed we are in the zone of a big reverse current eddy. Here, the Gulf Stream makes a turn eastwards, and that’s where we want to be. Let’s just hope the map is roughly accurate for today’s situation. We plot a course east towards the 500m depth contour, according to the old information we have, and fingers crossed we come across the positive current again soon.
But after motoring directly east for 30nm, still nothing :(. We call on VHF several boats we see on AIS and inquire if they are in the Gulf Stream. A Filipino crew on a tanker says “yes sir, 4.5kts under us”. Enthused with his reply we go full throttle to that direction. And when we get there, surprise-surprise, there is no current. We can only think it was the typical Asian attitude, telling us what he thought we wanted to hear. Another fishing boat says the Gulf Stream is below us (whatever that means), but nothing concrete that we could work with.

And the afternoon progresses on the same note: getting more comfortable motion wise as the sea flattens out, and at the same time more and more frustrated with our bad luck. After the amazing ride up the Florida coast (260nm in a day!) it feels like nature wants payback today: The wind doesn’t come around, the Gulf Stream hides from us, even a couple of dolphins which we briefly spotted next to the boat just swim away without coming to say hello next to the bow. The world must be upset with us today 🙁

Just before sunset we decide to abort the wild goose chase and motor in the direction we actually need to go before we end up in Europe! But before changing course, we switch off the engine and bob around while Glen tries to download weather forecast through SSB. And thank SSB gods, he manages to. It looks pretty much the same with what we had on PredictWind, minus the wind we were supposed to have today and didn’t. At least we have reassurance. On this positive note we start the engine and move on.

Few minutes later, just after sunset, the wind comes around to the SE and blows 8-12kts. We can sail at last! Confident now in the forecast and with no signs of squally clouds we prepare the deck for launching the Parasailor. Which goes without a hitch. Full mainsail out too, and we have peace at last after 12 hours of motoring. As the wind will gradually turn to the S, we decide to set the autohelm 90deg to the wind, for the fastest point of sail, doing 6-7kts boat speed (and sadly we still have a bit of current against us).
And so we glide quietly into the night. A peace well deserved after all the bashing and the frustration.