Tuesday 7 Dec, Beaufort to Wrightsville Beach, cruising day 10: A thundering 65nm downwind sail.
The plan was for an early start and try to make it all 400nm to St. Augustine by Thursday. But looking at the forecast late last evening there looked to be a quirky “disturbance” (start of a system) beginning just few hours before Charleston, which may or may not give us strong SW head winds for a few hours. Plus, squalls and a lot of rain. Now, I don’t normally tune in to Chris Parker’s weather broadcasts, preferring to work it out for myself with PredictWind. But this forecast has me worried. So I went on line and viewed Chris’ US East Coast marine weather podcast from yesterday morning. And indeed, he also warns of potential for head winds around Charleston on Wednesday morning, and advises any southbound passage plan should end in Charleston before 6am Wednesday, or risk being slammed on the nose by 25kt winds. To make that arrival time, we would have needed to leave very early this morning. Like 3am!
And sure enough, when I woke at 5am to re-check the forecast, I noted that many of the anchored yachts had already left. Clearly all fans of Chris Parker! Another look at PredictWind confirms that most certainly we would have the feared head winds. So departing now to go around Cape Fear is not happening. But one of the other yachts anchored here had mentioned Wrightsville Beach to us, which is 70nm west of here, just prior to the Cape Fear shoals. The inlet is a bit off the beaten track, but going there would put us 50nm closer to our objective. And it will be a nice starboard run all the way, without the need to go too far offshore, hence a lesser sea state. So that’s decided then: we go somewhere new. We go to Wrightsville!
I then wake Oana up, with a greeting: “We are only going to do a small day-sail today”. Though the news is not greeted with enthusiasm! Can’t blame her – she was still deep asleep in her cozy bed! But she is soon up and preparing, albeit still half asleep.
When we go to lift the anchor, it is clear it had dragged across the channel on the last tide change. Same for others too. The boat to our left is re-anchoring and two boats to our right are now tied up together with fenders between them, both still anchored. They must have swung or dragged into each other in the night. I definitely do not want to spend another night here. This anchorage is just neither safe nor relaxing for a deep keeled boat like us.
By 08:15 we are heading out the channel against a strong flood tide which runs 2.5kts against us. The wind is very gusty from behind, the sky is a deep grey and its frinkin cold! Not conducive to putting a smile on my face this morning and certainly not on Oana’s, who is already wrapped in a sleeping bag in the cockpit!
Once out the channel into the open sea we get the mainsail out and start on our layline course to Wrightsville. Once settled we access the wind angle. We are on a deep broad reach. Looks like we might just get the genoa to pull. But when we try, it just keeps collapsing, the angle is too deep and it cannot get clean air behind the mainsail. We have 2 choices in this situation. We steer 10-20 degrees up on our desired course, to allow the genoa to power up, or we steer down 10-20 degrees, and pole-out the genoa to starboard. As the wind will drop during the day, I chose the latter, so that we can put the genoa back on port and power-up later in the passage, when we need more power (due to less wind).
Right now, we certainly don’t need more power. The wind is 20 gusting 24. And sailing goose winged sees us tramping along at 8-9kts and occasionally 10+ as Cloudy Bay attempts to surf. You can almost hear her shouting in frustration: “Yes, yes, yes! … come on …. cooome oooon, I want to surf! Please let me surf ….!”. We don’t like to tell her she is too heavy for that.
When we sail goose-winged we have a technique that we really like. The problem with dead-down wind is that dirty air spills off the mainsail luff disturbing any chance of smooth flow over the genoa, which therefore never reaches full power. So we like to sail at 150deg (autohelm on “wind angle”), which places the genoa into clean air and a by-the-lee situation (wind flowing leech to luff instead of luff to leach). I learned to sail-by-the-lee when racing a Laser. This angle also allows better aerodynamic flow over the mainsail too, rather than just imitating a brick-wall. Not only does this technique provide at least another knot of speed, it also reduces rolling, making for a much more comfortable ride. Additional to passenger comfort, the speed also puts a huge smile on my face!
And talking of speed, lets discuss the competition out on the water today. There are 2 boats on AIS, 7 miles in front of us, looking to be on the same course. And one is our new friend Starfish Enterprise, the catamaran which we passed going down the Chesapeake and then passed again on our way to the Hatteras. It’s like we have been playing tortoise-and-the-hare! Well, of course, the challenge is to overtake them yet again, right?! Today they should be in their element: perfect broad reaching conditions for a cat. But steadily we gain, and by midday we are level with them when we get the expected call on VHF. It goes along the lines of: “Cloudy Bay, this is the 3rd time you’ve passed us, are you actually trying to make us look bad?”. By the end of the leg, we end up 10nm in-front of them. Of course, when we are next rolling back and forth in an anchorage, it will be their turn to be the smart-arse 😊
The other yacht, a 43ft sloop also chips-in on the chatter. He has a good excuse to be overtaken. He is a 68-year-old, single handed. He is sailing with genoa only, and rolling like hell!
As the day progresses, we hear of another yacht too. This one, called Grace, is trying to get help via VHF channel-16. They have a failed engine transmission (gearbox to non-US readers) and need someone to raise Towboat US to tow them into Wrightsville. Eventually they get hold of the coastguard who go through their usual multitude of pointless questions (obviously filling boxes in a report), before they actually get around to address Grace’s need. I’m certain the USCG are excellent at their jobs, but listening to them over the years, it does strike us that they would let a boat sink rather than miss getting the date of birth of the skipper and details of his pet dog! And, while I’m already ranting, what other country has a coast to coast service similar to TowBoatUS? It seems that not only is every US mariner a paid-up member of TowBoatUS, but many of them have actually used their service! Hmm, maybe I should not tempt fate, before the last laugh lands on us!
Late afternoon the wind reduces as forecast, but we still manage to keep up to 7kts, even with the following wind down 12kts. Thankfully we arrive to the inlet entrance at sunset and manage to motor up the channel and anchor just before darkness.
And we actually get so see something of Wrightsville Beach. All the way along the channel, the beach side is packed with holiday houses and condos. Each with its own elaborate jetty complete with power boat(s) lifted out the water. Clearly this is a summer beach and boating town. Maybe it would be interesting to go ashore and have a look around. Though I doubt that will happen. The weather tomorrow morning will be cold and wet, and we plan to get back out to sea immediately after that weather system has gone offshore. We have “summer” to get to!