Sailing to Windward

Sailing to Windward

As sailors, the direction of the wind dictates the set of our sails, our speed, and our sailing comfort. La Luna loves to reach and therefore sails best and is more comfortable for her crew when the wind is on the beam or somewhat aft of the beam. (The beam is the middle of the side of the boat.)

If the wind is coming from the direction we want to sail, then we must sail to windward which may involve tacking back and forth across the rhumb line (the straight line to our goal).

When we left Maine in October 2010 and decided to sail down the coast of the US to Jacksonville for Thanksgiving with the Klein family, we knew that we were going to spend much of the rest of that winter sailing to windward, sailing into the prevailing easterly winds as we made our way to the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and finally to the Eastern Caribbean.

As it turned out, we encountered weeks when we had to wait for a weather window, days of perfect sailing to the east, and days of tacking off shore in six foot seas. We were sailing to windward. It also turned out that we sailed to windward in other ways during our first year at sea as we encountered a steep learning curve, numerous unexpected boat projects, and challenges in our relationship.

Harts at Sea Sailing to Windward is comprised of the stories about our first year as full-time cruisers. It’s an often funny, sometimes useful, and always honest record of our journey from Portland, Maine to Grenada.

This blog is a companion to the book and will be mainly comprised of photos from this first year at sea. They will titled to fit the essays from the book and will be presented in the same order. I’ll also write about writing, self-publishing, and editing topics. Please join me. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For an up-to-date account of our current travels, travails, and triumphs make sure you visit ny primary blog, Harts at Sea.

This first photo, was taken by fellow sailors and friends the Nordbys. They are both excellent photographers and this is a shot they took of La Luna sailing to windward in Quahog Bay in Maine.

Also, the neat photo of EW and me kissing in the stream during the Etang six hour hike was taken by our intrepid hike leaders, Jeff and Sandy from s/v Magic Inspiration. 

Fort Lauderdale–On the Dock and At Anchor

We anchored in Lake Sylvia while Favorite was in town. His team stayed in the Hotel located at the marina across from Burnham Point. We were practically neighbors!  

Friends and Family

 

Heading to Jacksonville. Beautiful sail, even if we had to tack off shore for a while.

 

Someone didn’t get enough sleep that night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting for the bridge in St. Augustine. Cathy is jus ton the other side, waiting for us at the Marina.

We were happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                   Thanksgiving Feast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before Leaving Maine …..

Lobster with the Kleins.

 

 

 

 

 

Bon Voyage/Anniversary Party

Dora, Rhoda (in front), Kathy, Cathy, Lynnelle and me.

 

 

 

 

South Portland Bar Party … at which we were amazed by the attendance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                            Cathy, me, and Kathy.

 

Cake!  My sister and her husband held a wonderful family party for us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yard Sale

Lynnelle’s Pablo Ruiz, relaxing on coats EW and I never expect to need. This was at the yard sale I shared with Lynnelle and Rhoda.

Sixteen Things I Learned During the Frist Sixty Days at Sea

Breakfast on November 18th. After the storm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There really are no photos to go with this essay. I never keep tootsie rolls long enough to photograph them.

Cumberland Island, Georgia

The sign said to, “Walk this Way”.

Ruins

             Tourists

 

 

 

Horses

 

Ruins and Horses

 

 

 

 

 

Armadillos

Hampton Virginia to Cumberland Island Georgia …. You Have Nothing to Fear but Cape Fear Itself

Storage for warm hard-boiled eggs. One way not to raise the fridge temp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left Hampton, VA on the afternoon of November 13, 2010 and sailed out the channel. Here is a shot of the bridge/tunnel, disappearing into the water. Eerie, isn’t it?

 

 

Actual shot of computer screen as we motored in flat calm toward Cape Hatteras. After days of watching the weather, rounding this cape was very anticlimactic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy, EW, leaving North Carolina after the fateful fuel stop. We discovered we liked sailing without fleece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 15. This does not look ominous to us.

 

 

 

 

 

It should have.  November 17th. After the storm. The dinghy is in the rigging.

 

 

 

 

Another shot of the dinghy.

 

One of us slammed into the ladder during the storm and broke the bolts. EW lashed it down until he could fix it.

Hampton, Virginia

 

One we reached Virginia, we began to see derelict boats left along the shores of bays. This is something rarely seen in Maine. From Virginia to Florida and all throughout the Bahamas and Caribbean one can see partially sunk sailboats, abandoned power vessels, or simply a mast of a sloop, fitted out with a solar lamp to guide those in the anchorage around the obstruction. This particular sunken wreck surprised me because it was just off of beautiful private property and Blue Water Marine, a fairly high end marina.

When we arrived in Hampton, the Caribbean 1500 was waiting for weather and most of the anchorages were full. We anchored off of Hampton College in a small and rather shallow cove. Frankly, it was a bit too shallow for La Luna so we were anchored a bit too close to the channel. That was fine for almost two weeks, until the wind shifted and a barge captain tooted and yelled at us. We up anchored and moved to a spot closer to Downtown Hampton, right off Kate, the Harbor Master’s office.

 

Kate’s office is the small building with the green roof.

 

 

 

 

 

I purchased this small folding hand truck in West Marine. I had borrowed the type with a crate and didn’t find it sturdy enough. This works fine, but you have to provide your own crate or tie things on securely. It folds up and stores in the pilot berth “garage”, and works great. The dinghy is docked at South Port Marine in Virginia, a very friendly marina.

 

 

At this point, our cruising life was still new and exciting. I mean, I took photos of laundry on a hand truck, for heaven’s sake! Here’s one of EW going in to use the wifi at a local coffee shop. That is no longer a new and exciting moment.

We enjoyed Hampton, especially the a;ldkfj restaurant, where a young man laborously updates this menu in chalk, every day. We were there for lunch when he carefully completed this list of specials, only to find out that they were the previous day’s specials. After a quiet moment, he cleaned the board and started again. The food there is marvelous.

Pink Jobs and Blue Jobs

We stayed in Hampton from October 29 through November 13, and spent most of our time working on boat projects. I’ll get to those in a minute. On a more fun note, one day EW was on deck and heard someone calling his name (his real name, Stew). He looked up and saw a catamaran enter the anchorage off of the college, recognizing the captain as the former VP/Marketing guy who sold us our furnace when we first moved aboard.

Jeff and his wife, Sandy, had purchased a cat and were heading to the Caribbean to run crewed charters. We gathered for dinner on their boat one night, beginning a friendship that has deepened during hurricane season in Grenada and winter in St. Thomas. They are now friends for life – even if he did lead us on that six hour march to Concord Falls.

We also met Paddy and Steph and their beautiful dog, Jenny, while we were in Hampton. They have a huge house boat. How large is it? It is so big that folks on docks think it’s for rent and would walk aboard for a peek. They now have chains and signs across all deck entrances letting everyone know that it’s a private boat. We had dinner aboard and can tell you that it is a huge, giant, amazing private boat and that Paddy, Steph, and Jenny are delightful. We try to keep in touch via email. They currently have the boat in Florida and fly back to Canada in the summers.

We went out to eat a bit, socialized a bit, and worked on the boat. We worked on the boat a lot.

Here I am working on the job from he.l.l – pulling wire. This position is bearable.

This position was not bearable. Well, this exact position was OK, as I am holding myself up with my hands. It was laying across Pinetop and using both hands to pull wire that didn’t work for me.

 

 

 

 

 

EW was the real hero in Hampton. He single handedly installed our new wind generator. I didn’t take a lot of photos because most of them looked like some version of this: EW on his knees, EW upside down head first in a locker, EW crouched in the aft lazarette, or EW somewhere else running wire, making connections, (gasp) drilling holes. I ran for parts and propane, pulled wire, and attempted to cook and serve meals in a boat that was simply destroyed below.

 

 

He also installed the new deck wash down pump (see left), and the dinghy motor lift. (That last one was a lovely project because it didn’t impact below decks at all.)

 

 

Once the wires were run, the supports were in place, and the generator assembled, it was time to raise it up. This terrified me. I was sure we needed at least two additional people. But he had it planned, and it everything worked just as he had expected.

 

 

 

 

 

Here, EW is attaching the side supports.

When he didn’t need me, I did laundry, shopped for more provisions, and stowed what I could. Stowing was difficult as tools and boat items were everywhere.

Remember, we left on the 12th. On the 10th, the boat looked like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

As navigator, I also watched and listened to the weather – and to all of those sailors still in port. Jeff and Sandy, John from Maine, and the Caribbean 1500 all left a couple of days before we did. All left when some type of northerly wind was indicated in the Gulf Stream. I had been told to never cross the stream when there is an “N” in the forecast and I held to that.

On the 12th, the boat looked like this.

On the afternoon of the 13th, we motored out past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel, heading for Cumberland Island, Georgia.

Seven Lessons for Seven Days– New Jersey to the Chesapeake

Originally, we planned to leave Maine in September, so we started out a month late. We waited for weather in Cuttyhunk, made an unscheduled stop in New Jersey and waited for weather to escape, and decided that traveling up to Baltimore was out of the question. With a sigh, we bypassed Delaware and the canal to the northern Chesapeake, and headed instead for Norfolk, VA.

 

 

 

Entering NY was ‘interesting’, particularly since we didn’t have a digital plotter or computer charts for this area, and were dead reckoning among all the lights and ship channels. We were about 60 miles out from the entrance when the “fuel management issue” was discovered. 

The dashed black line is roughly the rhumb line at the start of our sail into New York/New Jersey.

 

Under sail, we actually sailed toward Jones Inlet at Long Beach after dusk.  I looked at all the info we had on board and could not determine whether we could get in safely and get fuel there, so, as the wind died, we began a snail’s-paced slog to Sandy Hook. We arrived shortly after the marina opened.

 

 

 

We avoided all of the very large cruise ships, cargo ships, tankers and pilot boats which dominated the channels during the hours of darkness. Both of us were alert and on-deck, hunched forward to help La Luna move faster.   We largely sailed outside of the channels, crossing them when we must. The start at the bottom of this chart shows where we anchored inside the break wall at Atlantic Highlands. EW installed stuff, I did laundry ashore, and we borrowed a car for a visit to West Marine. We tried to leave one day, but the waves outside of the harbor had us scurrying back in under power.

When we finally were able to head to the Chesapeake, we had a marvelous sail and arrived hours ahead of schedule. In the dark. Again, with no reliable chart plotter or computer charts for the region.

I refused to leave Hampton without having installed MaxSea software.

We found the trip to Hampton to be warmer than Maine, but I still wore fleece, and we had a small flock of land birds take refuge on board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were more ships and large fishing boats on this passage than I had encountered before. I called a couple of the fishing boats to make sure I stayed out of their way. One assured me that I could hold my course, and came very close off of La Luna’s stern. We were fine. I was able to breath again after thirty minutes or so. EW slept through it.

I was relieved to see my first large ocean tug during daylight hours. I saw the tug first, then realized that the barge was nearly a half mile astern. Never want to go between those puppies. Ever.

Seven Lessons for Seven Days–New England

Disclaimer: Regardless of the title, these photos will cover about 11 or 12 days, from leaving Great Island Boatyard on October 17th to sailing from New Jersey to the Chesapeake on October 29 and 30th.

As we left Quahog bay, we swung by Snow Island, owned by the late Dodge Morgan. Dodge broke the single handed around the world record in the eighties. We knew him through EW’s yacht brokerage and because he was a customer at GIBY. We wanted to honor his memory as we left Maine, so we stopped by for a photo of his charming schooner.

 

We left Quahog Bay on the 17th of October, heading directly to Jewell Island off of Portland, where we anchored for the afternoon and evening. EW worked on repairing the furnace, while I continued storing food items. The next morning, it became apparent that he needed some parts, so we called Portland Yacht Services and asked whether we could tie up for a few hours. They graciously agreed, EW got the parts and fixed the furnace, and we left Maine just before sunset on my birthday, October 18. Here is the obligatory shot of Portland Head Light.

 

It wasn’t warm. We dressed in fleece and hats watch caps and used the furnace when we were below.

EW’s goal was to get someplace warm so he could install stuff.

 

 

 

 

In Cuttyyhunk it blew and blew. We stayed for three days and never left the boat. I baked my first loaf of bread as a cruiser (having rarely baked bread before leaving Maine), and EW made “lake eggs” with a spoon that had been used in the bilge. We survived both.

Entering Strange Harbors

Here’s a chart of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.

 

The broad lavender lines are the bridge-tunnel. The four lines forming a “t” across the bridge denote the deeper channel that Dragon chose to take. If you look closely, you’ll see that there are green lighted buoys on the south of those four lines and red lighted buoys on the north border of the ship’s channel. Boats like ours and Dragon are supposed to travel in the smaller channels – outside the reds going into the bay and outside the green lights going out of the bay. There is plenty of water four smaller yachts outside of any of the channels. Remember, the channels lead us to one of two places where the bridge goes under the sea and becomes a tunnel, allowing boats to pass over.

Is that awesome, or what? I lifted this photo from the webiste for the Bridge-Tunnel. Check it out.