It’s hard to believe that we have been in North Sound for almost a week already. Time has flown by so I guess we must be having fun…. it certainly has felt good to be able to relax a little and take life at a nice slow pace for a few days. We have had one or two cloudy, even rainy, days but that has been just fine because it.. Read More
The past week and a half has been busy, a little emotional at times but with some fun times as well. Second Wind was the focus of our attention, prepping her for launch on the 16th, bringing her to Penns Landing Marina from Nanny Cay, bending the sails, cleaning and polishing her in preparation for the sea trial on the 22nd. She behaved well on the sea trial, so with.. Read More
Looks like some progress has been made …. and it’s lunchtime!
The last day and a half of the passage in the mostly Easterly Tradewinds went by fast, though we did alter course once or twice to avoid rain squalls, just in case they were the ones that Chris Parker described as isolated squalls with wind up to 30 knots. We didn’t see anything above 20 knots. However, based on Chris’s forecast we expected the wind to be a bit north.. Read More
The past couple of days have seen some great sailing but with a fair bit of motoring as well. The wind clocked steadily from Southwest to West when it was in the mid to upper teens to Northwest to North when it dropped to under 10 knots. Since our heading was Southsoutheast, boat speed dropped too much at that point so we resorted to the “iron genny” again. We felt.. Read More
Michael’s pasta dish on Tuesday was yummy, I’m looking forward to his next culinary creation…. Yesterday was a catch-up day; the wind died, as predicted and seas flattened out but it remained overcast so the temperature remained relatively cool (still wearing jeans during night watches). Although we really haven’t been using a whole lot of water, we tried out the water-maker for a couple of hours which successfully replenished about.. Read More
The whisker pole proved its value when we passed at least 4 boats while using it for about 9 hours on Sunday while wing-on-wing on a downwind run with winds of 10-18 knots. It actually helped to stabilize the boat from the wave action. Who said this isn’t a race? However, as the wind picked up at dusk, we wisely rolled in the genoa and some of the mainsail so.. Read More
Following Chris Parker’s webinar on Friday afternoon when he’d advised boats departing Hampton that the optimum window for crossing the Gulf Stream would be after sunset Saturday through midday on Sunday, we decided to leave with a favorable tide around 3am on Saturday. The wind was on the nose initially so we waited to set the sails until after we had passed the Chesapeake bridge-tunnel, had exited the bay and.. Read More
The week of seminars with a few parties thrown in went by fast, especially as Howard was still working to complete a few tasks on the boat and I helped out every day at the Salty Dawg ‘General Information’ table when I wasn’t helping him. Unfortunately our two crew were not able to join us in Hampton until the last couple of days so they missed the Air Sea Rescue.. Read More