Hello, all.
Well, it has been a busy couple of days. Right after the 8am Skipper's briefing on Monday, all the boats threw off their lines and headed out to sea. On the docks, you could feel everybody's pent-up anxiety and excitement. We all motored out to start line and then took off sailing, out of the bay and into the ocean. Within a couple hours, there were no boats around us. It's amazing how the fleet can spread out so fast. If it weren't for the SSB chats every morning and night, you could almost convince me that they had called the whole thing off and everyone went home.
We all went south so we could enter the infamous Gulf Stream at place where it would be narrower and hopefully less swelly and choppy than it is up near the coast of Virginia. Half of us aimed at a point near Cape Hatteras and the other half entered via point a little further south near Beaufort. The Gulfstream is a huge swatch of warmer water being pushed from beyond Florida all the way up the east coast where it hangs a right and then goes towards Europe. As you cross the stream, you can see the water temperature change from 45-50degrees to 75-80degrees in a matter of a couple hours. The stream will even develop its own weather systems as the warm water mixes with the cold air of the north. The Gulfstream is dreaded by most sailors because it can be so rough and can have such strong currents that are usually against you. For example, a gale off the coast of New England has been pushing swells of water down the coast. When the southerly flow from the storm meets the northerly flow of the Gulfstream, the walls of water collide you get very rough waters. Thus we chose to enter the stream further south in the hopes that all that energy would be used up by the time it reached us.
We aimed to enter the stream just off Cape Hatteras and by early Tuesday morning, we were full blown into the stream. We took a pounding. The waves were 8-10ft and came from every different direction. The boat spun left to right and surfed up and down the waves. It was more exciting than a roller coaster. It was next to impossible to do much of anything except hold on. Fogger has been the sail tweeking machine. We've all been learning a lot about how and why to do things. He's constantly pulling in something, letting out something, or thinking about pulling in or letting out something. He has had us trimmed and traveling 10+ knots throughout the day and night. There was no doubt about it... we were moving FAST, especially when we coasted down those waves. At one point, we saw 19knots while surfing down a wave!!
Howard, of course, spent the first two days being seasick. Right now, though, he seems over the hump (and the hurling). His "mal de mer' seem to be getting shorter the more times he does this. And I have spent my first two days at sea trying to remember where I stowed everything and obsessing about everything I've forgotten-- can't just run down to the corner store and pick up guacamole or a cucumber. The best I can find is the seagrass on George's fishing rod and a flying fish that landed in the cockpit last night, much to the surprise of Ed and Fogger.
So far, we have not had to run our engine yet. The wind has been strong, though out of the wrong direction. It's out of NW and we want to go SE, so it will be dead behind us. We don't sail well that way since we don't have a spinnaker. But we are making adjustments. But we are SPEEDING along at an average of 10knots. At one point, we saw 19knots as surfed down a huge wave, but that was only for a couple seconds.
The only big concern we have had so far is the 4 inches of water we found in
the salon late Monday night. Don't worry, we weren't drowning. A hose on one of our air-conditioning systems had sheared off. The a/c is water cooled so it pumps seawater through the unit and then discharges it through a port above the waterline. You've probably seen boats at dock just sort of peeing-- that's usually their heat/air system. When the pipe broke, water came in through the discharge port. As I said, this part is normally above water, but when you are heeling over at 45degrees, it's in the water. That water backed through the whole system and into the bottom of the boat (the bilge) which quickly filled up. It was a mess. We're going to just pull the carpeting out and stow it somewhere until we can get to port and properly clean it. (Janel-- any suggestion?)
By the way, boat-foodies:
--Monday morning as we started the race, we had the traditional sausage bake. (Nobody seemed to mind that it was made with hot dog rolls instead of bread.)
--Monday night, we ate the cheesy-chicken casserole that George's wife Paul prepared for us (Mmmmm).
--Last night we had a turkey, stuffing, green bean & gravy casserole
Gotta go. Need to make lunch for the crew. More later.
Kelly & Howard on Sunsets
from N31-34 / W72-22
