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Finally, after three weeks in Beaufort for our work at the boatyard, we were ready to depart and return back to Carolina Beach to our favorite marina – Joyner Marina. The winds were SSW when we had dinner, but were forecasted to turn to the NW sometime after midnight. I researched several web sites – but, my favorite for winds is PassageWeather.com. They have a new NOAA wind data model called NAM I wanted to try out. Based on the NAM model the winds would shift to the NW about 3 AM. So, after waking a couple of times to check local conditions, I got us up at 1:30 AM to depart.
We quickly weighed anchor (since we had prepped the boat for departure before dark), and began our motor out the channel. As we were exiting the mouth of the channel a barge under tow was coming down-channel. We moved out of his way and then re-crossed the channel trying to find calmer waters. The waves were about 4-6 feet and choppy as we were heading out. With a full moon out dodging a few scattered clouds were able to see the waves pretty well. Once we were beyond the shallower waters the waves were a bit less choppy. We then raised the sails – but, we double-reefed the main because the apparent winds were above 20 knots since we were going to be close-hauled.
I put the auto-pilot on WIND mode which means it tries to hold course on a given angle of the wind. We set it at 42 degrees off the starboard side. If you look at our track, you can see that the winds did indeed curve to the northwest because our track headed more and more to the SW as we hoped. Although we were a bit south of course for a while, I expected the winds to shift more north later in the trip, so we didn’t try to tighten up any further.
We put up our new corner-piece to our wind/spray dodger. This helps protect us from the wind or spray at the helm seat – especially on a close-haul like this. It worked great! Once we were on course, Karen went back to sleep for a couple more hours sleep.
We had clear skies the rest of the night and the moon was bright as could be. Since it was ahead of us, I had the clearest view of the water ahead of the boat at night I think I’ve ever had. I could have avoided a buoy or other floating object if I had seen one, and could easily have seen any boats. But, the night was quiet – except for the winds. Around 4:30 I was getting tired, so asked Karen to take over until sunrise.
The seas and winds started settling down after sunrise and we had a delightful sail into Wrightsville Beach. By the way, Tahina was pretty much in top form with freshly cleaned and painted bottoms. We were doing 9.5 knots in 10-11 knots of wind for the final parts of the run. Awesome! Since it was low-tide around 2 PM, we couldn’t go in the Carolina Beach inlet (which is very shallow at low tide). So, we entered at Masonboro Inlet and motored down the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) for the final 8-10 miles. We arrived at Joyner Marina about 2:10 PM.
This will be our home for the next month or so until we are ready to depart on the big trip. We have many details to work out before we are ready to leave, and we have to make sure the weather is right before we sail out to Bermuda. We expect late-October, early-November is still the target time-frame. But, we’ll leave when we’re ready.
