Recently in Weather Category

For several weeks, we've been keeping an eye on the weather between Aruba and Cartagena. There's an area just north of Cartagena that is notorious for strong winds. A river comes out to sea near Barranquilla and the contrary currents and temperatures apparently churns up some wind. We've regularly seen gale-force (> 30 knot) winds appearing in this area in recent weeks. Our package finally cleared customs in Aruba on Tuesday afternoon (Monday was a holiday). We picked up our new anchor light, but it was too windy to go up the mast to install it. But, the weather forecast for Cartagena was looking pretty good for the next day. There were still some 20-25 knot winds in the forecast, and it was all following winds and seas. NOTE: this is a long post! We decided to stay well offshore to avoid risks of piracy sometimes reported out here, and to reduce the risk of weather effects closer to Cartagena. Check out the map of our GPS track below.

Meanwhile, another boat in the anchorage, named m/v Antipodes, came over and invited us out for drinks. Jim and Lara's boat is a motor trawler live-aboard, and they have come from San Diego to Aruba in the past few months. They plan to attempt a circumnavigation as well. Only 18 motor trawlers have ever made it apparently. Their boat is registered in North Carolina, so naturally we had to meet them. They also have worked in the information technology business as well. And, the most amazing coincidence is that they know Pat and Ali from s/v Bumfuzzle (an amazing couple who I followed on their web site when they circumnavigated a few years ago). In fact, they met them in person a few times. I really enjoyed hearing their first-person accounts of what they are like.

I spent the rest of Tuesday preparing a route and planning our arrival in Cartagena. We got up Wednesday and first sent me up the mast to install the light. That went very smoothly and it worked perfectly. Next I drove Coconut down to Barcadera port and cleared out of customs. One more trip to town to take in trash and get some cash. Then we got the dinghy up and prepped for departure. We weighted anchor at about 10:30 and headed out. Shortly after we left, we had two dolphin swim over and join us at the bows a bit. I always consider it a good thing when they visit us on a passage.

We intended to go back north to Bequia this week to pick up some stuff we had shipped there. We ordered a maintenance kit to fix our leaky fresh water pump, and the new laptop will be coming hopefully later in the week. On Monday we left Tobago Cays and moved over to Union Island to check the Internet, get the Monday post out, get fuel for Coconut, and make some calls. The anchorage off the reef there is actually pretty nice, so we decided to stay the night.

The next morning (yesterday), decided we would leave. But, it was kind of rainy when we got up and the Internet was behaving better. So, we stayed until almost lunch time. It was still a bit squally and the winds were a tad strong (about 20 knots), but we were going to go slow to make more fresh water with our water maker.

We put up the mainsail with two reefs (greatly reduced sail), and let out two reefs worth in the genoa as well. We were going to have to be on a reach (going a bit against the wind), so the winds would be strong. It wasn't too strong though, the strongest gusts we saw were up to 30 knots - and that only happened a couple of times. Because of the reduced sail, we were going a modest 6 knots or so most of the way.

We were about 3/4 of the way and the winds had reduced below 20 knots for some time. So I had let out the genoa sail. We were considering letting out the main. But, the edge of another squall caught us and we started speeding up. I noticed the winds getting up to the mid-twenties and told Karen we needed to reduce the genoa. In fact, the winds got up to the high twenties at that point. So, we immediately put two reefs in the genoa. Since it was raining, we went inside the cockpit, and a minute later I heard an unusual bang.

I stuck my head out to look, and noticed the genoa was all the way out again. I looked down and saw the furling line was somehow below the drum of the furler. I went up to look and realized the whole drum was lifted up a few inches. Uh oh! The squall had already passed at this point. I told Karen to fall off the wind (go downwind) and we took the pressure off the sail. I untangled the line a bit and then we rolled up the furler manually. Obviously the drum mechanism attachment had either broken, or come loose somehow (I suspect broken).

Having the furling mechanism broken on this essential sail is not good. So, we'll have to get it repaired or replaced quickly if we want to sail. Otherwise, we're just a motor boat. In fact, we had to motor the remaining 1.5 hours to Bequia where we dropped anchor. We grilled some cheeseburgers for dinner and made some Skype calls home during the evening. Today we plan to investigate the broken furler, extend our stay a few days in the Grenadines, check to see if the part arrived, and maybe upload more photos.

After a frustrating 3 days trying to get Internet in Basse Terre (the capitol of Guadeloupe), we decided to move Tahina to the beautiful tropical islands of Iles des Saintes just about 12 miles south of us. These hilly islands are a popular tourist destination with many ferries coming from the main island every day. Iles des Saintes is home to Fort Napoleon - located on the top of Terre de Haut, the main island of population here. This is where the main anchorage is located and was our destination of the day.

We got up and prepared to depart our anchorage at Basse Terre. We've been through this route before, so we knew that the winds can accelerate around the southern tip of Guadeloupe. We raised the sails with two reefs. A good thing because we almost immediately got over 30 knots of wind as we started sailing (just a gust). The passage to the islands is normally a tight reach to the southeast. Our trip was normal in this respect.

Here's the map showing our GPS track with some highlights, read below for some exciting details on the trip:

View Basse Terre to Iles Des Saintes, Guadeloupe in a larger map | or load the map in Google Earth

We had strong apparent wind in the upper 20 knot range with gusts into the lower 30s. As we approached the island, it was apparent we wouldn't make the entry between the islands we wanted without tacking further east. Not only that, but there were two squalls headed our way. So, we tacked a bit early hoping to go between the two squalls. Our maneuver worked almost perfectly. We caught the northern tip of the southern squall for a few seconds. You could see the wall of water approaching us and we were hammered with rain for those few seconds. We had 45 knot gusts briefly, but I turned us into the winds to take the pressure off the sails. Thank goodness we were double-reefed! Then it suddenly was over - we were in bright sunshine with a clear view again of Les Saintes, and the winds quickly dropped back to normal.

We soon tacked back towards the islands and had an enjoyable, uneventful, sail into our chosen entry, dropped our sails and motored to the anchorage. Another great sail and we were left pleased with our seamanship. As a reward, we quickly discovered we had WIFI Internet available in the anchorage and were soon gobbling up a much needed fix on the Internet and making posts left and right.

We have added a Map page for the Tahina Expedition web site that will let you check on our current position, our past passages, and will even show position reports while we're on a passage which are being made through a Twitter log. In addition, we'll make occasional blog posts during a passage to report on how things are going, and you can follow our Twitter at @GoTahina for short messages about how things are going. Hopefully all the new radio systems will work, so you'll actually see these reports and updates during our first passage starting tomorrow.

After careful consideration of all the factors - including weather - we've decided to make a change in our route. Our goal has been to start in the Caribbean with St. Martin. We have been planning to sail out to Bermuda and stop a few days because often the weather is better if you head toward Bermuda from the US east coast before heading south for the Caribbean. However, we have a weather forecast which gives us the option of heading straight to St. Martin.

Since we were delayed by about a week by weather, we have considered the option of going straight to St. Martin and by-passing Bermuda. Our crewmember Wilson would like to help get us to St. Martin, but he needs to be back home in time for Thanksgiving. If we go straight to St. Martin our route plan shows us arriving in 6 days. This would give plenty of time for Wilson to get home. And, it would give us more time to spend going through the islands on our way south. We plan to be in Grenada for Christmas.

So, we now plan to leave Saturday morning early. We'll still head east to insure the right winds for our route. But, we'll turn south sooner and therefore save lots of miles off the original route taking us to Bermuda. See the map of the two options here:

Keep watching the blog for updates. I'll probably make another post before we leave in addition to the subsequent tweets and posts during the passage.

The weather is still looking good for us to depart for Bermuda. In fact, we may be leaving Friday night now. The winds behind the departing remnants of Ida are making for some ideal conditions for a sail to Bermuda. We'll still have some large sea swells to contend with, but the wind conditions should be pretty good for sailing.

When we make long passages like this, we hope to have friends join us to help crew so we can reduce the amount of time each person is on watch. With three people on board, we can each get several hours of sleep while one person is on watch. This also gives the joining crew a chance to do a blue-water sailing adventure.

This time, we are excited to have our friend Wilson joining us as crew. We met Wilson during our sailing adventures on PatiCat back in 2002/2003 in the Caribbean. Wilson was on a catamaran called "Hotel California" with his family. Our families spent a lot of time together during our stay down there (see pictures, and read about our visit to St. Barts).

Wilson will be arriving at about 8 PM. We are going to put him right to work since it looks like we may depart by 11 PM.

We have officially moved onto Tahina, and are now making final preparations for departure. We had planned to be ready as early as Monday. We have to complete storing our final belongings, get provisions (food, water and fuel) for the trip, return the rental car, check all the boat systems one more time, and - once we have the right weather - we can leave.

The weather is the crucial part. Our first destination is Bermuda so that we can have a favorable route down to the Caribbean. Most sailors go this way in order to have favorable winds. If you try to go along the Bahamas you will have wind on your nose most of the way.

It takes about 3-4 days to get to Bermuda on Tahina from North Carolina - with the right winds. After we arrived at the boat, I started looking at the weather (I purposely waited because I didn't want to rush our final preparations). Unfortunately, the weather forecast is not looking good.

Hurricane Ida is in the Gulf of Mexico and it will soon be influencing the weather up north. A front is scheduled to come into the Atlantic off the East Coast of the US by Wednesday. And will rapidly make its way across towards Bermuda (in the current forecasts). It doesn't look like ideal weather for a passage currently for the entire week.

So, we may have more time to run some safety drills after all. We may even have a chance to relax and recuperate from the weeks of hard work leading to this point.

We'll keep an eye on the weather - these forecasts can change dramatically (especially with a hurricane out there). Hopefully things will change so we can leave earlier.

A critical part of sailing safely around the world is to carefully plan your route according to the weather. Weather routing is dependent on two main factors: good weather data, and good weather decision making by the mariner. Today mariners have vastly superior data available thanks to advances in satellites collecting data on our weather, improvements in computer modeling for weather forecasts, and the availability of data through the Internet and onboard weather software.

Recently I was introduced to the team at ClearPoint® Weather (www.clearpointweather.com) and after a brief discussion with them about the Tahina Expedition, we were soon offered a partnership and access to the ClearPoint Weather software and weather data services. This is an invaluable tool for Tahina that will enable us to more quickly understand the weather around the globe, and make more accurate decisions about our routes. It is a data-rich, professional product that provides pro's and novices alike with weather analysis that is easy to read, understand, and plan by.

ClearPoint is a sister company to Weather Decision Technologies Inc, (www.wdtinc.com), a WDI company, which created some great real-time global weather data for Google Earth. It was in conversations with WDT about the plans for Tahina Expedition that I learned about ClearPoint Weather.

We are very grateful to be using the same weather software and data used by top around-the-world sailing competitors. Expect to see in our blog some examples of the weather data from ClearPoint that we use to make our decisions as we prepare for passages. We welcome Clearpoint Weather as our weather partners!

I've been working on processing photos and video this morning. Below is a slideshow of photos from the Beaufort anchorage during some sunsets/moonrise. And, some photos from our passage off the coast of North Carolina (about 15 miles off shore). I'm also uploading a short video (see below) showing some of the sailing (which show how it can get a bit bouncy when going 8 knots on choppy seas).

And here is the video clips showing us sailing Tahina 15 miles offshore. We were going about 8-10 knots in choppy seas. The ride wasn't as bad as it looks:

View Sail from Beaufort to Carolina Beach in a larger map

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.

We needed to get Tahina to Beaufort by Sunday so we can have it hauled out at a boatyard there on Monday. Fortunately, my friend Gerard had offered to help with the sail, since Karen needed to continue finishing touches on the house. On Saturday, I first loaded the truck with stuff from the house for one of my daughters, and then we loaded Gerard's car with stuff for the boat. After dropping off the truck-load, we drove to Carolina Beach and loaded the stuff for the boat. There was a lot of stuff from the house, which will need sifting to make sure we aren't carrying unneeded items before we depart on the big trip.

As soon as Gerard and I were done loading, I got on the Internet to check the weather. The issue with the forecast is that northerly winds were going to develop sooner than expecting on Sunday (as early as 8 AM). Since that's the direction we were headed, we would want to avoid that. It appeared there would be some chance of some sailing if we left right away. So, we immediately prepped the boat (by following our passage checklist), and were leaving the dock at 6:30 PM.

It was close enough to high tide for us to leave out Carolina Beach Inlet. Since Gerard had never seen the spinnaker, and I hadn't tried it since we had the chute repaired in June, we decided to try out the spinnaker even though it was close to sunset. We had it up in short order (about 20 minutes) without any issues. Unfortunately, we only had maybe 30 minutes to fly the big sail before dusk was settling. My rule is to take down the spinnaker at night - especially with crew who had never put away the big sail before. Fortunately, we had no problem dousing the sail.

We managed to sail for several hours during the night (there was a lull for about 3 hours). It was fantastic sailing under a starry filled sky, cruising over smooth waters, on a warm summer night. Gerard was loving it every bit as much as I. We both couldn't stop talking about how nice it was.

By morning the winds were clocking around. but, we managed to get within 8 miles of Cape Lookout shortly after the pale red orb of the sun had risen over the ocean. We had decided during the night to anchor at Cape Lookout when we arrived and get some sleep. Then we'd enjoy the bay there for a few hours before moving to Beaufort town anchorage for the night. At 8 miles, we had wind on the nose to Cape Lookout, we were tired, and so we doused the sails and cranked up an engine to get there more direct. By 8 AM we dropped the new anchor and were soon fast asleep for the rest of the morning.

We had a nice lunch in the cool breeze at the cockpit table watching other boaters in the anchorage. We then lowered the dinghy and went ashore. The winds were perfect, so we took one of the new kites and tried it on shore. The kites are for the aerial photography we plan to do during the Tahina Expedition. Expect to see a few photos of the kite flying - and this whole trip - soon.

After a relaxing afternoon in the anchorage, we raised the mainsail and the anchor, and sailed our way out of Cape Lookout and over to the entrance to Beaufort/Morehead City. We motored the rest of the way and dropped anchor at Beaufort by late afternoon. Soon we had taken showers and went ashore to find a restaurant for dinner.

For both Gerard and I, it was a great 24 hours or so doing what we both love: Sailing!