Had a nice motor up the ICW today.  After a nice pancake breakfast, weighed anchor around 8:30am.  Some of the rivers and cuts in this area are a little tricky but we have never touched bottom yet.  Came into Charleston and are at the Mega Marina on the south side of the historic district.  It's a huge marina with hundreds of very huge boats (in the 80 plus range).  Went out for a great dinner and am back at the boat now.  The skipper and the rest of the crew turned in at 9 so I'm up top pounding this out before calling Joan (she works tonight) and then off to bed.  Tomorrow we are off to Georgetown SC.  It's a town I've seen on the maps/charts and always wanted to go to. 

I had trouble sleeping last night.  Went to bed later than normal (10:30pm vs. 7 or 8) but woke up at 5 and was up making coffee at 5:30.  Fortunately, Dan is an early riser and didn't mind being awaken.  Soon, Captain Phil was up and dashed the plan of leaving at 10 (waiting for a favorable current) and, instead opted for weighing anchor ASAP to get out of the very narrow canal we had anchored in the night before.  So, we left the Hilton Head area before 7am.  We motored up the ICW all day and made just under 50 miles before dropping anchor somewhere in the middle of no where (Raccoon Island) about 30 miles south of Charleston.   It was a beautiful, sunny day with little wind until about 2pm when an East wind around 10 knots came in.   Tomorrow night we will be staying at a nice marina on the South side of Old Charleston.

Up at 6 this morning and weighed anchor at 7.   Motored out Doboy inlet and headed north.  Weather was mostly cloudy till about noon when it started sprinkling and getting a little foggy.  Had planned to only go about 40 miles but decided early to make it to Hilton Head (around 65 miles).  Came into the Savannah River past Tybee Point at around 5:30pm and to our anchorage around 6:45 (after dark).  So, it was a somewhat boring and dreary day.  On the bright side, Captain Phil did boat work and made good progress replacing some of the parquet flooring that had delaminated in the forward cabin.  I began work on replacing some of the broken sail slides.  Tomorrow, we plan to leave here around 10am (to be with the current) and head up the ICW.  Our current plan is to make it to Charleston Tuesday night.

What a great day yesterday, last night, and this morning.  It's almost 1pm on Saturday. It's sunny and around 60 degrees and we are motoring at about 6 knots up the waterway, north of Brunswick.  Our destination for the night is only about 25 miles north (about 15 miles north of our current position). We will be anchoring just south of Doboy Island, just inside Doboy inlet.  Tomorrow, we plan to go outside and will likely motorsail up to the inlet at the south end of Hilton Head.

Coming in yesterday, we ran head into a huge (Maine to Florida) line of thunderstorms that produced headwinds in excess of 60 knots and driving rain.  Thank goodness for the Pintita's sturdy enclosure.  It lasted about 30 minutes and we were very fortunate to be inside the inlet so the seas never had much of a chance to build.  However, we had the engine at 3,000 rpm and were still doing only a little over 4 knots.  We docked at Brunswick Landing Marina about 1pm.  What a really nice marina.  The dockmaster, Sheri was a real gem.  It was nice to get in early and take somewhat of a break since we had just finished a 3 day passage.  Later in the afternoon, I did a load of laundry and downloaded my Plan2Nav chart plotter app onto Captain Phil's smart phone (see below).  We went to dinner at Foxy's Pizza in downtown Brunswick.  It was a 6 or 7 minute walk from the boat.  It was the only place in town that showed any kind of life but it was lively and fun.  Good beer (Tarripin Mo Hoo) and pizza (buffalo wing and blue cheese) made it great.

Captain Phil has been coming along at erasing his "analog captain" label given by Dewey a couple weeks ago.  Over the last two weeks, he has been asking more and more frequently to use the charting app on my phone to get into and out of a number of tight inlets and reefs.  Last night, I downloaded the app and charts onto his LG phone with a 6" screen.   Today, he beginning to concede that there is some considerable usefulness to the device (other than as a phone and to look at photos of his new granddaughter). 

It's now almost 6pm. We pulled into an anchorage on the south side of Doboy island on the west side of Doboy inlet.  A strong ebbing current is pulling us out toward the inlet and the wind is trying to blow us the other way.  it's a pretty weird sight - small breaking waves blowing from the stern to the bow.  The plan is to weigh anchor at around 7am and head outside (offshore) for a 50 mile motorsail up to Ossabaw inlet (about 15 miles south of Savannah).

2/21/2014

Notice of blog format change. 

Readers may have noticed that I've not been - up with the "Photos" tab. Instead, I've been putting a limited number of photos under the Daily Trip Summary tab.  I've decided to just delete the photos tab to eliminate the redundancy.  Also, our new crew member, Dan (a computer expert) encouraged me to post my videos on You tube - which I have figured out how to do.  I've inserted links to the videos in the blog text.  If you are interested, you can scroll down through the text looking for the links.  They should be easy to find.

It's now 7:45am.  It was a long (and chili night).  We left the gulf stream sometime before midnight and the temperature started dropping.  I came on watch at 1am and the wind had picked up to South at around 25.  Captain Phil had just made the decision to reef the main.  It seems almost absurd to be on the foredeck of a 45 foot boat in 6 foot seas in total darkness to do a maneuver like this.  In retrospect, we should have set the reef just before dark when we dropped the mizzen.  Oh well, it had to be done.  Ollie and I were on the foredeck as Phil rounded the boat up into the wind.  Of course, the sail began flogging like thunder, making our adrenaline pump even harder.  It took about 10 minutes and the flaking job looked awful but the reef was in and the boat handled better.  By 3 or 4am, the wind had died to around 15 and the seas began to calm.  At this point, we are about 10 miles east of the outer buoy off Brunswick GA.  We motor sailed all night and are currently under a reefed main and staysail only, doing about 5 knots.  We expect to enter the inlet about 10am and be docked around noon.  I think we are ALL looking forward to the FREE laundry at the marina.

 

It is now 11am and we just sighted land for the first time in 3 days.  Hooray!  The weather stinks. It has been cold and foggy for the last 2 hours.  We just got a cell signal so we're able to use the AIS app on my phone to look for ships.  More later.

2/20/2014

Back in the US of A
It's now 1am Thursday morning.  We have sailed since yesterday morning (having left from Freeport).  We saw the last of the northwestern tip of Grand Bahama (West End) at around 4pm. Since then, it's been the open sea.  We had distant encounters with 2 or 3 cruise ships and 2 or 3 other commercial vessels during the night.  It seemed like we would never hit the gulf stream but we finally did at about 1 or 2am.  Our speed (motor sailing) went from 6.5 knots to the mid 9s.  The wind overnight couldn't have been more favorable for a "crossing" of the gulf stream.  I had read lots of articles about how treacherous it can be but it has been a piece of cake so far.  The winds are currently SE around 15.  It is supposed to shift to the south.  With all this working in our favor, we have decided to "skip" Florida and hope to make landfall in Brunsick GA - entering into St. Simon's Sound.  We have verified there is a customs office there and have made reservations at the marina (right in the town of Brunswick).  Joan and I traveled there 2 years ago ago, on the way to visit my Dad in Florida and loved the place.  Great French Toast for breakfast this morning.

Our newest crew member, Dan is a 26 year old, very fit bicycle racer who works for Martin Marietta as a cyber intelligence analyst. I think that means he spends most of his (working) time looking for foreign countries trying to break into and steel our military design secrets.  Much of their work is for the Department of Defense.  He grew up sailing at the Baltimore Sailing Center off Back River north of Baltimore and crewed on the Pintita during high school.  He lives in downtown Baltimore and  commutes to Gaithersburg Md every day.  Having Dan to help with the watch rotation has been very nice.  Getting 2 good hours of sleep between watches overnight is a real treat.

It's now 4:40pm and we are happily motoring along in the center of the gulf stream doing around 9 knots.  The wind has clocked around to the south so it is directly behind us.  We are motoring because if we weren't, we would have to bear off and we would be heading further out to sea - away from our destination onshore.  We have the main and mizzen out fully and locked in place with lines (jibe preventers) and both jib and staysail hauled in tight so they don't flop around (which is hard on the sails).   We are currently about 80 miles offshore.  In about 2 hours, we plan to jibe over to a port tack and head for Brunswick GA.  After jibing, we will continue to be pushed to the north by the current but in 2 or 3 hours we expect to be out of it and will then be on a direct path for St. Simon's Inlet.  We expect to make the inlet around noon.  From the inlet, it will be another 5 or 6 miles up the rivers to Brunswick.  Needless to say, we are looking forward to being back in the US.

It's 8am on 2/18.   We just finished an overnighter from Eleuthera to Freeport - about 150 miles.  It blew E at 20 most of the day yesterday and we had a great sail.  We started out on a port tack for about 2 hours and jibed over to a starboard tack that we were on for the remainder of the day and night.  Going through Flemming Channel at the far West end of Eleuthera was a little exiting.  We were sailing with a 3 knot current through the channel with the wind at 90 degrees to the current.  It created a very steep chop that lasted for about a half hour.  We dogged the hatches after taking on a couple quarts of salt water into the salon.  The wind finally died off around 9pm as we sailed into the lee of Great Abaco Island.  We were still 20 miles off shore so the seas were a little rough.  We ended up motor sailing all night.  I'd say we have gotten into a routine of motorsailing at night because having the engine running keeps the batteries charged and the auto pilot (Fred) uses a fair amount of power.  Hand steering at night in seas of any size is a pain so running the engine allows us to have Fred steer - making watch standing much more pleasant.  During the night, we must have seen 15 or 20 ships (freighters, cruise ships, etc.).  Only one came close enough that we changed our course for several minutes.  At 1am, a cruise ship passed us and we could see a large screen TV on his upper deck (over a mile away).  We are currently about 15 miles from Freeport on Grand Bahama.  We will be stopping to pick up Dan Kotowski (another long time Pintita crew member) and will stay over at a marina.  We have had great weather for our direction in the last week.  It has truly been fair winds and following seas.  But the forecast is for a major front to come through in about a week and our plan is to get to the Florida coast ASAP.  I expect we will be picking up Dan, provisioning, and heading out tomorrow for a Gulf Stream crossing tomorrow and tomorrow night.   When we leave Freeport and where we head will depend on the weather (primarily wind direction and strength).  Coming into Freeport now (12 noon). More later.

It's almost noon. We departed Cape Eleuthera this morning about 9am after saying so long to our friends and shipmates Mary and Dewey.  The wind went from W at about 20 yesterday evening to zero this morning.  We are motoring up the west coast of Eleuthera to Governor's Harbor to pick up Ollie.  He got in last night and stayed over somewhere in town.  We plan to pick him up at Government dock at about 1:30 and then take off for Hatchet Bay which is another 20 miles north.  Hatchet Bay is VERY sheltered and a better anchorage than Governor's Harbor.  It will also get us a little closer to the cut at the west end of Eleuthera that will get us to Freeport in two days.   Both harbors are supposed to be beautiful so will try and get some good photos.  After an hour of motoring, Captain Phil did his first laundry since Providenciales in the T&C.  I expect pulling into Government Dock to be a little embarrassing (with all the laundry hanging out to dry - see photos - but Captain Phil assures me that he won't be the least bit bothered).  Captain Phil ended up removing his laundry and donning a shirt for the Ollie pick up that we timed almost perfectly.  We sailed on a very nice close reach from Governor's Harbor to Hatchet Bay.  Hatchet bay has about the most unusual entrance I've ever seen (see photos).