Day 5 Sun 5/26 - – It was a lovely morning, but a predicted front went through and gave us ~ 20 knot headwinds which meant a very boisterous (aka “sporty) ride. We had to "batten down the hatches" because we were taking lots of spray. But we made good progress, averaging ~ 10 knts average for several hours. (Day 5 video will be added upon…
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Day 4 – Sat. 5/25 –Morning winds are good and we’re sailing nicely/comfortably. I have a video but we’ve already used 80% of our Data allotment for Starlink so I’ll add it when we get to Horta. We dropped to 9th place and are 60 nm behind the leader (White Night) because of our choice of northerly route – hopefully we can regain some distance on the…
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Day 3 (Fri, 5/24) started with Kobe (light, upwind sail), then Jenny (more downwind sail) a little later to match the changing wind speed/direction. Unfortunately, the wind died about 3 hours later and we had to turn on the engine again. However, we’ve been sailing almost continuously since 10:00 am, and the forecast looks good for the winds to build slightly over the next few days. …
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Thu., 5/23 – Conditions didn’t change much overnight… at dawn there was still very little wind and the sea looked like glass. https://youtu.be/9_NtbCgwhEE https://youtu.be/krtIYspFKwo Around 10:00 am, we got just enough wind to sail! So we put up Kobe (aka “Black Mamba”) which is for sailing upwind in light air - and we are actually sailing…. No engine noise – Fantastic! Around 1:00 pm, we took…
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https://youtu.be/HaxUovKX7Z0 May 22nd - It’s RACE DAY but there’s no wind!!!The forecast is for little to no wind – or as the sailing forecaster Chris Tibbs said: “negligent wind”. This means at least 2 days of motoring…. Ugh. On the bright side, we’ll have a smooth start and plenty of power to make water…. We did however, get a parade! https://youtu.be/xgnBaVTF-1Y As start time approached the…
Continue reading ...Once were officially cleared to come ashore, we moved to the dock to begin the boat chores (e. g., washing off the salt that had accumulated from 5 days at sea). We are in St. George’s Bermuda which is a small town about 20 miles north of the “capital” of Hamilton. We checked into Customs early on Wednesday morning, May 15th and met by the “yellow…
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I'm writing on day 1 of the 1st leg of our next Atlantic crossing (we love Starlink!). Our crew, long-time friends Rachael and Jeff Delahoyde, arrived Wed 5/8 and we have been working on the pre-departure task list including grocery runs for fresh fruits/vegetables and laundry. As usual, there are also last-minute boat chores and “surprises” like a wonky wind sensor. Bermuda bound We are a sailboat…
Continue reading ...We've had the usual mix of experiences (good and bad) while back on the boat. We got back to Matthews, VA in early April and got right to work "recommissioning". Moxie had been "dormant" for 6 months so there was lots of work required to "bring her back on line" (e.g., batteries, engines, watermaker, fridge, etc.) but after a week were ready to head up to…
Continue reading ...So... as promised, here's our dinghy story... the condensed story. Click here for the WHOLE story So, we have this fancy dinghy – a high-tech, carbon fiber model that is light to save weight …called the ASTender. Advertised as a more robust version of a typical RIB (rigid inflatable boat most cruisers have), it has been anything but! It is a German-made knockoff of a much…
Continue reading ...I’ve been terribly remiss in keeping the blog up to date, but we have been so busy since the last post in Feb. 23, (Oh dear…) from the Bahamas. The “cliff notes” version is that we left the boat in Hilton Head SC, flew back to Colorado in mid-March, then back to Hilton Head in May 23 with plans to sail up the East Coast to…
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