A Brief Break in the Weather

We are now 9 days behind our original target date.

Today dawned bright and cloudy. The sun peaking under the clouds woke me at 5:14 am and I could not get back to sleep. The cloud cover is low, broken and getting darker to the east as the day progresses. The second half of the storm is expected this weekend. I figured the weather was not really clear when I saw the schooners still tucked up against the shelter of the breakwater.

I got up at 5:30 am and starting washing down the masts. After a short break for breakfast at 7 am, I finally finished up both masts around noon. I spent the time working with a scotchbrite and dish soap getting the masts cleaned off - 39 feet of main mast plus 24 feet of mizzen, including sail tracks and jib furler. Adding up our main mast plus antenna, and then the distance from the bottom of the mast to the water line, we calculate we can clear under a bridge 45 feet from the water. I think I will want a few more feet if seas are high, to allow for waves.

Somewhere in there the boat moved out into the yard, with some help I am certain, but it might as well have gotten up on its jackstands and stalked off into the boatyard because it was suddenly nested on the north side of the yard, up against a 10 foot wall. Fiddler should be protected from the storm there. I think Dave got pictures.

The masts should be stepped early this afternoon, provided that the ragged edge on the halyard separator gets fixed first. I don't want a sharp edge near my main sail halyard. It is bad for boat, sail and sailor for the main to suddenly drop to the deck. It may have to wait until Monday. High tide Monday is around noon, so we should be able to launch if the weather is anything decent.

My mother, who had planned to meet us in Bermuda, is going ahead with her vacation. We are running into the Newport to Bermuda Race with 300 boats registered this year. Between the boats, their crews and various spectators and other support accomodations are pretty tight. Bermuda also has a policy of requiring confirmed accomodation reservations and firm return travel arrangements for all visitors. If you are going to Bermuda to visit, you have to present a letter confirming your accomodations, indicating you will be staying with them from Day 1 to Day End and tickets for your return trip before you will be granted entry to the country. (When we went to Bermuda for our Offshore Passagemaking course, we carried letters from the school indicating our return trip was to be aboard the school boat.) This makes short turn around arrangements a bit difficult.

The Race was a major factor in our original scheduling. We wanted to go late enough to miss the ice coming down from the north (this will be more important when we cross the North Atlantic to Europe) and early enough to miss both the Newport - Bermuda race and the hurricane season. So far, we have been delayed into the Race time frame.

We have a routing service who keeps an eye on the weather and things like the Gulf Current Eddys, and gives us a best window for leaving. We have rented a satellite phone for the trip so we can check in with the router once a day with our position and weather observations. The service will give us their best estimate of most efficient route, and anything we need to avoid.

Plant Notes

I found a nice patch of thyme outside the little sandwich shop we frequent. Watching as the flowers carpet the green in lavender. The "Blooming Wolves" (lupines) continue to thrive and window boxes are filling in.