The Week's Sailing Trip

[joyfinderhero]

(posted 2/29 after we got Internet access once in port)

2-23-08 10 am

Sitting here in the cabin saloon of a small sailboat 50 or so miles off Cuba … that is, on the edge of a small sea … it’s all I can do to look at the screen and type. We’re rockin’ and rollin’ under not much canvas and a wonderful strong diesel, in seas that are typically 4-6 feet … which is to say, excellent weather, not much compared to what can happen out here.

I’ve learned a lot in my 36 hours of sea-time.

Left our mooring ball at 6:15 pm, just as the sunset conchs were beginning to blow (a Boot Key Harbor tradition – if you don’t have a conch shell, you blow a bugle or a horn, or ring a bell). We left under a light breeze with a quiet harbor. Everything was “stowed” below, restrained as well as we’d needed to in our shakedown sails. We motored out the channel and past the reef in the fading light, hurrying to get through the minefield of crabpots before dark.

Crabpots – wooden traps that lie on the bottom – aren’t really the problem – it’s their buoys. Each individual pot along the line has a little round float marking its position … and if you get too close, you can wrap its line around the propeller. This stops everything and requires diving to clear, which can take awhile if you don’t have scuba gear, and can be dangerous in high waves because of the lift-and-drop of the boat.

So … hurry to get out past the reef to where the crab pots disappear.

Then: hoist sails. We put up about 2/3 of the mizzen, 3/4 of the main, and maybe 2/3 of the genoa jib. Took us an hour. The main and mizzen are in-boom roller furling and are becoming better behaved as we practice. The jib is around-the-forestay roller furling and so far appears to be having mechanical problems. Clearly when we reach port we need to take it down and look at it again. But for now … it took an hour to raise sail.

Then we had a few hours of sailing, making 3-6 knots over the ground (no water-speed indicator working yet). Eventually the wind began falling and varying, and we added the engine to give us stability and make a little apparent wind to fill the sails for better stability. That was probably 2 or 3 am the first night – I could look it up, I think, in the log that has been only sketchily kept so far.

Yesterday in the daytime we continued motor-sailing as we crossed the Gulf Stream, which we apparently got into during the night – bigger waves, more rockin’ and rollin’, and also a current pushing us away from the Yucatan Straits. Late yesterday we wondered if we were through the Stream already, as things quieted down some. Last night at sunset we took down jib and mizzen because they were flapping in the too-light air, trimmed the main in tighter and kept it up for stability … and as soon as it got dark both wind and waves began to build.

The Full Moon kept us company all of the first night. It drowns the stars when it gets up at all, so we only had a few minutes to marvel. The second night Sunset was about 6:30 and Moonrise not until a few minutes after 8:00, and in that hour we saw the constellations of my childhood, mostly not seen in adulthood except out on the water, or at Camp … and just before Moonrise saw the myriad of lesser lights that appear almost as a cloud behind the bright stars whose names we non-astronomers know.

Sailing by Moonlight was easy. If I wanted to walk across the cockpit I could time my motion with the waves, which wasn’t possible in the dark. We’ll have the moon with us at least part of every night this trip, and I think I’ll be glad of it.

So … I’ve typed a page and a half sitting here at the table, and it’s time to stop looking at the keys. More later.