…And what a doozy it was! Objectively this was the worst passage we’ve had to date. I enjoyed it, but the weather definitely decided to test us. We got an early start on Friday, stopping for fuel in the C&D Canal. We were overtaken by a giant ship but otherwise had an easy transit but […]
Saturday morning, we slipped the morning lines to sail up to the Chester River. We were determined to get in at least a little bit more Chesapeake Bay cruising, and the Chester River looked like a great place to start. We raised the sails just past the mooring field and had a wonderful, fast sail […]
After making our grand entrance at York River Yacht Haven, the rest of the week was, thankfully, a quiet one. Memorial Day was supposed to be stormy so we didn’t have grand plans, but we took an Uber over to Yorktown and wandered the streets a bit. We took the Riverwalk to the American Revolution […]
We’d been monitoring weather closer than a meteorologist for the entire week. Every time the new models came out, Chris was studying them. And all they did was add to the confusion. One minute, we’d have a lovely rounding. The next, it was “expect hellfire with a solid chance of brimstone”. Right up until Friday […]
If I told you I wasn’t terrified, I’d be lying. But there was no turning back. For better or worse, for the first time, it was just the two of us and Windara. In a way, it was massively freeing. We didn’t have to wait for crew to arrive, and we didn’t have to worry […]
Starting the journey north We headed over to Great Guana mid-week after fueling up. There was a storm forming to the north as we left that, thankfully, just missed us. Mike and Emma had headed over earlier and we met up at Grabbers for dinner. It’s crazy to me sometimes that this is just our […]
It was hard to leave Warderick Wells behind, but we were up with the dawn to depart as soon as the sun rose. We had a 50 nautical mile (as the crow flies) beat ahead of us, so an early start was key. We raised a reefed main in the channel where seas were lumpy […]
As we left St. Augustine, we had a strong ebb running against 5′ ocean rollers, making the inlet a sloppy, slammy mess. The only other boat we saw as we left was a Coast Guard small boat, and they were either doing a training exercise or they followed us idiot sailors out because once they […]
Our time in Charleston was awesome, but we were looking forward to continuing our progress south. The one thing we were NOT looking forward to was our dock departure. We were on one of the finger piers in the litter box with monohulls in front of and behind us, and two catamarans on the next […]
When every move you make is dictated by weather, what do you do when the models and actual conditions disagree? We check all the weather models available to us through Predict Wind, NOAA coastal forecasts, tropical activity, actual conditions reported by various weather stations, wave heights, rain and CAPE (convective available potential energy – an […]