Sunday 6/8/08 to Friday 6/13/08 Hampton, VA to St. Georges Bermuda

These comments are from emails sent by HF radio during our voyage.

June 9
Lat 36 Deg 31.1 min
Long 74 Deg 53.1 min

We have traveled about 86 nm so far today. Very light winds and have had to motor. Winds finally up to 12kts and will start running under sail only shortly.

We will send more tomorrow. We should be in the Gulf Stream mid-day tomorrow.

At 1300

Lat: 35 deg 56 min N
Long: 73 deg 30 min W

We had a busy night. The winds finally picked up after sunset and we had 15 to 17 with gusts to 22 during the night. Around sunset the Research vessel Nar pasted close by heading to waters off Bermuda for a few weeks and indicated they would be landing in Bermuda around th 27th of June.

Around 2 am Joyce was on watch and woke me up due to a call on the radio. It turned out to be a Navy warship cruising the area. We spent about 20 minutes shifting our course so they could realign their position to avoid another vessel that they could not contact.

We generally check the radar every half hour. This morning around 6 am while we thought we had decent visibility we saw a ship only about 2 miles away approaching rapidly. It cleared the fog about 1.5 miles off our port quarter. We were able to contact him and he altered course.

The wind died again an we started our engine around 1030 am this morning. We are very definitely in the middle of the Gulf Stream as I prepare this note with the current pushing us NE around 2.5+ knots. We hope to be east and clear of the Stream toward midnight.

Another hot day with the temp at 93 and little wind.

June 10

Lat: 35 deg 20.9 min N
Long: 071 deg 46.7 min W

We had a night of slow going. We thought we were through the Gulf Stream but a nasty 2 knot current against us and light winds made for little progress. The current finally abated this morning around 7 am and the winds seem to be consistent right now with the forecast of 10 knots from the southwest. We are making progress again.

June 11

Lat: 34 deg 50.9 min N
Long: 70 deg 26.4 W

Generally light winds during the day made about 110 miles. We need to run the engine for a few hours to keep up forward progress when winds get really light. With the calm seas we can run on really low RPM and seem to be getting reasonable fuel consumption. Best estimate is we used about 25 gal so far. Not bad considering that we motored pretty steady getting out of the Bay.

There is no traffic at all out here. Once we left the Gulf Stream the radar is absolutely blank. Probably will not see anything until Bermuda. We work with a Canadian fellow by the name of Herb that does weather forecasting with folks traveling in the North Atlantic. He comes on every day at 1900 GMT. We each take turns talking on the HF SSB with him. Right now there seems to be about 25 boats spread from the US East Coast clear across the Atlantic. Herb has been doing this as an avocation for years.

There is a front coming through sometime Thursday. This will cause our southwest winds to shift to the north/north west. We are a close to half way at this point. The weather was actually comfortable today.

June 12

Lat: 34 deg 14.1 min N
Long: 068 deg 26.3 W

We continue to make progress toward Bermuda. The GPS suggests that there are 230 miles or so remaining. The light winds continue so most of the day was spent motoring yet again. We had a strong unfavorable current for about 8 eight hours today that turned out to be a big warm water eddy. These are spun off by the Gulf Stream as spin clockwise (there is also a cold counter part that does the opposite).

Right now I am under sail with 6 kts of wind moving at 3.5 kts giving the engine a break so I can check the oil level. Even though it is new the Yanmar engines are designed to actually consume quite a lot of oil so I need to check it every 12 hours or so. It needs to be stopped for about 10 minutes. I think we are actually going to make 60% of this trip on engine power.

There is a front going through today, Thursday, that should bring northwest or even better north to north east wind that will be favorable for the final leg.

We did actually see a cruise ship this morning around 7 am. Visibility was very restricted. Joyce just came on watch and was checking the radar that there was this blip off about three miles that finally appeared on our starboard heading northwest.

2330

Lat: 33 deg 23.0 min N
Long: 66 deg 10.8 min W

Calm clear night with good moon light. The temp is in the mid 70's and the visibility is excellent. We are motoring as usual and are about 110 miles out of Bermuda. We should get some wind in the morning from the northeast as a small cold front passes. We anticipate arriving in St. Georges around 7 or 8 tomorrow evening and will clear customs at that time. I am finding with propagation conditions that I cannot send updates during daylight hours very reliably.

We will contact you by phone probably on Saturday.

June 13

The front came through and the winds are to the NE at 15 as forecasted. Arrival still anticipated late afternoon with distance to go approx 60 miles.

Lat: 33 deg 01.9 min N
Long: 65 deg 25.8 min W