Another night offshore

55 Miles off Georgetown North Carolina, it is 10:00 at night the moon is full, it’s 117 miles, about 14 hours, to Morehead City our next scheduled stop. We are puddling along at some 8 knots with a following sea and wind wavering right to left and back again but right on our butt. Not really a good point of sail for Steal Breeze. The boom is swinging and shaking the boat with every excursion. It is reefed in as tight as it will go, but there is just not enough wind to pin it in place. The main sheet is twisted around itself so that will have to get pulled out and unraveled. We have got preventers rigged, but still. This is our third overnight, and second on this leg, engines are running, which really is the only thing driving us, the jib while pinned out is only adding a knot or so to our speed. The swells are mostly light, but it’s never still. Prior to leaving Fort Lauderdale I figured I had reached my level of incompetence and hired a captain and a crew member to run the boat up to Virginia. After some 2.5 months in various yards, with parts and other fees it was time to get this trip completed. Home port is still 463 miles away, 2 days and 13 hours from now, but we still have to get past Cape Lookout and Cape Hatterus. Deadly dangerous places.

Boat is running well, engines are performing well, using a bit of oil from the port sail drive, and I despair of ever getting those things right. We are well provisioned and just running on a minimum time route to Tantalon Marina where we will port the boat while waiting for a closer slot in Occaquan. We figured fuel economy on our previous overnight and it is an excellent one gallon per hour with both engines running at cruise speed, 34 straight hours of run and just a bit over 34 gallons burned. Which is quite amazingly frugal. And simple math. So that part at least is working well.

Tried to raise the spinnaker earlier today, which was a complete bust. Had a bit of a timing issue getting the main sheet in the block and led back to the winch, which allowed the sail to twist itself around the jib stay. That took about an hour to resolve and the considered opinion of all was to not try that again. In looking at the sail itself it looks like it will need to be replaced. It has been mended quite a few times and is generally in poor shape. We’ll lay it out in Morehead City and give it a better inspection.

One amazing thing that happened today was a pod of dolphins decided to accompany us for 20 minutes. We got up on the bow and watched them frolic, till Breeze got annoyed and kicked off the autopilot. Mad scramble for the cockpit and got her back on course, and eventually the autopilot stayed engaged.

I have found that so far sailing is pretty boring for hours and hours, then it’s instant chaos. Nothing good ever happens at 3:00 AM. The boat never steers straight, always swinging back and forth, rising and falling, slopping about. But we’re doing much better than a call I heard earlier about 5 people in the water who evidently couldn’t get back in their boat. It’s been a very busy day for the Coast Guard. Two other Pan Pan calls, someone sinking and someone else run aground.

Anyway, it’s late, I’m going to catch a few Z’s and come up later to stand with whoever has the watch.